Trump wants to choose Iran's next supreme leader himself.
Iran's missile attacks on the region had dropped by 90%.
Iran has threatened to strike Israel's nuclear facility at the
Mona. A religious leader in Tehran has
called for Trump's blood. Kurdish forces are preparing a
possible ground incursion into Iran, and the total cost of this
war has crossed $5 billion in just one week.
Day 7 of Operation Epic Fury. And this conflict keeps reaching
into places nobody predicted it would go.
This is episode 7 of Epic Fury, the US Iran war podcast.
There is a great deal to cover. Let's get into it.
Begin with a statement that stopped the world in its tracks.
On Thursday, President Trump told Reuters and Axios in
separate interviews published on the same day that he personally
intends to play a role in choosing Iran's next supreme
leader. His exact words to Reuters were
these. We are going to have to choose
that person along with Iran. We are going to have to choose
that person. He drew a direct parallel to the
United States role in replacing Venezuelan President Nicolas
Maduro earlier this year, saying the two situations were
comparable. He urged the remaining leaders
of the Iranian regime to accept immunity and surrender.
He said. You're going to have a chance
after all these years to take back your country, accept
immunity, and we will be giving you really the right side of
history. Trump also made clear who he
does not want as the next supreme leader.
Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the late supreme leader who has
emerged as a front runner among Iran's Assembly of Experts, is,
in Trump's own word, unacceptable, he told reporters.
They are wasting their time. Earlier this week, Trump
revealed that most of the candidates his administration
had hoped might succeed, Common A, had already been killed in
the opening strikes of the operation.
The systematic killing of Iran's senior political and religious
figures was not, it appears, an accident.
It was a deliberate attempt to reshape the field of potential
successors before the succession process even began.
The implications of this are profound.
The president of the United States is not just bombing Iran.
He is attempting to determine who governs it when the bombs
stop. That is not a military
objective. That is regime change.
And Trump himself confirmed exactly that.
He told reporters the purpose of the strikes was effectively
regime change. It is the most explicit
statement of that objective any American president has made
about any country since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
And it raises the most consequential and legally
complex question of this entire conflict.
What comes after? Trump also told reporters
something that provided one of the sharpest justifications yet
for the timing of the entire operation.
He said if we didn't hit within two weeks, they would have had a
nuclear weapon. Two weeks.
That is the intelligence assessment Trump says he was
given. Iran was not months from a bomb.
It was 2 weeks away, and the International Atomic Energy
Agency had itself discovered on February 27th, just one day
before the strikes began, that Iran had hidden highly enriched
uranium in an underground facility that had survived the
June 2025 operation. The IAEA said it could no longer
be sure Iran's nuclear program was exclusively peaceful.
That IAA finding, combined with the intelligence assessment that
Iran was two weeks from a weapon, provided the final
trigger. Now consider the war powers
picture. Because the political battle in
Washington reached a decisive moment on Thursday, both the
House and the Senate voted on resolutions that would have
restricted Trump's authority to continue Operation Epic Fury
without congressional approval. Both votes failed.
The Senate rejected its resolution 47 to 53 on a near
party line vote. The House rejected its measure
212 to 219, with just two Republicans breaking with Trump
and four Democrats crossing the aisle to vote against the
resolution. The war powers challenge is, for
now, finished. Trump has congressional
acquiescence, if not formal authorization, to continue this
operation for as long as he determines necessary.
The financial cost of this conflict has now been estimated
by multiple independent analysts at more than $5 billion.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies put the
cost of just the first 100 hours at $3.7 billion, or $891 million
per day. Democratic Congressman Joe
Morrell, who sits on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on
Defense, estimated on Thursday that the war is costing
approximately $1 billion every single day.
The vast majority of these costs are unbudgeted and will require
emergency supplemental spending. Democratic Congressman Morrell
noted with some bitterness that Trump had repeatedly promised
voters he would reduce government spending and that
this war is adding to the national debt at a pace not seen
since the post September 11 military buildup.
One specific cost detail deserves a moment of reflection.
A single Iranian drone strike on a radar system in Qatar damaged
a piece of equipment worth $1.1 billion.
One drone, $1.1 billion of damage in a single hit.
The symmetry between the cost of an Iranian Shahid drone,
approximately $20,000 to build, and the damage it can inflict on
American military infrastructure is one of the defining financial
dynamics of this entire conflict.
The military picture on Thursday was dominated by 1 #90%.
CENTCOM Commander Admiral Brad Cooper, speaking alongside
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at Mcdill Air Force Base in
Tampa, FL, announced that Iran's ballistic missile retaliation
against the United States and its partners has decreased by
90% since the peak of the opening days of the conflict.
He said Iran's Navy was wiped out, its missile production
capacity was being demolished, its proxy forces were, in his
words, hardly putting up a fight.
He described the two most powerful air forces in the world
dominating the skies over the world's largest state.
Sponsor of terror Hekseth confirmed that 30 or more
Iranian ships have now been struck or sunk.
He said the next phase of the operation will focus
specifically on dismantling Tehran's missile production
base, the factories, supply chains and technical
infrastructure that Iran would need to rebuild its offensive
missile arsenal after this conflict ends.
The message was unambiguous. the United States is not just
destroying what Iran has, it is trying to destroy Iran's ability
to ever rebuild it. The 12th wave of Israeli strikes
was confirmed on Thursday morning.
The IDF struck Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and
bases militia targets across Tehran, including Central
Command Centers for Iran's internal security forces.
