Finally, Kissinger's joke has come true

During the long and bloody war between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s the late Henry Kissinger used to half-joke that he wished that both sides could lose. The world now feels pretty much the same about the US-Israel-Iran war that began with 12 days of bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025 and recommenced on February 28^th this year in a more intense, three-way conflict. This time Kissinger and the world will be proved correct: all three of the warring parties have lost.

After April 8^th, when America and Iran agreed upon a ceasefire that was supposed to last for two weeks but has so far endured for more than seven, the war descended into a bitter stalemate, one that left the Strait of Hormuz closed and sent prices for crude oil and other commodities soaring as the closure of that vital shipping route reduced supplies. Yet the oil markets have evidently now concluded that the energy crisis is ending and that a peace deal is near, with the price of crude oil falling back towards US$90 per barrel, more than 20% lower than its peak in early May.

The markets’ conclusion looks sound, even if nothing can be certain given the pervasive mistrust between Iran, Israel and the United States. None of those three countries has the strength to continue, and the mutual blockade of Hormuz by America and Iran is benefiting no one. So however loudly Donald Trump threatens more bombing if Iran does not accede to his demands, however grumpily Israel and its American supporters complain that their war objectives have not been achieved, and however menacingly the Iranian regime talks about renewing drone and missile attacks on its neighbours and on American bases in the region, the likelihood is that the war is over, at least for now.

Iran’s brutal theocratic regime, a regime which massacred tens of thousands of its own citizens during protests in January, may feel that it has won by simply surviving. Certainly, it has shown more resilience than the Americans and Israelis expected and proved to have larger reserves of weapons than was realised. The regime has remained intact and in power despite the assassination of its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and many top officials. Popular protests against the regime have been silenced in part by repression and in part thanks to the unifying effect of American and Israeli bombs.

Nonetheless, while the regime looks strategically strong it is politically and economically weak. Inflation is even higher than before the war and prospects for any improvement in living standards depend crucially on peace being achieved. The regime’s much-vaunted nuclear enrichment programme may still exist in theory but in practice most of the facilities and materials have been destroyed. Similarly, the network of militias that Iran has financed around the region, in Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen, remain intact but are depleted. Iran is in no condition to carry on fighting.

Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, would like the war to be resumed. His argument that Israel can never be safe while Iran is governed by a theocratic regime that is officially dedicated to Israel’s destruction is not unreasonable. But his effort to dislodge that regime through American bombs has failed. Crucially, his own government has also reached the end of its current road. The ultra-Orthodox political parties that have sustained his coalition withdrew last week in a long-running dispute over the exemption from military conscription of their religious community, and the Knesset (parliament) was dissolved on May 20^th paving the way for a general election. That election must be held before October 27^th and is now expected to take place in September.

Like his enemies in Tehran, Netanyahu is a great survivor as well as being ruthless. Undaunted by the prospect of elections, this week he ordered renewed military attacks on the Hizbollah militia in Lebanon. And in disregard of the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas in Gaza that was imposed by Trump in October last year he announced that the Israeli Defence Forces will increase the proportion of Gaza under their control from 60% to 70%. Yet these aggressive moves cannot disguise the fact that he has run out of options in Iran, at least for the time being.

This is principally because his main ally, Trump, has himself run out of options and of regional support. None of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain or Oman want the war to be resumed. All want to export their oil, to rebuild the facilities that have been damaged by Iranian attacks and to start the long task of persuading tourists and wealthy foreign residents to return to the Gulf.

It seems clear that none of the military options presented to Trump by his generals has proved attractive to him. Resuming bomb and missile attacks would achieve little beyond further depleting American stockpiles. The idea of using ground forces to seize Iranian islands or coastal defences, or even more ambitiously to attempt to seize Iran’s remaining stocks of enriched uranium, will have appeared far too risky and costly. The result is that Trump’s final hope is one of trying to extract something from the peace agreement with Iran that he can claim to his American supporters is a victory.

That he will claim a victory is certain, for that is what he always does. But the claim will be an empty one. What oil markets have been expecting is an agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, with no one charging tolls and probably with a pledge to extend the ceasefire by a further 60 days.

That pledge will be for a meaningless deadline, as the existing extension of the original 12-day ceasefire shows. But it will buy time for negotiations to take place over Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme, time which can itself be extended. Trump said on May 29^th that he was making, on that day, a “final determination” about the agreement, a promise he soon reneged upon, but in truth no final determination will be possible until the shape of the nuclear agreement has become clear, which on the basis of the previous nuclear negotiations between America, Iran and others in 2013-2015 could take months or even years.

Those negotiations will achieve credible control over Iran’s nuclear facilities, uranium stocks and weapons ambitions only if China agrees to become involved. China is the only country that can consider itself a winner in the 2025-26 US-Israel-Iran war, principally because that war has weakened the United States in practical and reputational terms but also because it potentially will extend China’s influence in the Middle East. Many of the wealthy foreigners and foreign contractors that the Gulf Arab countries want to lure back to rebuild their economies are Chinese.

For Trump, this will be a war he will want to forget. It has left in disarray his hopes of using Arab money to rebuild and reshape Gaza, and has displayed his own and America’s impotence. It has worsened his Republican Party’s prospects in November’s mid-term congressional elections. Most shockingly for him and his family, it hasn’t even made him any money. As far as we know.