The Strait of Hormuz is closed, the United States embassy in
Saudi Arabia has been struck, a UNESCO World Heritage site in
Tehran has been bombed, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio
is warning the world that the hardest hits on Iran are yet to
come. Day five of Operation Epic Fury
and every single day this conflict has widened further
than the day before. This is episode 5 of Epic Fury,
the US Iran war podcast. There is an enormous amount to
cover today. Let's get straight into it.
The single most consequential development of the last 24 hours
is not a military strike. It is 3 words from Tehran.
Iran has formally closed the Strait of Hormuz after days of
threats. Iran made it official on Monday.
The Strait of Hormuz, the 21 mile wide waterway through which
approximately 20 million barrels of oil flow every single day,
1/5 of the world's entire daily oil supply, is now closed.
Iran deployed naval assets and issued formal warnings to
commercial shipping that any vessel attempting to transit the
Strait does so at its own risk. The consequences were immediate
and severe. Qatar Energy, the world's
largest producer of liquefied natural gas, announced they had
halted production after Iranian attacks on its facilities.
Iraq's oil ministry announced it had been forced to stop
production and pumping from the southern Ramela oil fields near
Basra, citing a critical shortage of tankers caused by
the closure of the Strait. Storage levels at Iraq's oil
warehouses, the ministry said, had risen to critical levels
with nowhere left to put the oil that can no longer be exported.
Brent crude oil surged above $90.00 a barrel on Tuesday
morning for the first time since 2023.
That is up more than $17.00 a barrel since Operation Epic Fury
began just five days ago. Every $10 increase in the price
of oil sustained over a year reduces global economic growth
by approximately 0.2%. Every family in Britain, the
United States, Europe and beyond will feel this in their petrol
bills, their energy costs and the price of goods on
supermarket shelves. Trump responded to the closure
on Truth Social. He wrote Iran has just closed
the Strait of Hormuz. Big mistake.
The United States Navy will reopen it, and Iran will pay a
very heavy price for doing this. United States Central Command
confirmed on Tuesday that the Navy had been directed to begin
operations to reopen the Strait. CENTCOM declined to provide
specific details of those operations, citing operational
security. But the deployment of 2 carrier
strike groups to the region, the USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS
Gerald R Ford, was always understood by analysts to
include exactly this contingency.
The Strait of Hormuz is now, in effect, a naval battleground.
The geopolitical implications of a prolonged closure are
staggering. Japan, South Korea, China and
India collectively import hundreds of millions of barrels
of oil through the Strait of Hormuz every year.
China alone sources roughly a third of its oil imports through
this waterway. If the closure extends for weeks
rather than days, the economic damage will spread far beyond
the Middle East. Asian economies will be among
the hardest hit, and China, which has been loudly condemning
the strikes on Iran, faces the excruciating irony of watching
its own economy damaged by the actions of its opposed partner
in Tehran. The world's most important oil
choke point is closed and the United States Navy has been
ordered to reopen it, by force if necessary.
The death toll inside Iran has now risen to at least 787
people, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society.
That figure, released on Tuesday morning, marks a significant
increase from the 555 reported on Monday includes Supreme
Leader Khamenei and members of his own family.
Khamenei's wife was confirmed on Monday to have died of injuries
sustained in the same strike that killed her husband.
The most painful single figure within that toll remains the Min
of school air strike. The death toll from that single
incident has now risen to 168. According to Iran state news
agency IRNA, 168 people killed in a single strike on a girl's
elementary school. Among the dead are students,
teachers and parents who had come to collect their children.
95 others were injured. It is the single deadliest
single incident civilian casualty event of the entire
conflict so far. It continues to drive
significant international criticism of the operation, even
among countries that broadly supported stated objectives
beyond Iran's borders. The total picture of deaths in
the conflict continues to grow. 11 people have been killed in
Israel. 6 United States service members are dead.
