The United States promised its most intense day of strikes
inside Iran on Tuesday. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
stood at a podium of the Pentagon and told reporters.
The most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes,
intelligence more refined and better than ever.
And then, while those words were still in the air, an Iranian
drone struck an American diplomatic facility in Baghdad,
Iran laid mines in the Strait of Hormuz, a fire broke out at one
of the region's largest oil refineries in the United Arab
Emirates, and Iran's top national security official
issued A thinly veiled threat against Trump's personal safety.
Day 12 of Operation Epic Fury. This is episode 12 of Epic Fury,
the US Iran war podcast. Let us get into it.
The Pentagon press conference on Tuesday morning set the tone for
the entire day. Hegseth appeared alongside
General Dan Kane, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
and between the two of them, they delivered the clearest
official articulation yet of what the United States military
is actually trying to accomplish.
Kane said U.S. forces have now struck more than 5000 targets
since the conflict began. He laid out three operational
objectives. Neutralize Iran's ballistic
missile and drone capability. Destroy Iran's Navy to allow
movement through the Strait of Hormuz and strike deeper into
Iran's military and industrial base.
Hegseth went further. He said the goal was to
permanently deny Iran nuclear weapons forever.
Not temporarily degrade, not set back by years.
Permanently deny forever. Hegseth was also asked directly
whether he could say when the war would end.
He declined to give a timeline. He said Trump gets to control
the throttle. He said Trump is the one
deciding when particular objectives are being achieved.
He said it is not for me to posit whether it is the
beginning, the middle or the end.
That is a significant departure from the messaging of the
previous day when Trump told House Republicans the war was a
short term excursion and would end pretty quickly 24 hours
later. His own Defense Secretary
refused to confirm that framing. The Pentagon and the White House
are not speaking with one voice on how long this war will last,
and the gap between the two is widening.
The rhetorical escalation from Iran on Tuesday was
extraordinary. Ali Larijani, the secretary of
Iran's Supreme National Security Council and one of the most
senior figures in the Iranian government, issued a direct
response to Trump's Truth Social post, threatening to hit Iran 20
times harder. Larijani reposted Trump's
message on X with his own comment.
He said the Iranian people do not fear your hollow threats.
He said more powerful forces than Trump's White House had
failed to wipe them out. And then he added a line that
carried an unmistakable personal menace, that people who
threatened others with death and fire should be careful not to be
eliminated themselves. A senior Iranian official in a
public post on social media has just warned the president of the
United States to be careful not to be eliminated.
That sentence will have been read by every intelligence
agency on the planet. It will have been assessed, it
will have been briefed, and it tells you something profound
about where the threshold of Iranian public rhetoric now
sits. On Day 12, Larijani also
addressed the Strait of Hormuz directly.
He said the Strait will either be a Strait of peace and
prosperity for all or a Strait of defeat and suffering for
warmongers. The message is clear.
Iran is prepared to make the Strait a weapon of economic
destruction and is daring the United States to try to take it
back by force. And Iran is not just
threatening, it has begun laying naval mines in the Strait of
Hormuz. CNN confirmed the mine laying on
Tuesday, citing 2 people familiar with United States
intelligence reporting on the matter.
The significance of this cannot be overstated.
Mines do not discriminate. They sit on the seabed or near
the surface and detonate on contact with any vessel.
They do not know whether the ship that triggers them is a
military vessel or a commercial tanker carrying crude oil to
Japan or a liquefied natural gas carrier bound for Germany.
Mines are one of the oldest and most indiscriminate forms of
naval warfare and Iran has just introduced them into the world's
most important energy choke point.
Trump responded on Truth Social. He said if Iran has put out any
mines in the Hormuz Strait, he wants them removed immediately.
He said if mines were placed and not removed, the military
consequences to Iran will be at a level never seen before.
Hegseth followed on X, posting that at Trump's direction,
CENTCOM has been eliminating inactive mine laying vessels in
the Strait with ruthless precision.
CENTCOM later confirmed it had destroyed 16 Iranian mine layer
vessels near the Strait of Hormuz, along with multiple
other naval ships. the United States Navy does not have a
single dedicated minesweeper in the Persian Gulf.
