As the US and Iran sign a Memorandum of Understanding intended to pave the way for a broader agreement, there is a lot of commentary about the emerging deal.
The view among many is that this has been a loss for the US and Israel. The same voices that were very confident on February 28 when the conflict began are now resigned to what they see as a bad deal that will empower Iran and somehow leave Israel more isolated.
It’s worth considering that, like in any conflict, the “enemy gets a vote.” Iran is a key player in what has transpired, and it's worth considering what the regime’s game plan has been.
Over the years, Iran has generally sought not to sit down with the Trump administration. The regime didn’t want talks with the first Trump administration, especially after the US walked away from the 2015 JCPOA. The Supreme Leader in Iran, who was killed at the opening of the February conflict, was suspicious of the West. When Trump walked away from the Iran Deal, it cemented a perception among Iran’s leadership that the US and the West could not be trusted.
This set in motion an Iranian attempt to basically turn off relations with the West and shift towards China. Iran already had close ties with Russia, but after 2018, it increasingly pursued a policy of working more closely with China and developing infrastructure to create a north-south economic corridor and expand trade with Central Asia. This didn’t all pan out because Iran’s economy is in bad shape. Iran and China moved toward a 25-year agreement, but little Chinese investment flowed into Iran.
Iran brings nothing to Beijing in return
Beijing views Iran as a chaotic regime that doesn’t offer a return on investment. As such, Beijing assumed it could actually get more trade with the Gulf and other countries than with Iran. Economic groupings such as BRICS, the SCO, and others offered Beijing more opportunities abroad. Iran was simply one of many countries.
Iran believed it would benefit from the October 7 war. It sought to create a multi-front war against Israel. This didn’t succeed. Instead, Iran saw Hamas weakened and its Hezbollah partner badly beaten in the fall of 2024. Iran’s goal after this was to try to salvage its proxy network.
When the new Trump administration appeared, Iran signaled it was open to indirect talks. The indirect talks format meant any discussions would be slow. Iran and the US turned to Oman to be a mediator. The talks failed when Israel began airstrikes in June 2025. The US followed this up with strikes of its own, and Iran and the US turned to Qatar to end the conflict.
From Iran’s point of view, the June 2025 attacks showed that Iran’s air defenses and many other weapons programs were a paper tiger. Iran had launched large numbers of missiles at Israel, not only in June 2025 but also in two large salvos in 2024. Iran saw that its missile attacks would not win a war with Israel. Now Iran was presented with a strategy against Israel similar to the one Hezbollah was conducting. The goal was for the regime to survive and continue low-level attacks. It couldn’t win, but by not losing it could claim a kind of victory.
When Israel and the US attacked Iran on February 28, the Iranian regime was already prepared for a strategy of “not losing” as a way of “winning.” Iran is a large country, some 150 times larger than Lebanon. If Israel couldn’t defeat Hamas or Hezbollah, Iran reasoned that it could hold out as well. Holding out became Iran’s strategy.
The US and Israel didn’t have a clear strategic goal
The US and Israel didn’t have a clear strategic goal. Israel’s Prime Minister in March did claim that Iran had been so decimated that it could no longer enrich uranium or produce ballistic missiles. Ostensibly, these were Israel’s war goals.
But the goals had mission creep. Mission creep worked in Iran’s favor. Rather than a short conflict as in June 2025, Iran faced a long conflict of diminishing returns for the US and Israel, the kind of conflict that might benefit Tehran.
Iran acted to close the Strait of Hormuz and attack the Gulf and Iraq. Iran assumed that it could more effectively wage war in its neighborhood, while clawing back some influence over policy in Lebanon. As such, Iran’s goal was to prolong the conflict and negotiations. As long as Iran could return to something like a status quo, it could say it had won.
In any kind of game, if one side wins by not losing and the other side has to win, then clearly the side that needs to win has a much more complex road ahead.
Israel and the US chose this path, which put them at a potential disadvantage. Now that the result has been what many cynics might have predicted, there is a tendency to portray Iran as having achieved a lot. However, the reality is that Iran set itself very low goals and a low bar of success here.
During the war, much of the commentary on the conflict seemed to miss key points about Iran. For instance, some argued that precision strikes on a few IRGC positions would make IRGC members fearful and make them lose morale and desert. However, in a country as large as Iran, with so many IRGC members, is it likely that a few strikes on a few IRGC checkpoints will demoralize a group of tens of thousands? Most IRGC members probably never saw an airstrike during the conflict. How can they be demoralized by something they never experienced? Soldiers in the trenches in the First World War survived, and so did soldiers in Stalingrad.
The Iranian soldiers didn’t experience anything like that kind of war. Anyone who follows the regime knows that its ideology is rooted in the experience of the war with Iraq in the 1980s. If the regime survived that and was steeled by it, its troops are likely capable of withstanding some precision airstrikes.