As a formal end to the 106-day U.S.-Iran war moves toward a signing ceremony in Switzerland, both Washington and Tehran are claiming victory — but analysts say neither side walked away without significant costs. The conflict, which began on February 28 when U.S. and Israeli forces launched coordinated airstrikes on Iranian targets, is set to be officially closed by a memorandum of understanding scheduled for signature on June 19, brokered largely through months of mediation by Pakistan. The harder question being debated across foreign-policy circles is what, exactly, each party actually gained.
The sharpest early verdict may belong to The Economist, which described President Donald Trump as the conflict's biggest loser, arguing the war had exposed the limits of American military power and the hollowness of his administration's strategic vision. That assessment stands in tension with the White House's own framing of the deal — which Trump has described as imminent — as a triumph of pressure diplomacy. The framework reportedly includes Iran's indefinite commitment to never develop or acquire nuclear weapons, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the lifting of certain economic restrictions on Tehran, and a 60-day window for technical negotiations on Iran's enriched uranium stockpile and sanctions relief.
On paper, the nuclear dimension represents Washington's clearest gain. Iran's roughly 440 kilograms of highly enriched uranium are expected to be surrendered, and uranium enrichment would be suspended for between 15 and 20 years — terms that, if verified and enforced, would go significantly further than the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that Trump himself withdrew from in 2018. "Not all wars have a winner," The Economist cautioned, but even skeptical observers concede that rolling back Iran's nuclear timeline constitutes a tangible security outcome, particularly for Israel, which many regional analysts now regard as the conflict's principal beneficiary given the substantial degradation of Iranian conventional military capacity, including a large portion of its naval forces.
Yet the war's most consequential strategic outcome may ultimately belong to Tehran, not Washington. By shutting down the Strait of Hormuz — the chokepoint through which roughly 20 percent of global energy supplies pass — Iran demonstrated that it could weaponize a geographic asset long theorized about but never tested at this scale. The closure triggered fuel shortages across parts of Asia and sent cascading disruptions through global markets. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi made clear during ceasefire negotiations that Hormuz passage would continue only with authorization from Tehran's armed forces, and potentially subject to transit fees. Jonathan Spyer of the Middle East Forum argued that this de facto Iranian "toll booth" arrangement makes it difficult for the Trump administration to present the deal's terms as a clear American achievement.
The decapitation strategy that opened the war also yielded ambiguous results. U.S. forces killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the opening hours of the campaign on February 28, along with numerous other senior officials. His son, Mojtaba Khamenei, has since assumed the position of supreme leader. Far from destabilizing the Islamic Republic's theocratic structure, analysts note that the new leadership has in some respects hardened in posture — Mojtaba Khamenei declared as recently as June 2 that U.S. military bases across the Middle East were no longer safe. The regime change that the Trump administration appeared to have quietly sought as a war aim has not materialized in any meaningful political sense. Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House, summarized the situation bluntly: "We're still in the fog of war without a settlement."
Iran's costs are no less real. The country's conventional military capability has been substantially degraded. Its attacks on Gulf Arab neighbors — including Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, home to major U.S. installations — under the banner of retaliating against American forward bases alienated governments that Iran cannot afford to permanently antagonize. Richard Haass, writing in Project Syndicate, noted that China and Russia emerged as the clearest winners of the conflict, while Gulf Arab states suffered reputational damage and the primary combatants — the United States and Israel — gained the least relative to what they risked. Iran's international isolation, already severe before the war, has arguably deepened.
Domestically, Tehran faces a different reckoning. The theocratic government mobilized nationalist sentiment to suppress dissent during the conflict, but the end of hostilities typically removes the political cover that wartime provides. The Islamic Republic spent considerable state resources funding proxy forces — Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthi movement in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza — while its own population endured both direct military damage and the compounding pain of international sanctions. Whether that model of governance remains viable in the post-war period is a question the regime will not be able to defer indefinitely.
The formal agreement, with its 60-day negotiating window and unresolved technical questions about how Iran's enriched uranium stockpile will actually be removed, means the war's final ledger remains open. The shape of the post-conflict nuclear framework, the durability of any Hormuz arrangement, and the trajectory of internal Iranian politics will all factor into any definitive accounting of who won, who lost, and what the 106-day conflict ultimately cost — and achieved.