Any assessment of the war between the United States and Iran must come to grips with two seemingly contradictory observations. The US definitely secured a military win and the Iranian regime perhaps emerged strategically stronger. Is the world both better off and worse off? Definitely maybe.
For Australia, these contradictions shape how Canberra manages its most important ally while contending with a regime that has directed attacks on Australian soil.
Debate over who has come out more victorious is already old news. The most useful question is not which of the outcomes is worth the greatest notice but how they interact. A regime that has been materially weakened yet left politically entrenched presents a more complicated problem than either a straightforward defeat or victory would. It is that combination which will shape the next phase of the confrontation and the international order that emerges from it.
The military dimension is more straightforward. The US and Israeli campaign inflicted substantial damage on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, air defences and command and control networks. And military weakening of Iran (in terms of its nuclear program and ability to support its terror proxies) is to the world’s benefit. The broader strategic consequences are less straightforward. The regime’s survival is, in itself, a meaningful victory for Tehran.
While the terms of the US–Iran memorandum of understanding are less clear and still in negotiation in Switzerland, we see immediate benefits for Iran: the ceasefire, the lifting of the naval blockade and the oil waivers now returning Iranian crude to market through the Strait of Hormuz. The provisions that would underwrite a durable settlement – a lasting resolution of the nuclear question, verifiable curbs on Iran’s ballistic missile program and an end to its support for regional proxies – are deferred to a final agreement, the conclusion of which is uncertain. The danger is not that the deal concedes too much to Iran in substance but that the deferred half is never delivered. Iran could pocket its immediate gains while the harder questions are left unanswered and confrontation returns.
The imbalance reflects how the agreement came together. Its timing and shape seem to owe less to conditions on the ground than to a diminishing American appetite for a sustained confrontation. Among the sources of that waning resolve are mounting US political demands for resolution before the November midterm elections. Meanwhile America’s NATO and Asian allies are complaining of economic pain, and there’s quiet pressure from Gulf allies anxious for de-escalation on their shores. Arguably, Donald Trump’s wish to let the pomp and ceremony of the US’s 250th anniversary next month take centre stage may have also played a part.
Iran wagered from the outset that the US and its allies lacked the endurance for a prolonged confrontation. As Gil Merom argued in his 2003 book How Democracies Lose Small Wars, open societies struggle to sustain the costs of protracted conflict. Unlike an authoritarian adversary, they’re constrained by a public unwilling to tolerate mounting monetary expense or casualties. The calculation predates this war but is now demonstrated with unusual clarity.
Lebanon is a potential point of failure in the US–Iran negotiations. Whether the arrangement survives events in Lebanon depends in part on how much pressure Trump can or will exert on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to restrain Israeli operations there. Netanyahu is under no such obligation: Israel was not a party to the understanding. Tehran can probably absorb low-intensity Israeli activity in Lebanon without abandoning the deal, but not an Israeli major assault or a sustained military presence there. Neither Washington nor Tehran fully controls the answers.
China is watching closely. It can only be alarmed by the military destruction that Iran has copped. And in its planning, it must consider renewed American willingness to use force. The more consequential lesson available to Chinese strategists, however, concerns endurance rather than capability. The conflict raises questions about the extent to which the US is willing to sustain the economic, political and military costs of a prolonged confrontation.
For Beijing, any crisis over Taiwan would likely be measured in not days or weeks but potentially months or years. Chinese planners will therefore be looking at both US military performance and the durability of American political resolve, alliance cohesion, economic resilience and public support over time.
For Australia, the consequences are less remote than the geography suggests. A Gulf in which maritime traffic and energy flows are subject to Iranian leverage, a regional deterrence balance that has shifted and the possibility of friction between Washington and Europe all bear on the strategic environment Canberra has to plan against. This conflict has shown that West Asia deserves a more sustained place in Australian strategic thinking than it currently holds. For too long, the region has drawn Canberra’s attention only when a crisis has forced it to, and then lost that attention once the immediate danger has passed. A more deliberate and continuous engagement would leave Australia far better prepared for whatever the next phase brings.
