A region on fire, thousands dead, and a superpower bogged down in a conflict of its own creation. Six months after American bombs first thundered into Iran, the war Donald Trump once promised would end quickly has instead metastasised into a grinding, leaderless quagmire, and the bill is still climbing.
On 28 February, a joint US-Israeli operation killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Within days, Tehran had blockaded the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow maritime chokepoint through which a fifth of the world’s oil flows. Oil prices rocketed. Global markets convulsed. And the president, asked by a New York Post reporter about the chaos unfolding, snapped back: “I have a plan for everything, OK? You’ll be very happy.”
Half a year later, nobody is happy. Strikes continue to exchange hands, shipping through Hormuz has dwindled to a fraction of its former volume, and negotiations remain stuck on irreconcilable red lines. Oil benchmarks are still hovering near $90 a barrel, roughly 25 per cent above where they stood before the war. US troops are still dying. And Trump’s approval ratings have slumped to their lowest ebb since he returned to the White House.
What follows is the toll, measured in bodies, barrels, and ballot boxes.
The human wreckage
More than 8,000 people across the Middle East have lost their lives since the opening salvos of Operation Epic Fury, according to aggregated local tallies. That figure continues to climb, even as the tempo of strikes has slowed in recent months.
Iran’s own government put the death toll among its citizens at 3,468 by mid-April. The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency later placed the number higher, at 3,636, including 1,701 civilians. The Pentagon has confirmed 14 US service members killed and 417 wounded directly in Epic Fury, with a further four deaths and 341 injuries in overseas operations since 7 July. Another 60 casualties were logged last week alone.
Civilians have borne the brunt. The US military stands accused of obliterating a young family with a 907kg bomb during renewed strikes on Iran’s Qeshm Island in late July. An Indian sailor was killed and eight others wounded when cruise missiles slammed into two oil tankers in the Strait last month. Three sailors died in US strikes in June. Across the wider region, more than 150 deaths have been linked to the conflict.
A June interim ceasefire was violated repeatedly by both sides before being abandoned altogether. The killing has not stopped. It has merely become routine.
A bleeding economy
Tehran’s grip on Hormuz has strangled global shipping lanes and punished consumers from Manchester to Michigan. Crude is still trading around $90 a barrel, a 25 per cent jump from the $72 it fetched on the eve of the conflict. American petrol prices have surged roughly 30 per cent over the past year.
The numbers, laid bare by economists, are stark. The Watson School of International and Public Affairs estimates energy inflation has drained $91.6bn from US consumers as of 26 August. The average American household has forked out an extra $381.64 on petrol alone since the war began. The Center for American Progress puts the total household cost even higher, at $1,200 per family as of 20 August.
Britain, despite remaining outside the conflict, has not escaped the damage. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research calculates the energy shock will shave 0.3 per cent off GDP this year and 0.2 per cent next. Real GDP will land £12.8bn below pre-war forecasts, the equivalent of the entire Ministry of Justice budget. Ofgem has just raised the domestic energy price cap by four per cent. Inflation has climbed to 2.9 per cent. The Resolution Foundation warned in April that higher energy prices alone would leave the average British household £480 worse off by year’s end.
A president under siege
Trump now faces a reckoning at the ballot box. A Reuters/Ipsos poll concluded on Monday showed just 33 per cent of Americans approve of his performance, and only 31 per cent back the military action against Iran, down from 37 per cent in March. The drop is steepest among Republicans, the very voters he can least afford to lose.
Even Marjorie Taylor Greene, the firebrand former congresswoman, has broken ranks. She warned last week that the GOP “could get smoked” in November’s midterms, where every House seat and a third of the Senate will be contested. Primaries on 18 August put Democrats ahead by six points.
The midterms are fast approaching, and Trump has precious little to show for six months of war.
Dr Lindsay Newman, an associate fellow at Chatham House, told The Update Desk that the president appears to have misread the moment. She believes Trump modelled his approach on the swift removal of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro in January, and severely underestimated Iran. “Iran was always going to be a much bigger and more complex proposition,” she said. “Operation Epic Fury represents tactical success but strategic failing.”
Newman added: “Trump wanted a quick operation and instead got a Middle East-sized headache. The US administration finds itself six months along no closer to a conflict resolution, even after toggling between tactics.”
The search for an exit is now underway. Newman sees the strategy pivoting towards economic strangulation, squeezing Tehran through sanctions and pressure points rather than further military escalation. “It has been clear for months that Trump was not willing to pay the cost to end the war militarily, and there was little domestic appetite to do so,” she said.
Andreas Krieg, associate professor in security studies at King’s College London, argues the president has a path out, but only by rewriting the definition of victory. “He needs a deal that allows him to say the United States restored freedom of navigation, forced Iran to accept restrictions on its behaviour and imposed unprecedented economic costs,” Krieg said. Without that, the trap tightens.
Washington’s eroding grip
The war has not just cost lives and money. It has corroded American influence across the Middle East, damaged alliances with Gulf states, and left Washington looking overstretched at a moment when strategic attention is meant to be turning towards Asia.
Tehran, far from being broken, retains a viable military, controlling Hormuz, and now negotiating directly with Oman over passage through the strait, a waterway that was, before the war, freely accessible international territory. Iranian missile and drone strikes have reached previously safe Gulf Arab states, disrupted regional air travel, and inflated insurance and shipping costs across the board.
The irony is bitter. The war was sold as the means to eliminate Iran as a threat. Instead, it has emboldened Tehran and alienated old partners. The US has even threatened Oman, a long-standing ally, while burning through munitions and degrading its own readiness for future confrontations.
Krieg is blunt. “The US has won most of the battles, but it cannot win the war.”
Newman’s verdict is equally unsparing. “The conflict in Iran has truly been an application of the Trump Doctrine to use all available means at any time to champion core American interests as defined by the US administration,” she said. “Six months in, the report card is very mixed.”
Why it Matters
This war was supposed to be swift, surgical, and decisive. Instead, it has become a slow bleed, draining American lives, draining American wallets, and draining American credibility. With midterms looming, energy prices biting, and a Strait of Hormuz still controlled by a regime Trump vowed to crush, the president is running out of both time and options. The risk now is not defeat in some dramatic, televised sense, but a slow drift into the kind of endless, undefined conflict that has haunted American foreign policy for generations. For families in Tehran, Beirut, and Tehran’s ports, and for motorists in Birmingham and Boston alike, the cost is already here, and it is not finished.