The U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, well into its second week, has now involved at least 12 nations, with economic and political shocks reverberating around the world. Neither side has achieved its strategic objectives so far, and both boast that they can outlast the other.
If the conflict turns into a protracted war of attrition, Russia looks set to become a clear beneficiary, raking in profits from spiking oil and natural-gas prices, while the Western economies, Gulf states and even China will all feel spreading pain.
While we are still in the early days, both sides appear to have miscalculated how the other would behave, triggering an ever-expanding conflict with few clear ways out in the foreseeable future. President Trump, who spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, said in a press conference that the war will be over “very soon,” but followed it by saying that the U.S. would “go further.” Iran on Monday fired hundreds of drones and missiles across the Middle East.
Trump’s hope, according to U.S. officials, was that the Feb. 28 decapitating strike on the Iranian leadership—including the killing of the country’s supreme leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—would trigger either a collapse of the Iranian regime or the repeat of the Venezuela scenario, in which more pragmatic officials chose to cooperate with Washington.
Neither of these scenarios has materialized so far. Khamenei’s hard-line son Mojtaba Khamenei took over from his father, vowing vengeance, and no domestic insurgency has so far risen to challenge the Islamic Republic.
Despite massive airstrikes, Iran has retained the ability to lob ballistic missiles and drones at U.S. bases across the Middle East, at Israel, and—critically—at the main cities of America’s Gulf partners. It has also blocked the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint through which some one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas used to pass.
Iran’s strategy of all-out attacks on airports, hotels, energy facilities, ports and data centers in the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia was meant to collapse the economies and societies of these Gulf monarchies, forcing their leaders to pressure Trump to cease fire on Iran’s terms.
But this, too, didn’t happen. Gulf nations have showcased unexpected resilience, and instead of capitulation warned of retaliation as their air defenses shot down most Iranian drones and missiles, preventing catastrophic damage.
“Whatever is hurting us is also hurting the Iranians, and their capability to persevere is less than ours. We can manage, and I don’t think they can sustain this,” said Bader al-Saif, a historian at Kuwait University.
From the Gulf’s perspective, a wounded but undefeated Iranian regime would represent the worst possible outcome, as it would retain the ability to terrorize cities such as Doha or Dubai with drones, and continue disrupting oil traffic through Hormuz.
The Trump administration is certainly talking up the prospect of a decisive victory. “We will not relent until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated,” Trump said Monday. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth employed even more categorical language. “This is war. This is conflict. This is bringing your enemy to their knees. Whether they have a ceremony in Tehran Square and surrender, that’s up to them,” he said in a CBS interview.
If the Iranian regime were to collapse, or at the very least embrace Venezuela-style cooperation with the U.S., this would certainly shore up Washington’s global reach—and its relative power toward China, a key customer of Iranian oil. So far, this doesn’t seem to be in the cards, said Ellie Geranmayeh, Iran expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
“You are not going to get a decisive win in a war with Iran, given its territorial size, military capabilities and institutional structure,” she said. “The Iranian focus right now is to ensure that everything Trump hears and sees is how bad this war is for the economy and how directly Americans at home are going to be affected by what is happening in Iran. The longer this war of attrition continues, the longer Iran thinks it can keep exacting these costs.”
A long war depleting Western military stocks, diverting attention from Ukraine and making Russian oil and gas indispensable for the Western economies would certainly be a prize for Putin, said Alexandra Prokopenko, a former adviser to the Russian central bank and a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “It would be advantageous for the Kremlin for this conflict to last several months, which would lead to high oil prices for the foreseeable perspective,” she said.
Even if Trump were to decide that enough is enough, and that he can call it a victory after killing Ali Khamenei and destroying a large part of Iran’s missile arsenal, it isn’t at all clear that the Iranian regime under Mojtaba Khamenei—if he survives likely future attempts on his life—would agree to a cease-fire. Hard-liners such as parliament speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf have suggested that Iran won’t stop attacks until its own longstanding demands are addressed.
“Their calculus is that they paced themselves out, and that in coming days the U.S. and Israel will run out of interceptors and they will be able to inflict much more harm on every one of the U.S. allies in the region, and then Trump will be coming to beg for some kind of cease-fire, for which they could dictate the terms,” said Ali Vaez, head of the Iran project at the International Crisis Group conflict-resolution organization. “It is to a degree wishful thinking,” he added, “because even if U.S. defensive capabilities suffer, it is still well-stocked on the offensive side and can inflict way more damage to Iran.”
Continuing Iranian attacks on Gulf states might spur these nations, too, into joining the U.S.-led campaign. “Iran is engaged in a dangerous dance of death, targeting nearly everyone. Iran is attempting to strike at the backbone of the global economy,” said Saudi political analyst Salman al-Ansari. “Saudi Arabia right now is doing its best to de-escalate, because it knows that if there will be a response, it will not be a limited response, but a response that will involve Saudi Arabia at the forefront of combating Iranian recklessness. Restraint is not weakness.”
Yet, as Yemen’s Houthis have shown with their attacks in the Red Sea, it doesn’t take much sophistication to close major international shipping lanes. With a few drones and antiship missiles, the Iranians could do that too for a long time—unless the U.S. and allies launch a ground operation to seize the Iranian coastal areas, a risky proposition at best.
“If some kind of reasonable agreement is impossible with Iran, the Houthi example proves that even a very weak party can severely disrupt the straits,” said Sergey Vakulenko, who served until 2022 as head of strategy and innovation at Russia’s Gazprom Neft oil company.
Vaez, the International Crisis Group expert, said that it would be unthinkable for Mojtaba Khamenei, given that his entire family was just wiped out, to strike a deal with Trump. Instead, he would likely use any pause in the fighting to seek nuclear weapons.
“Even if the guns fall silent,” Vaez said, “it will be a very ugly equilibrium, which will not be stable.”
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com