The agreement between Washington and Tehran defers thorny issues and leaves Israel out in the cold, paving the way for a rocky 60 days of negotiations after the initial memorandum of understanding is signed in Switzerland on Friday.

Here is a breakdown of where the key players stand as the dust settles:

- Iran -

Iran exits its latest conflict with the United States and Israel weakened militarily, economically and having taken serious blows to its leadership.

Longstanding supreme leader Ali Khamenei was killed on the first day of the war on February 28 and his replacement and son, Mojtaba Khamenei, has yet to appear in public.

US-Israeli strikes continued to pick off high-profile figures, but the ruling system remains intact and holds significant cards as it enters negotiations with the United States.

"Strategically, geopolitically, the only real winner at this point is Iran," said Ross Harrison, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and author of "Decoding Iran's Foreign Policy".

"But that's a pyrrhic victory," he added, in that "Iran has won by denying its adversaries... their war aims", but for "a heavy price".

In attacking Iran, Washington and Israel aimed to pave the way for the overthrow of Iran's government, end the country's nuclear ambitions and destroy its missile capabilities.

While the face of Iran's leadership has changed, it has achieved its war aim of "survival and re-establishing deterrence", Harrison said.

Iran's demonstration that it could strangle the vital Strait of Hormuz to pressure its adversaries will "continue to hang over regional security like the Sword of Damocles", said Burcu Ozcelik, Senior Research Fellow for Middle East Security at RUSI.

"Tehran will use this vulnerability to maximise concessions as negotiations drag on -- a failure for Washington," she said.

Iran agreed to reopen the Strait as the United States ends a blockade of its ports, but Tehran's foreign ministry said the country would charge maritime service fees on transiting ships in a last-minute clause.

It is also expected to receive billions of dollars in frozen assets under the agreement as well as a suspension of oil sanctions, while the critical nuclear issue remains.

"There's a lot of things that it (Tehran) is getting... that it didn't have before the war. So by that metric, you could make an argument that Iran won," Amir Handjani of the US-based Quincy Institute told AFP.

He noted, however that in war, "It's just degrees of who lost more".

- United States -

US President Donald Trump hailed the long-touted deal as a win on his 80th birthday, saying "let the oil flow" and pledging the Strait through which roughly a fifth of global oil and gas passed before the war would be completely open from Friday.

Soaring energy prices have squeezed Americans, who will vote in November in midterm elections critical to Trump's party's control of Congress.

Bernard Hourcade, a specialist on Iran at France's CNRS research institute, said the deal for the United States was "perhaps a media victory, but not a political victory" and that Washington had lost global "credibility" through the conflict.

For Ozcelik, "Washington's competitors -- from Moscow to Beijing -- will study this conflict for what it revealed about the limits of American power, decision-making, and alliance management".

"Those lessons will shape future crises well beyond the Middle East," she said.

The accord leaves the key questions of the future of Iran's nuclear programme to the 60-day negotiations.

Trump, who abandoned a landmark 2015 deal on Iran's nuclear programme, has repeatedly vowed that the country would never gain a nuclear weapon, a goal Tehran has long denied.

- Israel -

The deferral of the nuclear issue is a major setback for Israel, which has come out "the biggest loser" in the conflict, Handjani said.

Israel lost momentum with Gulf state relationships, he said, as well as losing leverage with key ally the United States.

Israeli figures from across the political spectrum quickly condemned the deal, saying it would not ensure their country's security.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, facing looming elections, has come under fire internally for failing to achieve the war's aims as well as from Trump, who called him "a very difficult guy" as he slammed attacks in Lebanon that threatened to derail the agreement.

The deal includes ending the Israel-Hezbollah war but leaves multiple issues in Lebanon unresolved, including Tehran's support for the militant group.

That theatre of the conflict could be "the biggest ultimate spoiler" of the coming negotiations, Harrison warned.