Of course Israel and America are winning this war.

Strategic patience, not headlines and commentators, reveals who is actually winning — and it's definitely not the Iranian regime.

Israeli fighter jets en route to the Islamic Republic of Iran (photo: IDF/X)

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Every entrepreneur knows the emotional cycle of launching a new venture.

At the beginning, there is tremendous optimism. The vision is clear. The possibilities feel limitless. Energy is high, confidence is high, and early momentum makes success feel inevitable.

Then comes the crash.

Reality intrudes. Progress slows. Obstacles appear that seemed invisible in the early days. The venture is harder than expected. There are more competitors than were initially discovered. The euphoria fades, replaced by doubt.

Eventually, however, something more stable emerges: The venture finds its baseline. The entrepreneur adapts, recalibrates, and continues building from a more grounded understanding of reality.

The same psychological cycle is now unfolding in the war between Israel and the United States on one side and the Iranian regime on the other.

When the war unexpectedly started on February 28th, approximately two weeks ago, the U.S. and Israel delivered unbelievable blows to the Iranian regime, including assassinating its Supreme Leader and other high-ranking officials. The momentum continued for several more days, but the past few days have felt like the crash.

Suddenly, the lofty goal of regime change appears far more difficult than it seemed at the outset. The Islamic Republic is not a small militia or a fragile dictatorship that collapses overnight. Iran is a massive country of nearly 90 million people with a sprawling political, military, intelligence, and religious apparatus. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of individuals are directly employed by the regime or tied to it through patronage networks, security forces, and ideological institutions.

Dismantling a system like that in a matter of days was never realistic. And yet recognizing that reality does not mean the war is being lost. In fact, the evidence suggests the opposite.

The Nature of the Iranian Regime

Regimes like the Islamic Republic are extraordinarily effective at suppressing dissent.

They maintain power not only through surveillance and propaganda, but through violence and fear. Potential dissenters know the consequences of speaking out: imprisonment, torture, and often the punishment of their families as well. The regime has spent decades perfecting the machinery of repression.

At the same time, many of those within the system are not merely bureaucrats preserving their jobs. They are ideological Islamists who genuinely believe in the regime’s mission. For them, martyrdom is not something to be avoided; it is something to be embraced. This creates a uniquely difficult adversary.

When regimes such as this feel cornered, they do not seek negotiated exits. They lash out. They escalate. They try to create chaos in the hope that instability will weaken their enemies or buy them time. We are seeing exactly that behavior now.

In recent days, the Iranian regime has taken a series of increasingly reckless actions that reveal its growing desperation. Mines have been laid in the Strait of Hormuz, one of the most strategically important shipping lanes in the world. Iranian forces have begun targeting commercial cargo ships in and around the strait. Tehran has issued threats against global technology companies — including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia, Palantir, IBM, and Oracle — labeling them “legitimate targets” and publishing lists of their offices and data centers across the Middle East.

Last week, drones struck Amazon data centers in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Iranian officials have also threatened banks and other financial institutions.

These actions complicate the military strategy of the United States and Israel. Their coalition must now simultaneously conduct offensive operations against the regime while also protecting civilian infrastructure, global shipping routes, commercial networks, and allied military assets across the region.

Iran faces no such constraints. The regime cannot meaningfully defend its own military infrastructure, since much of which has already been severely degraded by American and Israeli strikes. And it has never shown the slightest interest in protecting civilian or commercial infrastructure. Its strategy is therefore brutally simple: Attack anything and everything that might create instability in the region to effectively force an end to the war — an end that keeps them alive and in power.

But desperation should not be mistaken for strength. Historically, regimes escalate recklessly when they begin to sense their strategic position deteriorating.

Iran is not Russia or China.

It is also important to recognize that the Islamic Republic is not comparable to other adversaries of the West.

Russia and China are geopolitical rivals of the United States. They challenge Western influence and frequently oppose Western policies. But they remain fundamentally pragmatic actors within the international system. Both states maintain functioning diplomatic channels, respect certain norms of international order, and generally calculate risk according to strategic interests.

The Iranian regime operates under a very different ideological framework.

