Trump told reporters Thursday that Iran has agreed to the
framework. Iran's own media said Thursday
that Tehran has not yet finalized its response. the
United States struck Iranian military facilities on Thursday
in response to what CENTCOM called unprovoked missile, drone
and small boat attacks against US guided missile destroyers
transiting the Strait of Hormuz. The situation has since settled
down, according to Iranian state media.
The ceasefire for Trump's own direct statement on Thursday
remains in effect, and Trump warned regarding the prospect of
no ceasefire. You will not have to know if
there is no ceasefire. You will just have to look at
one big glow coming out of Iran. It is Friday, May 8th, 2026, Day
70 of Operation Epic Fury. CENTCOM struck Iranian military
facilities inside Iran on Thursday afternoon.
Trump told the Oval Office press corps that Iran has agreed to
the terms. Iranian media reported Thursday
that Tehran has not yet finalized its response.
The ceasefire is simultaneously being struck at and described as
intact and Trump's warning. One big glow is the most
explicit and visceral evocation of what the alternative to a
deal looks like, that this president is issued in 70 days
of war. This is episode 70 of Epic Fury,
the US Iran war podcast. Follow on Spotify and Apple
Podcast to stay with this story as it develops.
Let's get into it. Begin with Thursdays.
Strikes on Iranian facilities because they are the most
significant American military action inside Iranian territory
since the ceasefire was announced on April 8th, and
because their context makes Day 70 the defining paradox of this
entire conflict. St.
Com striking Iran on the same day Trump's as they have agreed.
CENTCOM confirmed on Thursday that U.S. forces conducted
self-defense strikes against Iranian military facilities on
May 7th after intercepting what it described as unprovoked
Iranian attacks on U.S. Navy guided missile destroyers
transiting the Strait of Hormuz toward the Gulf of Oman.
CENTCOM stated that the strikes targeted specific Iranian
military infrastructure, missile and drone launch sites, command
and control locations, and intelligence, surveillance, and
reconnaissance nodes inside Iranian territory.
The targets were, in Centcom's framing, the specific facilities
that launched the attacks on the American destroyers.
The surgical response directed at the source of the attack
rather than a broad retaliatory campaign.
The Iranian military attacked American warships transiting the
Strait. The American military responded
by striking the facilities that launched those attacks inside
Iranian territory. And the ceasefire, according to
Trump's own statement on Thursday, remains in effect
throughout all of it. The phrase self-defense strikes
inside a country with which the United States has a nominal
ceasefire is worth pausing on carefully.
The April 8th ceasefire agreement halted the major
combat operations of Operation Epic Fury.
It did not, in the administration's interpretation,
create a situation in which Iranian attacks on U.S.
Navy vessels transit the Strait without military response.
Centcom's Thursday statement is explicit. the United States
intercepted unprovoked Iranian attacks and responded with
self-defense strikes. That framing self-defense is the
legal architecture the administration is using to
conduct military operations inside Iran while simultaneously
maintaining that the ceasefire is in effect.
The tension in that position is visible.
The administration's war powers argument deployed to cross the
60 day threshold on May 1st was that the ceasefire had already
terminated the hostilities that the statute was measuring.
The ceasefire ended the hostilities.
Now, 30 days into the ceasefire, CENTCOM is conducting
self-defense strikes against Iranian military facilities
inside Iran in response to Iranian attacks on US warships,
transiting the same straight that the Guided Transit
operation was designed to open if the hostilities were
terminated by the ceasefire. What legal framework governs
strikes conducted under the self-defense rubric during the
ceasefire? The administration has not
publicly addressed that question.
Its practical position appears to be the ceasefire ended the
formal offensive war, but U.S. military forces retained a right
of self-defense against Iranian attacks at all times, and a
self-defense strike on the facility that launched the
attack is permissible response that does not violate or
terminate the ceasefire. Whether Iran accepts that
framing that self-defense strikes during a ceasefire are
permissible and do not constitute A ceasefire violation
determines whether the ceasefire survives.
Thursday, Iranian state media's settled down response suggests
Iran is provisionally accepting it.
That response settled down rather than ceasefire violated
or war declared. Is Iran implicitly accepting, at
least provisionally, the same framing?
