It has been six months since February 28, when the US and Israel shocked the world by launching missile strikes on Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several senior Iranian officials in Tehran, as well as scores of children in a school in Minab, southern Iran. US President Donald Trump then claimed the conflict would only last “four to five weeks”. In the months since, the war has erupted on several other fronts, reaching as far as the Caspian Sea.
It has triggered a global oil supply crisis as the US and Iran battle for control of the strategic Strait of Hormuz, through which more than one-fifth of oil and natural gas cargo transited. And it has resulted in an estimated 8,000-10,000 deaths, as well as tens of thousands of injuries. The conflict is also realigning the global order, experts say, as new alliances form and dominant ones show signs of crumbling.
The US’s goals were not initially clear: officials first claimed the strikes were carried out in preemptive self-defence. According to demands presented on the eve of the war, and a jumble of sometimes contradictory statements from Trump and senior US defence officials, they include the following: Despite Trump’s claim that the US had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities when it joined in at the end of Israel’s 12-day war on Iran in June 2025, the US and Israel again claimed in February that Tehran was just weeks away from developing nuclear weapons. Repeated strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites during the war have likely caused vast damage to the facilities, but it is believed Tehran still possesses 440kg of highly enriched uranium, which could be used to make a weapon.
The Trump administration wanted Iran to hand over this stock to the US and to commit to zero enrichment of uranium going forward. Iran refused to do this, although at one point appeared open to the possibility of handing the stock over to a third country. Iran also insisted on retaining the capacity to develop a nuclear power programme, which requires much lower levels of uranium enrichment.
Later, Trump briefly floated the idea of US troops retrieving the stock by force – a potentially dangerous mission. In the June 17 memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by both sides, Iran agreed not to pursue a nuclear weapon – something it had always pledged anyway. The MoU unravelled as its vague wording led to disagreements about what it actually stipulated.
Clark Summers, a US military veteran and professor at Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina, said the US “can rightly assert that these ends have been achieved. Although for how long before Iran can rebuild is difficult to assess.” But Iranian expert and professor at the Australian National University (ANU), Alam Saleh, disagreed, and noted that Iran’s nuclear power programme is still intact. On day one of the war – February 28 – the US killed Khamenei alongside several other senior officials.
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