This was as close to an admission of failure in Iran as Donald Trump has come.

The President’s decision to reassign his Vice-President from Iran diplomacy to tackling what he calls corruption and crime in Democrat-controlled cities and states was not intended as a promotion.

It was partly a public rebuke of JD Vance, who blamed the Republicans’ midterm losses on the economic consequences of the Iran war (an assessment supported by much of the polling). But it was also a performance-related demotion. The man who negotiated a short-lived truce earlier in the conflict, and was expected to play a central role in future talks, had effectively been sidelined.

The unintended message was unmistakable: things are going badly.

Trump was wrong again on Thursday when he declared, “We’ve got their Strait”. Oil prices rose after he suggested a deal with Iran was no longer necessary.

Far from being under American control, the Strait of Hormuz remains a battlefield. Tankers are still being struck by missiles and sea mines. This week, Iran claimed to have attacked navigation infrastructure on a small Omani island, while US Central Command continued its blockade.

The uncomfortable possibility, which few in the US administration seem willing to acknowledge, is that this could become a semi-permanent state of affairs. Iran’s chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, suggested as much when he told Al Jazeera that the Strait would “never return” to its status before the war.

More than eight months have passed since Trump first declared victory. “We won. The first hour, it was over,” he said during the opening days of the war.

What has emerged since is a conflict in which every side can claim achievements, but none can credibly claim victory. The war has exposed the difference between inflicting damage and achieving strategic success. Everyone is still losing. 

The United States and Israel have devastated much of Iran’s military, killed senior leaders, including the Supreme Leader, and inflicted enormous economic damage. Yet their overwhelming firepower has failed to deliver their central objectives. The regime survives. The Strait remains effectively closed to normal commercial traffic. Iran’s nuclear ambitions endure.

Both the US and Israeli governments have paid a political price. Republicans suffered in the American midterms, while Israel’s recent elections left an opposition bloc with a potential path to removing Benjamin Netanyahu and what his critics call his “October 7 government”.

Iran, meanwhile, has demonstrated an extraordinary capacity to absorb punishment, at a devastating human and economic cost. Survival is not victory, any more than American and Israeli military superiority amounts to strategic success.

Indeed, Iran’s determination to retaliate has exposed both its reach and its weakness.

This week, I revealed for ITV News how two branches of the Iranian state are suspected of commissioning a network of just seven men, with criminal connections, to carry out a string attacks across Europe. Synagogues and Jewish community organisations were targeted before the group turned its attention to military installations.

The network, now proscribed in Britain, used AI-enhanced propaganda videos to magnify the psychological impact of its attacks, spreading fear particularly among Jewish communities.

The operation illustrated Tehran’s ability to project violence far beyond its borders, even under sustained military pressure. But its reliance on a handful of intermediaries and hired criminals also suggested the limits of that capability. Iran could still threaten its enemies abroad, but increasingly through improvised and outsourced methods.

There is, however, a fundamental asymmetry between the adversaries.

In the United States and Israel, military setbacks and economic hardship carry democratic consequences. Leaders are facing elections, public anger and the possibility of losing office. Iran’s rulers, of course, face no comparable electoral reckoning. They can pursue strategic patience while their population bears an extraordinary burden.

And the war may have strengthened the very political forces the US hoped to destroy.

Some Western officials assess the hopes of a popular uprising against the Iranian regime to have receded. Even some Iranians who oppose their rulers, they argue, have been drawn towards the regime’s anti-Western narrative by the scale of the destruction and humanitarian suffering. A war intended to weaken the Islamic Republic may have made its survival more politically sustainable in the immediate future.

That does not mean the regime has emerged stronger. It means its enemies continue to misunderstand the relationship between military punishment and political change.

For Iran’s leadership, resistance to American demands is central to the Islamic Republic’s political identity. The regime can present endurance itself as an achievement, even as the country is impoverished.

For Trump, acknowledging the limits of American power is equally difficult. Having declared victory almost from the outset, he has little political room to concede that the war has failed to produce the outcome he promised.

That leaves the Gulf states, particularly Qatar, trying to negotiate between adversaries. The emir has urged Trump to persist with diplomacy, arguing that mediation has prevented further escalation. He’s right. But preventing escalation is not the same as achieving de-escalation. The absence of a new offensive is not the arrival of peace.

For now, the conflict has settled into a punishing stalemate. Iran can deny its enemies victory, but cannot end its own suffering. The United States and Israel can continue to inflict enormous damage, but cannot compel the political and economic outcome they seek.

All three have demonstrated their capacity to endure a war. None has demonstrated how to end it.