Its leadership is rooted in revolutionary Islamist ideology that openly calls for the destruction of the West. Jihad and martyrdom are not rhetorical flourishes in this worldview; they are operational principles. The regime does not merely compete with Western power; it views Western civilization as something that must ultimately be eliminated.

That ideological component makes the regime both dangerous and unpredictable. It also means that conventional deterrence strategies often function differently when applied to the Islamic Republic.

The Western Patience Problem

The United States, Israel, and their partners possess overwhelming military, technological, and economic capabilities. The coalition has the means to dismantle the regime’s power structures piece by piece.

But doing so requires patience.

This is often the West’s greatest strategic weakness. Democratic societies are impatient by nature. Political leaders face constant pressure from public opinion cycles that move at the speed of social media. News organizations demand immediate results. Analysts produce hourly verdicts about whether operations are succeeding or failing.

However, wars do not operate on social media timelines.

Dismantling a deeply entrenched regime — one that has spent more than four decades building networks of militias, intelligence agencies, ideological institutions, and foreign proxies — cannot be accomplished in two weeks. It requires sustained pressure, strategic sequencing, and the slow erosion of the regime’s ability to project power.

Expecting near-instant victory misunderstands both the scale of the problem and the nature of war itself.

American soldiers on one of the U.S. aircraft carriers in the Middle East (photo: U.S. Central Command/X)

The Quiet Support of the Arab World

There is another crucial development that has received surprisingly little attention: the relative quiet of the Arab world.

If Gulf states and other Arab governments truly opposed the American and Israeli campaign against the Iranian regime, we would hear it loudly and constantly. Public condemnations would dominate regional diplomacy. Emergency summits would be convened. Energy policy would be weaponized.

Instead, regional leaders have been largely quiet — and that silence speaks volumes.

Across the Middle East, governments that are not aligned with jihadist movements have long viewed the Islamic Republic as one of the most destabilizing forces in the region. Iran has funded militias, armed proxies, and fueled sectarian conflict from Lebanon to Gaza to Iraq to Yemen to Syria for decades.

Many Arab governments therefore see the current campaign not as a threat, but as an opportunity. Behind the scenes, Gulf states and other regional actors are taking unprecedented measures to stabilize energy markets, protect internal political systems, and quietly coordinate with the United States and Israel to maintain momentum against the regime.

During a press conference on Thursday evening, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a striking remark: “In these days, my team and I are weaving additional alliances with countries in the region — alliances that only a few weeks ago would have seemed unimaginable.”

Historically, statements like this have often been interpreted as references to Saudi Arabia, which has long maintained quiet cooperation with Israel while publicly remaining outside the Abraham Accords. But the regional landscape may now be shifting even more dramatically.

If the Iranian regime’s influence collapses or significantly weakens, entirely new diplomatic configurations could emerge across the Middle East. Countries that previously remained hostile, or at least distant, may suddenly find themselves aligned with Israel against a common threat. An expanded regional framework could soon include countries such as Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and/or Qatar — which just weeks ago seemed, as Netanyahu put it, unimaginable.

The Media Narrative Problem

Another challenge in understanding the war lies in the way it is being reported.

Many major Western media outlets are not simply reporting events; they are shaping narratives about those events. News coverage increasingly reflects ideological assumptions about Israel, the United States, and the Middle East. Stories that reinforce the perception of Israeli or American failure receive enormous attention. Stories that suggest the opposite often receive far less visibility.

A recent example illustrates the problem: Earlier this week, the American media giant ABC News reported a dramatic story claiming that the FBI had warned California law enforcement about a potential Iranian drone attack on the West Coast. The report quickly spread across social media, fueling widespread fear that the Islamic Republic was preparing retaliatory strikes on American soil.

But the underlying reality was very different.

Federal agencies had merely forwarded a single, unverified tip that had been submitted to the FBI. There was no confirmed plot, no operational intelligence, and no indication that an attack was actually imminent. That crucial context was completely omitted from the initial reporting. By the time the fuller picture emerged, the original headline had already done its work — amplifying anxiety and reinforcing the narrative of an escalating crisis.

Consumers of modern media must therefore approach coverage with caution. Headlines are not neutral reflections of reality; they are often part of an interpretive framework that shapes how the war is perceived.

