AS the Israel-US war on Iran was entering its second week, President Donald Trump demanded an “unconditional surrender” by the Persian Gulf Islamic Republic. But within hours, President Masoud Pezeshkian of the beleaguered nation retorted: they will take their dreams of Iranian people surrendering unconditionally to their grave.

So what can influence the course of this war, including its end?

Apart from claims by the Israel-US coalition of decimating Iran’s nuclear facilities and missile production and launch capabilities, besides decapitating its leadership and destroying its command and control systems, and equally defiant statements by Iran about its own military might, evidence is in short supply about how the war is going.

Given how Iran is being carpet-bombed and how missiles are slamming into various parts of the country, it is not difficult to say that the Israel-US coalition controls the skies over most of the country, with the latter’s air/missile defences knocked out. But, at the same time, Iran continues to launch both drones and missiles at targets in the apartheid state itself and at US military facilities across the Gulf. The decapitation seems to have left intact and functioning Iran’s 12 autonomous military-aerospace commands.

In terms of assessment, American analysts are split into two camps. The first group says that the war is not going America’s way and that one major indication of this is the number of direct hits that US assets, most notably THAAD and Patriot radars and batteries, have taken, exposing or making vulnerable, for example, Gulf allies and the Zionist apartheid state itself.

This war was always about bowing to Netanyahu’s pressure to facilitate the Greater Israel project.

These analysts, among them former US military and intelligence officers and also former CIA experts, maintain that their military will now need to move its missile defence assets positioned in South Korea, and even Taiwan, to the Middle East, for the time being at least.

Their stance carries weight in the light of continuing Iranian drone and missile attacks on targets across the region. The Zionist state and many of the Gulf states, which are at the receiving end of these weapons, have imposed tight censorship but even then, information trickles out and it does not paint a positive picture from their perspective.

Then there are analysts usually seen as close to the defence and intelligence establishment in the US who insist that the war is going well and has so far led to widespread destruction of Iranian nuclear and missile (production and launch) capability and that America’s ascendancy in the air means that their drones can hover over underground facilities and direct heavy bombers to targets accurately.

I’ll leave it to you to assess which of the two points of view are closer to reality but, if it helps, a New York Times investigation has established that the missile attack on a school which killed 165 schoolgirls in Iran was carried out by one of the warships in the USS Abraham Lincoln battle group. And the target was chosen from a map dating back to 2015.

This war was always about bowing to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pressure to facilitate the Greater Israel project. Top US leaders have all attributed the American campaign to different reasons. Therefore, in military (and even political) terms, the objectives of the war have never been clearly defined or stated.

Perhaps from the Israel-US perspective, the war could continue till Iran is stripped of every single weapon and means with which to challenge the primacy of the apartheid state, and that is why almost every day, objectives shift from the elimination of the nuclear programme to the destruction of Iran’s long-range missile capability to regime change. Trump talks one day about putting “boots on the ground” and two days later says that would be a “waste of time”. Today regime change. Tomorrow something else.

With Congress firmly in his pocket because of the AIPAC-funded/ compromised members’ majority, he can pretty much make up objectives as he goes along. Some critics have suggested that Netanyahu possesses some damning evidence against Trump from the Epstein ‘video archives’. I find hundreds of millions of dollars as campaign donations from Zionists to be an equally compelling reason.

A few things may have a bearing on the course of the war. First and foremost is the impact of the Strait of Hormuz’s closure on oil prices, which have risen nearly 25 per cent in a month and may breach $100 a barrel. Rising prices at the petrol pumps and their impact on the US stock markets will create their own pressure for hostilities to end.

The strait’s closure will also result in a major hit to the oil and gas, and trading and tourism, revenues of the Gulf states. Qatar has gone on record to say that if its gas revenues continue to face disruptions, it might be forced to disinvest in the US. Such a disinvestment could take the shape of stock market sell-offs, and dumping of US treasuries and other instruments that could hit American markets.

Social media posts indicate that some in the Gulf are also realising that the top US priority seems to be to protect Israel. This, they say, is evident from how their ‘depleting’ air/ missile defence assets and missiles stocks are being ignored, leaving them to fend for themselves, while Tel Aviv’s needs are being met first.

This war may also have an impact on Europe, for example, as the US has given India a 30-day waiver (to begin with) to purchase Russian oil. With the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the demand for Russian oil and gas could bring Moscow a huge windfall, fuelling its military campaign in Ukraine.

While countries such as Pakistan must be increasingly concerned about rising oil prices and the possible fall in remittances, Europe, the Far East and South East Asia in particular, and the US in general, will not remain immune from the impact of rising energy prices, which may become a compelling reason to end the war.

The writer is a former editor of Dawn.

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Published in Dawn, March 8th, 2026