On February 28, 2026, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in an operation U.S. President Donald Trump said was carried out in direct coordination with Israel. The killing marks a historic rupture, reshaping the very contours of the conflict between Iran, and the U.S.-Israeli axis. For years, Washington leaned on diplomacy, pairing negotiations with a strategy of “maximum pressure” through sanctions to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Israel, by contrast, never concealed its preference for the use of force, repeatedly signaling its readiness to dismantle Iran’s program militarily, and urging the United States to back that course. That posture reflects a long-standing doctrine Israel had enacted before, destroying Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981, and striking Syria’s nuclear infrastructure in 2007.

On the other side, Iran’s approach can best be understood as a blend of pragmatism and security-driven calculation in the face of a persistent threat. While it continued to expand its nuclear program, enhance its military capabilities, and deepen its regional footprint, Tehran simultaneously sought to signal restraint: issuing a religious decree prohibiting the acquisition of nuclear weapons, joining international non-proliferation agreements, granting access to international inspectors, and engaging in multiple rounds of negotiations with Washington. Those efforts culminated in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), reached under U.S. President Barack Obama. Israel then rejected the deal outright, a stance that contributed to a noticeable chill between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the time. Against this backdrop of divergence, a prolonged shadow war took shape, one marked by assassinations, cyber operations, and attacks on shipping, drawing all three actors into a sustained, undeclared confrontation.

Following the current calibrated, but steadily intensifying U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran, and a reciprocal Iranian response that escalated in both scope and reach, extending beyond Israel to target U.S. bases and military installations across the region, the world is now witnessing what may be one of the most consequential conflicts of the contemporary international order. Its significance lies not merely in the number of regional and international actors involved, but in the breadth of its repercussions, spilling beyond political boundaries into deeply disruptive economic and military effects. What, then, are the real calculations of gains and losses for the United States, Israel, and Iran in this war? The answer cannot be reduced to immediate outcomes. Rather, it requires a multi-layered assessment of the war’s trajectory and its implications for all three actors, ranging from the extent to which stated objectives are achieved, to the scale of political, military, and economic costs incurred, the pressures exerted on each actor’s domestic front, and the broader strategic position each is likely to occupy once the war subsides, regardless of its formal outcome.

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At the strategic level, the nature of this war becomes clearest when viewed through the objectives each side seeks to achieve. These objectives reveal not only the core stakes at play, but also their limits, and the possible trajectories the conflict may yet take. U.S. President Donald Trump framed the campaign as an effort to ensure that Iran never acquires a nuclear weapon, while also containing its missile program. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth articulated this in more operational terms: targeting Iran’s missile launch platforms, its defense industrial base, and its naval capabilities, alongside preventing any pathway to a nuclear weapons capability.

At the same time, the White House adopted a more expansive framing, describing the war’s objective as delivering overwhelming and decisive blows to eliminate the Iranian regime as a source of threat altogether.

At the same time, the White House adopted a more expansive framing, describing the war’s objective as delivering overwhelming and decisive blows to eliminate the Iranian regime as a source of threat altogether.

Official Israeli statements suggest that the war is aimed at removing what they describe as an existential Iranian threat. Within Israeli military thinking, that threat is increasingly defined not merely in terms of capabilities, but as embodied in the Iranian regime itself. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, has articulated the objective in more specific terms: eliminating Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile threat. In practice, this translates into targeting ballistic missile systems, air defense networks, command and control nodes, as........

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