On 28 February 2026 the United States and Israel killed Iran's Supreme Leader and began the largest air campaign since the invasion of Iraq. Five months on, the strikes hit almost everything they aimed at — and Iran holds the one thing that matters. A guide to the causes, the motivations, the costs, and where this goes next.
President Trump authorised Operation Epic Fury at 20:38 UTC on 27 February. Strikes began the next morning at 06:35 UTC: Tomahawks, HIMARS, B-2s, and roughly 200 Israeli aircraft in the largest combat sortie in Israel's history. The targets were ballistic-missile facilities, command centres, and air defences.
The defining act came in the first hour. A leadership-decapitation strike on Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's residential compound killed him and a large number of senior officials. No outside power had killed a sitting Iranian Supreme Leader before; there was no script for what followed.
Iran answered within 48 hours with about 170 ballistic missiles and drones. They hit Tel Aviv, killed nine in Beit Shemesh, and struck four US bases — Al Udeid, Ali Al Salem, Al Dhafra, and the Bahrain headquarters — plus targets in Dubai. By 3 March nine countries were involved. Hezbollah entered from Lebanon on 2 March; Israel answered with more than 70 strikes on southern Lebanon and Beirut's Dahieh.
Then, on 4 March, Iran declared the Strait of Hormuz closed. That decision, not the decapitation, is why the war is still running.
The shape of this conflict is not a front line. It is a cycle: overwhelming air campaign, Iranian chokepoint retaliation, negotiation, collapse, repeat. It has now run through twice.
Goal: remove the leadership and the means of retaliation in one blow.
Decapitation assumed the system depended on the man. It did not. Succession took eight days, and the successor had less incentive to compromise than the man who was killed.
Iran's answer to losing the air war: stop being in it.
Iran could not win an exchange of airpower. It could impose a cost on the global economy that no amount of airpower removes, because reopening a strait requires holding both shores — which means a ground war nobody in Washington wanted.
Convert a stalemate into terms.
The MOU required Iran to use “its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels, with no charge for 60 days only.” Washington read that as an open waterway. Tehran read “for 60 days only” as written permission to charge afterwards — and therefore as recognition that the strait was Iran's to charge for.
Both sides return to the position they held in April, poorer.
CENTCOM has redirected 44 commercial vessels since mid-July. The blockade and the counter-blockade are now both in force at once.
The stated reasons and the operative reasons are not the same for anyone here. Both are worth tracking, because the gap explains why the war has no natural stopping point.
| Actor | Stated aim | Operative interest | Constraint |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | Stop the nuclear programme; destroy missile and naval capability; end proxy support; reopen the strait. Rubio framed it as pre-emption against an “imminent threat” to US bases. | Contested. Senator Warner stated there was “no evidence that Iran was going to launch a pre-emptive strike”. Critics call it a diversionary war — it began amid the Epstein files release and falling approval. Securing Iranian oil and gas was named as an objective by officials. | No congressional authorisation. Approval below 40% for the war's entire duration. Midterms in November. |
| Israel | Existential: an Iranian bomb and the missiles to deliver it, plus decades of sponsorship of hostile militias. | Netanyahu had sought this strike for years and lacked a willing US president until now. The war coincided with his own legal jeopardy; polling moved from a tie to 62% support. | Cannot reopen Hormuz alone. Simultaneous fronts in Lebanon and Gaza. |
| Iran | Self-defence against unprovoked aggression and the assassination of its head of state. | Regime survival first. Then: prove the state functions without Khamenei, and convert the one asset airpower cannot destroy — geography — into sanctions relief and unfrozen assets. | An economy in free fall. Missile stocks halved. Cannot escalate without inviting the ground war it is trying to avoid. |
| Gulf states | De-escalation and reopened shipping. | They are being hit by both sides' war: Iranian missiles on Ras Tanura and Qatari LNG, drones over Kuwait, and an oil windfall they cannot ship. Saudi Arabia lobbied Washington directly to call off the August campaign. | Host US bases that make them targets. No independent security guarantee. |
| Russia | Condemns the strikes as unacceptable aggression; convened emergency UNSC sessions. | Straightforwardly enriched. Higher oil prices, relief on export sanctions, and a distracted Washington. Offered China an energy lifeline as Gulf supply choked. | Little ability — or desire — to change the outcome. |
| China | Concern for Gulf sovereignty; blames the war's “root causes”. | Buys Iranian crude and depends on Hormuz, yet gains by standing aside: it vetoed a US-backed reopening resolution with Russia while keeping Gulf ties intact, since those relationships are economic rather than security-based. | Most exposed of anyone to a prolonged closure. |
Split the question in two, because the answers are opposite.
