US President Donald Trump is desperate and is already hinting at an end to the war in Iran as Israel warns the abandoned opposition it will likely have to try to change the regime itself

War in Iran and the surrounding region, it seems, may soon be over, according to US President Donald Trump, who is now desperate for an off-ramp. This conflict has cost America and Israel billions in missiles, troop and warplane movements and the upkeep of the US fleet in the Arabian Sea - but still the Iranian regime remains intact.

If he drops the war now, hoping the financial markets will react positively, then Iran’s policy of outcosting the coalition and threatening to drag the Gulf States into a long and enormously expensive war appears to have worked. Iran’s military leadership and its ability to fight back has been seriously degraded but its leadership has become more vengeful and even more hardline than ever before. And Iran too has a vote in when the war ends, depending on when it wants to stop firing missiles.

Motjaba Khamenei, 56, has replaced his slain father the Ayatollah Khamenei and has deep ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, along with having lost his mother, son and wife. Trump’s chaotic messaging from the beginning has further exposed his incompetence and lack of any depth in understanding what he was doing in starting the war.

First it was a ‘help is on the way’ message to the opposition uprising that had been growing for months and morphed into a bloody cull of tens of thousands of their numbers by the regime. No help has arrived thus far except to divert the attention of the IRGC and the Basij security units that will doubtless launch security sweeps throughout the country if war stops.

It is a near-certainty that there will be no US ‘boots on the ground’ to assist regime change. So the protesters have not been helped and the regime remains intact, whilst significantly more hardline and determined to fight to continue to exist.

Trump has threatened Iran with ‘death, fire and fury’ if it blocks oil flow through the Strait of Hormuz, apparently ignoring the fact that it has already done this. He has also warned Iran that if war starts up again ‘they’ll be hit even harder,’ hinting at a kind of ‘mowing the lawn’ policy of a cycle of attacks that could go on for months.

Israel too has suffered an enormous bill of billions of pounds in terms of missiles and sorties against Iran and failed to initiate some kind of regime change. But both allies wanted regime change and have failed in this whilst apparently having still not reached the depths in the ground needed to destroy Iran’s entire nuclear programme.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says of the Iranian opposition: “Our aspiration is to bring the Iranian people to throw off the yoke of tyranny. “Ultimately it depends on them. But there is no doubt that through the actions taken so far we are breaking their bones — and our arm is still outstretched.”

But he clearly has no intention to keep the war going from Israel’s side until the regime has been replaced, apparently a near-impossible task without ground troops and many months of war. So, it seems the unarmed opposition which was promised help will not be getting it and they are being cast adrift, left to hide from the inevitable clampdown that will follow the war.

Iran’s navy has been destroyed, its air force decimated, its ballistic missile programme severely damaged but none of the stated aims of this war so far have been achieved -apart from smashing Iran’s ballistic programme. Even that, however, has not been destroyed as evidenced by the fact Turkey was forced to shoot down a ballistic missile only yesterday.

And despite talk of an end to the war the attacks on IRGC centres, missile storage sites continue and show little sign of reducing in the coming days. So far this war has been far more wide-ranging and devastating than the 12 day war which was supposed to have obliterated Iran’s nuclear plans for years.

But tomorrow only marks the 12th day of this round of military action and already Trump is making noises about quitting, as he prepares his off-ramp from an unpopular war. Even if this war stops or winds down in the coming weeks it will not be the end - they started a war and failed to finish it as they apparently intended. So it is very likely it will be open-ended, with Trump threatening more ‘fire and fury’ in a few month’s time as the cycle continues.