What does ‘winning’ actually mean?

To understand whether Israel and the United States are winning the war, we must first define what winning actually means.

Victory does not necessarily mean marching into Tehran and installing a new government. In fact, Israeli officials themselves have repeatedly emphasized that regime change cannot ultimately be imposed from the outside. As Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar recently said this week:

“Ultimately, we cannot topple the regime — only the Iranian people can. At the same time, we must say that without external assistance they have no chance to topple the regime.”¹

Winning therefore involves several achievable strategic outcomes.

First, it means permanently curtailing Iran’s nuclear weapons program and severely degrading its ballistic missile capabilities. By many accounts, those objectives are already well underway.

Second, it means reducing Iran’s ability to project power through its network of regional proxies. For decades, Tehran has relied on terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas, militias in Iraq and Syria, and armed groups in Yemen to extend its influence across the Middle East. Weakening those networks would fundamentally reshape the regional balance of power.

Third, it means creating the conditions for long-term stability. As Sa’ar noted this week, Israel has no interest in entering a new war every year or two. The goal is not endless conflict but a strategic environment in which the regime’s ability to threaten its neighbors is diminished if not permanently then for many years to come.

IDF soldiers operating against Hezbollah in Lebanon (photo: IDF/X)

The Hezbollah Question

One of the most important remaining pieces of this puzzle is Lebanon-based Hezbollah, which has long been the Islamic Republic’s crown jewel in its so-called “axis of resistance” and the “ring of fire” it tried to build around Israel.

Reports this week suggested that Lebanon had expressed interest in engaging in direct talks with Israel regarding Hezbollah’s future — an extraordinary possibility given the decades of hostility between the two countries. Israeli and American officials reportedly questioned the seriousness of the proposal, and Israeli media reported this week that the offer had been rejected.

Yet even the appearance of such discussions reveals how dramatically the regional environment may be shifting.

At the same time, new reporting has shed light on just how deeply Iran has embedded itself inside Lebanon. According to Iran International, Lebanon’s parliamentary speaker allegedly receives more than $500,000 per month from Tehran to support Iranian interests and those of Hezbollah. Iranian officials reportedly describe the payments as a way to “buy unity” among Lebanon’s Shiite leadership and ensure that they act in accordance with Iran’s interests rather than those of Lebanon.

This arrangement highlights the deeper challenge facing Lebanon. Hezbollah is not merely a terrorist organization; it is part of a broader political ecosystem that Iran has spent decades cultivating through money, patronage, and intimidation. Dismantling Hezbollah therefore requires more than military pressure. It requires exposing and dismantling the financial and political networks that allow Iran to manipulate Lebanese politics from afar.

Within Israel’s defense establishment, some analysts believe that once the primary campaign against Iran concludes, attention may turn northward. With Hezbollah already weakened and the Islamic Republic under intense pressure, Israel may see a strategic window to dismantle the organization “once and for all,” as one diplomat with knowledge of the matter described it this week.

Such a campaign would require time and significant firepower — resources currently concentrated on the Iranian theater. But if successful, it would remove one of the most powerful tools Iran has used to destabilize the region for decades.

The Long(er) Game

Wars of this magnitude are rarely decided in a single dramatic moment. And they are certainly not decided in two weeks, or three or four.

Instead, they unfold gradually, through shifts in power, alliances, economic pressure, and political legitimacy. The collapse of regimes often appears sudden in retrospect, but it is usually the result of a long process of strategic erosion. From that perspective, many of the developments now unfolding across the Middle East suggest that the Iranian regime’s position is weakening by the day.

Its military capabilities are being degraded. Its proxies are under pressure. Regional governments are quietly aligning against it. New diplomatic possibilities are emerging. And the regime itself is responding with increasingly desperate actions.

None of this means victory is guaranteed, but it does mean that the simplistic narrative of Western failure does not match the strategic reality. The early optimism may have faded, and the inevitable crash may have arrived. Yet beneath the surface turbulence, the long-term trajectory of the war is becoming clearer.

And by any serious strategic measure, Israel and the United States are absolutely winning this war.

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1. “FM Sa’ar to ToI: Only Iranians can bring down regime, but they need outside help.” The Times of Israel.