Military action occurred. It has ceased.
The ceasefire framework remains operative.
Both governments appear to be operating under a shared, if
publicly unacknowledged and legally untested, understanding
that military exchanges in the Strait can occur without
formally ending the ceasefire, as long as neither side issues a
formal declaration that the ceasefire has been broken.
Iranian state media reported after the exchange that the
situation had settled down. That formulation settled down
rather than ceasefire violated or war declared, is Iran's way
of communicating that the immediate exchange of fire has
ceased without either side formally acknowledging a
ceasefire violation or demanding termination of the framework.
Both governments are choosing, apparently simultaneously and
independently, to maintain the ceasefire's nominal existence
even after the most direct and confirmed exchange of fire since
it was announced 30 days ago. The ceasefire is technically
intact as a Friday morning day 70 of a conflict who's in May
now be measurable in hours rather than days.
American self-defense strikes have fallen on Iranian military
facilities inside Iran for the first time since the ceasefire
was announced on April 8th. Iran has attacked US warships
transiting the Strait of Hormuz. CENTCOM conducted strikes inside
Iranian territory. Iranian state media said.
It's settled down. Trump said the ceasefire remains
in effect. Those facts are simultaneously
true on Day 70 and they tell you what the ceasefire has become in
its fifth week. Not an absence of military
action between the two sides, but a framework in which
military exchanges occur and are absorbed by both parties, who
continue to maintain that the framework has not been formally
dissolved. Turn out to what Trump said from
the Oval Office on Thursday afternoon because his statements
on the deal contain the most significant direct claims about
the framework status of the entire 70 day conflict.
Reporters asked Trump about the one page offer, as reported by
Axios and Reuters the previous day.
Trump pushed back on the characterization.
He said it is more than a one page offer.
It is an offer that basically said they will not have nuclear
weapons. They're going to hand us the
nuclear dust and many other things that we want.
Then reporters asked whether Iran had actually agreed to
those terms. Trump said they have agreed.
Iranian media immediately and independently contradicted that
statement. Tehran had not.
Iranian news outlets reported on Thursday finalized its response
to the US proposal, the 48 hour response window the
administration described on Wednesday.
As expected timeline did not yet produced a final formal,
publicly confirmed Iranian answer as of Thursday
afternoon's Oval Office remarks. Trump's statement, they have
agreed, is either a characterization of a partial or
verbal commitment from Iran that the American side treats as
sufficient to describe his agreement at this stage of the
process, or it is a projection of presidential confidence
intended to create momentum and accelerate the formal
finalization of Iran's response by presenting it is already
complete, or it reflects specific intelligence or private
channel information that no public reporting has yet
confirmed. All three of those possibilities
are consistent with the available evidence.
None of them can be definitively confirmed or ruled out from
outside The West Wing. What is not consistent with a
completed, signed agreement is Iranian media simultaneously and
independently reporting that Tehran has not finalized its
response. The Iranian government's own
media is not reporting that Iran has agreed.
It is reporting that the response is under review.
That is a substantive factual contradiction with Trump's Oval
Office statement. Either Trump's characterization
of the Iranian position is more advanced than Iran's own public
position acknowledges, or there is a disconnect between what the
private channel has communicated and what Iran's public and media
apparatus has been told to say. Or Trump is describing something
as agreement that Iran would describe as continuing
deliberation. 2 things are simultaneously true.
On Thursday. Trump says they have agreed, and
Iran says the response is not yet final.
The distance between those two statements is the specific
distance the deal has yet to close.
It may be measured in hours, it may be days.
Trump's confident claim that they have agreed if it reflects
genuine intelligence from the private track, the one only he
and a handful of others understand about Iran's actual
internal direction, suggests the formal remaining distance is
measurably small. The CENTCOM strikes on Iranian
facilities that happened on the same day, and the fact that the
ceasefire is still nominally in force after them suggests the
pressure on Iran to finalize a response is now operating
simultaneously from the diplomatic and the military
direction. Trump's warning about the
alternative to a deal is the most explicit and visceral
escalation formulation of the entire 70 Day War, he told
reporters on Thursday. You will not have to know if
there is no ceasefire. You will just have to look at
one big glow coming out of Iran. That phrase, one big glow is not
the language of conventional military planning.
