The war launched by President Donald Trump — cheered on with theatrical confidence by Benjamin Netanyahu — was never a war for the Iranian people, nor a strategic effort to reshape the Middle East, nor even a coherent attempt to “deter” Iran. It was a campaign without a defined end-state, without a political vision, and without an exit strategy. Predictably, it ended as a lose–lose conflict, with none of the objectives Trump promised ever materializing: the theocratic regime did not fall, Iran’s regional project was not neutralized, and its power was not diminished in any meaningful or lasting way.

As Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of Iran Human Rights, put it bluntly: “This war was never about the rights of the Iranian people… the authorities used it as a pretext to intensify repression.” A woman in Tehran, identifying herself only as Sima for fear of reprisal, offered an even starker assessment: “Any peace with the Islamic Republic is a peace with my tormentors.”

These voices are not emotional outbursts; they are evidence that the war changed nothing inside Iran. If anything, it handed the regime a familiar and useful narrative — the language of siege and victimhood — which it has mastered for four decades.

Thirteen thousand airstrikes, as David Blair of The Telegraph reminds us, did not topple the regime, dismantle the Revolutionary Guard, or curtail Iran’s regional influence.........

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