A parallel battle of narratives has emerged from the US-Iran war 

Air Cmde TK Chatterjee (retd)

The US-Iran war was in a temporary, fragile pause just a few weeks ago, and the world heaved a sigh of relief. That the truce was indeed fragile was soon proved. Before the ink dried on the memorandum of understanding (MoU), Iran attacked commercial shipping, and the Americans recommenced their bombing campaign. 

Hoping that this pause in operations would eventually lead to a lasting peace treaty, all participants in this war began putting out their own versions of the truth about who achieved what objectives. There is the US version, which claims complete victory over Iran. There is the Iranian version, which also claims victory over the unjustified and illegal invasion of their sovereignty. There is the Israeli version, which claims, US-Iran MoU notwithstanding, that their war continues until Iran-backed proxies are decimated. Then there is the West Asian version, which is still wondering whether it is worth hosting US military bases on its soil. There is also the Pakistani version, which cannot decide what to celebrate more—their diplomatic success as a mediator or the fact that India was not a party to it. Finally, there is the rest-of-the-world version, which found the war unnecessary, meaningless, unplanned, lacking proper objectives and basic military wisdom.

Clausewitz’s observation that war is ‘the continuation of policy by other means’ helps explain why military operations and competing political narratives run in parallel. Victory, restraint, and sovereignty have all become terms tailored to particular audiences. For Washington, the pause must look like a strategic success; for Tehran, it must preserve dignity and resistance; for Israel, it must not appear to be an abandonment; and for regional hosts, it must justify difficult choices made under pressure. The real test, therefore, is not who can narrate the conflict most convincingly, but whether these competing narratives leave enough room for de-escalation before another round of military action overtakes diplomacy.

This war of attrition and narratives cannot continue indefinitely. Pauses will come, and all parties will repeat the same narratives. The battle of the narratives will continue long after the guns fall silent. This essay aims to examine each party’s claims, seek the truth behind the façade created for domestic and international consumption, and determine whether there is any convergence in their stories. Prima facie, the parties’ claims are wildly divergent, yet there may be hope that all will come together to seek a common, peaceful, and prosperous future for a reorganised West Asia. 

The American Overreach

The American version depends on who you ask: Democrats or Republicans. To the Democrats, it was all a waste of USD25 billion of taxpayers’ money, with a further commitment of USD300 billion. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was signed after years of negotiations in 2015, held more promise than the MoU signed in June 2026 regarding Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The Iranian government has become more hard-line, and the nation refused to capitulate before the American ‘Epic Fury’. In short, America entered a war that three previous presidents had the option to wage but refused, and that it lost convincingly.

If Iran has not capitulated, if its government has hardened, and if future talks must still resolve the same nuclear issues, then victory becomes a matter of presentation rather than substance.

For Republicans, and especially the Trump administration, the truth remains simpler: pressure worked, force restored credibility, and Iran was compelled to negotiate from a position of weakness. In this telling, military action demonstrated American resolve, reassured allies, and re-established deterrence after years of perceived drift. The reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s willingness to engage diplomatically are cited as evidence that Washington achieved important objectives.

The American truth, therefore, is divided between two claims: one side sees decisive leadership that extracted concessions. The other sees an expensive detour that has returned Washington to diplomacy with fewer guarantees and greater regional risk. As a writer in Foreign Affairs states, the US disregarded its experience of the difficulty in overthrowing ideological foes like Hezbollah, the Islamic State, or the Taliban.

But most Americans know from numerous media reports that this great ‘victory’ was not America’s own brainchild. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s revelation at the beginning of the war said it all, all subsequent denials notwithstanding. They were lured into it with the assurance that a swift decapitating strike on the Iranian leadership would bring about a total and immediate capitulation of the theocratic regime, and the US-Israeli combine could then have a compliant leadership in place to run the country. Bolstered by their ‘victory’ in Venezuela, the American government waltzed into the trap with its eyes wide shut. Billions of USD, many lives, and a host of equipment losses later, they perhaps realise that starting a war is easy, but controlling its direction, duration and consequences is far more difficult.

A Battered but Victorious Iran

Tehran’s version is that the US and Israel attempted to break the Islamic Republic, decapitate its leadership, destroy its military-industrial base, and impose surrender, but failed to achieve any of these decisive objectives. Therefore, even a battered Iran can present itself as undefeated. 

Iran International captured this argument sharply when it quoted former US Assistant Secretary of State David Schenker as saying, “In the meanwhile, it’s a tremendous win for Iran.” The value of that line lies in its irony: even a critic of Tehran could see that the pause in the hostilities gave Iran time, leverage, and space to recover. Iranian officials can point to the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz not as a concession, but as evidence that the world had to negotiate with them because the cost of ignoring Iran had become too high. They can also argue that their nuclear programme was not dismantled, their government did not collapse, their regional networks were not erased, and their right to negotiate from a position of sovereignty remained intact. 

