As the US and Israel’s War on Iran Backfires, the Global Order Pays the Price

In modern war, figuring out who won and who lost is not easy. Victory sometimes looks like a defeat, and defeat, victory. Ask the Americans. They have experienced this phenomena in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. The Chinese experienced it in Vietnam, the Russians are experiencing this with Ukraine. Something of the sort has also afflicted India in relation to Operation Sindoor.

So, the big question is: Who won the 12-day war between Israel and the US and Iran, and what are its principal lessons? The answer is as complicated as the issues that gave rise to the conflict in the first place. We will not go into those; they are well known. The estrangement between the two combatants goes back to the very foundation of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, deepened by the US support to Saddam Hussein’s 1980-88 war on Iran. That war, which saw Iraq use chemical weapons against Iran, without any demur by the west, also formed the root of Teheran’s nuclear weapons programme.

Well, the 12-day war is over for now but understanding its lessons is not as easy as it appears. True, the Israel-US combine devastated Iran’s nuclear capacity. Indeed, President Trump claims he has “obliterated it.” Like Russia in Ukraine, Israel hoped that its decapitating strike that saw the killing of the cream of Iran military and nuclear leadership, would bring the Islamic Republic to its knees. Yet at the end of the day, Iran recovered and gave as good as it got, despite having virtually no air force and a barely functional air defence system.

Indeed, the well known realist scholar John Mearsheimer says that it was Israel that had to seek a ceasefire as the war of attrition was going against them. Israel underestimated Iran’s resilience and capacity to hit back.

What the war did was to hit Israel’s aura of invincibility hard. Given the ease with which it bombed Iran in April 2024 and handled the Iranian missiles and drones fired at the time, Tel Aviv expected a similar asymmetrical outcome. But Iran had a few aces up its sleeve, especially manoeuvring and hypersonic warheads of which at least 20 got through and caused extensive damage in Tel Aviv and its environs as well as several bases which the Israelis have so far kept secret.

It is also clear now that the US played a role in the war from the outset. This is evident from figures claiming that it has expended 15-20 % of its stock of Theater High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) missiles in defending Israel from Iranian missiles and UAVs from day one in the war.

What the events, as well as the debate within MAGA in the US showed was that the US is losing its taste for wars. Having being forced to come in and complete the job for Israel, which wanted a complete destruction of Iran’s nuclear capacity as well as regime change, the US forced a ceasefire after strikes on some key Iranian installations. But note, they did not bomb all the known underground nuclear facilities. For example, they left out the Pickaxe Mountain facility south of Natanz which is said to be deeper than Fordow. As for regime change, the US clearly steered clear of that since that would have required the commitment of ground forces.

The US is now openly treating Israel like the protectorate it has actually been in recent decades. A sign of this is Trump’s increasingly peremptory demand that the country cancel Netanyahu’s corruption trial. In a Truth Social post on Saturday he said that the Israeli PM was the victim of a political witch hunt of the kind he had had to endure. The US, he went on to add, spent billions of dollars a year protecting and supporting Israel: “We are not going to stand for this.”

On Sunday, the Israeli court cancelled this week’s hearings on ‘security grounds’.

The jury is out as to the extent of damage Iran has sustained. Opinion is divided as to how effective the American strikes have been. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says that Iran could have the capacity of enriching fuel again in a “matter of months.” According to the IAEA, the damage is “severe” but not “total”, an assessment which mirrors that put out initially by the US Defence Intelligence Agency. On Sunday, the Washington Post put out a story citing intercepted Iranian telephone calls to say that the US attacks were less devastating than expected.

Iran has secret sites that remain untouched. But whether it can advance its nuclear programme now is a question that does not come with easy answers. One thing, however, is certain: its nuclear ambitions are not going away.

Now with the destruction of its key nuclear facilities, Iran has to decide whether or not it wants to continue upholding the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). More important is the lesson it gives to other countries that worry about their security vis-à-vis nuclear armed countries—Japan and South Korea in relation to China and North Korea, or various European countries in the context of Russia.

If the war showed the limits of what the US can achieve despite the firepower at its command, it also revealed that China is not yet a global power. In 1973, the erstwhile Soviet Union intervened with a nuclear alert to save Egypt’s skin. But in 2025, Iran had little help from friends. Russia is preoccupied with Ukraine and China lacks the wherewithal or the inclination to play a global role.

The war has damaged the NPT, whether fatally or not remains to be seen. Iran is a signatory to the treaty and the IAEA testified that, notwithstanding some issues they had with Iranian reporting of past activities, Teheran had upheld its commitment not to make nuclear weapons and also, that till Trump trashed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018, Iran had restricted its enrichment activities.

The war has also damaged international law, whose basic principle against violating the sovereignty of a member nation was rudely shattered by the Israel-US combine. The UN permits wars of self-defence only after armed attack occurs and even then the country concerned needs to thereafter get UN sanction for the war. Israel claims its attack was “pre-emptive”, implying that Iran was planning an attack. It was probably harking back to the Six Day War of 1967 when it launched a successful pre-emptive attack against Arab countries. But at that time there was evidence of warlike activity on the part of its adversaries; there is no evidence that an enfeebled Iran was considering an attack on Israel. In any case, the UN does not sanction “pre-emptive”, leave along “preventive” attacks.

The war is likely to make regional countries cautious of the United States, especially after its accentuated role as a protector of Israel. On the other hand, there will be a push for its adversaries – China, Russia and Iran – to enhance their military and geopolitical cooperation.

From India’s point of view, it is important to accept that the country had no significant role in the events that unfolded in West Asia, except to underscore the Modi government’s pro-Israel position. New Delhi may now find that India-Middle East Economic Corridor goes the way of the International North South Transportation Corridor, a victim of its geopolitical vacillation.
Yet, India and other countries of the Global South will pay the price as institutions of the global order ranging from the United Nations to the Geneva Conventions are undermined and further eroded.

Manoj Joshi is a Distinguished Fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.

This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.

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