The question is whether any government has benefitted from the Gulf War that began on 28 February when Israel and the USA attacked Iran. How do the costs and benefits stack up politically? Whose national interests have been enhanced by the war so far?

There are different categories of involvement and non-involvement in this war and my sketch groups the governments accordingly. First, the three main protagonists, whom I discuss in this post. In my next, I look at the other governments in the region, the mediators and, lastly, significant outsiders such as Russia and China, Ukraine and traditional US allies.

Note the provisional nature of the assessment (and indeed, of any winners-and-losers round-up you read anywhere). There’s a heavy emphasis on the words so far. 

The three main players

1. The USA

The USA is a major loser in the war it initiated. It is using up military assets at a staggering rate, including half its stockpile of stealth cruise missiles and as many Tomahawk cruise missiles as are produced in ten years. Despite that, Iran is thought to retain about 70 percent of its missile launchers so it still possesses considerable firepower. For all of Trump’s puerile boasting about US military strength, it is clear he has not yet understood that destructive capacity only equates to power in the most limited, useless and frustrating sense – the power to knock things down and kill people but not necessarily the power to achieve objectives.

To begin with, those objectives were

• Getting all Iran’s enriched uranium out of its hands (recently emphasised by Trump as the only thing that matters, but also recently described by him as “more for public relations than it is for anything else”) – not achieved yet and it continues to look like it’s a case of nothing doing unless Iran gets some big compensation;
• Degrading Iran’s military capacity – significantly but far from fully;
• Reducing Iran’s military role in the region – likewise;
• A popular uprising and regime change – no change – if anything, the regime looks more entrenched, stronger and stable than before (see below).

Events have added securing free passage through the Strait of Hormuz to the list because the war created the right conditions for Iran to assert control of those waters. So far, the US has not achieved that objective.

This demonstration of the tight limits on US power is draining its capacity for strategic leadership. US allies are faced with reckless behaviour, frequently expressed disregard and contempt for them, demands that they fully back actions on which they were not consulted and would have counselled against, inconsistent and misleading statements, a general impression of arbitrary and chaotic decision-making, and a war without strategy, legality or ethics. Not surprisingly, several of them have been taking their distance not just from the operations in the Gulf, and not just from Trump, but from the USA. 

The USA today has lost much of its moral capital and reputation. It is hard to see how it will get it back. It will not be restored by Trump’s latest round of bluster. After the notorious threat that Iran’s “whole civilization will die tonight,” his latest bout of bellicosity is “there won’t be anything left of them” if they don’t comply. The same day as he made that threat, he withdrew it, saying he did so at the request of Gulf state leaders to allow time for negotiations. Once again, he also said an agreement was very close. The problem is, of course, that this process is becoming so familiar that not many people take the sound and fury seriously any more, and certainly not the Iranian leaders, yet one day it might be for real again, as it was on 28 February.

A better president and an administration that does not casually abuse and threaten allies as well as adversaries will be welcomed by many in Europe, Northeast Asia, and elsewhere. But the thought has surely sunk in pretty widely and firmly by now: if the US electorate can do it twice, it can do it a third time, if not with Trump due to age and the US constitution, nonetheless with Vance, Rubio, Hegseth or AN Other as yet unknown. 

Hedging against the unreliability of the US will be a major component of US allies’ long-term policies for many years to come, maybe forever. As they become less dependent on the US, they will also be less compliant. That loss of influence is a non-material process that will have direct, long-lasting material effects on the US and its citizens. Even if events unfold in the Gulf war so that Trump’s will does prevail, it is hard to see that changing.

2. The Islamic Republic of Iran

Iran – the government, that is – is not really a winner but nor is it a loser either. Not losing is, as many observers are pointing out, a kind of win. As I suggested in a recent post, if Iran can trade its enriched uranium (or even an undertaking not to enrich uranium further) for sanctions relief, that will count as a win too. 

The government has a firmer grip within Iran now than it seemed to hold during the huge mobilisations against it at the start of the year. There seems to have been a rally-round-the-flag effect, along with tighter repression and the fatigue and exhaustion of people who are suffering from US actions and no longer believe it will come to their aid.

Though Iran is intransigent, it is worse off. Judging from the different accounts coming through, over 250 senior officials have been killed, depriving it of important leadership capacity. It has lost most of its navy and economically important industrial assets. In the circumstances, remaining functional as a government is quite some achievement. The US naval blockade of its ports is reducing both exports and imports, though land routes remain open. Prices are rising, shortages are increasing.

