The Great Deception: A Century of Wars… Who Actually Won?

From the Sykes–Picot Agreement to the present, flags have changed, regimes have shifted, and slogans have succeeded one another, yet the final outcome has remained almost the same: the Arab and Islamic region continually pays the price, while others reap the strategic gains.

For more than a hundred years, the peoples of the region have been pushed from one battle to another under different banners: liberation, resistance, national security, confronting colonialism, confronting terrorism, protecting stability, or defending identity.

But after every war, the same question remains:

Should we judge the slogans or the outcomes?

For politics is measured not by what is said in speeches, but by what changes on the ground.

If we examine the outcome of the past decades, we find that most countries in the region have emerged weaker than they were: Iraq was destroyed and then reshaped; Syria was depleted over an entire decade; Lebanon lost much of its economic and political stability; Yemen became the arena of a protracted war; and Gaza suffered enormous, unprecedented destruction.

Each time, the rhetoric spoke of victory, steadfastness, and confrontation, while cities were demolished, economies collapsed, and new generations inherited crises they had not created.

The Forbidden Question

If Iran has represented the axis of resistance for decades, why have most of that axis’s arenas ended in ruin?

And if Israel is the central enemy in the region, why does it appear stronger today economically, technologically, and militarily than ever before?

How have its international relations expanded? And how has it succeeded in maintaining its strategic superiority while almost the entire region was mired in conflicts?

These are not answers, but legitimate questions that anyone has the right to ask.

The Latest Iran War: What Were the Objectives?

According to the declared objectives: overthrowing the Iranian regime, ending nuclear enrichment, curtailing Iranian regional influence, and breaking Iran’s ability to exert influence in the Gulf and maritime corridors.

But if we look at the current outcome: the Iranian regime remains in place, nuclear enrichment has not ended definitively, Iranian influence has not been erased from the region, and Iran’s strategic sources of leverage have not disappeared entirely.

Thus, measured against the declared objectives, one cannot speak of a decisive victory.

Conversely, one cannot say that Iran emerged without losses; it suffered major military, security, and economic blows.

But the more important question is not the scale of the losses.

The question is: did the war achieve its fundamental objectives?

The answer is clear.

Who Paid the Price?

This is where the real story begins.

In every major confrontation between regional and international powers, the Gulf states are the first to be affected: threats to maritime navigation, disruption of energy markets, rising insurance and shipping costs, and direct security risks to oil and economic infrastructure.

In other words, the Gulf finds itself at the heart of the storm even when it is not the one deciding to go to war.

Then comes the greater paradox. After years of conflicts, discussions begin about reconstruction projects and investments worth hundreds of billions. The question then arises:

How do the states that bore the risks of war become the parties called upon to help finance its consequences? And how does the bill for conflict become the responsibility of those who did not decide to ignite it in the first place?

The Nuclear Dossier: A Crisis or an Instrument?

For decades, the Iranian nuclear program has been presented as the greatest danger in the region: sanctions, negotiations, threats, agreements, withdrawals, and then a return to negotiations once again.

Yet after all these years, the issue persists. Here a legitimate question emerges:

Was the real objective to end the crisis? Or to manage the crisis?

In international politics, there is a considerable difference between resolving a problem and benefiting from its continuation.

Who Is the Real Winner?

Perhaps the greatest mistake in reading the region’s history is to look for a winner and a loser in each war separately.

Wars end, agreements are signed, and rhetoric changes, but the true picture emerges only when we examine the outcome of an entire century of conflicts.

At that point, the question becomes different: who has become stronger after a hundred years? And who has become weaker?

If we look at reality as it is, apart from slogans and biases, we find that most Arab and Islamic countries have emerged from the past decades more divided, less stable, and more depleted in their wealth and human resources.

States disintegrated, states sank into civil wars, states exhausted hundreds of billions on conflicts, armament, and reconstruction, and peoples paid the price in their security, their economies, and the future of their generations.

Conversely, a question emerges that is difficult to ignore: who emerged stronger?

According to this reading, some consider Israel and Iran the greatest beneficiaries of the conflicts the region has witnessed as a whole, even though they present themselves as existential adversaries.

Israel emerged from the past decades more powerful militarily, more advanced economically and technologically, and with a greater presence in international and regional relations than at any previous stage.

And Iran, despite sanctions, wars, and pressures, transformed from a state confined within its borders into a regional actor whose influence and impact extend across several arenas in the region.

As for the arenas in which most confrontations took place, these were largely Arab and Islamic countries that paid heavy prices in their stability, their economies, and their national unity.

From here, some pose an intensely sensitive question:

If the confrontation between Israel and Iran is as intense and existential as is claimed, why have its destructive consequences mostly appeared in other lands and countries?

And why have the principal centers of power on both sides remained intact and capable of enduring, while the arenas of confrontation themselves were turning into zones of permanent attrition?

People may differ over the answer. But the figures and facts impose a question that cannot be evaded: after all these wars, whose influence expanded? Whose power increased? And who lost their cities, their economies, and the future of their generations?

For this reason, perhaps the real question is no longer: who won the latest war? Rather: who benefited from all the wars taken together? Who paid the bill every time? And who will be asked to pay the next bill as well?