Oil and Gas

It has been six months since February 28, when the US and Israel shocked the world by launching missile strikes on Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several senior Iranian officials in Tehran, as well as scores of children in a school in Minab, southern Iran.

US President Donald Trump then claimed the conflict would only last “four to five weeks”.

In the months since, the war has erupted on several other fronts, reaching as far as the Caspian Sea. It has triggered a global oil supply crisis as the US and Iran battle for control of the strategic Strait of Hormuz, through which more than one-fifth of oil and natural gas cargo transited.

And it has resulted in an estimated 8,000-10,000 deaths, as well as tens of thousands of injuries.

The conflict is also realigning the global order, experts say, as new alliances form and dominant ones show signs of crumbling.

Here’s what we know:

Has the US achieved any of its war objectives?

The US’s goals were not initially clear: officials first claimed the strikes were carried out in preemptive self-defence.

According to demands presented on the eve of the war, and a jumble of sometimes contradictory statements from Trump and senior US defence officials, they include the following:

Iran’s nuclear programme

Despite Trump’s claim that the US had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities when it joined in at the end of Israel’s 12-day war on Iran in June 2025, the US and Israel again claimed in February that Tehran was just weeks away from developing nuclear weapons.

Repeated strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites during the war have likely caused vast damage to the facilities, but it is believed Tehran still possesses 440kg of highly enriched uranium, which could be used to make a weapon.

The Trump administration wanted Iran to hand over this stock to the US and to commit to zero enrichment of uranium going forward. Iran refused to do this, although at one point appeared open to the possibility of handing the stock over to a third country. Iran also insisted on retaining the capacity to develop a nuclear power programme, which requires much lower levels of uranium enrichment.

Later, Trump briefly floated the idea of US troops retrieving the stock by force – a potentially dangerous mission.

In the June 17 memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by both sides, Iran agreed not to pursue a nuclear weapon – something it had always pledged anyway. The MoU unravelled as its vague wording led to disagreements about what it actually stipulated.

Clark Summers, a US military veteran and professor at Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina, said the US “can rightly assert that these ends have been achieved. Although for how long before Iran can rebuild is difficult to assess.”

But Iranian expert and professor at the Australian National University (ANU), Alam Saleh, disagreed, and noted that Iran’s nuclear power programme is still intact. “The US lost even before the war,” he said, adding that the effort also shows that Washington failed in last year’s 12-day war.

Regime change in Iran

On day one of the war – February 28 – the US killed Khamenei alongside several other senior officials. Trump, two days earlier, said regime change is “the best thing that could happen”.

As the US launched missiles, he also called on “Iranian patriots who yearn for freedom to seize this moment to be brave, be bold, be heroic, and take back your country”.

Iran’s political leadership has, however, remained largely the same under the new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei – the late ayatollah’s son.

Summers told Al Jazeera that the goal may have been “ad hoc” or improvised rather than well-planned. But “killing leaders does not mean strategic achievements, even if it’s a tactical success,” Saleh said.

Ending support for regional proxy groups

Iran’s “axis of resistance” is an umbrella comprising a number of armed groups around the region that it funds. This includes Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and several smaller groups in Iraq and Syria.

There are no signs that Tehran’s support for them has ended, and this demand did not appear in the MoU signed by the US.

Hezbollah went to war with Israel in Iran’s defence, and Iran has refused to negotiate an end to the war unless the Lebanon front is included. The Houthis, meanwhile, have launched a blockade on Saudi Arabia in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, partly in support of Iran.

Iran’s ballistic missiles programme

Washington swore it would “raze” Iran’s missile facilities to the ground when it launched the war on February 28. The US also pledged to destroy Iran’s navy.

Trump has since claimed that about 82 percent of Iran’s missiles are gone and the navy is degraded.

In April, he also said that 158 Iranian naval vessels had been hit, while US Central Command (CENTCOM) has continued to announce dozens of strikes on command centres of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Iran, however, has continued to fire missiles, most recently launching a long-range missile in July that killed three US soldiers in Jordan.

Furthermore, the demand for an end to Iran’s ballistic missiles programme was also absent from the July MoU.

Control of Iranian oil

In June, Trump said the US would seize and control Iran’s Kharg island, the heart of Iranian oil production.

To date, the US does not control any Iranian territory.

What have the US and Iran gained and lost during the war?

Besides the US demands at the start of the war, several other pressure points have emerged during the conflict.

Control of the Strait of Hormuz

Soon after the war began, Iran in effect closed the narrow but critical Strait of Hormuz, which passes through its territorial waters as well as those of Oman. Since then, shipping traffic has slumped from more than 100 ships per day to an average of about five.

To enforce this closure, Iran began striking vessels in the strait, the only route to the open ocean for Gulf oil and gas producers, which had not gained its explicit permission to pass through.

The US responded with its own naval blockade on Iranian ports in and around the strait. This is continuing.

Despite a large number of expletive-laden demands from Trump since then – many of them on social media – that Tehran reopen the strait, Iran has not budged. It is currently negotiating plans for the future of the waterway, through which more than one-fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas supplies were shipped before the war, with Oman.

