Both sides remain engaged in mutual attacks despite rising financial and human costs, as the world faces recessionary pressures.
Second, Iran seems increasingly isolated and battered, maintaining a fragile control over a shrinking, though still damaging, capacity for retaliation.
For Trump, the short campaign has become a strategic trap: military strikes yield decreasing benefits, while regime change and a clear exit plan remain out of reach.
Beijing views Tehran as maintaining its retaliatory ability, showing strong resilience under intense pressure, even though its control over the conflict remains fragile.
Iran may attack with relatively inexpensive weapons, but it has suffered severe damage to infrastructure, vital services, institutions, and its defence and industrial sectors.
Beijing, therefore, concludes that despite Trump’s unease, Israel still needs America in this war.
Trump, then, faces a tough reality: a war he cannot clearly win, cannot suddenly walk away from, and cannot end without seeming defeated. »