Iran's conventional military has effectively collapsed as a fighting force.
| Measure | Before | Now | Read |
|---|---|---|---|
| Missile launches per day | 480 | <10 | The high-intensity phase is over — Iran cannot sustain volume fire |
| Ballistic missile inventory | — | 500–1,500 | Roughly a third to a half destroyed |
| Operational mobile launchers | — | <120 | About half lost; the binding constraint on any salvo |
| Guidance & radar production | Parchin, Shiraz | Destroyed | The “brain” of the programme — surviving missiles are harder to aim |
| Navy | Surface + subsurface | Speedboats | Corvette and submarine sunk; IRGCN small craft survive |
US intelligence still assesses that Iran maintains significant launch capability, and the “missile city” architecture is decentralised enough to survive. But the character of the threat has changed from conventional deterrent to guerrilla harassment — a speedboat and a drone against a tanker, not a salvo against Tel Aviv.
Measure each side against what it said it wanted, and the scoreboard inverts.
| War aim | Status | Assessment |
|---|---|---|
| Destroy missile & naval capability | Achieved | Halved arsenal, navy sunk, production hit |
| Remove the leadership | Achieved | And replaced within 8 days by a harder-line successor |
| Regime change | Failed | The IRGC consolidated rather than fractured |
| Reopen the Strait of Hormuz | Failed | 5% of pre-war volume; Iran now charges tolls |
| End the nuclear programme | Unknown | Unverifiable — inspectors have no access at all. See section 6 |
Every phase of this conflict is legible in one line. Brent moves on diplomacy, not on bombing — which tells you which lever actually matters.
| Date | Brent | Event |
|---|---|---|
| 27 Feb 2026 | ~$72 | Day before the war |
| 2 Mar 2026 | $118 | Strait declared closed — peak, +64% |
| 21 Apr 2026 | ~$95 | Ceasefire extended indefinitely |
| early Jul 2026 | ~$72 | Post-MOU low (derived: Brent is +16.4% over the month to 3 Aug) |
| 3 Aug 2026 | $83.82 | −4.68% on the day, on news of talks |
| Metric | Before | Now |
|---|---|---|
| Oil through Hormuz | 10.3 Mb/d | 0.515 Mb/d (5%) |
| Daily transits | ~60 ships | 14 |
| War-risk insurance (VLCC) | 0.125% of hull | ~1% (~$2M/transit); peaked at 2.5–5% |
| Asia–Europe container spot rates | — | +150% |
| Reroute via Cape of Good Hope | — | +3,800 nm, 10–14 days, ~$40–50M/week fleet-wide |
The strait normally carries roughly a fifth of the world's oil and a quarter of its LNG. The Dallas Fed projected the closure would cut annualised global GDP growth by 2.9 percentage points in Q2 2026 and push WTI to $98 in Q2 and $115 in Q3. The heaviest losses fall on energy-importing developing countries that have no strategic reserve and no alternative route.
The rial passed 1.47 million to the dollar in January, before the war. Government figures put eggs up 345%, rice 287%, milk 139%. Iran has lost around 230 million cubic metres per day of gas production and is warning citizens of blackouts. Senior officials have told President Pezeshkian that rebuilding will take more than a decade. The blockade threatens roughly 70% of export revenue.