The last four specialized mine countermeasure ships that had
served in the Gulf for decades were decommissioned in September
last year and sent back to the United States for scrapping.
Mine sweeping duties were transferred to 4 literal combat
ships which are not purpose built for the task.
Iran knows this. The mining of the Strait is not
a random act of desperation. It is a deliberate strategic
move that exploits a specific gap in American naval capability
at exactly the moment when keeping the straight open is the
central economic objective of the entire campaign.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced on Tuesday that the
United States Navy had successfully escorted an oil
tanker through the Strait of Hormuz, describing it as the
first such operation since Operation Epic Fury began.
The escort demonstrates that the United States can physically
move a vessel through the Strait under military protection.
It does not mean the Strait is open for commercial traffic. 1
Escorted tanker is a proof of concept, not a solution.
The commercial shipping industry needs consistent, insurable,
scalable transit. 1 Navy escort does not deliver that, but it is
a meaningful signal that the military is actively developing
the operational framework for protecting transit and that the
Strait has not been completely sealed off.
Saudi Aramco, the world's largest oil exporter, issued a
statement on Tuesday warning of catastrophic consequences if the
conflict continued to disrupt shipping through the Strait of
Hormuz. Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth
and the financial foundations of the entire Gulf Cooperation
Council are built on the assumption that Gulf oil can
reliably reach global markets through the Strait.
Saudi Arabia intercepted 6 ballistic missiles aimed at
Prince Sultan Air Base on Tuesday alone.
It is simultaneously defending its own territory, warning of
catastrophic global consequences, and watching the
waterway through which its entire economic future flows
being mined by its neighbor. Iraq opened another significant
front in the conflict complexity.
On Tuesday, Iraqi authorities announced they are exploring
alternative routes to export the country's oil after Hormuz
Transit was disrupted. The Iraqi oil Ministry
spokesperson said production and marketing have been severely
impacted, leaving the government no choice but to seek
alternative export routes. Iraq has oil shipments stuck at
sea. This is a country watching its
primary revenue stream being choked off by a war it did not
start, does not want and cannot stop, and is simultaneously
defending itself against Iranian backed militia attacks on
American facilities on its own territory.
The Baghdad Diplomatic Support Center, a large logistical and
operational hub near the Baghdad International Airport, was
struck by suspected Iranian drone on Tuesday. 1 drone struck
near a guard tower. Five others were intercepted.
The attack was believed to have been carried out by the Islamic
Resistance in Iraq. The umbrella grouping of Iran
backed armed factions operating in the country.
The State Department last week ordered non-emergency personnel
to leave Iraq entirely. The attack suggests that even
the reduced American presence that remains is not safe.
The drone attack on the Ruais industrial complex in United
Arab Emirates on Tuesday ignited a fire at one of the region's
largest oil refineries. No injuries were reported.
But Ruais is not a military target.
It is a civilian petrochemical and refining complex.
Iran's Joint Military Command issued a statement on Tuesday
declaring that banks and financial institutions are now
also a target across the Middle East.
The deliberate escalation to civilian, financial and energy
infrastructure is the strategic logic of a country that cannot
match American airpower in the skies and is choosing instead to
make the economic cost of the war unbearable for the entire
region and by extension, the world.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards claimed on Tuesday that they had
launched their most intense and heaviest operation since the
start of the war. Kuwait's National Guard shot
down 6 drones. Qatar intercepted 5 ballistic
missiles. Saudi Arabia destroyed 6
ballistic missiles aimed at Prince Sultan Air Base.
UAE shot down 9 drones, with one getting through to hit Ruwais.
Sirens sounded across Jerusalem. Explosions were heard in Tel
Aviv. Hezbollah launched missiles into
northern Israel. Israel struck Tehran again,
hitting central command centers before launching a second wave
targeting a suburb of Beirut. Overnight, Israel also struck
the city of Tabriz in northwest Iran, a significant expansion of
the geographic footprint of Israeli strikes beyond the
traditional targets in and around Tehran and the central
nuclear sites. The death toll crossed new
thresholds on Tuesday. Iran says more than 1300
civilians have been killed in Iran since February 28th.