It has made a big gain by asserting control of the Strait of Hormuz. This is part of its war strategy of spreading the pain. Part of the missile capacity it has retained seems to be on the coast by the Strait. It does not need to strike often to show that merchant shipping that tries to go through the Strait without its permission faces an unacceptably high risk. It is probably not sustainable for a long period, not because it can be forced to stop by military action, but because the pain it causes will mobilize opposition, even among governments that might be moderately sympathetic to it.

The other major component of spreading the pain is Iran’s missile and drone strikes on other Gulf states. This is intended to warn against getting too close to Israel and to the US. With most of the Gulf states, that appears to have sunk in (the UAE is the exception) but it is going to cast a shadow over future relations. Three years ago, China brokered what seemed to be an important détente between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Improved relations lasted for around a year and a half but now seem like a distant memory, an echo from a world that has been left behind.

The proximity of the Gulf states to each other, and in particular their dependence on trade through the Gulf, would seem to militate in favour of pragmatic co-existence and cooperation. But when one of those states is at loggerheads with all the others, and has even launched missile and drone strikes against one with which it had decent relations all the time, namely Qatar, proximity becomes the name of the problem.

Iran is obviously feeling the pain of the war and of the US naval blockade of its ports (the US is not blockading the Strait of Hormuz, by the way, regardless of a characteristically imprecise statement by Trump). So in one sense, the question is who has the greater capacity to endure the pain. Iran can turn the Hormuz tap on and off while the USA can block a lot (but not all) of its energy exports and its commodity imports. 

For what it’s worth, my bet would be that the government of Iran will still be in place after Trump has left the White House.

3. Israel

Israel looks like a significant short-term winner but some of its gains will prove illusory and fleeting. 

On the plus side for Israel, if not for anybody else, the war on Iran has provided cover for military activities in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria:

• Israel has kept up the pressure on Palestinians in Gaza. Despite the October ceasefire – the Trump peace plan – its attacks continue, killing more than 730 Palestinians since the ceasefire, though the frequency of attacks and rate of killing are falling. Netanyahu recently boasted that Israel now occupies 60 percent of Gaza territory, significantly more than the Trump peace plan permitted. Hamas nonetheless remains the dominant force in the other 40 percent.
• Israel grabbed the opportunity for another offensive in Lebanon to re-defeat Hizbollah. A ceasefire agreed in mid-April and extended on 15 May has little meaning since it is an agreement between Israel and the government of Lebanon, not Hizbollah. Attacks continue, as does Hizbollah’s defiance.. The outcome will probably be to render Israel’s northern neighbour effectively ungovernable, which will not generate security for either country, as experience shows. 
• In Syria, where Israel took over a 400 sq km area as a military buffer zone shortly after the fall of Assad in December 2024, it is currently launching repeated, relatively small armed incursions to increase the area of its effective control. 
• In the West Bank, the settlers charge on with terrorizing Palestinians with government support.

From the perspective of Netanyahu and Israeli hawks, this may look like unmitigated gain even if the conflicts and the fighting continue. And if the argument that Netanyahu’s political standing depends on being a wartime leader is valid, then it’s reasonable to think that he and his hawkish supporters are content that the fighting continues. 

In the short term, while Israel like everywhere else will be affected by rising prices for imports, it has no problem about the Strait of Hormuz because its crude oil does not come from the Gulf. 

How Israel is affected by the evolving security situation in the region is harder to read. In the long term, pure chaos in the Mashriq is not in its interest but the weakening of the Gulf states that the war causes fits Israel’s current perception of its advantage quite well. On the other hand, an undefeated, even more hardline, hostile, and potentially vengeful Iran looks like a decided problem. 

In broader international relations, Israel is a clear loser, despite its close and deepening partnership with the Trump administration. The viciousness Israel currently displays on the West Bank, in Gaza and in Lebanon combine with this government’s evident taste for aggression to result in friends falling away like leaves in autumn. Even in the USA, despite (or because of) the closeness of Trump and Netanyahu, support for Israel is at its lowest ever. 

It may not be the Netanyahu government that feels the effect of losing friends but the loss will likely return to bite Israel in the not very distant future.