THE US-Iran war’s primary after effects include a severe global energy crisis from the blocked Strait of Hormuz, disproportionate military losses, and a shift in Iran’s leadership to hardline IRGC factions. The conflict has profoundly impacted both the Middle East and the broader international system. Iran’s retaliation and the effective blockades in the Strait of Hormuz cut off nearly 20% of global oil and gas supplies. This triggered soaring global fuel shortages, record-high petroleum prices in Asia, and fears of a worldwide recession. The World Trade Organization noted that elevated oil prices resulting from the conflict reduced forecasted global GDP growth.
Large-scale strikes on Iranian leadership killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He was succeeded by his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, alongside an elevation in the political and security power of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Despite the decimation of conventional military assets and extensive infrastructure damage, the regime has maintained a hardline stance in negotiations aimed at formally ending the conflict. The broader theater of the war directly pulled in neighboring Gulf States and Israel. Continuous saturation attacks and missile exchanges forced countries hosting US military bases—like Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain—to navigate highly precarious security positions. While fragile ceasefires have paused the most severe kinetic exchanges, both sides remain locked in tense, indirect negotiations. The long-term resolution hinges on diplomatic frameworks like the proposed memorandum of understanding regarding unrestricted regional shipping and nuclear constraints.
Iran is one of the neighboring countries of Pakistan and this war has pushed the conflict dangerously close to our borders. Pakistan hosts the world’s largest Shia community after Iran and this community is up in arms protesting with full force on the streets of the country especially in cities like Karachi and Islamabad. The American Consulate in Karachi was surrounded by an angry and agitated crowd that resulted in firing by the security agencies resulting in the death of ten persons while sixteen others died in other parts of the country who were engaged in anti-American protests. Israel is scared of the Iranian capability to acquire atomic weapons and under no circumstances it will allow it become a nuclear power because it believes that a nuclear armed Iran will be in a position to deliver a fatal blow to the state of Israel. So far it is not clear why Donald Trump launched this ferocious attack on Iran, the only logical reason appears to be Israeli pressure and pressure from the Jewish lobby in the USA.
Hostility between Iran and the USA is nothing new it goes back to 1980 when the Shah of Iran was kicked out of the country and the Shia clerics took control of the country with their popular slogan of “Death to America” when America was dubbed the Great Satan. The American embassy in Tehran was raided by the radical students union and over 400 American personnel of the embassy were taken hostage to be released after the end of the Carter Govt. The Iranian regime has survived many weeks of targeted assassinations of much of its political and military leadership and sustained its ability to launch missiles and drones at Israel and the Gulf states. The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the targeting of US military bases, and attacks on energy production facilities across the Gulf have demonstrated Iran’s ability to fight back against the onslaught, producing the kind of balance of power that might, in principle, be conducive to a negotiated outcome.
If Israel and the United States have failed at their strategic objectives, however, they have done immense damage to every aspect of Iran’s military, economy, state, and society. Their ferocious bombardment has targeted Iran’s infrastructure, state institutions, and civilian population alike. Beyond the horrific death toll, the US-Israeli strikes have destroyed schools, universities, hospitals, bridges, water desalination plants, police stations, oil refineries, and more.
Analysts often note Iranian society’s resilience in the face of such horrors, pointing to the long eight years of war with Iran in the 1980s or to its adaptation to ever more intense international and US sanctions over the last 20 years. But that resilience does not make the devastation any less traumatic. Countless Iranians have lost their loved ones, their homes, their schools, and their livelihoods.
US and Israeli officials boast of how many bombs have been dropped and how many targets destroyed, and President Donald Trump warns of destroying “every bridge” and “every power plant” if Iran does not comply. Such rhetoric erases as inconsequential the people whose lives they are destroying along the way—or, even worse, pretends that somehow those people celebrate the devastation of their homes and welcome the bombing.
The decision of Donald Trump to attack Iran resulted in deep fissures in the Republican Party. Joe Kent the former director of the US National Counter terrorism Center wrote a letter to the President and tendered his resignation thus becoming the first senior member of the Trump administration to leave the Govt. in protest. In his letter he said “I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”
—The writer is Professor of History, based in Islamabad.
