25 June 2025
People celebrate at Enghelab Square in Tehran on 24 June, after a ceasefire came into effect between Iran and Israel.
Xinhua News AgencyIsrael launched a war of aggression against Iran on 13 June. After more than 24 hours of ceasefire, it is clear – Iran won, Israel lost.
“It wasn’t a decisive defeat for the [Israeli] regime, where it comes to the edge of collapse,” Mohammad Marandi of the University of Tehran told the Dialogue Works channel on Tuesday.
“But it was a win for Iran.”
Marandi’s assessment is fair: Israel’s war failed and left Iran stronger. This has enormous implications for Iran, Palestine and the world.
How do you define a winner?
Carl von Clausewitz said war is politics by other means. You win if you achieve certain objectives.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed the war aimed to remove “two existential threats” to Israel, “the nuclear threat and the ballistic missile threat.”
But his actual goal, only hinted at, was regime change.
Following the ceasefire, Netanyahu declared “a historic victory,” claiming he had eliminated the “threat of destruction via nuclear weapons” and the threat from “20,000 ballistic missiles.”
He notably omitted regime change.
Tactically, Israel scored some early “successes” – murdering Iranian commanders, scientists and their families. But when measured against Netanyahu’s own objectives, Israel failed completely.
The nuclear “threat”
Iran had no nuclear weapons and was not attempting to build one, according to US intelligence assessments and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
President Donald Trump nonetheless adopted Netanyahu’s lie that Iran was “very close,” and bombed three Iranian nuclear sites.
But US intelligence assessments now say US bombing set Iran’s nuclear programs back by mere months.
US officials concede that they do not know where Iran’s highly enriched uranium is. Iran moved it before the strikes.
The ineffective attack, moreover, relied on US power.
Israel achieved nothing.
Iran’s ballistic missiles
Netanyahu claimed Iran had 20,000 ballistic missiles.
His own military put the number at 2,500.
The Israeli military claims Iran fired around 550 missiles during the war, and had between 1,000 and 1,500 left at the end.
Israel asserts Iran owned about 250 mobile launchers and that by the end of the war it had just 100 left.
Marandi estimates the number of launchers – easily replaceable trucks – to be in thousands, a much more realistic number for a country of Iran’s size.
We can’t verify any of this. Iran does not publish its military secrets, and Israel is not known for telling the truth. But Iran has spent decades building a missile program to deter the United States and Israel. It is unlikely Israel did that much damage.
Even according to Israel, Iran ended the war with a significant arsenal and as far as we know Iran’s underground missile cities and launch sites remain untouched.
But the clearest evidence of Israeli failure came Tuesday morning, in the hours before the ceasefire went into effect: Iran hammered Israel with repeated salvos of ballistic missiles, keeping millions of Israelis in shelters, where they had spent much of the previous 11 days.
One missile struck an apartment building in Beersheba on Tuesday morning, killing four, bringing the number of people killed in Israel during the war to 28.
Israel killed more than 600 people in Iran.
Yet with a few hundred missiles, Iran depleted Israel’s stock of interceptors in days and caused unprecedented damage, shattering Israelis’ sense of safety and immunity.
Iran revealed new types of missiles that pierced multi-layered US and Israeli defense systems with apparent ease.
Israeli censorship hides much of the damage.
But what was visible showed Israel’s vulnerability – even with massive US military protection.
Netanyahu’s war exposed Israel as more vulnerable than ever.
Regime change failed
Though Israel never officially admitted regime change was its goal, it was clearly Netanyahu’s goal.
Michael Oren, Israel’s former ambassador in Washington, acknowledged that regime change was an “implicit goal.”
He said Iran’s collapse – even if it spread nuclear material among competing factions in a “balkanized Iran” – was preferable to its current centralized leadership.
Oren’s remarks to CNN on Sunday reveal Tel Aviv’s real fear: It is not a nuclear Iran, but a sovereign Iran that supports resistance. The same fear drove US-Israeli destruction of Iraq, Libya and Syria.
Despite sanctions and discontent, the Islamic Republic commands domestic legitimacy, Marandi says.
The joint US-Israeli aggression, he argues, strengthened the Iranian state and left Western-oriented segments of society disillusioned by Western deceit.
“Iran’s biggest achievement or gift wasn’t on the battlefield but at home amongst the people, becoming as one,” said one Iranian.
Trump’s claims about obliterating Iran’s nuclear program are, as analyst Mouin Rabbani said, “a boast better known as proclaiming victory and going home.”The US likely realized that the Israeli attack had reached its limits and that “it only made sense to continue in the context of achieving the different outcome of regime change.”
So Netanyahu not only failed to provoke regime change, he also failed to draw the US into a wider war. Trump’s strikes were, in the words of former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, “an act of political theater.”
What about Gaza?
Some hoped Iran would tie a ceasefire to ending the genocide in Gaza.
That is understandable, amid the unbearable, ongoing horror. During the 12-day war with Iran, Israel killed almost 900 Palestinians in Gaza.
But this was unrealistic and would have been extremely risky.
Iran’s strategy has never been to support Palestine by direct war with Israel. Rather, it has been to support indigenous resistance groups. That’s precisely why Iran was targeted.Iran said from the start that it would punish Israel and stop retaliating when Israel stopped attacking. Iran’s goal was defensive, not to seek escalation.
What might have happened if Iran had linked this war to ending the Gaza genocide?
It is likely the US would have launched a strategic bombing campaign to save Israel. It would attack Iran’s institutions, industry and infrastructure with even more ferocity than Israel did.
Thousands would be killed, and Iranian leaders could lose internal legitimacy to continue such a fight.
Marandi doubts such losses would provide any strategic benefit. In the long term, Iran’s goal is to strengthen itself and the resistance in the Global South.
Iran and allied resistance movements have never aimed to defeat Israel in a single blow, but rather to wear it down. That is how asymmetrical warfare works when you are the weaker side facing the full might of the US-led Western empire.
Although Israel started it, this war advanced that aim. Israel now appears weak, unstable, unsafe to live in and totally reliant on foreign support in a world where it is more hated than ever after nearly two years of its livestreamed genocide in Gaza.
Brain drain and capital flight will likely accelerate.
Had Iran gone further, it would have lost the initiative.
By ending the war from a position of strength – after showcasing its missiles and surviving a war of aggression, Iran preserved its capabilities and may now enhance them.
Iran signed no agreement to halt support for any resistance group. It remains independent and sovereign.
There is no sign that this war “has altered Iran’s strategic posture,” observes Sina Toossi of the Center for International Policy.
Dangers ahead
While Iran prevailed, the dangers it faces cannot be overstated: Washington and Tel Aviv will intensify their efforts to subvert and weaken it.
Iranians know they will not be able to rest and, according to Marandi, will work immediately to address vulnerabilities revealed by the Israeli attack.
“If the ceasefire Trump just announced holds – and is paired with serious US-Iran diplomacy – it would mark a strategic defeat for Israel in launching this war,” according to Toossi.
But the terms and purpose of any “diplomacy” are key. Iran has absolutely no reason to trust the United States or its European vassals. “Negotiation” for them means demands to surrender.
Any negotiation must be from strength.
Global implications
As a result of Israel’s illegal aggression, Iran gained international legitimacy and support.
It drew forceful statements of support from countries around the world, including Russia, China, Brazil and Muslim and Arab nations.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Israel-friendly Arab regimes that have long been hostile to Iran, joined the condemnation of Israel’s aggression.
Israel’s pitch to weak US-backed Arab regimes has long been that it can help them counter a supposed threat from Iran.That offer looks much less attractive now.
Even Iran’s token strike on a US base in Qatar, pre-announced to avoid casualties, sent a clear message: Iran is willing to fight anywhere in the region if provoked.
That should focus minds across the Gulf. Even Trump, whose perfidy and recklessness helped set off the war, recognized the danger and rushed to put out the flames.We must hope that this brush with even broader regional disaster and recognition of Israel’s weakness will push Washington to end the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza.
That is more likely to happen while there remains a strong, sovereign Iran.
Comments
Israel got a bloody nose
Permalink Richard Lightbown replied on
The clearest evidence that Israel got licked is that they have not dared to violate this ceasefire. This is possibly the first time ever. Why are they so unusually restrained? Because they fear the response that Iran has promised if they dare to restart the conflict.
It would be interesting to know the full damage inflicted on the genocidal Zionist state. Serious harm was done to their intelligence service and probably to their military. Stocks of missiles for the defence systems are desperately low. The economy is not working now. The port of Haifa is closed (Maersk has announced a suspension of all services). Ashdod is under threat from Gaza and Yemen. International carriers are not using Ben Gurion airport. So Israel's only effective trade route is currently dependent on Jordan and other collaborating Arab states. Iran knocked out the biggest refinery and much of the infrastructure. Daily life in Israel is very different now to what it was a month ago because of this misadventure, and those effects are going to last a while.
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