The following day, the Israelis were poised to attack Iran again, and a visibly frustrated Trump told reporters of the two countries, “they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing”, reserving most of his ire for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and publicly berating the Jewish state as no president has before. Then, by noon, the attack was off and the ceasefire was on. And it has held.

As the dust settles, the smart money in Western capitals is saying that Israel scored a big win. Launching a swift, surprise assault, Netanyahu short-circuited diplomacy, took out a layer of Iran’s military and scientific leadership, degraded the country’s armed forces and civilian infrastructure, and damaged its nuclear program (that last with US help). And this, at a relatively low cost to Israeli society.

All this is true enough. And yet there are good reasons to doubt the certainty. This becomes apparent when we examine the conflict’s key dimensions from the Iranian perspective: nuclear continuity, regime survival, and domestic reconsolidation. Meanwhile, it is too easy to underestimate the psychological and political price paid by Israel in the bargain of maximalism.

Start with the Iranian side of the ledger, and the nuclear program. Trump claimed that US bombs “totally obliterated” Fordow, a key nuclear facility buried deep under a mountain. Yet American security sources briefing the media later conceded that US bunker-busters had merely “damaged” Fordow. Iranian state media, meanwhile, reported earlier that most of the enriched material had been removed from the site — all too plausible and predictable.

This prompted DC hawks to call for the “last step” of removing “the nuclear material from the sites”, as Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies put it. As Matt Duss and I warned in the hours before Trump’s decision, an attack on Fordow was bound to necessitate cleanup. Now that the deed is done and a ceasefire is in place, there is little chance of such an operation taking place; the fissile material has most probably been spirited away to locations unknown.

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“At the end of the day there are some really important things that haven’t been hit,” the nuclear expert Jeffrey Lewis told NPR. “If this ends here, it’s a really incomplete strike.” Of course, it did end there. Which means that, by interrupting the diplomatic process, Netanyahu drove Iran’s nuclear program underground and might well have rendered future inspection and enforcement that much harder. Perhaps impossible.

On Tuesday evening, CNN and The New York Times reported on a leaked report from the Defense Intelligence Agency warning that the American bombing raid had only set back the Iranian program by a few months. Trump pooh-poohed it as fake news, and some experts, most notably David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security, pointed out that the report probably expressed the worst-case scenario and suggested more analysis is needed. Yet it is fair to say that many analysts believe, bottom line, that Iran retains enrichment knowhow and capacity.

The second dimension, regime survival, is more crucial to Iran. In the early days, many observers — myself included — fretted about rapid state collapse and chaos. This was understandable, given the pathetic, deer-in-headlights state of Iran’s security forces. Israeli authorities at various points hinted that regime change was their ultimate goal. Western hawks mused about naming Tehran streets after Bibi. Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the last shah, readied himself for the pomp befitting the Shahanshah, the king of kings.

But Pahlavi will now most probably return to his suburban throne on the Beltway, to contend with less lofty problems. The regime held, after all, proving sturdier than even its leaders perhaps expected. After wreaking havoc for several days, the Mossad infiltration was mitigated. Iran’s social fabric and territorial boundaries remained stable. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei walked away with his life.

This might seem like a low bar to clear. But for the Islamic Republic — a regime that has long felt, and often earned, a sense of insecurity — endurance is just about everything. The regime can justly claim that it withstood an assault from two nuclear powers, the regional hegemon and a global power, notwithstanding the enormous technological differential between the warring parties.

Then, too, while the Jewish state benefited from the material support of the Western powers, the Islamic Republic stood virtually alone, with its major allies, Russia and China, offering kind words but minimal material assistance. That’s the kind of narrative upon which Iran’s ruling class thrives: a replay of the eight-year war against Iraq, during which Saddam Hussein served as a proxy for a collective West bent on strangling the then-nascent Khomeinist regime.

Which brings us to the third dimension: domestic reconsolidation. The rally-around-the-flag effect unfolded as critics of hawkish strategies had warned. No anti-regime uprisings erupted. Ali Daei, arguably the greatest living Iranian footballer, posted on Instagram that he would sooner burn than side with foreign enemies. Other athletes, artists, and celebrities likewise declared for national unity and resolve. Even some exiled regime critics began to rail against IDF violence.

