Who decides when the Iran war ends?

When President Donald Trump said he was postponing his Beijing trip because the Iran war had upended US diplomacy, while Moscow was simultaneously floating the possibility of cutting what remains of its gas sales to Europe, two realities came into focus at once. The first is that this war is no longer just a Middle Eastern conflict. 

The second is that it is already reshaping the strategic calculations of the three outside powers that matter most: the US, China and Russia. Trump’s delayed visit was supposed to reopen room for bargaining with Beijing on tariffs, chips, rare earths and Taiwan. Instead, Iran has moved to the centre of the agenda. At the same time, the Kremlin’s talk of suspending gas exports to Europe underscored how quickly Moscow saw opportunity in an energy shock generated by a war it did not start but from which it can still profit. 

That is why the Iran war should now be read less as a simple US-Israel-Iran confrontation than as a three-way test of strategic priorities. Washington wants a way to claim success and step back. Beijing wants rapid stabilisation because prolonged disruption in the Gulf threatens shipping, energy security, trade flows and already fragile global growth. 

Moscow, by contrast, has every reason to prefer a controlled prolongation: long enough to keep oil and gas prices high, divide Western attention, and weaken the priority given to Ukraine, but not so long that Iran itself collapses and Russia loses another major foothold in the Middle East after its setbacks in Syria. Those are not rhetorical differences. They are different practical interests, and they point toward different preferred endings. 

The American position is increasingly the easiest to read. Trump said on 17 March that the US was not ready to leave the Iran operation yet, but would be leaving “in pretty much the very near future”. That is not the language of open-ended escalation. It is the language of a president looking for an exit that can still be marketed as victory.

The problem is that Washington’s preferred end state remains politically thin. If the original selling point was to cripple Iran’s strategic capabilities and restore deterrence, the war has already revealed the limits of air superiority as a shortcut to political closure.

Iran has been hit hard, but neither US nor Israeli assessments point to imminent state collapse. Israeli officials see no certainty that the regime will fall, even after the killing of the supreme leader and many senior commanders. A war that was launched under the logic of coercion is therefore drifting toward a more awkward question: how does Washington stop without making its own partner look blocked rather than victorious? 

China’s position is very different. Beijing may gain some tactical leverage from a US military distraction and from tighter American dependence on supply chains in which China remains indispensable, especially rare earths and magnets. But structurally, China is hurt by a long war, not helped by it.

Even though China is better buffered than most Asian and European economies to the evolving energy crisis, thanks to the large role of diversified energy partnerships, domestic coal and clean energy in its overall energy mix, Beijing has openly pressed for an immediate ceasefire, condemned the attacks as unacceptable, and continued to present itself as a mediator. 

After all, a prolonged war means higher import costs, riskier shipping, pressure on export markets in the Gulf, at the Arabian Sea and Red Sea, and beyond, and a blow to the stable external environment Beijing needs for its own already lowered growth goals. China can tolerate the war more easily than many others. But it still does not want it to last. 

Russia, meanwhile, is the opposite case. Moscow has spoken the language of de-escalation, and the Kremlin has condemned the killing of Iran’s leaders, but its incentives are plainly more opportunistic. The same crisis that pushed Trump to delay Beijing also gave Putin a chance to raise the spectre of halting gas to Europe altogether and to present Russia as both an energy alternative and a diplomatic player.

Putin said Russia could stop supplying gas to Europe “right now”, and Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said the government would soon discuss doing exactly that. This is not the behaviour of a power urgently seeking immediate stabilisation. It is the behaviour of a power trying to convert a Middle Eastern war into leverage over Europe, energy markets, and the broader Western coalition.

Yet Russia’s opportunism has limits. Moscow does not want Iran to collapse. A broken or replaced Iranian regime would further reduce Russia’s influence in the Middle East and could leave it strategically poorer even if oil prices stayed high in the short run. 

That leaves the two regional protagonists, whose preferences are also diverging. Iran has made clear that it does not want a ceasefire on terms that merely pause the bombing and invite a second round later. Tehran is reportedly rejecting any ceasefire until US and Israeli strikes end. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi has also said that after the war, the Strait of Hormuz cannot simply return to its previous status and that a new protocol will be needed. That is a sign that Tehran’s aim is no longer only survival. It wants to raise the long-term costs of attacking Iran again and to force a renegotiation of the regional security environment, however limited that renegotiation may prove to be. 

Israel, by contrast, has openly said the war will continue until its objectives are achieved. Foreign Minister Gideon Saar declared that Israel had effectively “won”, yet in the same breath made clear that its goals remained unmet and gave no timeline for ending the campaign. In other words, Washington wants an exit, Tehran wants a guarantee and Israel still wants a better strategic finish. 

That is why the most plausible scenarios now are not about decisive victory, but about which outside power gets closest to its preferred kind of imperfect ending.

The first and most likely scenario is a US-led limited exit. In this version, Washington defines success narrowly enough to justify stepping back, then pressures Israel to accept a pause it does not really want. Iran, in turn, accepts a de facto truce once it receives enough informal assurance that the campaign will not resume immediately. China and regional states would help supply the political wrapper for such a pause, while Russia might quietly reassure Iranian security elites that they are not being pushed into unconditional capitulation. This would not be peace. It would be an untidy armed pause wrapped in victory language. 

The second and moderately likely scenario is a managed extension of the war. Trump continues to speak about leaving “soon”, but in practice gives Israel more time to damage Iranian missile, nuclear-related and security infrastructure. This is plausible because Israel has given no timetable and still believes more can be extracted militarily, while some Gulf states, far from pushing purely for restraint, are now urging Washington not to stop short.

Some Gulf Arab states reportedly did not ask the US to go to war, but now want it not to pull back before Iran is weakened further. This path is dangerous precisely because it is easy. It does not require any side to compromise immediately. It only requires them to postpone compromise, at the cost of a deeper energy shock and a wider regional and global crisis. 

The third scenario, much discussed but less likely in the near term, is some kind of multilateral de-escalation framework involving the US, China, Russia, and Gulf intermediaries. A version of this may eventually emerge, but not as a clean grand bargain.

The three major powers do not want the same thing. China wants quick stabilisation. Russia wants leverage. The US wants an exit on acceptable optics. So any real framework is more likely to be layered and improvised than formal and comprehensive: American military restraint, Chinese diplomatic cover, Russian security-channel communication with Tehran, and Gulf mediation to keep the region from sliding into the next phase. That still may be enough to stop the war. It just will not look like an elegant concert of powers. 

The final and least desirable scenario is continued escalation. That remains possible because none of the core actors has yet fully accepted the other side’s minimum condition. Iran will not accept a ceasefire without an end to strikes and some assurance against renewed attack. Israel does not believe its war aims have yet been met. The US wants out, but not at the price of looking like it forced a halt before delivering a strategic result. If that gap remains too wide, then Trump’s postponed Beijing trip will not just symbolise a diplomatic delay. It will mark the moment when a regional war visibly began reorganising the wider geometry of great power politics. The real issue now is no longer whether Iran can be bombed harder. It is who gets to define the political terms on which the bombing stops.

Related: The illusion of decapitation: Why killing Iran’s leaders strengthens the regime | A war, a postponed summit and a wider US-China rift