US President Donald Trump did it. Just 12 days after Israel attacked Iran, triggering a wave of attacks and missile barrages between the two sworn enemies, he declared the conflict was over. Remarkably, he even thanked Tehran for notifying Washington in advance of its intention to strike al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar—a move seemingly designed to allow Iran to save face following two years of severe setbacks to both its nuclear programme and regional militia proxies.
Iran had been desperately trying to avoid a direct war on its own turf since the spillover from Hamas's October 7 attacks and Israel’s subsequent war on Gaza spread across the region. As such, Iran didn't step in to defend its proxies in Lebanon and Yemen when they came under direct Israeli and/or American attack. But the war ultimately barged through its front door when Israel launched its unprecedented attack on 13 June, killing dozens of top-ranking Iranian military officials and several nuclear scientists.
Claims of victory
In a televised address following the ceasefire announcement, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei claimed: “Iran has triumphed over Israel and America.” He went further, asserting that “Israel was on the verge of collapse under Iranian strikes,” and that the United States intervened only out of fear that Israel would be completely destroyed.
According to Khamenei, the Israeli-US war on Iran was a massive failure. Indeed, an early US intelligence assessment produced by the Defence Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's intelligence arm, said that US military strikes on three nuclear facilities did not destroy the core components of Iran’s nuclear programme and likely only set it back by months, despite claims by Trump and US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth that it had been “obliterated”.
For its part, Iran’s state news agency, IRNA: “This great Iranian victory was not merely a military response or a tactical manoeuvre; it was a frank declaration that the era of Zionist hegemony is over, and the old equations in the region have been broken under the feet of the resistance fighters.”