In Lebanon, at least 570 people have been killed since Israel
began strikes on the country. 13 Israelis have been killed and
nearly 2000 wounded in Iranian attacks.
Two additional UAE nationals were killed on Tuesday. 7
sailors have been killed in attacks on merchant ships near
the Strait of Hormuz. The Pentagon disclosed for the
first time that approximately 140 United States service
members have been wounded in the conflict. 7 American service
members have been killed. Nearly 700,000 people have been
displaced in Lebanon. Australia moved on Tuesday to
grant asylum to the Iranian women's National Football team,
whose players are stranded after the outbreak of the war made
their return to Iran impossible. FIFA President Johnny Infantino
said he had spoken to Trump and received assurances that Iran's
team will be permitted to come to the United States for the
World Cup later this year. The Iranian women's football
team seeking asylum in Australia is a detail that carries the
full texture of what it means to be an ordinary Iranian during
this conflict. These are athletes, they were
outside Iran when the war began, they cannot go home and they are
now seeking to be accepted as refugees by a country on the
other side of the planet. The Trump administration took an
action on the economic front on Tuesday that went almost
unnoticed amid the military developments but whose strategic
implications are significant. The administration eased
restrictions on Russian oil exports to counter rising
domestic petrol prices driven by the disruption to Gulf supply.
This is the United States government formally and
deliberately opening up the flow of Russian oil into global
markets to counteract an energy crisis caused by war the United
States started. It reduces the effectiveness of
the sanctions architecture maintained against Russia since
the invasion of Ukraine. It hands Vladimir Putin, who has
been providing targeting intelligence to Iran while
congratulating its new supreme leader, a significant economic
and political victory. Senator Chris Murphy of
Connecticut emerged from a 2 hour classified war briefing on
Capitol Hill on Tuesday and described what he heard as
incoherent and incomplete. He said he worries the conflict
could become an endless war. He said all the briefings are
closed because Trump cannot defend this war in public.
The fact that he chose to come out of that briefing and
describe it publicly using the word incoherent, suggests the
gap between the administration's public messaging and its actual
operational planning is significant.
Hegseth also acknowledged something on Tuesday that had
been largely unspoken until now. He said Israel has its own
objectives for the conflict. That sentence is a remarkable
admission. the United States and Israel are conducting a joint
military operation. They are striking the same
country, but they have different objectives.
America wants to permanently deny Iran nuclear weapons.
Israel wants to destroy Hezbollah, degrade Iran's
capacity to threaten Israeli territory and potentially bring
about regime change. Those objectives overlap, but
they are not identical. And as the conflict continues,
the divergent between American and Israeli goals will become
more, not less, visible. There is one more development
from Tuesday that demands specific attention.
The Defense Intelligence Agency released a preliminary low
confidence assessment that Iran had moved much of its stockpile
of enriched uranium before the American strikes took place and
that the strikes did not collapse the underground
facilities. The assessment said the strikes
set back Iran's ability to produce nuclear weapons by only
a matter of months, not years, months.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe pushed back, saying new
information indicated severe damage to the nuclear facilities
that would take years for Iran to rebuild. 2 separate
intelligence agencies diametrically opposed
conclusions about the most important strategic question of
the entire conflict, whether the strikes have actually succeeded
in their stated primary objective.
If the Defense Intelligence Agency's assessment is even
partially correct, the entire justification for Operation Epic
Fury is called into question. The war was launched to
permanently deny Iran the ability to acquire nuclear
weapons. If the enriched uranium was
moved before the strikes began, if the underground facilities
were not collapsed, and if the program has only been set back
by months, then the United States has spent more than $10
billion, killed more than 1300 Iranians, displaced hundreds of
thousands of people, disrupted global oil market strain
alliances, and placed American personnel across the Middle East
in direct danger in exchange for a nuclear set back measurable in
months. The administration's insistence
that Ratcliffe's more optimistic assessment is correct does not
resolve the underlying uncertainty.