It’s possible that, as external hostilities cool down, the people’s discontent will return to the fore, now magnified by anger at the government’s intelligence and defense failures. The Milosevic regime in Serbia collapsed a year after the NATO intervention that forced it out of Kosovo. The tyrant’s military humiliation at Western hands gave breathing space to a democratic opposition, and the rest was history.

But liberal regime change of the kind long envisioned by hawks — a velvet revolution under the aegis of Western warplanes — seems to be off the table for Iran. If anything, the regime transition might involve a takeover by younger security apparatchiks who are more ferociously nationalistic, and who revile the aging mullahs for being insufficiently confrontational.

Now turn to the Israeli side of the ledger, where we find unquestionable gains. For a while, Israeli aircraft maintained a corridor of near-absolute operational freedom from western Iran to the capital. As usual, the Israelis used spycraft brilliantly to sow death and paranoia. The methods included, according to The Washington Post, telephoned threats to murder the wives and children of senior Iranian officers unless the officers filmed videos of themselves defecting from the regime. (Not a single officer apparently complied, a testament to the regime resilience.)

As for the Israeli bombing raids, the full extent of the damage still isn’t clear (and it may never be fully disclosed). But it’s fair to say that lots of Iranian assets went kaboom. Moreover, it is likely that Israel has attained a Lebanon-style ceasefire arrangement, under which it can violate Iranian airspace at will to target Iranian forces and materiel.

Yet through it all, the Iranians kept lobbing ballistic missiles of increasing accuracy at targets across the Jewish state. While these proved far less lethal to Israeli civilians than did IDF operations in Iran, the psychological impact of the Iranian barrages is bound to be lasting and significant. No one in the region will soon forget the sight of Iranian hypersonic systems tearing through the night sky, weaving past air defenses before making explosive impact.

It will be remembered, too, that Israel couldn’t defend itself from Iranian rocketry without foreign assistance. Nor that the Jewish state was forced to ration defenses, meaning the government allowed a share of Iranian missiles to make impact to preserve interceptors for more pressing targets.

Osama bin Laden famously said, “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.” For much of the conflict, Israel was indeed the strong horse. But not always. At crucial points, it appeared brittle — and dependent on a much stronger horse across the Atlantic.

In America, too, it didn’t go without notice that the Israelis, having initially demanded mere permission to attack, formally requested US involvement on the second day of the operation. In doing so, they swiftly put to rest an argument, floated even by some realists and restrainers, that Trump’s encouraging the attack was hunky-dory, since allies like Israel would now do their own thing in their respective neighborhoods, without bothering Uncle Sam for help.

When it came, the request for help sealed the impression of a client that drags America into its conflicts. It worked this time — and very likely for the last time. According to YouGov polling, fewer than 1 in 5 Americans supports a military intervention in the Israeli-Iranian conflict. Similarly, a Brookings Institution poll last month found that solid majorities prefer diplomacy to war for addressing the Iranian nuclear problem.

Trump defied such public sentiments — and overcame ferocious, sustained opposition from some of some of MAGA’s biggest stars — to directly intervene in favor of Israel. Why he did so will be debated for years to come. My own reporting, including conversations with administration insiders and congressional staffers of both parties, suggests that it was less a concerted scheme hatched jointly with Bibi than a typically Trumpian “gut” decision.

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When confronted in early June with intelligence that the Israelis were about to invade, Trump had a call with Bibi in which the American president tried to discourage the move, lest it blow up his diplomacy. This, even as Trump also reportedly told Bibi, “Maybe you can do it.” The Israeli premier took these contradictory signals for a green light and proceeded.

At first, according to my sources, Trump was prepared to disown the operation if it curdled — hence, Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s initial statement disavowing the attack. But as the strike appeared successful, Trump resolved to “own” it. Glued to Fox News — whose frothy talking heads opened a time warp back to 2003 — Trump ditched aversion to new wars and his vow to “prevent World War III,” as last year’s GOP platform had it.

