It is difficult to tell which side is winning in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran because the objectives and strategies for victory of the combatants are so different. This is even further complicated by the fact that, for the United States, many of the highest costs of the war lie outside the theater of conflict and involve the economic costs to U.S. allies and the diplomatic damage to the United States.

President Donald Trump and his advisers have laid out multiple goals for the United States, some quite limited and others expansive. These include ending Iran’s nuclear program, degrading its missile capabilities and conventional military stocks, stopping Tehran’s support for Hezbollah, Hamas, and other proxy forces, and, most ambitiously, regime change in Tehran. To achieve these goals, the United States and Israel have killed Iranian leaders and bombed Iran’s military forces and infrastructure.

Iran, for its part, seeks to preserve its regime and, if it can, restore deterrence with the United States and Israel. It has also committed enormous political capital to its nuclear program and has a strategic as well as ideological commitment to its proxy forces. Tehran believes, probably correctly, that if it can survive the bombing, it can achieve many of these goals. To increase pressure on the United States in particular, Iran has attacked U.S. allies in the Gulf and shut down traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.