The war consuming the Middle East is, at its core, a zero-sum contest between two incompatible survival imperatives. Israel’s long-term security, as defined by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, requires not merely the degradation of Iran’s proxies but the dismemberment of the Iranian state itself — a fragmentation into six or seven ethnic ministates. Tehran, for its part, frames its own existence as inseparable from the resistance axis it has built across the Levant and Mesopotamia. As the late strategist Edward Luttwak observed, in the Middle East, peace processes tend to freeze conflicts rather than resolve them. Ceasefires here are not endings; they are pauses for rearmament.

The structural logic is unforgiving. A pro-Western government in Tehran would sever China’s Belt and Road corridor through Central Asia, tilt South Asia’s balance against Pakistan, and cut Russia’s only viable overland access to warm-water ports. These are not marginal interests — they are existential ones for Beijing, Islamabad, and Moscow alike. Iran’s survival, in other words, matters more strategically to its allies than Israel’s survival matters to its Western patrons, if only because the United States has the luxury of geographic distance. As scholar Vali Nasr has argued, Washington’s Middle East policy has long underestimated the depth of Iran’s regional embeddedness.

Washington: Winning the Battle, Losing the Map

The Biden-to-Trump transition has done nothing to simplify America’s position. The United States will announce a version of victory — citing degraded Shiite militias in Iraq and demonstrated naval dominance — but the strategic ledger is far murkier. Trump’s political capital is under severe strain.

A rising anti-interventionist chorus within his own MAGA coalition is already framing the conflict as Netanyahu’s war, not America’s.

A rising anti-interventionist chorus within his own MAGA coalition is already framing the conflict as Netanyahu’s war, not America’s.

“This is not our war,” the refrain goes. “American boys should not be sacrificed on the altar of Israel.”

A protracted war of attrition — or, worse, a catastrophic naval loss in the Strait of Hormuz — would accelerate a constitutional crisis. Congress will demand accountability. The questions will be pointed: What were the objectives? Were they achieved? Who authorized what? The historian Robert Kagan has warned that American credibility in the Gulf depends not on the willingness to strike, but on the clarity of purpose behind those strikes. Purpose, in this conflict, has been conspicuously absent from public discourse.

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Israel: Tactical Strikes, Strategic Retreat

Israel may be the conflict’s most consequential loser. Netanyahu’s maximalist war aims — regime change, territorial fragmentation — were always implausible.

Iran’s deep state, its Revolutionary Guards, its nuclear knowledge, and its theocratic legitimacy are not targets that can be bombed into extinction.

Iran’s deep state, its Revolutionary Guards, its nuclear knowledge, and its theocratic legitimacy are not targets that can be bombed into extinction.

Having failed to achieve any of those objectives, Netanyahu will return home to a Knesset demanding answers, and to three criminal charges — corruption, bribery, breach of trust — that had been conveniently submerged beneath wartime solidarity.

Israel’s deterrence posture, the invisible architecture on which its security doctrine rests, will be damaged. Hezbollah and Hamas will claim resilience. The Abraham Accords’ momentum toward normalization, which relied on the perception of Israeli invincibility, will stall. As former Mossad director Tamir Pardo has cautioned, military operations without defined political endgames risk transforming tactical wins into strategic defeats.

Iran: Survival as Triumph

For Tehran, survival is its own form of victory. The Islamic Republic has absorbed strikes from one of the world’s most technologically advanced militaries and the full weight of American air power — and endured. That narrative will echo across the Muslim world. Iran’s proxies in Iraq and Lebanon will absorb heavy punishment, but Tehran has rebuilt shattered proxies before; it rebuilt Hezbollah after 2006, and Hamas after each of its Gaza conflicts.

Iran’s alliances with Russia and China will deepen. Its role as the primary counterweight to American influence between the Mediterranean and the Hindu Kush will be reinforced. The political scientist Ray Takeyh has noted that the Islamic Republic has always been more adaptable than its adversaries expected. A state that survives this conflict will enter the next phase of regional competition emboldened.

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Russia gains disproportionately. American distraction in the Gulf offers Moscow strategic breathing room in Ukraine and Central Asia. Should the Strait of Hormuz close, even briefly, Russian oil flows eastward to China at premium prices — a windfall measured in billions. China, for its part, watches as the Belt and Road remains intact and American credibility erodes simultaneously — a dual dividend that requires no military expenditure on Beijing’s part.

Iraq and Lebanon absorb the heaviest collateral damage. Iraq’s Shiite political blocs and Iran-backed militias face decimation by US strikes, fracturing Baghdad’s fragile sectarian equilibrium. Lebanon, already a failed state in fiscal terms, may use Hezbollah’s weakening to push for disarmament — but the structural conditions that produced Hezbollah have not changed. The Gulf Arab states gain temporary breathing room; they also discover, again, that their security depends entirely on the durability of American commitment, a commitment that domestic American politics is steadily undermining.

The most dangerous feature of this conflict is not its destructiveness but its irresolvability. Neither side can achieve its maximalist aims. Neither can afford to concede. Any ceasefire leaves intact the underlying incompatibility — two regimes whose founding ideologies require the destruction of the other.

The most dangerous feature of this conflict is not its destructiveness but its irresolvability. Neither side can achieve its maximalist aims. Neither can afford to concede. Any ceasefire leaves intact the underlying incompatibility — two regimes whose founding ideologies require the destruction of the other.

The war will continue through other instruments: assassination, cyber operations, sanctions, proxy rebuilding, and the patient accumulation of nuclear capability.

The world’s major powers have placed their bets. Russia and China are, for now, on the winning side of a conflict they did not have to fight. The United States and Israel are on the costly side of a conflict whose objectives were never clearly defined. The Middle East’s civilians — in Gaza, in southern Lebanon, in Iranian cities — are on no side at all.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

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