Put another way, it wasn’t true that Washington and Jerusalem had planned all along to lull Iran with a deceptive diplomatic outreach. But Trump liked the impression anyway, and leaned into it. The Fox News bubble, and the urgings of hawkish advisers like CENTCOM commander Gen. Michael Kurilla, similarly prompted Trump to bomb Fordow and two other facilities.

A few days before the Saturday bombing, senior administration officials began calling in MAGA skeptics to “message” the operation, and to provide reassurance that it would be strictly limited in scope.

The MAGA restrainers, then, lost the insider battle, and their media access and prowess was dwarfed by Rupert Murdoch’s. Yet science proceeds one funeral at a time. The voters who watch Fox and lend unquestioning support to Israeli maximalism are old and getting older. Meanwhile, Republicans between the ages of 18 and 49 have registered the sharpest rise in “unfavorable views” toward Israel, jumping to 50% earlier this year, up from 35% in 2019, according to RealClear polling.

On the Left, meanwhile, it is hard to say that the future lies with aging centrists for whom rock-solid support for Israel is an absolute given. All the energy and enthusiasm are with younger Israel-skeptical activists and politicians, like Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old Shia Muslim who won New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary without apologizing for his strong support of the Palestinian cause or walking back his embrace of the slogan “globalize the intifada”.

Maybe American support isn’t all that necessary anymore to Israel. Maybe Trump’s permanent ceasefire will hold. Maybe Washington and Tehran will make a deal that will satisfy hard-liners in Washington and Jerusalem. Then again, it’s telling that American hawks are already complaining about the ceasefire and insisting that nothing short of regime change will do.

But younger cohorts of security professionals, Republican and Democratic, have had more than enough. Their dissatisfaction is likely to crystallize into a hard determination to avert a repeat of the 12-Day War gambit. None of Israel’s spectacular battlefield and intelligence victories, I suspect, can compensate for this generational political loss.

For Israel, Iran’s possession of a deliverable nuclear weapon posed an intolerable, existential threat. There can be no doubt that Iran was close to achieving this aim, enriching uranium far beyond the level needed for nuclear power generation, and doing so in secretive, hardened locations. It had a delivery system, with ballistic missiles capable of reaching Tel Aviv. Only the question of a bomb mechanism remained and this could have been resolved with a bomb too large to fit on a missile, but deliverable by other means.

Following the war, all three parts of Iran’s nuclear weapons program have been severely degraded. Most of the senior scientists working on a bomb mechanism are dead. The enrichment facilities are at the very least severely damaged. Most of Iran’s long-range missiles and missile launchers have either been used or destroyed. Moreover, by weakening Iran, Israel has reduced the threat from Tehran’s proxies such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. While Israel’s military leadership wished to wage the war without foreign assistance, the political leadership sought direct American intervention. This was achieved, thus demonstrating and strengthening Israel’s strategic alliance with Washington. All of this was accomplished with the loss of fewer than 30 Israeli lives.

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What Israel failed to achieve was regime change in Iran. For 40 years the Ayatollahs have based their regime’s legitimacy on calls to destroy Israel and drive the United States from the Middle East. They remain in power and committed to a vision they believe to be divinely inspired.

What, then, did Iran gain from the ceasefire? The country is ruled by an ageing, ideologically rigid theocrat who is currently hiding in a bunker. He governs an ethnically and religiously diverse nation. Iran’s Kurds, Azeris, Baluchis, and Arabs together make up nearly half of the population, and they have long resented Persian dominance. Christians, Jews, Sunni Muslims, Baha’is, and Zoroastrians have been systematically persecuted by the Islamic revolutionary government. This multicultural patchwork could easily unravel without widespread fear of the Ayatollah’s secret police.

Ayatollah Khamenei may very well believe the encouraging propaganda broadcast on state television, but the Iranian economy is failing and his government increasingly unpopular. His regional allies, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, have been greatly weakened while his international allies, Russia and China, have provided little tangible support. At 86 he faces a looming succession struggle, but many of his most trusted potential heirs have been eliminated. For such a weak leader to survive such a massive military blow must be considered a success. His agreement to a ceasefire, however brief, allows the regime to survive and the revolution to rebuild.

