Within hours of the end of the 12-day war that Israel launched against Iran – which included unprecedented U.S. strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities – all sides raced to declare victory, with blustery bombast.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that Israel had “achieved a historic victory, which will stand for generations.” Israel had removed two existential threats, he said, of “annihilation by nuclear weapons and … by 20,000 ballistic missiles.”
President Donald Trump said the one night of American strikes “totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program and set it back “decades,” not just months, as initial intelligence reports suggested. The first-ever combat use of 30,000-pound bunker-buster munitions “ended the war,” he said, comparing them to the atomic bombs dropped by the United States on Japan to conclude World War II.
Why We Wrote This
Starkly different narratives about the Israel-Iran war’s results point to multiple unresolved issues and underlying tensions that remain. A central question is whether postwar diplomacy, if and when it resumes, returns to square one.
And supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – who hid in a bunker throughout the conflict – on Thursday issued a video saying Iran’s “victory” had “delivered a heavy slap to the face of America.” The U.S. intervened only to prevent Israel’s “annihilation,” he asserted, and he ridiculed Mr. Trump’s demand that Iran surrender, saying it “will never happen.” The well-practiced propagandists of the Islamic Republic even created a Lego-style victory video, which portrayed Iran’s missiles as sending Israelis running for their lives into rat-infested shelters, before striking their strategic targets and melting a plastic Israeli flag with flames.
The starkly different narratives about the war’s results point to several unresolved issues and underlying tensions that remain. They also suggest mismatched expectations that are likely to influence future decisions about Iran’s nuclear program and security across the Middle East.
Indeed, analysts say that while the shooting may be stopping, for now, the conflict is far from over. If so, what has changed?
Whither diplomacy now?
Among key uncertainties is the fate of Iran’s stockpile of 400 kilograms (880 pounds) of uranium enriched to 60% purity – a short technical step from weapons-grade – which Iran says it successfully moved before it was attacked.
The war began June 13 when Israel launched its first wave of 200 fighter aircraft in a surprise attack that targeted Iran’s nuclear facilities, its ballistic missiles arsenal, and its top military and nuclear science leadership.
After staying on the sidelines for a week, Mr. Trump joined the campaign before dawn Sunday, ordering American B-2 stealth bombers to target Iran’s hardened nuclear sites with 14 bunker-buster bombs and a host of cruise missiles.
A central question is whether postwar diplomacy, if and when it resumes, returns to square one, with Iran insisting it has a right to enrich uranium on its soil, and the U.S. and Israel insisting it does not.
“It’s unlikely that the U.S. will feel it necessary to soften its position,” says Ali Vaez, director of the Iran program at the International Crisis Group. “So the question falls to the Iranian side to accept a compromise, or double down with a weaker hand.”
Iran is crowing about the unprecedented damage it inflicted by penetrating Israeli air defenses with an estimated 10% to 15% of nearly 600 missiles it launched, according to Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), leaving 50 impact sites in urban Tel Aviv and elsewhere looking like Gaza rubble.
Iran’s vulnerabilities revealed
But Iran also revealed its own defensive vulnerabilities and intelligence failures, says Mr. Vaez. Israel immediately seized control of Iran’s skies, struck with impunity, and operated agents on the ground in Iran.
In addition, the damage to Iran’s nuclear sites and expertise “may not be a terminal blow, but it’s undoubtedly a major setback in terms of capacity,” says Mr. Vaez. “There are some within the [ruling] system who will argue that a nuclear deterrent is now essential, but whether they can marry capacity and intent remains to be seen.”
Removing such a bomb option was the Israeli and American goal. Israel has said it will “respond forcefully” to any violation of the ceasefire that Mr. Trump announced Monday, and Mr. Trump has said the U.S. can strike again.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) “achieved what it could have achieved,” says Chuck Freilich, a former Israeli deputy national security adviser now at the INSS in Tel Aviv. “We severely downgraded the Iranian [nuclear] program. Maybe we didn’t eliminate it, but … we bought time. And that’s what it’s always been about with the Iranian nuclear program: gaining time.”
INSS figures indicate Israel attacked more than 1,480 targets in Iran and killed 606 Iranians, including the assassinations of more than 30 top military officials and 15 nuclear scientists. The IDF says it destroyed more than 300 missile launchers, which it estimated to be 75% of all those in Iran.
Losses inside Israel include 29 killed and more than 3,500 injured.
Israel’s campaign helped it “regain its deterrence factor toward its enemies,” says Daniel Wajner, an international relations expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
“It is not only about deterrence and legitimacy, but also about political influence,” says Dr. Wajner. “Admiration about how courageously, quickly, intelligently, and surgically Israel conducted the war may change some element on how global public opinion looks at Israel.”
Iranian “rethink” expected
Israel’s strikes will require a “long process of rehabilitation,” says Israel Ziv, a retired IDF general.
“The Iranians will need to internalize the fact that, even as they perceived themselves a superpower and tried to convince the world that they were such, in the end it was a paper tiger,” says General Ziv.
“We can expect them to rethink their ways,” he says. “If they will revert to being belligerent, they will have to again face Israel and the U.S.”
Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA/Reuters
Adds Mr. Vaez, noting the weakening before the war of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” allies, from Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon to the Houthis in Yemen, “For the Islamic Republic’s strategists, the question should not just be about the 12 days of war, but the setbacks across more than 12 months to a national security doctrine that’s built up over decades.”
Still, there are few signs so far that Iran will recalibrate its positions, despite withstanding the heaviest direct military pummeling since the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s.
Iran was outgunned and outsmarted, and “They simply know that this is not a war they can win,” says Hamidreza Azizi, an Iran expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin.
Yet, while Israel delivered “significant blows,” Iran also preserved its capacity to retaliate, he says, noting that in the final days of the war, Iran achieved “qualitative escalation” – by launching fewer missiles, but with a higher percentage that successfully evaded Israeli air defenses.
And though most of Iran’s enrichment capacity “has been damaged beyond repair,” the fate of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium may determine Iran’s next steps, Dr. Azizi says.
“The Israeli stated goal was to deprive Iran of the ability to build a bomb,” he says. “If Iran opts for nuclear ambiguity, then this war might have had the reverse effect.”
Arab states’ diplomacy undermined
The war has reverberated far beyond its belligerents. Arab states view the Israeli war on Iran as dragging the region back toward polarization and conflict and undermining the Arab-led push for cooperation and prosperity that Mr. Trump endorsed on his recent visit to the Gulf.
“Israel reinvested in the use of hard power when everyone is trying to create links between different countries,” says Mohamed Baharoon, director general of b’huth, a public policy think tank based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. “People will start thinking, Is this idea of having connectivity – a space for us to coexist without having to fight – still possible?”
Even should the Israel-Iran ceasefire hold, and Arab-led diplomacy continue, the conflict has dramatically changed Arab states’ views.
“The conflict hit home that diplomacy alone cannot guarantee Gulf security,” says one Arab diplomat from the Gulf, asking not to be further identified.
“From Ukraine to Gaza to the Iran war, we are learning that ‘might makes right,’” he says. “We will not abandon the rules-based order Israel and the West are undermining, but we cannot count on it to protect us.”
