Eight days ago the United States and Israel launched a just and necessary military campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran aimed at eliminating the multifarious military threats posed by the world’s leading state sponsor of terror. The early stages of America’s Operation Epic Fury and Israel’s Operation Roaring Lion have produced astonishing achievements. The joint action has already severely weakened and may topple the brutal Islamist theocracy. Yet the Trump administration has given little evidence of gaming out the consequences for the post-war governance of Iran – a sprawling country of approximately 93 million persons, half of whom belong to non-Persian ethnic minorities.
On the morning of Feb. 28, the United States and Israel struck with force and precision. In the opening minutes of the battle, Israel destroyed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s Tehran compound and with it the ayatollah himself, who had ruled Iran since 1989. Buried under the rubble as well were approximately 40 top members of the Iranian security establishment including the Supreme National Security Council secretary, the defense minister, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps ground forces, the chief of the IRGC Intelligence Organization, and the Iranian army chief of staff. In the joint operation’s first 24 hours the United States and Israel hit more than 1,000 targets – air defenses, navy ships, command-and-control capabilities, and other military infrastructure.
The onslaught of the joint action has been unrelenting. By the second day, the United States and Israel had struck more than 2,000 targets including missile stockpiles, launchers, and IRGC installations. By the third day, President Trump announced that the military projected that it might take the United States four to five weeks to attain its objectives. By the fifth day, according to Secrtary of War Pete Hegseth, the United States and Israel were well on the way to achieving “complete control of Iranian skies” and had accelerated operations, with the United States concentrating on eliminating Iran’s missiles, defense-industrial base, and political and military leaders. By the end of the week, the United States and Israel had conducted more than 4,500 strikes, and President Trump stated on Truth Social that he had ruled out negotiations with Iran and that operations would not cease until Tehran agreed to “unconditional surrender.”
Notwithstanding his antics and extravagances – and despite his at-best cursory steps to comply with the War Powers Act – President Trump’s decision to pull the trigger was neither surprising nor impetuous. His extraordinary concentration of military assets in the Middle East generated a logic and a momentum of its own. The negotiations with Iran, moreover, were doomed to fail. The late Ayatollah Khamenei could not have agreed to the terms set by Trump negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. Asking Iran to renounce nuclear enrichment, ballistic missiles, and Islamist-proxy funding was tantamount to asking it to renounce its reason for being, which is nothing less than to impose its Shia Islam rule on the Middle East by force of arms. And in early January, by seizing Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife from within a fortified military complex, the Trump administration demonstrated its readiness once negotiations had been exhausted to boldly and swiftly employ military force.
Trump’s first administration provides further evidence of both a willingness to act decisively and a determination to remove Iran’s multiple threats to America and American interests. In April 2017, Trump enforced a “red line” by firing 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Syrian air base Iran-backed dictator Bashar al-Assad used to conduct a chemical strike on his country’s civilians. And in 2018, Trump withdrew the United States from the Obama administration’s flawed Iran deal – also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – which delayed but did not end Tehran’s quest for nuclear weapons and ignored Iran’s ballistic missiles and proxy-militia financing. Trump replaced it with a maximum pressure campaign of economic sanctions to compel Tehran to return to the negotiating table on terms favorable to the United States.