As part of these negotiations, Iran announced this week that it has agreed to a shipping route, which it will partially control, with Oman.

While Trump has recently claimed that the US has “full control” of the strait and that it is open to vessels, shipping remains at an all-time low and Iran has continued to fire at any vessels trying to pass without its permission.

Iran sees the strait as its main piece of leverage in the war with the US, which Salah said, Iran views as an “existential threat”.

Economic impact

• Iran: The war’s impact on Iran’s economy has been severe. The Iranian rial has in effect collapsed. Food prices have surged amid the war, and the US blockade and renewed sanctions have hampered Iranian oil exports, with the blockade cutting oil revenue by at least $6bn. Tehran’s economy has long been battered by US sanctions, although the fragile ceasefire provided temporary relief. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said last week that economic pressure is a “rerun we know by heart” and that the country knows how to survive it.
• US: US consumers have also felt the pressure of the war at the petrol pump, making the conflict highly unpopular. A July poll by The Associated Press revealed that two-thirds of Americans are against the conflict. While many tend to forget there’s a war, Summers said, they do remember it acutely when petrol prices rise. In states like California, gasoline prices doubled. That anger will likely translate into a political backlash against Republicans in November’s midterms, experts say.

Relations with allies

• Iran: Iran’s targeting of US military assets as well as both military and nonmilitary infrastructure in neighbouring Gulf states and Jordan has not made it popular regionally, experts note. Iran has hit infrastructure in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain. Those states have called this a violation of their sovereignty. However, Iran’s economic and political ties with China have held, as Beijing has managed a delicate dance by advocating against sanctions on Iran while refraining from becoming fully entangled in the conflict. Trade relations with Russia also remain strong.
• US: The US has faced reluctance from its NATO allies to back it up in this war. Despite being asked directly by Trump, they have refused to join the war. Spain and Italy, in particular, have highly criticised the conflict, while Germany, Israel’s strongest ally in Europe, has done the same. France rejected calls to send warships to enforce the blockade. Gulf allies, Pakistan and Turkiye have all similarly refused, while in Asia, Japan, Australia and South Korea all declined to get involved. Gulf allies are also likely weighing the fact that it is the US’s war on Iran which has caused them to become targets.

Military capabilities

• Iran: US experts say that claims Washington has degraded Iran’s military capabilities are correct. Several army bases have been struck while Iran’s ballistic missile stockpiles are down by about 82 percent, according to Trump. However, Iran is still launching missiles and, while nuclear facilities have been damaged, it still has possession of its enriched uranium stockpile. Experts point out that Iran likely has a bigger appetite for an atomic weapon now than before the war began. Tehran has also continued to produce and deploy its mass-produced, cheap Shahed drones. An estimated 1,221 military personnel were killed by April, although the real toll is likely higher.
• US: The US has lost 18 soldiers and more than 750 have been wounded. That’s “quite low”, Summers said. However, US media reports suggest the Pentagon has severely depleted stockpiles of some of its most powerful and most expensive weapons – particularly its Patriot defence missiles – something Washington denies. Those missiles are only produced in the dozens annually and cost millions of dollars each. In August, the US signed a $22.9bn deal with manufacturer Raytheon to boost Tomahawk cruise missile production from 60 to more than 1,000 annually.

Is there an outright ‘victor’?

Observers say there is not.

“Both of them have not achieved anything,” Saleh of ANU said, noting that the US has failed to translate military superiority to actual gains despite being a “superpower” fighting a “middle power”.

China and Russia are likely observing Washington’s weaknesses, making new military calculations in the event of a future conflict with the US, he said. That has implications for Taiwan, especially as the US has now deployed its last aircraft carrier in the Pacific to the Middle East. The shift leaves the US without an aircraft carrier in the Western Pacific, despite Washington’s previous strategic emphasis on the region.

“Iran surviving also does not mean it’s a winner,” however, Saleh said. “This might be a defeat for the US, but it’s not a victory for Iran either.”

The Iran war is settling into attrition, with no regime collapse and Gulf economies facing growing uncertainty

Analysts broadly agree the United States and Israel’s war on Iran will not see regime collapse in Tehran or a definite victory for Washington, but rather a dragged-out affair of stagnation and attrition.

The hope among the US leadership at the start of the war, which began after surprise Israeli and US attacks on February 28, was that mounting economic and military pressure on Iran would force a structural shift in Tehran. Six months on, it is clear this vision will not come about, and instead many are preparing for a protracted war and managed fallout.

Oil-dependent economies are still absorbing supply shocks after traffic in the Strait of Hormuz slowed to a trickle of pre-war levels following Iran’s attacks on shipping and a US blockade on Iranian ports.

The US military is still entrenched in a region that remains its most militarised in years. Although the war’s intensity has lessened since a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed by Washington and Tehran in June, there is no sign it will conclude, leading to continued uncertainty about the future.

Existing tensions, such as those between the Houthi rebels and Saudi Arabia in Yemen, look only set to increase as the war drags on. The influence of rival powers, such as those of India and China, remains stalled rather than stopped, with Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative having already established itself within the Middle East and North Africa. All in all, the region remains in flux where formal alliances with outside powers no longer guarantee safety.

