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On the night of February 28, 2026, the Middle East shifted into a different gear. In a televised address just hours after the first bombs fell, President Donald Trump told the world that the United States and Israel had launched major combat operations against Iran dubbed ‘Operation Epic Fury’. He called it a move to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.
The phrase “removing threats” sounded clean in a briefing room. Still, on the ground, it meant a deliberate attempt to dismantle the pillars of Iran’s ability to project force beyond its borders. According to the State Department’s own legal justification filed with the UN Security Council, the objectives were specific: destroy Iranian offensive missiles, destroy Iranian missile production, destroy the Iranian navy and other security infrastructure, and ensure Iran would never have nuclear weapons. That last line was the core.
The opening 72 hours set the tempo and the logic for everything that followed. This was a campaign designed to blind, deafen, and disarm before Iran could react. Within the first hours, Israeli and US aircraft struck a bunker complex in Tehran, killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Defence Minister Ali Larijani, Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib, and IRGC Commander Gholamreza Soleimani. The Assembly of Experts moved quickly to appoint Mojtaba Khamenei. Still, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, under Major General Ahmad Vahidi, effectively seized executive authority from President Masoud Pezeshkian’s civilian government. That internal coup paralysed Tehran’s strategic decision-making ability.
At the same time, coalition aircraft went after Iran’s air defences and radar network. Roughly 120 Iranian air defence systems were destroyed or disabled in the opening phase, about a third of Iran’s pre-war inventory. Russian-supplied S-300 batteries and domestically built Bavar-373 sites were hit across western and central Iran. By the end of day two, coalition aircrafts had “unchallenged” access over most of the country.
The missile and drone infrastructure took the brunt of it. Over 450 ballistic missile storage and basing facilities were struck in the first 72 hours, along with more than 800 drone depots. B-2, B-52 and B-1 bombers targeted underground silos, mobile launcher sites, and production plants using GBU-57 and GBU-72 penetrators. The goal was to degrade Iran’s ability to retaliate at range. Coastal defence cruise missile sites near the Strait of Hormuz were also hit to keep the Gulf open for naval operations. The Pentagon reported 1,700 targets hit in those first three days out of 13,000+ over the full campaign.
Iran’s Navy didn’t survive the opening salvo. In the first hour alone, nine Iranian Navy vessels were sunk. By the end of day three, over 20 major surface combatants were destroyed, including Soleimani-class frigates, submarines, and the IRGC drone carrier mothership IRIS Shahid Bagheri.
The nuclear and weapons production ecosystem was also on the target list, but with a different focus than the 2025 strikes. Enrichment sites at Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan had already been hit the previous year, so Epic Fury prioritized weaponization and delivery systems.
By the end of the 72-hour window, the tempo had reached 300 to 500 targets per day. The cost was immediate and staggering. The first 100 hours alone ran to $3.7 billion. By the end of the two-month kinetic phase, the total bill for the US was around $25 billion. Israel’s share was separate, but the operation was joint from the start. US fighter jets and warships worked alongside Israeli squadrons, and the airspace over western Iran became a coordinated battlespace.
Iran’s response was what the war planners called “Operation True Promise – 4.” It wasn’t a single night of retaliation. Over the following weeks, Iran fired missiles and drones across the Gulf, hitting US bases in Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, as well as civilian airports and oil infrastructure. The Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and gas flows, was effectively closed. Iran’s threat to set the region’s energy infrastructure “on fire” became operational reality. Tankers sat idle, insurance rates spiked, and global energy markets reacted with the kind of volatility that ripples into every household in Europe and South Asia.
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The human cost mounted quickly. Human Rights Activists in Iran reported 3,636 people killed by April 7, including 1,701 civilians and at least 254 children. Iran claimed a girls’ school near an IRGC base in the south was hit on the opening day, killing 168 people, around 110 of them children. The UN estimated 3.2 million people displaced inside Iran alone. In Lebanon, the spill-over killed 2,883 people by early May, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. Israeli casualties were lighter but real: 12 IDF soldiers and 23 civilians killed, with over 7,600 injured. Thirteen US soldiers were also killed, according to CENTCOM.
What “removing threats” didn’t achieve became clear as the campaign dragged on. Despite over 12,000 strikes, a substantial portion of Iran’s missile and drone arsenal remained operational. Later intelligence assessments said Iran retained about 75 per cent of its mobile missile launchers and 70 per cent of its missile stockpile, and regained access to 90 per cent of underground storage facilities. Iran leveraged decades of preparation, using underground tunnels, missile silos, and shoot-and-scoot tactics to preserve capability. The nuclear programme was set back, but a classified assessment found the strikes only delayed it by less than six months rather than eliminating it.
Operation Epic Fury was formally declared over by Secretary of State Marco Rubio on May 6, 2026. He told reporters the objectives for that phase had been achieved and that Washington now preferred the path of peace. The active kinetic phase lasted about 38 days, with over 13,000 combat sorties flown. But the declaration didn’t end the war. It transitioned into a different phase. Trump announced Project Freedom to escort stranded ships through the Strait of Hormuz, though that effort was paused almost immediately. A ceasefire brokered by Pakistan went into effect on April 8 and was extended multiple times, though it hung by a thread as talks stalled.
The fresh reality in mid-May 2026 is one of stalemate and spill-over. Israel and the US inflicted severe infrastructural damage, but failed to achieve regime change, total destruction of missile capabilities, or forced capitulation. Iran, for its part, suffered leadership losses and economic strain, but retained the ability to disrupt regional shipping. The suffocating US naval blockade, labelled Economic Fury by the White House, costs Iran an estimated $500 million per day, according to spokeswoman Olivia Wales.
Diplomacy is now the main arena, but it’s fractious. Trump has signalled impatience with stalled negotiations and warned that if Iran doesn’t “give what has been agreed to,” the bombing will resume at higher intensity. Israel is alarmed that a deal might leave Iran’s nuclear infrastructure partially intact while bypassing the ballistic missile and proxy network that triggered the war. The broader region has changed in ways that weren’t anticipated on February 28. Saudi Arabia and the UAE, long wary of direct confrontation with Iran, launched their own covert strikes on Iranian soil in late March, retaliating for attacks on the kingdom and Emirati facilities.
The war’s imprint is visible in mundane details. Ben-Gurion and Ramon airports in Israel have become de facto US military bases, with American tankers parked on civilian runways. Israeli airlines have been forced to park aircraft abroad, driving up costs and forcing the government to consider compensation. Passenger numbers in April 2026 dropped 74 per cent compared to the previous year. In the US, the war is already reshaping the 2028 political conversation.
The question now is whether “removing threats” was ever a military problem alone. Operation Epic Fury degraded Iran’s conventional and nuclear infrastructure and shattered its leadership, but it also created a more hard-line successor regime drawn entirely from the IRGC. It pushed Gulf states closer to Israel, but it also risked dragging the entire region into a wider war that neither side can win without intolerable cost.
What’s left is a dangerous equilibrium. Iran’s “ring of fire” is weakened but not gone. Its proxies are fragmented, its navy crippled, its air defences thinned. But its missile capability persists, its nuclear knowledge remains, and its willingness to retaliate asymmetrically is intact. The US and Israel achieved tactical dominance in the air, but airpower alone hasn’t produced the political outcome they sought.