In this telling, resistance itself becomes victory. The resumption of American strikes and Iranian retaliation only reinforces this narrative. Tehran can now argue that the conflict never truly ended because its adversaries remained committed to coercion rather than accommodation. Every renewed exchange allows the regime to present itself as a state under siege, thereby justifying continued sacrifice at home while portraying resistance as both necessary and patriotic. From Iranian perspective, the very fact that powerful adversaries continue to target Iran is evidence that they failed to compel its surrender.

Yet, the Iranian version also obscures uncomfortable truths. The country has paid heavily in terms of military losses, economic exhaustion, infrastructure damage, and diplomatic uncertainty. Its human rights excesses remain unexplained. No one enriches uranium without an ultimate purpose, yet its real nuclear ambition remains unstated. Its claim of victory depends on defining success as non-capitulation rather than on clear advancement. Still, in wars of narrative, survival can be enough. If the enemy’s stated or implied objective was surrender, merely sitting at the negotiating table allows Tehran to say it is winning.

The Israeli Compulsion

For Israel, it was an opportunity for which it had waited for four decades to bring the US directly into a military confrontation with Iran. That would give the attack a sense of legitimacy and insulate Israel from repercussions worldwide. 

The Jerusalem Post captured the Israeli anxiety about the ceasefire in June most clearly when it noted that ‘it remains unclear whether Israel will be permitted to act only in response to Iranian attacks or also against Hezbollah’s military buildup.’ For Israel, this uncertainty lies at the heart of its narrative: the diplomatic negotiations may pause and restart the American-Iranian war repeatedly, but they cannot be allowed to freeze Israel into strategic paralysis while Hezbollah rebuilds under Iranian protection.

Most Israeli versions also hide the truth of Israeli losses in the war. According to the Times of Israel, Israel’s finance ministry estimated that the Iran war cost about NIS 35 billion (USD9.5 billion), including NIS 22 billion (USD 5.9 billion) in defence spending alone. More importantly, there was a moment of genuine anxiety in Israel when an Iranian missile landed in Dimona, close to the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Centre. 

The Times of Israel described how the strike ‘rocked residents’ sense of security,’ quoting one resident as saying, “We thought we were safe,” and another adding, “We didn’t expect this.” That reaction matters because Dimona is not just another southern town; it sits near the most sensitive symbol of Israel’s undeclared strategic deterrent. Even though the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported no indication of damage to the nuclear research centre and no abnormal radiation levels, the psychological effect was immediate. 

Iran had shown it could reach an area Israelis assumed would be among the best-protected in the country. The issue was therefore not only physical damage but also symbolic vulnerability. If Iranian missiles could penetrate air defences near Dimona, then Israel’s claim of total operational superiority looked less absolute. For Tehran, the strike was a message that attacks on Iranian nuclear infrastructure could invite pressure near Israel’s own nuclear-associated sites. For Israelis, it raised a more uncomfortable question: whether escalation with Iran had brought the war closer to assets that had long remained outside open battlefield calculations.

The West Asian Dilemma

West Asia got embroiled in a war between Israel and Iran. Israel wanted a crushing military and political defeat or large-scale politico-economic chaos in Iran. They found a willing partner in Trump. Arguing that Iran was very close to acquiring a nuclear weapon, they made the case for a military intervention. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states did not respond uniformly to the conflict. Qatar and Oman opposed the escalation from the outset, while Saudi Arabia and the UAE adopted a more cautious approach.

Qatar played a particularly important mediating role, helping facilitate communication between Tehran and Washington. Oman, meanwhile, faced Iranian pressure to endorse the idea of tolling the Strait of Hormuz—a proposal rejected by regional states and the wider international community, which regard the waterway as an international passage rather than a commercial asset.

Despite those differences, this war has deepened doubts about Washington’s long-term reliability as a security guarantor, even as Iran’s Arab neighbours remain dependent on American military infrastructure. The renewed strikes and counterstrikes have reinforced concerns that the Gulf states are becoming unwilling participants in confrontations they neither initiate nor control. 

Al Jazeera states in an article published on 12 June 2026 titled ‘How The Gulf Will Manage Collective Security After The Iran War Ends’: ‘Gulf states will likely look for new long-term security solutions when a war in their region—which they did not start—finally ends.’ There is already talk about a ‘Muslim NATO’. The idea is essentially a renewed call for a collective defence framework among Muslim-majority states, driven by frustration that the US security guarantees no longer look reliable enough. 

The phrase is loose: sometimes it refers to a possible Saudi-Pakistan-Turkey-Qatar defence bloc, sometimes to a wider Arab/ Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) security arrangement, and sometimes to the older Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition based in Riyadh. The idea is, however, less about ideology than anxiety. Gulf states host major US military facilities, but recent crises have shown that those bases can both protect and expose them. This is why analysts describe the region as seeking ‘strategic autonomy’—not necessarily to replace Washington, but to reduce its total dependence.

The Pakistani Diplomacy

A surprise gainer in this whole conflict is Pakistan. They congratulated themselves on pulling off a diplomatic coup by mediating between the US and Iran, a move that earned them international recognition. A greater reason for this sense of elation is that India was nowhere to be found on the scene. 