Eight people have been killed across the Gulf states in the
UAE, Kuwait and Bahrain. Inside Iran itself, United
States and Israeli strikes have now hit targets across 24 of
Iran's 31 provinces. The IDF confirmed that Israeli
aircraft dropped more than 1200 munitions across those provinces
in the past 24 hours alone. Among the targets struck were
the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting headquarters in
Tehran. The head of Iranian State
Broadcasting, Payman Jabelli, confirmed the building had been
hit, though he said broadcasting was continuing due to pre
prepared contingency measures. And in a strike that generated
immediate international outrage, the historic Gholston Palace in
central Tehran was damaged. Gholston Palace is a UNESCO
World Heritage site, a 19th century royal complex that is
one of the oldest and most important historical monuments
in Iran. Photos circulating on social
media showed debris across the ornate tiled courtyards of the
palace. Iran's cultural Heritage
organization confirmed the damage.
UNESCO issued a statement expressing profound regret.
The Israeli military did not comment on the specific strike
but is maintained that all its targets were military in nature.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio appear before reporters on
Monday and delivered a message that sent a chill through
capitals across the world. He said.
And I am quoting directly, the hardest hits on Iran are yet to
come. Rubio explained the strategic
logic behind the pre emptive launch of Operation Epic Fury on
February 28th. He said that American
intelligence had determined that within an hour of the initial
Israeli strike on the Iranian leadership compound, Iran's
missile forces in both the north and the South had already been
pre positioned and activated to launch.
He said if we stood and waited for that attack to come first
before we hit, we would have suffered much higher casualties.
The president made the very wise decision.
Rubio's statement that the hardest hits are yet to come,
combined with the deployment of the two Spirit stealth bombers
and the now confirmed targeting of deeply buried underground
facilities, suggests the most intensive phase of this air
campaign may still lie ahead. That is an extraordinary
statement given the scale of what has already been done in
five days. Trump, speaking at a Medal of
Honor ceremony at the White House on Monday, delivered his
most expansive public justification for the operation
to date. He told attendees that Iran had
ignored repeated warnings against continuing to pursue
nuclear enrichment. He said the purpose of Iran's
fast growing missile program was to shield its nuclear
development and make it difficult for anyone to stop it.
He blamed former President Barack Obama for the nuclear
deal. He said it given Iran the
pathway it needed. He said I was very proud to have
knocked out the Iran nuclear deal by President Barack Hussein
Obama. And he said the strikes would
continue until every United States objective had been met.
Trump also made a statement that stopped many people in their
tracks. He told reporters the United
States military is knocking the crap out of Iran, but the big
wave of attacks is yet to come. When pressed on whether he would
consider deploying ground troops to Iran, Trump did not rule it
out. He said I don't think it will be
necessary, but I never say never.
When asked if the United States was prepared to go longer than
the four to five week timeline he had previously outlined, he
said whatever it takes. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
addressed the nation at a Pentagon press briefing
alongside Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Cain.
Hegseth stressed that Operation Epic Fury will not become
another Iraq. He said this is not endless, but
he declined to rule out the possibility of ground troops
being deployed. He said the goals of the
operation remain what he described as laser focused,
destroy Iranian offensive missiles, destroy Iranian
missile production, destroy their Navy and other security
infrastructure, and ensure Iran never, ever has nuclear weapons.
Hekseth also provided the most detailed technical account yet
of the opening moments of the operation.
He said that more than 100 aircraft launched from land and
sea simultaneously at 1:15 in the morning Eastern Time on
February 28, fighters, tankers, airborne early warning
platforms, electronic attack aircraft, bombers flying from
the continental United States, and unmanned platforms all
forming what he called a single synchronized wave.
He said United States Cyber Command and Space Command
initiated non kinetic actions to disable Iran's communications
ability beginning hours before the physical strikes, creating a
window of confusion and blindness in Iran's military
command systems before the 1st bomb fell.