Conventional military operations produce fires, explosions,
smoke, damage assessments and casualty reports from specific
sites. They do not produce a single
visible glow from a distance. The phrase invokes the imagery
of something so large and concentrated that it is visible
as a single luminescent event kind of strike that would
destroy not a missile site or a command post, but something much
larger in the context of a conflict over Iran's nuclear
program. On a day when CENTCOM has
already conducted strikes inside Iran, the phrase carries a
specific weight that is difficult to dismiss as mere
rhetoric. Whether Trump is describing a
massive conventional strike, the kind of infrastructure
bombardment he threatened in early April, targeting power
plants, bridges and energy facilities, or something more
extreme is not clear from the phrase alone.
What is clear is the function is Trump using the most dramatic
imaginable formulation of what the alternative to the deal
looks like to make the deal Iran has not yet finalized feel
urgently necessary. The one big glow is Trump's
description of the consequence of continued non agreement
delivered from the Oval Office on the same day U.S. forces
struck Iranian military facilities and the ceasefire was
declared intact. Paired with Trump's simultaneous
claim that Iran has agreed, the big Glow warning creates a
specific diplomatic pressure architecture.
We believe you have agreed to the terms, and if we are wrong
about that, here is the specific consequence that follows.
That combination of apparent confirmation and existential
threat is designed to make the remaining distance between where
Iran formally is and where Trump says Iran has already arrived
feel both small and critically urgent to close.
Before the glow becomes the answer, the structure of
Thursday is worth examining as a complete sequence.
Iran fires on US destroyers in the Strait.
CENTCOM strikes Iranian military facilities in self-defense.
The situation settles down, per Iranian state media.
Trump says Iran has agreed to the framework.
Iranian media says Tehran has not yet finalized its response.
Trump warns of one big glow if there is no ceasefire.
And the ceasefire, per Trump, remains in effect throughout all
of it. That compressed sequence attack,
counter strike, settlement agreement, claim, qualification,
existential threat, ceasefire intact describes a single
Thursday that cannot have existed in any previous
diplomatic or military framework in recent American history.
The framework document being negotiated, the one Trump says
is more than one page and that includes Iran not having nuclear
weapons and handing over what he called the nuclear dust, remains
as of this Friday morning, the subject of Iranian internal
review. The key outstanding questions as
publicly reported are these. The enrichment moratorium
duration. Iran proposed five years, the
United States demanded 20 years. The reported likely landing
point is 12 to 15 years. That gap has not been publicly
confirmed as closed. The disposition of Iran's highly
enriched uranium stockpile approximately 408kg of uranium
enriched to 60% purity. Whether that material goes to
the United States, to Russia under the Putin custody offer,
or to another third party has not been confirmed.
Trump's statement that Iran will hand us the nuclear dust
suggests the US destination is the working assumption, but this
has not been officially confirmed.
The underground nuclear facility prohibition, including the
Fordow enrichment site, buried under a mountain and calm, which
the framework would require Iran to commit not to operate.
Whether that commitment satisfies US verification
requirements, given Fordow's history of being built covertly
and operated in ways that evaded timely international detection,
remains an open technical and verification question.
The SNAP inspection regime allowing UN inspectors to
conduct unannounced visits to undeclared sites, which would
close the verification gap that allowed Iran to advance its
program for years without timely detection.
In the Lebanon clause, the provision that would formally
declare the war ended throughout the region, explicitly including
Lebanon, marking the first explicit US Iran framework
acknowledgment that the Lebanon conflict is part of the same
war. Each of those questions requires
a formal Iranian governmental authorization.
The civilian diplomatic track Arachi Galabaf and the
parliamentary majority that signed its support statement in
late April cannot formally commit without common as
explicit and authoritative direction.
That direction as a Friday morning has not been publicly
confirmed through any Iranian official channel.
Trump's claim that they have agreed remains as yet
unconfirmed by any Iranian government source.
Trump's push back on the one page characterization, it is
more than a one page offer, is also his way of signaling to
Iran, to Israel, and to the American public that the deal is
more substantive than the preliminary framework document
the Axios reporting described. The Axios reporting
characterized the document as a one page memorandum that would
establish A framework and launch 30 days of detail negotiations.