It deepens it. The broader international
response to Date 12 reflected full global alarm.
Pakistan announced it would deploy naval vessels to escort
Pakistani flagged oil tankers through the Gulf.
Japan convened an emergency cabinet meeting on energy
security. India said it was in direct
contact with the United States and Gulf states about protecting
Indian flag vessels. South Korea activated emergency
fuel rationing protocols for the first time since the 1970s oil
crisis. Germany's economy minister told
the Bundestag that Germany had enough natural gas reserves for
approximately 6 weeks at current consumption levels and that if
the conflict continued beyond that window without a hormone
solution, Germany would face mandatory industrial rationing.
The war that began as a targeted military operation against
Iran's military and nuclear infrastructure has become in 12
days a global energy emergency touching every major economy on
the planet. The Lebanon dimension of the
conflict deepened significantly on Tuesday in ways that deserve
specific attention. Lebanon's President Joseph On
made a public statement calling on the international community
to provide the Lebanese Armed Forces with equipment and
logistical support to help in the government's campaign to
disarm Hezbollah. He said Lebanon was ready to
enter direct talks with Israel under the supervision of
international mediators to reach a solution.
Those are remarkable words from a Lebanese president.
A Lebanese head of state publicly calling for the
disarmament of Hezbollah and offering direct talks with
Israel on the record represents A dramatic shift in Lebanese
political positioning. The new Lebanese government,
which came to power determined to assert state authority over
Hezbollah, is attempting to use this conflict to the lever to
permanently diminish the organization's military power.
The Lebanese government has already announced it would
arrest and repatriate anyone in Lebanon connected to Iran's
Revolutionary Guards, leading to the departure of more than 150
Iranian nationals from Beirut, including diplomats and Kurds
Force military advisors who have been running Hezbollah's
operations for years. Israel's response to Lebanon's
diplomatic opening was a rejection.
Israel told Lebanese interlocutors the negotiations
would only take place under fire.
Beirut demanded a cessation of hostilities before any meeting.
Israel wanted to discuss only the possibility of a cessation.
The sequencing disagreement meant the talks did not
materialize, and in the meantime, Israel authorized its
military to push deeper into southern Lebanon, expanded
evacuation orders to additional villages and struck the Dahiya
suburb of Beirut again overnight.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog visited an air defense battery
along the Lebanese border on Tuesday and said Israel was
determined to dismantle Hezbollah once and for all.
The political isolation of Hezbollah inside Lebanon is
accelerating in ways that would have been unthinkable a year
ago. Hezbollah has lost significant
support even within parts of the Shia community it has
traditionally dominated. The Lebanese government has
banned Hezbollah's military activities.
Over 150 Iranian nationals have left the country.
The organization's financial capacity has been degraded by
the destruction of al Qaeda. Al Hassan, the financial
institution that funded its weapons purchases and paid its
fighter salaries, and Iran Speaker of Parliament Mohammed
Bagar Galabaf made clear on Tuesday that Iran itself is not
seeking A ceasefire, removing any diplomatic cover Hezbollah
might use to justify standing down.
The organization is caught between a Lebanese government
demanding its disarmament and Israeli military determined to
finish it and an Iranian patron that has told it to keep
fighting. On Day 12, Hezbollah's strategic
position is as precarious as it has ever been.
Day 12 of Operation Epic Fury, the most intense day of strikes
yet, by the Pentagon's own description.
Mines in the Strait, an American facility struck in Baghdad, An
Iranian official threatening the American president's personal
safety, A fire at one of the Gulf's largest refineries.
700,000 Lebanese displaced. Contradictory intelligence
assessments on whether the nuclear mission has even
succeeded. And the United States quietly
unlocking Russian oil exports to cope with the energy shock from
a war it is still in the middle of fighting.
There is a word for a conflict that is simultaneously
escalating militarily, spreading geographically, generating
global economic damage, producing a growing humanitarian
catastrophe, and resisting every diplomatic attempt to contain
it. That word is not short term.
That word is not excursion. That word is war.
And on day 12, it shows no sign of ending.
That is episode 12 of Epic Fury, the US Iran war podcast.
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