Military victories are easy to measure, but strategic ones are not, and that distinction may define the Iran War. Since the Iran War began on February 28, the US has presented a myriad of scattered objectives in attacking Iran—from annihilation, to regime change, even to partial negotiation. Although the US’s sheer military power has severely damaged Iran’s offensive strike capability, instead of taking away Iran’s power, the US has essentially handed Iran strategic leverage through the Strait of Hormuz. As a result, as of April 13, more than a full month since the start of the war, we are in a tentative two-week ceasefire, and failed peace talks leave a very unclear path for how the US will proceed from here, despite the country’s clear position in the war as one of the most powerful militaries in the world.

Tactically, the US has nearly achieved its goal of decimating the Iranian military—at least, according to officials in the White House. On April 7, US President Donald Trump declared the war “a total and complete victory,” and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth added that Iran’s military has been “decimated” and “rendered… combat ineffective for years to come.” This statement appears largely accurate: PBS reported that the US has struck 90% of Iran’s naval fleet, 90% of their weapons factories, and 80% of Iran’s air defense systems. However, this tactical definition of success is limited to short-term military outcomes, and the leaders of the US government are measuring success through the lens of battlefield damage rather than that of strategic outcome; their perspective is far too narrow. In fact, the framing of the US as an unmoved, heavy-handed actor ignores a key point of leverage that Iran continues to hold: the Strait of Hormuz.

While Iran has lost a significant portion of its military, reports indicate that its arsenal may still retain thousands of ballistic missiles, alongside hundreds of attack drones and a large percentage of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC’s) small attack boats. Consequently, despite the loss of a significant portion of their weapons, Iran still possesses enough military capabilities to realistically threaten the Strait of Hormuz and the ships that would normally pass through its waters.

In practice, Iran may have had the capability to threaten the strait for many years, but it is this war that has led Iran to fully understand and leverage that capability for the first time. In other words, a war launched in order to weaken Iran and create a regime change appears to have instead directly strengthened Iran and its government in the long term. Iran now recognizes that it can singlehandedly cause global inflation to rise, impact the political fortunes of governments in the US and the West in general, and thereby put significant pressure on those countries. Kelly A. Grieco, a senior fellow at The Stimson Center, a foreign policy think tank, sees this threat as a meaningful setback for the US. “Even with the ceasefire, Iran has effectively established itself as gatekeeper of the strait,” said Grieco. “That’s a fundamentally different status quo than existed before the conflict. It also gives Tehran a durable form of economic leverage.” Instead of removing or reducing the threat of Iran, the US has increased it.

Going into peace talks, we can expect Iran not to cave in to US demands, since the former country appears to have significant leverage now that it can effectively exert geopolitical influence on the Western world. Even despite the recent US blockade, Trump’s changing, impatient, and force-focused strategies make it unlikely that this show of military might will be successful, given that Iran can now control a large sector of the global economy. Ultimately, the war appears set to achieve the opposite of the US government’s stated goals: to dominate Iran and “[take out] the whole country… in one night,” as Trump has proclaimed.