Trump is describing something he regards as containing specific
substantive commitments. No nuclear weapons, nuclear
material handed over, many other things we want rather than just
a procedural entry point. Whether the document has grown
in scope and detail since Wednesday's Axios and Reuters
reporting, or whether Trump is describing the broader
negotiating package rather than the specific document currently
on Iran's table for review, is not clear from his Thursday Oval
Office remarks. The gap between A1 page
procedural framework that launches 30 days of talks in a
document that already contains the core substantive commitments
is a gap that matters enormously for how quickly an agreement
could be announced and what form it takes.
If it is the procedural framework, 30 days of detailed
negotiations remain before any substantive agreement exists.
If it is the substantive commitment document, the deal is
substantially complete and awaits only Iran's formal
authorization, which Trump says has already happened.
The CENTCOM strikes on Iranian military facilities on Thursday
are significant not only for their military dimension, but
for what they reveal about the operational state of the
ceasefire and the continued status of the Hormuz guided
transit that Trump announced paused on Tuesday evening.
The CENTCOM statement is specific.
U.S. Navy guided missile destroyers
were transiting the Strait of Hormuz toward the Gulf of Oman
on May 7th when they came under attack.
Trump paused the guided transit on Tuesday night, citing the
request of Pakistan and other countries in great progress
toward a complete and final agreement.
The transit was described as paused, not cancelled, not
permanently suspended, but paused to allow diplomacy to
proceed. Guided missile destroyers in the
Strait on Thursday under Iranian attacks suggest that either the
pause ended or the destroyers were completing a transit that
had already been authorized before the pause or the straight
passage was a separate naval movement not characterized as
part of the guided transit operation.
CENTCOM statement does not resolve which of those applies.
What it establishes beyond doubt is that American naval vessels
are still in the Strait of Hormuz, still transiting it
under Iranian military opposition, and that the US
military is now conducting strikes inside Iranian territory
in response to the attacks. Those vessels received the core
operational dynamic in the Strait.
US ships transit, IRGC attacks, CENTCOM responds with strikes on
Iranian facilities has not fundamentally changed since
Monday morning's guided transit launch.
The pause, at least in operational terms, as CENTCOM
Thursday statement reveals, appears to have been more
diplomatic framing than a substantive change in US naval
activity in the Strait of Hormuz.
American military power is continuing to assert
navigational rights in the straight through naval presence
and force of response. Iran continues to contest those
rights through the Irgc's operational presence and
willingness to fire. Both governments continue to
call the ceasefire intact. And somewhere in the gap between
that military confrontation and the diplomatic claim of Iranian
agreement, the deal is either being finalized or is not yet
finalized, depending on which government you're listening to.
On Thursday, Day 70, the United States conducted self-defense
strikes on Iranian military facilities inside Iranian
territory. The ceasefire holds in the
administration's framing in the absence of either side formally
declaring it over and in the continued operation of the
Pakistan Proposal channel. Trump says Iran has agreed to
the nuclear framework. Iran says the response is not
yet finalized. Trump warned of one big glow.
If there is no deal, the self-defense strikes, the
agreement claim, the Iranian qualification, the existential
threat and the intact ceasefire all happened on the same
Thursday. The most consequential 72 hours
of the war are not yet over. The answer to whether the deal
exists, whether Iran has already agreed in the precise way Trump
describes or is still formally deliberating in the way its own
media reports, is not yet publicly confirmed.
But it is demonstrably closer to resolution and simultaneously
closer to the alternative than at any moment in 70 days.
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Apple Podcasts. This has been episode 70 of Epic
Fury. the US Iran war podcast CENTCOM struck Iranian military
facilities inside Iran on Thursday in self-defense.
The ceasefire holds Trump. They have agreed.
Iran not yet finalized Trump. One big glow.
If there is no deal, 70 days of war, a deal that is by Trump's
account already agreed. They have agreed, by Iran's
account not yet formally finalized, by the ceasefire's
account, somehow still intact despite CENTCOM strikes and IRGC
attacks on the same day. We will be back very soon
because the next episode may be the one in which the answer
finally arrives.