Iqbal Latif, an economist and historian, explains in his blog ‘How Pakistan Stopped the War’: “And when the Americans needed someone with Iran’s trust, and the Iranians needed someone with America’s trust, and the Saudis needed someone who had demonstrated they could stand their ground, not one of those descriptions fitted India.” He, of course, omits the process that the state of Pakistan followed to gain this priceless ‘trust’ of the President of the United States (POTUS). Accepting that the US brought about the ceasefire in Op Sindoor, nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, allowing a huge cryptocurrency deal to Trump’s son, granting oil exploration and rare earth mining rights to the US, in short, adopting a notably deferential posture towards the POTUS to gain his invaluable ‘trust’. Everything that India refused to do.

The Pakistani version of the truth hides the fact that an Iran in chaos is hugely problematic for it. It shares a long border, almost 1,000 km, with Iran. An economic disaster in Iran, which is inevitable if the war persists, would cause a refugee influx, which Pakistan can ill afford given its own fragile economy. It therefore had no choice but to get involved in the war, just as India was once forced to get involved in the genocide in erstwhile East Pakistan. Instability along its western frontier, with the Afghan border already hot and the Indian border never cold, would have posed a major national security concern for the country. So, it did what it rightfully should have done. It chose to be the mediator. The renewed fighting has demonstrated that the Islamabad initiative, while valuable, was only a first step. Much more remains to be done before a durable and lasting peace can be achieved.

The Rest of the World’s Issues

To the rest of the world, the US-Iran war was uncalled for. It caused economic hardship for all countries that needed oil from the Gulf. The US’ Nato allies refused to participate in the war, saying they had never been consulted before the conflict started. 

Russia’s reaction was predictably anti-West. Moscow condemned the US-Israeli strikes as ‘a preplanned and unprovoked act of armed aggression against a sovereign and independent UN member state,’ while warning that the attacks risked a ‘humanitarian, economic and possibly radiological catastrophe.’ This allowed Russia to present itself as a defender of sovereignty and international law, even as its own credibility on those principles remained deeply contested. 

China’s reaction combined legal condemnation with strategic caution. The Chinese foreign ministry said the US attacks on Iran and the bombing of nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards ‘seriously violate the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and international law.’ In contrast, the Chinese representative to the UN, Fu Cong, warned that the strikes had ‘dealt a heavy blow to the international nuclear non-proliferation regime.’ For Beijing, the war was therefore not only a regional crisis but also a warning that American military power could destabilise energy routes, weaken diplomatic norms, and push West Asia further away from negotiated security.

Many developing countries depend heavily on Gulf oil, remittances, shipping routes, and migrant labour networks, so any conflict around Iran and the Strait of Hormuz directly threatens their economies. Their objection to the war was not necessarily a defence of Iran’s political system or nuclear opacity, but a rejection of the idea that powerful states may decide, without international authorisation, when another state’s facilities can be bombed. For them, the war confirmed a long-standing complaint: that the West invokes rules when convenient and ignores them when strategic interests demand it. India, Brazil, Indonesia, and many African and Latin American states had little appetite for another conflict that could raise oil prices, disrupt trade, and deepen global instability. The renewed strikes and counterstrikes have only reinforced these concerns, reminding much of the world that the underlying disputes remain unresolved and the economic consequences of escalation are shared far beyond the battlefield. In this version of truth, the war was not about victory, deterrence, or regime survival. It was about the danger of allowing West Asia to become, yet again, the battlefield where the rest of the world pays the bill for the ambitions of great powers.

Conclusion

Analysing all the hues of truth presented by different parties to the world, one searches for some convergence. The convergence, if any, is mostly practical and not ideological. It is perhaps true that, except Israel, most parties wanted at least a pause in the fighting. The US wanted it for the political survival of the President and the Republican Party at home, having mistaken Iran for Venezuela. 

But it cannot allow Iran to have unilateral control over shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. That would be a strategic defeat for the superpower. So, they respond to Iranian attempts to control the strait with renewed strikes. Iran wants the war to end, but cannot relinquish control of the Strait, which gives it strategic leverage. Gulf states want stability to return. Pakistan wants diplomatic relevance and border security, and the rest of the world wants oil, trade, and shipping routes protected. For every economy, big or small, keeping energy and trade routes open is a shared interest. Even Iran benefits from not destroying the world’s economic lifeline, which gives it leverage. 

In the battle of narratives, each version claims victory but hides the unpleasant truths. American overreach, Iranian damage, Israeli vulnerability, Gulf insecurity, Pakistani compulsion, and global exposure to disruption in trade and energy flows. The common convergence is not around justice, truth, or trust. It is about the fear that further escalation will harm all. The stories that have been carefully crafted by the belligerents diverge in blame and propaganda but converge towards the need for a negotiated settlement. That makes peace possible, though not secure, and as yet, elusive.