Operation Epic Fury: The War Burning Down the Middle East

How It Started

On the night of February 28, 2026, US warplanes struck Iranian military installations in a coordinated operation with Israel, marking the opening salvo of what the Pentagon would name "Operation Epic Fury." Within hours, Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was dead. The Strait of Hormuz - through which roughly 20 percent of the world's daily oil shipment flows - would be shut days later, triggering a global energy shock that sent gas prices in the United States soaring above $8 a gallon by late April.

What began as a targeted strike campaign swiftly evolved into a multi-front war involving Iran's proxy forces in Lebanon, retaliatory Iranian missile barrages on Israel and Gulf states, and a US naval blockade that cut off Tehran's primary source of revenue. The conflict has now entered its third month with no definitive end in sight, though fragile ceasefire negotiations are underway - and being simultaneously undermined by all parties on the ground.

Trump's Truth Social War Room

No conflict in modern history has been narrated in real-time by its commander-in-chief quite like this one. President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social 30 times on March 1, 2026 alone - the day after American bombs first fell on Iran. According to an NPR analysis of his first four months of posts in 2026, Trump averaged nearly 19 posts per day, totaling 2,249 in just the first four months of the year - with the Iran conflict featuring prominently throughout.

The posts have ranged from dramatic threats to self-congratulatory declarations, often contradicting one another within hours. Here is a sample of the chaotic social media commentary that has doubled as US foreign policy:

The Price Tag: What This War Is Costing

Wars are expensive. This one is extraordinarily so. Pentagon officials told Congress that in just the first six days of Operation Epic Fury, the United States burned through $11.3 billion - the most costly opening week of any American military campaign since the Gulf War. The Tomahawk cruise missiles alone cost $3.5 million each; intercepting Iranian drones with US air-defense systems costs vastly more than the drones themselves.

CNN reported that the Pentagon's official figure of $25 billion - provided by Acting Comptroller Jules Hurst III to the House Armed Services Committee on April 29 - was itself a significant underestimate. Sources told CNN the real cost, factoring in damage to US bases across the region and destroyed military assets, was closer to $40-50 billion. Democratic lawmakers called the official figure "totally off."

The Trump administration has simultaneously requested a $1.5 trillion defense budget for fiscal year 2027 - a 42 percent increase and the single largest expansion in US military spending since World War II. Analysts at Penn Wharton estimate total economic impact - including the global oil shock from the Hormuz closure - could reach $210 billion.

Lebanon: The Forgotten Front

While headlines focused on Iran's nuclear infrastructure and the Strait of Hormuz, a parallel war has been grinding through Lebanon since early March, when Hezbollah launched drone and rocket attacks on northern Israel in support of Tehran. Israel responded with ferocious air campaigns that have since killed more than 3,200 people, including 292 women and 211 children, according to Lebanon's health ministry.

More than a million Lebanese have been displaced, with many sheltering in tents along Beirut's seafront. Israel says it is targeting Hezbollah military infrastructure and accuses the group of using civilian areas as cover - a claim Hezbollah denies. Reuters reported in early May that several thousand Hezbollah fighters had been killed in the conflict, based on estimates from within the organization itself.

Iran has made ending Israel's Lebanon campaign a formal condition of any wider peace deal. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, announced on May 25 that he would intensify strikes rather than scale back - even as US-Iran negotiations accelerated. Israel-Lebanon talks are now expected to resume in Washington in the coming days.

Iran's Economy: From Fragile to Freefall

Before the first US bomb fell, Iran's economy was already bruised - a decade of Western sanctions had hollowed out reserves, the rial had shed value consistently, and food inflation was running at 64 percent annually. The war did not create Iran's economic crisis. It detonated it.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz - Iran's primary weapon and Iran's primary economic artery - has proven a double-edged sword. More than 90 percent of Iran's international trade moves through the strait. The US naval blockade on Iranian ports has severed what Oxford Economics estimated is 70 percent of the country's export revenues, almost entirely eliminating oil income that previously funded a quarter of the government budget.

Iran can probably avoid complete collapse, but at a very high cost - higher inflation, more poverty, weaker services, and a much harder daily life for ordinary Iranians.

- Euronews, May 13, 2026, citing economists

China, Iran's largest trading partner, has dramatically reduced bilateral trade. According to Chinese customs data, trade between the two countries in March 2026 - the first month of the war - stood at just $184 million, an 80 percent drop year-on-year and 64 percent lower than the month before. Banks in Tehran began running out of physical banknotes, with informal withdrawal caps of $18-$30 per day reported in January. The central bank responded by issuing the largest currency denomination in Iranian history: a 10 million rial note worth, at current exchange rates, about $5.26.

Where Things Stand: Peace Talks in Islamabad

A fragile two-week ceasefire was announced on April 8, 2026 - the same day Israel launched what it called its most powerful attacks yet on Lebanon. The contradiction was not lost on anyone. Since then, both US and Israeli strikes on Iranian positions have continued even as diplomats meet in Islamabad, where Pakistan is hosting the US-Iran negotiations with US Vice President JD Vance set to lead Washington's delegation.

On May 24, Trump said talks were "largely negotiated" and that a deal was close. The following day, CENTCOM announced fresh "self-defense" strikes against Iranian targets - while insisting the ceasefire remained technically in force. The contorted logic has become a defining feature of this conflict.

At the heart of any deal are several outstanding issues: Iran's nuclear program (Trump demands Iran "never, ever" obtain nuclear material capable of making a bomb), the future of the Strait of Hormuz, the disarmament of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and whether a wider Arab normalization with Israel - via the Abraham Accords - can be made a condition of peace. Both Hamas and Hezbollah have rejected disarmament proposals outright. The International Atomic Energy Agency, unable to resume inspections in Iran since the June 2025 conflict, says any deal without such provisions would be "an illusion of an agreement."

If no agreement is reached, we go back to shooting - but bigger and stronger than ever before. And nobody wants that.

- Donald Trump, Truth Social, May 25, 2026

The path to a lasting peace remains steep. Three months in, the human cost continues to mount on every front. The war has killed Khamenei, devastated Lebanon, bankrupted Iran's middle class, cost American taxpayers tens of billions of dollars, and produced $8-a-gallon gas at the pump - while generating over 2,000 Truth Social posts from the president who ordered it all.