One of the most significant and troubling developments of the
last 24 hours involves not Iran but America's own ally. the
United States Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia was struck by two
suspected Iranian drones on Tuesday morning.
Two sources familiar with the matter confirmed a strike to
CNN. The United States embassy is
sovereign American territory. A strike on an American embassy
is, under international law, an act of aggression against the
United States itself. Saudi Arabia condemned the
strike in the strongest terms. the United States has not yet
formally attributed responsibility, though the
attribution to Iran or an Iranian proxy is considered
certain by officials familiar with the intelligence.
Saudi Arabia's position in this conflict is becoming
increasingly significant. Riyadh had initially maintained
a position of study neutrality, committing only to intercepting
Iranian missiles that entered its airspace and refusing to
allow offensive use of Saudi territory or airspace.
But after the strike on its capital's American embassy and
following Sunday's Iranian targeting of the Rasta Neuro oil
refinery, Saudi Arabia issued a statement on Monday saying it
reserves the right to respond to aggression.
Saudi Defense Ministry sources told regional outlets that the
Kingdom is now actively considering direct military
action against Iranian positions.
If Saudi Arabia formally enters this conflict on the side of the
United States and Israel, the strategic picture changes
dramatically. Saudi Arabia has one of the most
powerful and well equipped air forces in the Middle East.
With F15 Strike Eagles purchased from the United States and
hundreds of advanced munition stockpiles built up over
decades, Iran and its proxy forces have now struck targets
across an extraordinary geographic range.
In addition to Israel and the Gulf states, Iran backed Qadab
Hezbollah in Iraq issued A veiled threat on Tuesday against
Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, claiming that American
aircraft that struck their positions earlier in the
conflict had taken off from a United States air base in
Jordan. This is the first direct threat
by an Iranian proxy specifically directed at Jordan, which has
until now attempted to remain on the periphery of the conflict.
In Lebanon, the situation continued to deteriorate
sharply. Hezbollah issued a formal
statement through its senior official Mahmoud Kamati on
Tuesday. Kamati said that after more than
a year of abiding by the November 2024 ceasefire despite
continued Israeli strikes on Lebanese territory, Hezbollah's
patience has ended. He said Hezbollah had exercised
restraint, hoping the Lebanese government's diplomatic efforts
would yield results. They did not, he declared.
The Zionist enemy wanted an open war, which it has not stopped
since the ceasefire agreement. So let it be an open war.
The IDF struck a building in Beirut's southern suburbs on
Tuesday that housed Hezbollah's television and radio station
Almana, causing heavy damage. Lebanon's Health Ministry
confirmed that Israeli airstrikes killed at least 31
people and wounded at least 149 in Lebanon, most of them in the
South. Thousands of displaced Lebanese
civilians were streaming into shelters set up in schools in
Beirut, many of them displaced for the second time in two
years. One entirely new dimension of
this conflict that has received less attention than it deserves
is the cyber war that has been running in parallel with the
physical strike since the opening hours of the operation.
American cybersecurity companies including Checkpoint and
Google's Threat Intelligence Group confirmed that Iran
aligned hacker groups resumed cyber espionage operations after
a brief lull in the immediate aftermath of the first strikes,
John Haltquist, the chief analyst of Google's threat
Intelligence group, said in a statement.
Iranian cyber espionage has resumed after a brief lull
during the initial military strikes, he added.
Much of what we see here we also saw in the June war between
Israel and Iran. On the other side, the opening
hours of Operation Epic Fury included a coordinated Israeli
cyber offensive that went far beyond anything seen in the June
operation. The Bait Sabha Calendar prayer
app, a widely used Iranian app with over 5 million downloads,
was hacked in the opening hours of the conflict.
Push notifications were sent to every user on the platform in
Persian, urging military personnel and citizens to
defect, to lay down their weapons and to join opposition
forces, the messages said. Help has arrived and it is time
for reckoning. Iranian state communications
infrastructure was targeted. Simultaneously, connectivity
inside Iran dropped to as low as 1 to 4% of normal levels of the
height of the cyber offensive, creating a near total Internet
blackout that lasted more than 60 hours.
