In the space between peace and war that the Gulf crisis has now entered, and from which it may exit at any point, if only for a brief time, maybe this is a convenient moment to think about what has been gained and what has been lost so far. 

In this and the next two blog posts, I look at the balance of losses and benefits in and from this war. It is, of course, a provisional sketch. First because the war is not yet over. And second because even when it is, data will be incomplete. So this is just a first stab at figuring it out (though, talking of figures, I’m not looking at economic cost except in the most general sense). 

This post looks at some of the broader costs of the war. In the following posts, I take on a political assessment of gains and losses by different kinds of actors. The next post looks at the three combatant states – Iran, Israel and the USA. And the final one in the series has a look at other regional powers, the mediators, and significant outsiders.

Summary

To give you the overall balance up front, and noting the provisional nature of the exercise, with heavy emphasis on the words so far,  nothing can be seen that balances the negative impact that the war has had, is having and will continue to have on people, nature, legality and human rights. Among the three main combatants, there is no clear winner, though Israel has been able to get away with various actions with less scrutiny than it would otherwise have faced, and Iran has achieved something simply by not losing. The USA is weakened in both material and non-material ways. The Gulf region is worse off, regional security is diminished, global prosperity is at risk, food insecurity is on the rise. Other bystanders partake of the general negative effects of the war but find (or might be able to find) some gains here and there. For the USA, whose leader launched the war and trumpeted victory early on, there is as yet no silver lining.

Fatalities & hunger 

In any war, the greatest losses are suffered by ordinary people and by nature. Compared with the wars in Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine, the death toll in the Gulf has been low. Numbers are always uncertain but a Wikipedia compilation suggests a range of 6,000 to 8,600 deaths and 36,500 injured (excluding 4,600 fatalities and 8,730 injured in Lebanon).

However high or low the figures, with each of them goes tragedy, grief and suffering. 

Beyond the direct effects, the war hurts people all round the globe. Worldwide hunger is likely to increase this year because about 30 percent of the world’s supply of fertiliser originates in the Gulf. As a result, there is a risk of food insecurity reaching record levels, worse than in 2022 when Russia escalated its war against Ukraine, and worse than during the Covid-19 pandemic. And even if the fertiliser gets out of the Gulf and to farms soon enough to be useful in the Northern Hemisphere’s planting season (now), prices for food, medicines and everything will rise. This has a direct and impossibly heavy impact on the poorest. In Somalia, for example, the price of some essential foods has already tripled.

The war hits the poorest hardest. But everybody else is carrying some extra burden too. In one way, you could call this a world war.

The natural environment is also suffering. Strikes on industrial facilities – especially in the oil industry – produce fires with the blackest smoke, meaning it is thick with pollutants, and throw from toxic debris into the air. The result is increasing particulate air pollution and declining water quality, in a region where there are already major issues with both. And then there’s the impact on the Gulf waters themselves. With the third major war in the Gulf region in three and a half decades, parts of the fragile maritime ecosystem are at serious risk of becoming unsustainable. This is the season in which marine life gathers and breeds in Gulf waters, including sea turtles, seabirds and the extraordinary-looking dugong (aka sea cow) and it is facing extreme risk.

Matters of principle

Thus, human security and ecological security are both severely damaged by the war. Is there a positive gain that could go some way towards balancing that out? If there is, it is not to be found in issues of principle for fundamental principles are also casualties in this war. 

Human rights have suffered, as was predictable from the outset. If the Iranian regime stayed in power, as it did despite the deaths of senior personnel in the Israeli-US decapitation strike that opened the war, and notwithstanding US President Trump’s fantasy that regime change is just a matter of a different cast of characters, then it stood to reason that it would crack down on dissent and strengthen its grip. That is what often happens under the pressure of war.

In more general terms, the war undermines fidelity to the rule of law. It was illegal from the outset as neither Israel nor the USA faced an imminent threat from Iran. The claims by US envoy Steve Witkoff that Iran was a week away from being able to make nuclear weapons and by Israel’s premier Netanyahu that it was a month or two away from actually having a nuclear bomb are not borne out in expert analysis of the available intelligence. Nor, even if true, do they fulfil the conditions of “imminent threat”. Nor are they consistent with Netanyahu’s claim in June 2025 that attacks on nuclear installations and scientists by Israel and the US had eliminated the “existential threat” of “nuclear annihilation” by Iran. In fact, those attacks may not have “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear industry as Trump has claimed (he does seem addicted to over-statement, doesn’t he?), but there is no doubt they did serious damage, which, as a by-product, so to say, undermines any principled, legal case for starting the war in February this year.

To dwell on this issue a moment more, there is a regrettable if understandable tendency to ignore the historical facts and nuances about Iran and nuclear weapons. Iran is a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Israel is not. Nonetheless and despite the treaty commitment, Iran had a programme to manufacture nuclear weapons in the early 2000s. It has maintained the technical capacity to do so since scaling back the programme in 2003. However, it has not enriched uranium to weapons grade. The prospect of an additional nuclear-equipped state in the Middle East is deeply unsettling; it would undermine regional security and stability. The prospect, however, does not provide either a moral or a legal basis for Israel and the US going to war against Iran.

And there is something vaguely ridiculous and even distasteful in the notion that Israel with its undeclared nuclear weapons is taking action to prevent further nuclear proliferation.

Viewed politically

If there is no gain for important principles, then we have to answer the question about gains by assessing putative political advantage for one government or another, whether participating in the war or on the sidelines. How does it stack up politically? Whose national interests have been enhanced by the war so far? That is the topic of the next post.