To be sure, Trump has excoriated his predecessors’ military interventions and extolled his own dedication to peace. In 2016 during his first presidential run, he campaigned against “endless wars” and specifically the George W. Bush administration’ s launch of the 2003 Iraq War and its embrace of nation-building. As the nation’s 45th president, Trump stressed that he was the first commander in chief in decades who did not start an international conflict. At the July 2024 Republican National Convention, the former president asserted, “I will end every single international crisis that the current administration has created,” and in his November 2024 election night victory speech he stated, “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”
Operation Epic Fury comports with Trump’s boast. Iran started the war 47 years ago with the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking 66 Americans prisoner and holding 52 of them captive for 444 days. In 1987-1988, Iran mined the Persian Gulf to disrupt the flow of oil to the world. The USS Samuel B. Roberts nearly sank after striking a mine, provoking Operation Praying Mantis, the largest U.S. naval engagement since World War II. In 1993, Iranian proxies bombed the U.S. embassy in Beirut, killing 63, and the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241. In 1996, Iran sponsored the Hezbollah bombing of Khobar Towers, a U.S. military housing complex in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 U.S. airmen. In 1998, Iran-trained al Qaeda terrorists detonated bombs at the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 12 Americans and more than 220 Kenyans and Tanzanians, and injuring thousands. In 2000, Iran and Iran-backed Hezbollah were complicit in the al Qaeda bombing of the USS Cole, which killed 17 U.S. Navy sailors and wounded 39. In 2000 and 2001, Iran and Iran-backed Hezbollah, according to the 9/11 Commission Report, facilitated the travel of and otherwise assisted al Qaeda operatives involved in the 9/11 attacks. From 2003 to 2011, Iran-backed militias in Iraq planted improvised explosive devices that took the lives of more than 600 American troops. Substantial evidence gathered by intelligence agencies and the Department of Justice indicate that Iran has sought to assassinate Trump as well as former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former National Security Advisor John Bolton. And Iran’s nuclear program, ballistic missiles, and proxy militias threaten U.S. commercial vessels, America’s numerous Middle East military installations, and the security of key regional friends and partners.
By eliminating Tehran’s capacity to project military power abroad, the United States and Israel would end Iran’s long war against the United States and America’s friends and partners in the Middle East.
At 2:30 a.m. on Feb. 28, Trump posted a video on Truth Social announcing the start of major combat operations and explaining that America’s war aims focus on the destruction of Iran’s armed forces. “Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime” to “the United States, our troops, our bases overseas, and our allies throughout the world,” said the president. To accomplish that goal, the United States would target Iran’s nuclear program, missiles, navy, and other military infrastructure.
The president did not present regime change as a U.S. goal. However, he called on Iranian forces to “lay down your arms.” And he urged “the great, proud people of Iran” to take shelter until the bombing ends and then to “take over your government.”
In a video statement the same day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu concurred with the American president. The joint action to destroy Iran’s military capabilities, Netanyahu said, “will create the conditions for the brave Iranian people to take their destiny into their own hands.”
Paying scant attention to the historical background, the geopolitical context, or the president’s and the prime minister’s Feb. 28 statements, critics – including on the right – insist that Operation Epic Fury is unprovoked, reckless, contrary to the president’s rhetoric and assurances to the American people, and bound to destabilize the Middle East and subvert U.S. interests. On Feb. 28, former Obama administration deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes quickly decried the operation against Iran as “A war that has no domestic or international legal basis. A war that Americans do not support. A war in response to no imminent threat. A pointless war.” Tucker Carlson, Sen. Tim Kaine, Rachel Maddow, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez among other prominent figures echoed Rhodes’ categorical denunciations.
While war entails weighty risks and much still can go wrong, critics tend to overlook several crucial factors.
First, it is worth repeating: On Feb. 28, the United States did not initiate a war but rather undertook an operation to end the war that Iran’s Islamist revolutionaries have waged for 47 years against the United States and Middle East friends and partners.
Second, Iran rejected negotiations in favor of rearming. Following the extensive damage that Israel and the United States inflicted on Tehran’s nuclear program last June, Iran repaired and began rebuilding its missile facilities, hardened and constructed harder-to-reach underground military installations, worked to restore its nuclear program, and, according to U.S. intelligence and international experts, likely retained enough enriched uranium to build multiple nuclear weapons. Trump only green-lighted military action after Witkoff and Kushner reported that Tehran had no interest in ending its decades-long war for supremacy in the Middle East.
Third, those who know Iran best have sided with the United States. America’s major Sunni Arab Gulf partners, who themselves are prime targets of Iran’s hegemonic ambitions, are materially backing Operation Epic Fury, not least by hosting U.S. military bases involved in the operation.
Fourth, eliminating Iran’s multifarious threat to the United States and its regional friends and partners thwarts the Chinese Communist Party’s ambitions to bolster anti-American and pro-authoritarian forces in the region.
Difficult days lie ahead for the United States, for Israel, and for America’s Gulf Arab partners. American planning for the day after the termination of major military operations should proceed expeditiously and consult widely, preparing both for a greatly weakened regime and for regime collapse.
Assiduously explaining the justice and necessity of the joint U.S.-Israel operation to eliminate the military threat posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran will assist the United States in reconstituting order in the region and aiding Iranians who seek freedom and self-government.