The defence agreement between Turkiye, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia recently signed in Mecca will likely be the first of many such military pacts agreed in the region.

“The war has just accelerated trends, but hasn’t really started anything that wasn’t already under way. The Gulf countries were already diversifying their economies,” Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House, told Al Jazeera. “Many were already looking at broadening their defence partnerships beyond existing US security guarantees, as well as increasing their own defence capability.”

Israel, for its part, is still pursuing its regional project of “paramountcy”, HA Hellyer of the Royal United Services Institute said, despite its failure to bring Iran to its knees this year.

“There is no chance of the government in Tehran falling in the next six months,” Hellyer told Al Jazeera. “If everything were to theoretically stay the same … with just increased economic pressure, that could eventually cause a ripple effect that could lead to state collapse in Iran. But we’re talking years, not months, and everything is not likely to stay the same.”

The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz and strikes on regional cities have hindered Gulf states’ plans to use oil revenues as an engine to diversify their economies and build on their reputations as a safe haven to encourage investors.

Shipments of oil, derivative products and liquefied natural gas (LNG) have been repeatedly and severely disrupted since the US and Israel launched their attacks on Iran in February.

Transit through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, which saw attacks on shipping by the Houthis during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, became even more hazardous in July, when the Iran-allied Houthis declared a naval blockade of Saudi Arabia.

“The price of oil has increased broadly in line with the Gulf states’ difficulties in exporting it,” John Sfakianakis, chief economist at the Gulf Research Center, told Al Jazeera. “Is this going to go for six months? Is it going to go on for longer?”

Exacerbating the Gulf states’ difficulties is that, although the price of oil has risen, so has inflation. In addition to the economic difficulties the war has created, there is also growing pressure for Gulf states to invest more in defence.

For now, the majority of the states caught in the middle will look at ways of living with the turmoil and managing the consequences.

A top Iranian official says Iran and Oman have agreed on a new temporary route for shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, but insisted that the waterway will not reopen until the United States fulfils its commitments under an interim peace deal signed in June.

The remarks by Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for legal and international affairs, came on Tuesday, after Iran and Oman’s top diplomats held talks in Tehran to finalise the details of a phased framework for managing the strait.

Iran and Oman, both coastal nations on the strait, have been in on-and-off talks for weeks about controlling traffic through the strategic waterway, which handled one-fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas shipments before the US-Israel war on Tehran began in February.

Most ⁠shipping in the strait has been shut down since then.

Gharibabadi, speaking on state television, said Iran and Oman had agreed the new route’s entry “would be through our territorial waters, and part of the exit route would also be through our territorial waters”.

The transit corridor would be seven miles (11.3km) wide, he said.

“The agreed-upon transit route with Oman is a temporary route,” he added.

Earlier on Tuesday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met with his Omani counterpart, Badr Albusaidi, in Tehran to discuss the temporary navigation corridor as well as a project to clear mines from the strait, according to a joint statement.

Albusaidi said on X he hoped the countries would “soon announce” the corridor, adding that “future management of the strait and a permanent solution will follow in due course.”

Technical talks are planned to develop a long-term arrangement, including mechanisms for information sharing and navigational and security services, according to the statement.

Mines in Hormuz

The Strait of Hormuz became a flashpoint after Tehran responded to the US-Israel war by closing the waterway. It then announced a new shipping route through its territorial waters, bypassing the internationally recognised Traffic Separation Scheme adopted by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in 1968. Tehran said that route had been mined.

Then in June, when Iran and the US signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to end the war, Oman and the IMO announced a new transit corridor in the Strait of Hormuz – backed by the US – that hugged the Omani coast.

Iran said the so-called southern route violated the MoU and launched attacks on ships using the corridor, resulting in the collapse of the interim deal.

Diplomatic efforts towards a broader peace deal have since stalled, and passage through the strait remains dangerous. An oil tanker was disabled by an unidentified projectile on Tuesday near Oman’s Ash Shishah, close to the strait’s entrance, the United Kingdom’s maritime trade watchdog said.

Gharibabadi, in his comments on Tuesday, said Iran would not consider the strait open despite the agreement with Oman.

He also dismissed a claim by US President Donald Trump that all mines had been cleared from the strait’s international waters, saying it was “only aimed at calming the markets”. He warned that US mine-detection vessels would become “very good targets” if they entered the area.

Gharibabadi insisted the US must fulfil its commitments under the MoU – including sanctions relief and the release of frozen Iranian assets – if it wants a return to the diplomatic track.

He also urged countries to resist US pressure over sanctions on Iran.

Trump had announced last week the “most crushing economic operation ever” against Iran, and threatened sanctions against any country that does business with it.

“We are urging countries not to succumb to American pressure regarding the sanctions that Washington wants to impose on us,” Gharibabadi said, adding that Washington was “mistaken about its ability to enforce its sanctions against our neighbours”.

He said an earlier US sanctions campaign under Trump had failed to achieve its goals and predicted new measures would meet the same fate.

“The new American sanctions are doomed to failure, and we have our own methods to counter them,” he added.