The Iran War has settled into what is a very tetchy and tenuous ceasefire.

The war, which started on 28 February when US and Israel bombed military and government sites in Iran and assassinated the country's leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, has resulted in deaths on each side, thousands of people - both soldiers and civilians - injured, untold destruction across the Gulf, and massive economic consequences which are yet to be fully felt.

The aim of the US' bombardment of Iran wasn't exactly clear from the outset: President Donald Trump muddled through a whole variety of goals that the US wanted to achieve.  At one point it was to deny Iran the ability to develop a nuclear weapon (something Iran said it never planned to do), then the aim became to cause a regime change, and when that didn't pan out, Trump went into a frenzy which culminated in threatened to "destroy a whole civilisation."

A two-week ceasefire came hours later, and that allows us to take stock and really see that this was a war with no real winners.

For Iran, the war has decimated its military and naval capabilities and infrastructure. Iran's top leadership was picked off one by one: its Supreme Leader was assassinated, followed by top official Ari Larijani and then by other top officials as well.

Yet the regime change that the US hoped for did not happen.  The top officials were replaced, and the regime remains strongly in control of the country - perhaps more in control now than earlier this year when it was beset by a huge civilian protest movement.

Meanwhile, there is no indication that Iran's uranium reserve has been touched by the US and Israeli forces, and the country now has the bargaining chip of control over the Strait of Hormuz - a piece of sea which controls around 20% of the world's LNG traffic and 25% of the world's oil traffic.

For the US, it is difficult to understand how the conflict can be deemed to be a success.  Sure, Iran's military capabilities were destroyed - but none of the US government's stated aims have been achieved, and the US has now become even more of a global pariah than it was before.

Back home, polling shows that the majority of Americans do not agree with the war and the economic impacts of it are being felt at the fuel pump as well.

For Israel meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu's years and years of threats, stunts at the United Nations, and pressure on successive American administrations to agree to a war against Iran proved to be a complete bust.

His efforts to even stop a ceasefire was happening proved futile, and Netanyahu's political opponents blasted the situation: ""There has never been a political disaster like this in our entire history. Israel was not even close to the table when decisions were made concerning the core of our national security," Israel's main opposition leader, Yair Lapid said.

For a nation that has had its global standing already massively tarnished by its actions in Gaza, this war will have damaged it even further.

Lebanon has ended up a part of the war as Hezbollah, which counted Iran as its most significant backer, launched rocket strikes against Israel in retaliation for their strikes on Iran. Almost 2,000 civilians have been killed in Lebanon, thousands of others have been injured, and over a million have been displaced.

The war there rages on: Israel continues to strike Lebanon despite the two-week ceasefire which was brokered for the war - something which has immediately put the said ceasefire on the brink.

Then there are the Gulf nations.  Countries like Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates have always relied on the notion that they provide a safe haven in an otherwise unstable Gulf region.

The carefully constructed reputation that these countries are an idyllic haven for business and leisure alike has been shattered, as Iran launched drone and missile strikes on these little Gulf enclave countries.

Tourism will dry up as airports remain disrupted, businesses will think twice, migrant workers - which these countries rely on - will evaporate.  The reputation that the Gulf nations worked painstakingly to build in the last five decades has been destroyed by Iran in the space of five weeks.

History likes to look at war within the context of there being a conqueror and a conquered.  The winner and the loser. History is written by the victor, after all, they say. 

Yet this is truly a war where nobody can realistically claim to have emerged in triumph.  It's a war which truly has no winners.