All sides say they are winning. But one month intothis warperhaps only one outcome is certain: Immense damage to theglobal economy.
After four weeks,President Donald Trumpis talking up negotiations to end this conflict that he started alongside Israel. That's even as thousands more American troops head to the Middle East with apossible ground operationlooming.
The U.S. and Israel say the war has been an unmitigated success. Indeed it has unleashed unprecedented damage on Iran: killingSupreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameneiand echelons of his top officials while gutting its navy and missile defenses, but also killing almost 2,000 people, many of them civilians, according to Iranian officials.
But Iran's response — which many regional officials and expert observers warned about beforehand — has successfully transposed these aftershocks so they are already being felt around the world. Tehran has used missiles andcheap dronesto effectively blockade theStrait of Hormuz, a vital trade route through which 20% of the world's oil passed daily before the war, while attacking Gulf oil and gas facilities.
The world is now facing price rises and perhaps even shortages for energy and food that are already baked in — and that's if the conflict ended tomorrow.
"The Iran crisis is an epoch-defining event, similar in scale to the fall of the Berlin Wall or 9/11," believes Peter Frankopan, a professor of global history at the University of Oxford. "The cascades coming towards us all are epic in scale, even if peace is agreed today," he told NBC News in an interview.
The U.S. and Israel launched their assault at 1:15 a.m. ET on Feb. 28, an attack Trump has boasted took even U.S. allies by surprise.
It came even as American negotiatorswere speaking with their Iranian counterpartsover a deal to contain the regime's nuclear program, in the wake of its deadly crackdown against protesters.
Whatever the initial reasoning, Trump now seems focused on solving a global oil and supply chain crisis that did not exist before the bombing started.
The war has further damaged America's standing among its European allies, unconvinced by Trump's rationale and his demands they help resolve the crisis.
At home, the war is unpopular with most Americans, polls show, and it has caused open criticism from elements of Trump's MAGA movement.
The assault "makes it clear that we are now in an age where might is right," added Frankopan, author of "The Silk Roads: A New History of the World," which examines the impact of the pre-Iran Persian Empire. We are used to seeing this from "rogue states," but Washington's choice of force over diplomacy, he added, "will rewire how the world sees the West."
What follows in the days and weeks ahead will depend on an array of diplomatic, military and economic moving parts.
Trump is claiming that negotiations to end the conflict are ongoing. He has extendedhis deadline for Iranto reopen the Strait of Hormuz until April 6, pausing his threatened attacks on Iranian energy infrastructure amid talks he says "are going very well."
That has been denied by Iran, as well as expert observers. The U.S. has attacked Iran during or directly after previous negotiations, meaning trust is thin.
"I've been talking with the mediators and there are no negotiations," said Ali Vaez at the International Crisis Group, a think tank based in Belgium, who was involved in the Obama-era landmark nuclear deal of 2015, from which Trump withdrew. "There have been some exchanges of messages urging the parties to get to the table. But the preconditions of both sides are so far apart that there is no prospect for any kind of high level meeting anytime soon," said Vaez.
Using Pakistan as a mediator, the Trump administration has sent a 15-point "peace plan" to Iran, which focuses on preventing it from developing nuclear weapons, something Tehran has already denied trying to do. Iran confirmed receipt of the proposal, and immediately countered with maximalist demands of its own.
"The conflict is at a stalemate because the parties are fighting different wars," Vaez said. "The U.S. and Israel are fighting a war aimed at weakening Iran, while Iran is fighting a war to survive."
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The Iranian view has always been that "although the U.S. and Israel have a higher capacity to inflict pain on them, the Iranians have a higher threshold for absorbing pain," Vaez said. "As it doesn't collapse, Iran is winning from its perspective."
Both sides also believe they have cards left to play.
The U.S. isdiverting thousands more marines, sailors and paratroopers to the region, and has refused to rule out a ground invasion in which it could attempt to seize Iran's vital oil terminal on Kharg Island or to break Iran's stranglehold over Hormuz.
"The United States Military is meeting or exceeding all of its benchmarks, and the President's decisive action is quickly eliminating short- and long-term threats to the United States and our allies," White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement to NBC News.
One way or another, the U.S. seems determined to loosen Iran's grip on the waterway, with White House officials saying forces are "zeroed in on systematically eliminating the terrorist Iranian regime's ability to disrupt the free flow of energy."
Between 1,900 and 2,500 vessels are currently stranded in the Persian Gulf, according to the International Maritime Organization, depriving the global oil market of around 8 million barrels every day, and sending costs for some fertilizers — around one-third of which transits Hormuz — doubling. Global stock markets tumbled again Friday.
On Friday alone, theprice of U.S. oilsurged 7%, bringing its total rise since the war with Iran began to more than 50%. Since the start of the year, U.S. crude oil prices have soared more than 75%.
There has already been significant human suffering.
The war has damaged some 82,000 civilian buildings, including hospitals and the homes of 180,000 people in Iran, the International Organization for Migration said Friday. Those prosecuting the war "have not understood that tens of millions of civilians across the region bear the brunt of violence, displacement and destruction," Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said in a statement.
Residents of Tehran, the Iranian capital, say they are exhausted by the bombs that have battered their city on a daily basis and terrified of the security checkpoints that have popped up looking for spies.
Trump's uneven messaging on the war's aims and end date, along with the constant screech of jets overhead, has shattered their nerves even more, residents say.
"The main question is whether this will go on for years or if it's almost over," said one Tehran resident, who asked not to be identified for safety reasons. "The country has had enough and cannot endure a long war, even though the system might want one, trying to flex and make it costly for the whole region as they threaten Arab nations every day."
Yet Israel has vowed to "intensify and expand" its attacks on Iran, punishment it says for Tehran continuing to launch missiles at its civilians. It has also escalated its offensive into neighboring Lebanon on the grounds of countering the Tehran-backed Hezbollah militant group,raising fears it may plan the long-term occupationof much of the country's south. Some 1 million people in Lebanon have been displaced by that conflict, including 300,000 children, according to the United Nations' refugee agency.
However, amid all this, the Iranian regime has not fallen but, in fact, hardened.
The supreme leader's death saw the appointment of his son,Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not yet been seen in public, is injured and likely "disfigured," according to the U.S. Little is known about the younger Khamenei, and his elevation has only allowed the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to consolidate power, according to close observers of Iran.
The Houthis, Iran's Yemeni proxy force, fired a missile at Israel for the first time in the current conflict on Saturday, in a signal that the group could soon join the war.
As they have done before, the Houthis could start firing on ships in the Red Sea, another vital waterway on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula. And if Trump does ultimately decide to hit Iranian power plants or launch a risky ground operation, Tehran has threatened to hit back even harder across the region.
What worries independent observers is that there appears to be far more scope to expand and intensify rather than calm the conflict.
"There is both tentative diplomatic outreach and ways for all sides to take more steps up the escalation ladder," said Naysan Rafati, a senior analyst on Iran at the International Crisis Group. "For the moment, the latter seems more likely."
