Ten Days In: The Iran War Nobody Planned For

The US-Israel war on Iran has lasted ten days, killed over 1,300 Iranians, pushed oil past $90 a barrel, and effectively shut down the world's most important oil chokepoint. Nobody in Washington, Jerusalem, or Tehran can clearly articulate how it ends.

That's the central problem of this conflict. The military campaign has been devastating. The strategic thinking behind it remains opaque.

What Happened

On February 28, Israeli missiles struck a government compound in central Tehran. The blasts killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and several top military commanders. According to the New York Times, the strike also killed Iranian officials who the White House had identified as more willing to negotiate — people who might have helped end the conflict quickly.

Since then, the US and Israel have hit oil facilities, military bases, and air defenses across Iran. More than 50 fighter jets and 100 munitions targeted an underground bunker Iranian leaders had planned to use in emergencies. A US submarine torpedoed an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean — the first American submarine kill since World War II.

Iran hit back. Hard. Missile barrages struck US bases in Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain. Drones hit Saudi Arabia's Ras Tanura refinery, shutting down 550,000 barrels per day. An Iranian drone damaged an Australian air base in the UAE. Israel struck Beirut. Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel. The war spilled across at least twelve countries.

The human cost: Iran's UN envoy reported 1,332 Iranian civilians dead as of March 6. A strike on a girls' school in Minab killed more than 165 people, many of them children. Seven US service members have died. Twelve Israeli civilians. Hundreds more across Gulf states and Lebanon.

The Hormuz Problem

Iran's most effective weapon hasn't been missiles. It's geography.

The Strait of Hormuz carries roughly a fifth of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas. Iran's Revolutionary Guards threatened to "set ablaze" any vessel using the waterway. Traffic fell to 10% of normal — worse than Goldman Sachs initially projected.

The result: approximately 140 million barrels of oil from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iraq, and Kuwait couldn't reach global refiners. Storage facilities in the Gulf started filling up. Kuwait and Iraq cut production. The UAE was expected to follow.

Oil hit $91 per barrel by Friday — its largest weekly gain on record in data going back to 1983, according to Al Jazeera. Goldman Sachs warned prices could breach $100 within days and potentially exceed the 2008 and 2022 peaks if Hormuz flows stay depressed through March. The Guardian reported oil has risen more than 50% since the start of 2026.

US petrol prices jumped to $3.41 per gallon, up $0.43 in a single week, according to the American Automobile Association.

Djibouti's finance minister warned the fighting would "bring severe economic consequences for developing countries." Egypt's president said his country's economy was in a "state of near-emergency."

The Albis Perception Gap Index scored the Iran oil strikes at 7.0 this week, with US and Middle Eastern outlets diverging most on whether the strikes on energy infrastructure were a defensive military action or an attack on civilian livelihoods.

The Endgame Gap

Here's what makes this war different from the Gulf Wars, Afghanistan, or even the 2025 Israel-Iran exchanges: there is no stated objective that can be measured.

President Trump has offered at least three different explanations for the war's purpose. First, he called for Iranians to rise up against their leaders. When intelligence reports concluded the clerical regime would likely hold on to power, he shifted — saying he cared little about Iran's internal politics. Then he demanded "unconditional surrender." He also suggested the US should choose Iran's next supreme leader, calling Khamenei's son "unacceptable."

According to the Associated Press, Trump appeared to rule out negotiations entirely.

Senior administration officials tried to narrow the goal: deny Iran any chance of gaining a nuclear weapon. But the military campaign has targeted oil facilities, government buildings, and leadership bunkers — a scope that goes well beyond nuclear infrastructure.

The New York Times described the situation plainly: "a withering air campaign by American and Israeli forces against an overwhelmed enemy, but few answers about what victory might look like."

How the World Sees It

This is where the gap widens.

Western and allied media have largely framed the conflict as a defensive response to Iranian aggression. The opening strike killed the supreme leader — presented as eliminating a threat. Oil facility attacks are framed as degrading Iran's ability to fund proxy wars.

Middle Eastern coverage tells a different story. The school strike in Minab. The 1,332 dead. Infrastructure damage affecting ordinary Iranians. Regional outlets emphasize that Gulf states — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE — are caught in a war they didn't ask for, absorbing Iranian retaliation aimed at US bases hosted on their soil.

Asian coverage focuses on economic fallout. South Korea's stock market dropped 8% in a single session. Japan and India scramble for alternative energy supplies. The Strait of Hormuz closure threatens Asian economies more than anyone else — they're the largest buyers of Gulf oil.

African and Latin American coverage barely exists. These regions appear in fewer than 20% of stories tracked by Albis this week. But they'll feel the pain most acutely: higher fuel prices, more expensive shipping, rising food costs driven by fertilizer shortages that trace back to disrupted Gulf natural gas flows.

What Comes Next

Ten days in, the military picture is clear. The US and Israel have air superiority over western Iran and Tehran. Iran's conventional military is overmatched. Over 3,000 Iranian military personnel and 43 naval vessels have been destroyed, according to US and Israeli figures.

But military dominance hasn't produced political clarity. Iran's government remains in place. A ruling triumvirate has formed to replace Khamenei. The Revolutionary Guards are still functional. Hezbollah is still launching rockets. And the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed.

Clayton Seigle, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, put it sharply: "The grace period given by the market to the Trump administration expired at the end of last week. A deficit of 20 million barrels per day is hitting global balances with no sign of relief."

Qatar's energy minister predicted that if the war continues, all Gulf energy exporters would be forced to shut down production within weeks. Oil could hit $150 a barrel.

The war nobody planned for is now the war nobody knows how to end. And for the billions of people watching from outside the blast radius — filling their petrol tanks, buying groceries, watching their currencies wobble — the question isn't who's winning. It's who's paying.