U.S. sailors prepare to stage ordnance on the flight deck of Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) in support of Operation Epic Fury. (Photo by U.S. Navy via Getty Images)
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With a two-week ceasefire in Iran, it’s already possible to spot some initial winners and losers beyond the primary protagonists.
Although many of the countries and trends mentioned below have not garnered as much public scrutiny as the war’s primary participants — the United States, Iran and Israel — I think they will significantly influence the geopolitical landscape in the years ahead.
While considerable attention has been focused on Russia’s gains from the conflict, China has also benefitted in several less visible ways.
China’s longstanding diplomatic preference is to ensure geo-political stability and to avoid potential disruptions to its economy. In light of the country’s dependence on Middle East oil—China annually imports around 13% of its oil from Iran alone—China has diligently prepared in recent years to face the type of market turmoil it now confronts.
Beijing surged oil imports in early 2026 as a hedge against disruption, and, in recent years, stockpiled a strategic oil reserve of 1.3 to 1.4 billion barrels while working diligently to develop a world class clean energy economy. This includes creating a robust electric vehicle industry and expanding its domestic power generation, like the widespread use of solar panels and other renewable energy sources. As a result, China is widely considered to be better positioned than most other major powers to weather an oil shock and keep its economy growing.
Meanwhile, Beijing has cleverly inserted itself in the diplomatic search for an off ramp to the war, holding talks with multiple countries, including Russia, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, while coordinating closely with Pakistan to craft a plan to end hostilities and reopen oil flows.
Critics of China’s approach note that its wartime diplomacy has been more show than substance, but it’s hard to argue the point that China—at little cost thus far—has expanded its global diplomatic profile by engaging in talks to resolve a conflict in a region where it has historically played only a minor role, and has simultaneously enhanced its reputation as a responsible global actor.
And finally, Beijing is clearly benefitting from the US military’s heavy commitment to the Iran war, especially its deployment of thousands of combat troops, dozens of surface ships, its significant expenditure of conventional and advanced munitions, and its loss of advanced combat fighter jets and a valuable command and control aircraft. So whatever Chinese diplomats may say publicly, Beijing is undoubtedly heartened to see the US bogged down in another costly Middle East conflict.
A second early winner are companies that are involved in producing both low- and high-technology drones, and companies that are developing systems to defeat them. With global defense spending soaring—it’s projected to reach around $2.8 trillion this year—considerable funds will undoubtedly flow to companies in this market space, given the overwhelming battlefield effectiveness of drones in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the Iran war.
As of now, the global military drone market is forecast to be around $16 billion in 2025 and is predicted to grow to around $23 billion by the end of the decade. The range of military missions that drones are engaged in, from precision strikes and intelligence collection to logistical resupply and mine detection, are helping fuel this growth, and it’s likely that the Iran war is only going to boost global interest in drones among state and non-state actors.
By any measure, the last month has been tough for the Gulf states and the broader region. In addition to the damage done to the Gulf states’ international reputation as a political and economic safe haven, the physical damage that Iran’s missiles and drones have done to the Gulf’s airports, hotels, ports and other critical civilian infrastructure will likely require years to repair. Similarly, the internal damage that Iran has suffered will likely take a decade to repair, regardless of who is ultimately in power.
Meanwhile, as the war gathered steam and spread beyond the Gulf, the accompanying damage to other parts of the Middle East also intensified. Regional officials are already warning that the war could tip many more Middle East countries, including Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt into severe economic crisis, with the UN forecasting that the war’s toll could cost the Middle East up to 4 million jobs, plunge millions across the Arab world into poverty, and slash the region’s economic output by up to 6%—which would be the equivalent of nearly $200 billion.
Equally worrisome is the fact that the grievous economic and physical harm to the Gulf states from the war—the UN is currently forecasting a more than $150 billion GDP hit to the Gulf alone—will severely constrain its ability to help fund post-war Middle East reconstruction projects, leaving these efforts without a traditional primary source of funding.
Sadly, the NATO alliance and America’s 77-year partnership are another likely casualty of the war, with the real possibility that President Trump will reconsider the US commitment to NATO in the coming months.
Trump’s frustration with NATO has been longstanding and building, with a long list of perceived grievances ranging from NATO not spending enough on its own defense to the latest thorny dispute—the organization’s unwillingness to come to America’s assistance and participate in hostilities against Iran, specifically in helping open the Strait of Hormuz.
Whatever the merits of Trump’s case (and to be clear I think that the NATO alliance is a cornerstone of US security and that severing the US-NATO relationship would be a strategic mistake), it’s clear that in the wake of the Iran conflict Trump’s frustration with NATO has reached a tipping point. I fully expect the administration to start laying the groundwork soon for disengaging from the alliance.
Another less understood implication of the deteriorating US-NATO relationship is the toll it will eventually take on US defense firms hoping to export weapons to Europe. Just consider, several European countries are planning to spend hundreds of billions of euros on defense procurement by 2030, with a specific goal of preparing for a potential conflict with Russia.
At the same time, the European Union’s defense implementation plan expresses a strong desire for much of that spending to be earmarked exclusively for European defense companies and not for US defense corporations, Europe’s traditional source of military hardware. In one example of this new direction, Germany’s latest military procurement plan reportedly calls for more than 150 major defense purchases through the end of this year, with only 8% going to US suppliers—a sharp departure from the pattern of recent decades.
In my view, Europe’s newfound desire to delink itself, at least partly, from the US on security matters will, over time, greatly complicate the ability of US and European allies to conduct joint military operations because of differing combat platforms, sensors and communications systems. It will also, as US defense budgets shrink in the coming years due to rising budget pressure, drive up the cost of keeping US weapons-production lines open in the absence of critical export markets.
A final clear loser from this conflict is the damage done to long-established warfighting norms. Some of these norms include:
Sadly, this trend has continued from other recent conflicts, including the Syrian civil war, where chemical weapons were used on civilians; the devastation in Gaza, which included Israel’s bombing of residential areas and forced evacuations; and the Russia-Ukraine war, in which Russia has regularly targeted Ukrainian cities, hospitals, apartment buildings, the country’s energy sector and other critical infrastructure.
The steady erosion of warfighting norms that were established by the international community in the 1940s and the decades afterward to limit the carnage of armed conflict is an especially worrisome development that will likely make future conflicts more violent, more devastating to civilians and, almost certainly, harder to resolve and rebuild from afterwards.
These are my preliminary observations, and I will provide a more comprehensive analysis once the ceasefire is confirmed and the conflict has conclusively ended. At this point, however, I’m not certain that’s going to be the case anytime soon.
All opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
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