Government communications, state media and public services were
all disrupted. The combination of kinetic
strikes and cyber warfare represents the most
comprehensive integrated military campaign in modern
history. The physical bombs and the
digital disruption were designed to work together, destroy the
infrastructure with missiles, blind the population with a
cyber blackout, and send messages directly to Iranian
phones urging them to rise up. The United States State
Department escalated its diplomatic evacuation operations
on Tuesday. non-emergency personnel and family members of
United States government staff have now been ordered to
evacuate from six countries in the region, Bahrain, Iraq,
Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
The UAE, which includes Dubai and Abu Dhabi and has long been
considered one of the safest and most stable environments in the
Middle East, has now been formally added to the evacuation
list. the United States Embassy in Abu Dhabi also issued a
warning that terrorist attacks targeting tourist locations,
transportation hubs, shopping areas and places of worship were
possible in the UAE and encourage American citizens to
exercise extreme caution. Behind the bombs and the
missiles, in the cyber attacks and the diplomatic evacuations,
there is a diplomatic track that is moving in confusing and
contradictory directions simultaneously.
Trump's special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff,
appeared on Monday and provided the most detailed account yet of
how the Geneva nuclear talks collapsed in the days before
Operation Epic Fury began. He said that he and Jared
Kushner had traveled to Geneva on Trump's behalf to determine
whether Iran was serious about doing a deal.
The United States delegation proposed a decade long halt to
uranium enrichment. Iran's opening position, Witkoff
said, was to insist on its inalienable right to enrich
uranium and to boast that it's 460kg of 60% enriched uranium
could produce 11 nuclear bombs, he said.
They began the talks by telling us how many nuclear weapons they
could build. That is not a serious
negotiating partner. Despite the collapse of those
talks and the subsequent launch of the operation, Trump told The
Atlantic on Monday that the new Iranian leadership had expressed
interest in negotiations. He said talks with Iran will be
easier following the death of Khamenei.
Iran's position publicly remains what Ali Larijani stated.
We will not negotiate with the United States.
But Oman's foreign minister confirmed he remained in active
contact with both sides, and the Wall Street Journal's reporting
that back channel signals are being sent through Oman has not
been contradicted by anyone. What this means in practice is
that a military operation in a diplomatic process are running
simultaneously in parallel in opposite directions, and neither
side is prepared to stop the other while the other is still
running. Netanyahu was asked directly on
Fox News whether this will become an endless war.
He said this is not an endless war, this is in fact something
that will usher in an era of peace that we haven't even
dreamed of. He said the operation will
create the conditions for the Iranian people to form their own
democratically elected government and to free
themselves from the yoke of this terror machine.
Netanyahu also provided a specific and chilling
justification for why the operation launched when it did.
He told Fox News that Iran's new underground nuclear bunkers
would have become immune to attack within months.
The window to destroy them was closing.
That is why February 28th was the date the Quincy Institute's
try to Parsi, one of the most respected Iran analysts in
Washington, offered a sobering assessment of why Iran is
unlikely to agree to a ceasefire quickly.
He said Tehran believes it made a mistake by agreeing to a truce
in June 2025. The regime calculates that if it
stops fighting now, the United States will simply restart the
war at a later point. Iran's logic, Parsi argues, is
to keep fighting until the cost of the United States becomes
high enough that Washington commits to a durable end to
hostilities rather than a temporary pause.
Iran, in other words, is not trying to win this war
militarily. It is trying to make it
expensive enough in American lives and treasure and global
disruption that the United States chooses A negotiated end
over a prolonged campaign. Whether that calculation is
correct and whether the Islamic Republic survives long enough to
test it are the two most consequential open questions of
this entire conflict. That is episode 5 of Epic Fury,
the US Iran War podcast. The story is moving fast.
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