This matters strategically: the largest and longest wave of unrest since 1979 began in December 2025 — before the war — when bazaar merchants in Tehran protested the currency collapse. The war interrupted that movement by supplying an external enemy. The economics that caused it have since become far worse.
| Source | Figure | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| Cross-source tracker | 8,976–18,310 killed | All sides, to 30 July |
| Conservative count | 7,144–9,676+ killed, ~46,965 injured | All fronts, to 20 July |
| HRANA | 1,701 civilians, incl. 254 children | Iran, to 7 April |
| Hengaw | 7,650 killed, 1,030 civilian (13.5%) | Iran, first 40 days |
| Lebanese Ministry of Public Health | 4,328 killed, 12,229 wounded | Lebanon, since 2 March |
| OCHA and UNHCR | 3.2 million displaced, 60% women and children | Internal displacement in Iran |
The spread between the high and low totals is roughly a factor of two. That is normal for an active war with no independent access, and it is a reason to distrust confident precision — including anyone citing a single number without a source.
The war's stated purpose was to stop Iran building a bomb. It is the one objective that cannot currently be evaluated — by anyone.
The last verified inventory, from before the June 2025 strikes, was 440.9 kg of uranium enriched to 60%, plus 184.1 kg at 20% and several tonnes at lower enrichment. Most of the 60% material is believed to be buried in tunnels at Esfahan. Fordow — the deepest site — was undamaged in the 2025 round. The IAEA's director has said Iran could resume enrichment within months.
Two facts sit awkwardly against the war's rationale. The Defense Intelligence Agency assessed that Iran would not field an ICBM until 2035. And on 2 April, with the campaign under way, Trump said publicly that he did not care about Iran's highly enriched uranium stockpile — the stockpile that had been the stated reason for the strikes.
Analysts converge on four scenarios: strategic stalemate (most likely), diplomatic breakthrough, full escalation, or state collapse. Below are six specific forecasts, each with the signal that would confirm or kill it.
| Prediction | Confidence | Watch for | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stalemate holds through the November midterms. Neither side can achieve its aim at acceptable cost. The cycle — strike, chokepoint retaliation, talks, collapse — has already run twice and has no built-in stopping point. | High | A third round of talks that produces another ambiguous document rather than a verifiable one. The 3 August round is the test case. | Plan for elevated energy costs and closed Gulf shipping as the base case, not the risk case. |
| Any durable deal concedes Iran a formal role in the strait. The MOU already conceded it implicitly with “no charge for 60 days only”. Iran's negotiating position rests entirely on that concession being made permanent. | Med-high | Language about “transit fees”, “service charges”, or a joint authority. Iran's parallel talks with Oman over an alternative route are the same idea in another form. | The war's likely settlement ratifies the thing it was fought to prevent. |
| The nuclear programme becomes the war's defining strategic loss. Not because Iran dashes for a bomb, but because nobody can any longer say whether it has. Deterrence without verification is a permanent crisis generator. | High | Whether any deal restores IAEA access. If a settlement covers shipping but not inspections, that is the tell. | Expect this to be the subject of the next crisis, on a multi-year horizon. |
| Oil settles structurally higher but well below the March panic. Markets have priced a long closure; the residual premium is now about diplomacy, not supply. Brent fell 4.7% in a day on a rumour of talks. | Med-high | Whether Brent holds a $75–95 band. A break above $100 means escalation the market didn't expect; below $75 means it believes a deal. | The price is now the most honest real-time poll on whether this ends. |
| The regime survives the year; the economy is the threat, not airpower. Decapitation consolidated the IRGC rather than fracturing it. But 68.9% inflation and pre-existing bazaar protests are a different kind of pressure, and one the war has been suppressing rather than solving. | Medium | Protests resuming with economic rather than political slogans, especially if blackouts arrive with winter. Watch the bazaar, not the campuses. | Regime change, if it comes, arrives through the currency — on a timeline no air campaign controls. |
| Gulf states hedge further toward Beijing. They took Iranian missiles because they host US bases, then watched Washington plan an escalation they had to lobby against. China vetoed the reopening resolution and kept its Gulf relationships intact anyway. | Medium | Gulf–China security language, not just trade deals. Saudi's successful August lobbying is the precedent to watch. | The war's durable geopolitical effect may be in the Gulf's alignment, not Iran's. |
Forecasts as of August 4, 2026; confidence labels are judgment, not measurement.
If you read nothing else, these five things: