For the first time in the history of horse racing, a triple dead heat was recorded in 1944, at the Aqueduct racecourse in Queens, New York. Iran, Israel and the US President Donald Trump claiming victory in the 12-day war that has just had the pause button hit on it may be the first such incident of a triple dead heat in the world of international relations, diplomacy and dialogue. Israel believes it knocked out most of Iran’s air defence and missile launching capabilities besides striking at its nuclear fuel processing facilities and eliminating key members of its defence, science and engineering corps. More significantly, the perpetrator of the air battles, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, convinced the United States into joining a war in the Middle East, a first in 22 years.
In showing that Israel’s famed Iron Dome defence can be breached at will when hit with multi-directional missile launches, Iran can claim victory. Besides, it also ran a choreographed attack on the US air base in Qatar, with pre-warnings to ensure no damage was inflicted and could still claim to have attacked the US even if it did so ominously on the soil of close ally Qatar. Joining the two claimants to victory was the US President Trump who has stopped so many wars as to promote his candidature for a honorary Nobel for lifetime achievement in the style of Hollywood’s Oscars, but who may have rendered himself ineligible for the Nobel Peace Prize because he dropped 15 of the mother of all bombs — 13,600-kg bunker-busters — on two of Iran’s nuclear fuel enrichment sites while hitting a third with Tomahawks.
At the end of it all, assuming of course that the tenuous ceasefire which Trump trumpets holds, who has won and who lost is a matter of deep conjecture. Doubts over claims that Iran’s nuclear bomb ambition has been wiped out have been raised, including in an intelligence report from inside the Pentagon. And Trump has been shooting down the messenger lest his bombast fails to deliver its intended message of an all-powerful US military. Iran may be only months away from processing the 60 per cent enriched fuel it may have safeguarded, which means the very purpose of this Israeli scheme to take down an existential threat may have been defeated, though it had to endure civilian suffering and deaths in the Iran offensive. The deaths of Iranians, about 600 to Israel’s 40, and the loss of some key personnel are a measure of what damage the war wrought. The Israel-Iran war of June 2025 illustrates the need for learning the classic lesson of there being only losers in a war. America’s military might has not been fully endorsed, Iran’s relative weaknesses not wholly exploited even as its supreme leader hid in a bunker and Israel’s military operations against Iran and its proxies in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon and Yemen have not brought it all the assurance and security it seeks in a volatile neighbourhood.
There came a point in the war when ceasefire seemed the best way out for all nations involved. Iran could not possibly wage a two-front war involving the US without risking further the nuclear fuel assets it may still possess. Israel has taken enough hits to its economy and its physical infrastructure
despite all the success of seriously impeding opponents’ abilities to keep striking it. Under a whimsical President who acts on the instincts of a bargaining businessman, the US could not stay tuned to a “forever war” in faraway land, which was also one that Trump ordered without Congressional approval. It is best then that the triple dead heat be declared the result.