Many other regional players have also been affected by the war. For one thing, the interests of the conservative Gulf Arab monarchies were conflicted. On the one hand, they welcomed any action that weakened Iran. Iran has long posed an ideological and security threat to them. The 1979 Iranian Revolution supercharged Islamic militancy in the region forcing Saudi Arabia to adopt far more socially conservative policies. Saudi Arabia’s King Salman takes his role as Custodian of Mecca very seriously, yet the Ayatollahs have explicitly challenged his right to this status and tried to disrupt the Hajj more than once. Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE recently went to war against Iranian proxies in Yemen. Iran has territorial disputes with several of the Gulf states and, of course, Iran’s nuclear ambitions are as much a threat to its Arab neighbors as to Israel.

On the other hand, the Gulf Arabs did not wish to be drawn into the Iran-Israel conflict. Salman, in particular, is in the midst of a very ambitious program to reshape Saudi Arabia socially and economically. He needs regional stability to attract foreign investment and oil revenues to finance economic development. But all the Gulf Arabs are highly vulnerable to Iranian missile attacks. Their oil fields, oil-loading terminals and above all life-sustaining seawater desalination plants are all easy targets. For them, then, a ceasefire is the ideal outcome: Iran has been weakened, but they have not been seriously attacked.

Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and even Iraq have long felt the boot of Persian imperialism delivered by the likes of Hezbollah and Iraq’s Hasht al Shabi or popular militias. These Shia forces have killed thousands of Sunni Arabs and, like Hamas and the Houthis, will no longer be receiving generous support from Tehran. For the first time in decades, Syria and Lebanon have the opportunity to set their own course without taking instructions from Tehran.

But there’s another group with interests at stake: oil producers and consumers. The war saw price increases for some shipping and insurance rates as well as for jet fuel from Gulf refineries, which have become very important for Europe since it imposed sanctions on Russia. However, it could have been much worse: there was no loss of supply and no crude oil price spike. Attacks on oil facilities were limited to Israel’s refinery at Haifa and Iran’s North Pars gas field. The Straits of Hormuz remained open. Had it been needed, the Saudis maintained enough spare capacity to compensate for the total loss of Iranian oil exports.

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Nevertheless, both oil producers and consumers have drawn lessons from the conflict. The apparent vulnerability of Gulf oil has increased demand for alternative energy supplies in China, the United States and Europe. Europe, with very little oil of its own, will seek to accelerate its transition away from hydrocarbons, while the United States, already the world’s largest oil producer, will seek to increase domestic production even more.

China, for its part, is heavily dependent on flows of oil from the Persian Gulf. It remains one of the few nations still buying oil from Iran, is currently Iran’s largest customer and buys Iranian oil at a deep discount. However, the People’s Republic buys even more oil from Saudi Arabia and made its displeasure with Tehran clear when Iran attacked Saudi oil facilities at Abqaiq in 2019. And Beijing will have cautioned Tehran against similar attacks or closing the Straits of Hormuz during the recent conflict. While China was no doubt mollified to see American military assets diverted from the Pacific to the Indian Oceans, this will only have emphasized fears that in times of crisis, the US Navy could interdict all oil flows from the Middle East to China —  a profound strategic liability.

The United States, meanwhile, has come off well from the ceasefire. Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been set back with no loss of American life. There has been no oil shock, no increase in inflation, and no stock market crash. Most Americans supported the President’s action and allies have seen that Donald Trump is not the next Neville Chamberlain. With the threat from Iran diminished, the United States may finally be able to make its much-anticipated pivot towards Asia.

Nevertheless, while the American strike on Iran was impressive —  involving the world’s largest conventional bomb — it remains uncertain whether “one and done” will be enough to change Iran’s behavior. Will the Ayatollahs agree to forego uranium enrichment and curtail their ballistic missile program? Will they allow inspectors to visit the damaged sites and accept direct negotiations with the United States? Through prolonged negotiations, Europe and the United States have tried to bring Iran back into the community of nations. Now, the United States has carried out a very limited military operation. If Iran’s regime will not change its behavior, some argue that the next step should be regime change. But that would create a whole new raft of risks for regional instability. While foreign powers can support domestic efforts, far better the regime change is carried out by the Iranian people themselves.