A war with no end date: The United States unleashes its military might against the Iranian regime

The United States’ Operation Epic Fury against Iran will be, according to Donald Trump, a “massive and sustained” campaign in which the Pentagon plans to deploy its greatest military force in the Middle East in nearly a quarter of a century to strike the enemy country’s navy, its missile program, and its own authorities. With this plan, Washington aims to trigger a regime change and has pledged not to spare military efforts. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has described it as ”the most lethal, most complex, and most-precision aerial operation in history.”

Saturday’s bombings, carried out in broad daylight, included dozens of Tomahawk missiles launched from warships that had been stationed for days in waters near Iran, with which the Israeli-U.S. coalition sought to neutralize the enemy country’s air defenses.

According to a senior Trump administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity, the president decided to greenlight the operation this weekend because they “received indications” that Iran was considering striking first. “If we had sat back and waited to be attacked, the casualty and damage figures would have been much higher,” the official argued in justification of the bombings. According to U.S. Central Command, which oversees American forces in the Middle East, no U.S. service members were injured in Saturday’s attacks.

U.S. fighter jets also took part in the strike, which is expected to be the first in a series and which hit, among other places, a girls’ school in Minab, in southern Iran, leaving more than 85 dead, most of them children, according to the state news agency IRNA. The attack, according to U.S. Central Command, was carried out by a joint force, Scorpion Strike, which, in addition to the ships and aircraft in the area, also included personnel from the Space Force, the Army, and the Marine Corps.

For the first time, that force used low-cost, single-use drones inspired by Iranian Shahed models. “Now delivering American-made retribution,” CENTCOM said in a statement distributed on social media.

The bombings have struck locations across Iran’s geography, from the vicinity of the Strait of Hormuz in the south to Urmia, on the border with Turkey and Iraq, passing through the capital, Tehran; the city of Qom, sacred to Shiism; and Isfahan, which was hit last June in the brief (45-minute) Operation Midnight Hammer against Iranian nuclear facilities.

“All I want is freedom for the people,” Trump said in a brief late-night phone interview with The Washington Post. In a speech on social media, he called on Iranians to rise up against their regime once U.S. and Israeli forces have finished preparing the ground with their attacks. “[The ayatollahs] will then be ready for you to overthrow them,” he promised.

The president did not specify how long he expects Epic Fury to last or whether he believes diplomatic talks between Washington and Tehran, which continued until Thursday, will resume. In a post on Truth confirming Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had been killed, Trump assured that the “heavy and pinpoint bombing” will continue “uninterrupted throughout the week or as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!”

In his morning address, the president warned of the possibility of casualties among U.S. forces in an operation that could be much longer than the previous one in Iran or the one launched on January 3 in Venezuela to capture Nicolás Maduro.

In the initial attacks, U.S. forces focused on “high-value targets,” including facilities belonging to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s elite force. “Underground facilities” were also struck, likely linked to Tehran’s nuclear program, as well as naval installations.

The fact that naval facilities were targeted, and that the U.S. president specifically referred to the Iranian Navy as one of the primary objectives, is significant: analysts note that one of Tehran’s main cards in the war that erupted this Saturday is the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and, with it, the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf. Iran responded almost immediately by launching missiles at U.S. bases in the Persian Gulf.

It does appear clear that, at least for now, the operation will not deploy U.S. ground forces — the major red line that Trump’s supporters would likely not forgive him for crossing. The deployment does not include the number of troops necessary for a land intervention — much less an attempt at regime change — in a country three times larger than Venezuela and with a population of 92 million people.

Experts believe that the U.S. military power amassed in the waters and skies of the Middle East gives the Pentagon the capacity to carry out strikes for several consecutive days, but not for weeks. Beyond that, they point out, additional supplies and ammunition would be required. And, according to U.S. media reports this week, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, had warned Trump during planning and strategy discussions that current stockpiles are insufficient: the missing materiel was sent to Israel during the offensive in Gaza and to Ukraine over the course of four years of war.

For its part, Iran’s objective “now is to absorb U.S. and Israeli attacks, hold its position and signal expansion of war, and wait for worried regional actors to mediate a ceasefire,” said Vali Nasr, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and former diplomat, in a post on the social media platform X. “They expect that if Trump does not get a quick win then he will look for an exit, and negotiations afterwards will be different,” he added.

Accelerated deployment of aircraft

In recent days, the United States has accelerated the deployment of all kinds of military aircraft to bases in the Middle East and the Mediterranean, from drones to fighter jets, as well as spy planes and KC-46 and KC-135 tanker aircraft — 39 of them in three days — and C-130J transport planes, which are commonly used to move troops and very heavy equipment.

The deployments also include E-3 Sentry aircraft, equipped with radar and airborne detection systems that make it possible to monitor potential battlefields and enemy positions, as well as Global Hawk surveillance drones. At the end of this week, a dozen F-22s arrived in Israel, a fifth-generation stealth fighter model that ranks among the most advanced in the U.S. Air Force.

In the Gulf of Oman, the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln is already in position, along with its escort group of three Arleigh Burke–class guided missile destroyers. On board the flagship are F-35 aircraft, the most modern fighter jets in the U.S. Air Force.

In waters near Israel is the colossal Gerald Ford, the largest and most modern aircraft carrier in the U.S. fleet. Its complement includes F/A-18E and F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter jets, E-2D airborne surveillance aircraft, and MH-60S and MH-60R Seahawk helicopters. In addition, the Pentagon has other destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean: littoral combat ships converted into mine detectors and submarines.

According to spokesperson Leavitt in a social media post, Trump was overseeing the attacks overnight from his private residence, Mar-a-Lago, in Florida, where he is spending the weekend. Earlier, Secretary of State Marco Rubio had contacted seven of the eight Republican and Democratic leaders of both chambers of the U.S. Congress to inform them in advance of the imminent strike. The eighth was unavailable.

For its part, early Saturday morning in the United States, once the bombings had begun, the Pentagon notified lawmakers who are members of the Armed Services Committees in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

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