The winners and losers of the Iran war

 A deal to end the Iran war has finally been agreed, Donald Trump has said, almost four months after the US and Israel launched their attacks on Tehran.

The conflict has torn apart the Middle East, choked the global economy and tested some of the world’s greatest powers.

This is how the war has affected some of the key players.

Iran

Iran has been hammered by air strikes by the US and Israel, which enjoyed nearly complete air dominance during their campaign.

Its conventional navy has been sunk, and many senior leaders, including Ayatollah Khomeini, have been killed. An economy which was suffering badly before Feb 28 is now in even worse shape.

However, the regime remains in control and analysts say that, if anything, it is more hard line than before.

Tehran still has substantial missile and drone stocks, even though its defence industry appears to have been badly damaged.

While much of Iran’s uranium enrichment infrastructure was destroyed or badly damaged by Israel and the US’s earlier bombing campaign in June 2025, a large part of the highly enriched uranium it amassed is thought to have survived in Iranian hands.

Perhaps most importantly, Iran has shown its control over the Strait of Hormuz. The strait has been reopened through negotiation with Iranian permission, not through US force of arms.

Meanwhile, there appears to be no credible alternative to the Iranian regime, which killed thousands of its own people in January.

United States

The US has faced less economic disruption from the war than some countries, but it has not been pain-free. Petrol prices at the pump have risen by half, and Americans have spent nearly $450 extra per household on rising energy costs.

Polling shows they blame the war for their cost of living increase, and they are not happy with the way Washington has handled it. The US military colossus was able to strike at will, but the war showed limits to its might.

Air strikes did not remove the regime, or break its grip. Tehran has for decades readied for such a one-sided war by hiding away missiles and nuclear material and building cheap drones to strike back.

Iran damaged 20 US military sites across the region. Diplomatically, trust in the US has been further eroded, allies complain. Mr Trump plunged the Middle East into crisis with little consultation and has left allies to pick up the pieces.

Donald Trump

The US president has forged a war that has been increasingly unpopular with his Maga base and which most Americans were sceptical about.

A Fox News poll in late May reported that 60 per cent of Americans opposed the war. Such unease has fed into a slide in Mr Trump’s approval ratings.

And his deal to end the war has also not delivered on his main goals, at least not yet.

The White House in April said his “clear and unchanging” objectives were to wipe out Iran’s missile stocks and production, annihilate its navy, sever its support for terrorist proxies, and ensure it never acquired a nuclear weapon.

He has come closest with regards to Iran’s navy, though Tehran retains a “mosquito fleet” of speedboats to harass shipping in the strait. Missile stocks have been cut by as much as half, according to some estimates, and manufacturing has been degraded, but not knocked out.

Iran still has enriched uranium, the wider nuclear issue has been kicked down the road, and Tehran continues to sponsor proxies across the Middle East, though these have been significantly weakened since 2023.

The largest initial result of the agreement appears to be the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, which was open and unimpeded before the war.

Sagging poll numbers and the hangover from an unpopular and inconclusive campaign risk following Mr Trump to the November midterms.

Israel

Israel and the US began the war shoulder-to-shoulder, but it is Mr Trump who is ending it after sidelining Benjamin Netanyahu

At the start, the prime minister of Israel told his nation that the campaign offered a chance to “put an end to the threat from the ayatollah regime in Iran”.

Relations between the Israeli and US leaders are less cordial than they were at the start of the conflict - Alex Brandon/AP

After more than three months, Israeli officials are worried that a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz will not sufficiently address their core concerns.

As a recent analysis in the Times of Israel put it: “The Iranian regime still exists. It still possesses much of its ballistic missile arsenal and its stockpile of enriched uranium. And it also controls the Strait of Hormuz.”