Project Syndicate -- Iran’s Strategic Victory - Apr 9, 2026 - Shlomo Ben-Ami

Project Syndicate

Iran’s Strategic Victory

Apr 9, 2026

Shlomo Ben-Ami

The US-Israeli war will be remembered as yet another episode of powerful countries falling into the trap of asymmetric warfare, with the ceasefire ratifying what any competent military planner should have anticipated. But while the US might be able to absorb the shock of another defeat, Israel is no superpower.

TEL AVIV—When the news that the United States has agreed to a two-week ceasefire with Iran broke, I was immediately reminded of an exchange described by the American Colonel Harry Summers in 1982. “You never defeated us on the battlefield,” Summers said to a former North Vietnamese colonel. “Yes, but we won the war,” was the categorical response.

Make no mistake: the ceasefire deal seals the strategic defeat of the US-Israel alliance in Iran. This war will be remembered as yet another episode of powerful countries falling into the trap of asymmetric warfare, in which the mightiest militaries invariably fail to translate tactical gains into strategic victories.

The US and Israel—especially Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is better versed in history than US President Donald Trump—should have known this. The principles of war, laid out by Carl von Clausewitz in 1812, make clear that the destruction of enemy forces should have a terminal impact on their will to resist. Asymmetric wars defy this norm of “decisive battle.” And there was no reason to think that Iran would be an exception.

A civilization animated by ideological fervor, which has endured centuries of wars of survival, was never going to surrender easily. A country that sacrificed some 750,000 of its people’s lives, including thousands of children, in its eight-year war against Iraq in the 1980s always had a tremendous advantage over enemies that crumble under the emotional impact of a few dozen body bags. A regime that in January murdered tens of thousands of its own citizens in a mere 48 hours was not going to be fazed two months later by threats against civilians.

Even as the US and Israel have killed much of the Islamic Republic’s political and military leadership, and demolished much of its military capacity, the regime has waged a war of attrition against the global economy. As any competent military planner would have predicted, Iran has blocked transit through the vital Strait of Hormuz, and ensured that its Houthi allies are poised to close the only alternative, Bab al-Mandeb. Add to that strategic drone and missile attacks, and Iran has managed largely to offset its enemies’ military advantage.

In the process, Iran has managed to replenish its budget: it is now earning nearly twice as much from oil sales as before the war, while raking in profits from taxing ships for passage through the Strait. Russia has also profited, thanks to the easing of US sanctions on its oil. Meanwhile, the earnings of America’s allies in the Gulf have plunged, raising questions about whether they will be able to fulfill their pledges to invest billions of dollars in the US and in their own economic diversification.

To top it all off, the US and Israel have failed to achieve any of their war aims. Even the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz cannot be considered a victory, since it was open before the war. Iran’s ballistic-missile capabilities and its enriched uranium supplies remain a problem that will be addressed through diplomacy, just as they were before the war. And the upcoming negotiations in Islamabad are not going to produce an American diktat: the Iranians can still teach US negotiators a lesson, especially since Trump is eager to cut his losses and shift his attention to the politically vital domestic front and to the neglected East Asia theater.

As for regime change, though different individuals now lead Iran, they are no more moderate than their predecessors. Quite the contrary: the Islamic Republic has been transformed into an outright military dictatorship, with the Ayatollahs providing religious legitimacy to the hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The broader regional implications are no more favorable to the US and Israel. The war is bound to lead to a redrawing of the geopolitical map of the Middle East. Ties among the countries most overtly challenging the Western-led global order—China, Iran, Russia, and North Korea—might be strengthened, and their resolve hardened.

At the same time, the Gulf states, which have borne the brunt of Iran’s retaliatory strikes, might start viewing US military bases as more of a liability than an effective deterrent and move to diversify their alliances. They may consider aligning with a regional power like Turkey, which already has ties to the Gulf Cooperation Council, or Pakistan, which has a defense treaty with Saudi Arabia and has shown a willingness to share its nuclear know-how with Islamic states.

In fact, the likelihood of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East has now grown, as leaders in Iran and elsewhere come to view nuclear weapons as the ultimate insurance policy. Iran will also continue to build up its proxies in Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen, capitalizing on state failure—and the West’s reduced appetite for nation-building—to strengthen its regional buffers.

As for Israel, unless it holds Netanyahu accountable for leading the country into the abyss, its democracy is doomed. With his violent and poorly conceived policies, he has torn apart a once-cohesive society and undermined Israel’s standing in the US to the point that Americans’ alienation poses a strategic threat. His attempt to use Iran to distract from Israel’s escalating brutality toward the Palestinians—which has been essential to Netanyahu’s political survival—only compounds the catastrophe.

During the Cold War, the late US diplomat and strategist George Kennan recognized that internal dysfunction and external overreach would cause the Soviet Union to collapse on its own. So, he devised a strategy of containment, focused on preventing Soviet expansion while avoiding an unnecessary military showdown.

The same strategy could have worked against the Islamic Republic, which sooner or later would have collapsed under the weight of its internal contradictions. Instead, the US and Israel initiated a confrontation that was never going to go their way. And whereas the US might be able to absorb the shock of yet another defeat in an asymmetrical war, Israel is no superpower, no matter what Netanyahu claims.

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Shlomo Ben-Ami

Writing for PS since 2006

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Shlomo Ben-Ami, a former Israeli foreign minister, is the author of Prophets without Honor: The 2000 Camp David Summit and the End of the Two-State Solution (Oxford University Press, 2022).