The IDF also released dramatic footage showing an Israeli F35
IA Deer stealth fighter in aerial combat firing a missile
that destroys an Iranian Yak 130 jet over Tehran.
A dog fight over the capital of Iran in 2026 captured on video.
The IDF also confirmed it had struck the 12,000 seat indoor
arena at Tehran's Zazadi complex.
Two basic student leaders allegedly involved in the brutal
suppression of the mass and Thai government protests that
preceded the conflict were killed in Israeli airstrikes.
The Azadi complex, which houses one of Iran's most iconic sports
venues, is a landmark of Iranian cultural identity.
In a development that carries staggering symbolic weight, the
Assembly of Experts, the body of 88 senior clerics tasked with
choosing Iran's new supreme leader, was itself targeted by
Israeli airstrikes on Thursday while its members were
reportedly in session. Let that be stated clearly.
Israel bombed the meeting where Iran's religious leadership had
gathered to elect the next supreme leader.
The strategic intent is unmistakable.
Israel and the United States are not just shaping the
battlefield, they are attempting to shape the succession itself
by eliminating the people doing the choosing.
Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami of the Assembly of Experts told Iranian
state television they were close to a conclusion but that the
country was in a war situation. Given that the building where
they were meeting was subsequently bombed, the
timeline for that conclusion is now entirely unclear.
The conflict expanded in a genuinely alarming new direction
on Thursday. Iran has threatened to strike
the Israeli nuclear facility at Damona.
Iran's semi official list in the news agency, citing an Iranian
military official, reported that Iran will target Damona if
Israel and the United States seek regime change in the
Islamic Republic. Damona is Israel's primary
nuclear research facility in the Najaf desert and is widely
believed by international analysts to be the site of
Israel's undeclared nuclear weapons program.
Any Iranian strike on Damona, successful or not, would
represent an escalation unlike anything seen in the entire
history of the Middle East conflict.
Israel has never confirmed the existence of nuclear weapons of
Damona, but its reported arsenal is estimated at between 80 and
400 warheads. A strike that caused any kind of
radiological release at that site would trigger consequences
of almost unimaginable scale. An Iranian religious leader went
further. In a Friday sermon broadcast on
Iranian state television, a senior cleric called for Trump's
blood. The sermon was inflammatory,
incendiary and representative of the rage being expressed
publicly by those within Iran who remain loyal to the Islamic
Republic. Whether these statements
represent genuine strategic intent or are designed for
domestic consumption inside Iran is difficult to determine from
the outside, but the combination of the Damona threat and the
call for Trump's blood illustrates the degree to which
this conflict is moved beyond conventional military framing.
On the Iranian side, Kurdish forces in northern Iraq are
preparing a possible cross-border ground incursion
into Iran, according to multiple regional intelligence sources
cited by regional outlets on Thursday.
Pro American Kurdish forces have long maintained deep grievances
against the Islamic Republic for its treatment of Kurdish
communities inside Iran. The CI as reported arming of
Kurdish rebel groups in western Iran has dramatically
accelerated the timeline for what Kurdish commanders are now
describing as potential direct action.
A Kurdish ground incursion into Iran would open a third front in
this conflict, alongside the aerial campaign from the United
States and Israel and the Hezbollah front in Lebanon.
It would also mark the first time a ground forces crossed
into Iranian territory since the Iran Iraq War of the 1980s.
NATO air defenses in the eastern Mediterranean intercepted and
shot down an Iranian ballistic missile that entered Turkish
airspace. On Thursday, Turkey and NATO
member lodged a formal protest with Iran.
This is the second confirmed incident of Iranian missiles
breaching the airspace of a country not formally at war with
Iran. The first was Azerbaijan.
The second is Turkey, a NATO members.
Air defense systems have now fired on an Iranian missile in
defense of their own sovereign territory.
The legal and strategic implications of Iran repeatedly
striking the airspace of countries not party to this
conflict are significant and deeply troubling.
Iran launched a fresh wave of attacks on Thursday morning
targeting Israeli and American bases.
Iran vowed that the United States would bitterly regret the
torpedoing of the Iris Dina in the Indian Ocean, and operatives
from Iran's Ministry of Intelligence signaled openness
to the CIA for talks on ending the war.
The New York Times reported this development, citing officials
briefed on the matter. Iran's Intelligence Ministry,
not its foreign ministry, not its military command, but its
intelligence operatives reaching out directly to the CIA about
ending the war. That is an extraordinary back
channel signal happening beneath the surface of the public
rhetoric in which Iran's foreign minister insists it will not
negotiate in. Religious leaders call for
Trump's blood. the United Nations panel of experts said it
was deeply disturbed by the deaths of children following the
bombing of the Shajare Tibet Girls school in southern Iran.
The panel cited reports that more than 160 children were
killed. The investigation into the Min
of School airstrike continued with Planet Lab satellite
imagery showing the building struck appears to be within the
compound of a known Iranian military base.
But the presence of a military installation nearby does not in
any legal or moral framework justify the killing of 160
schoolchildren. This will be one of the defining
humanitarian controversies of this entire conflict for years
to come. The economic picture on Thursday
was painted in detail by Allianz Research, which published one of
the most comprehensive economic analysis of the conflict
financial implications yet seen. Their baseline scenario?
The United States and Iran deal within four weeks associated
with the transition of power in Iran.
Projects bring crude oil briefly spiking to $85 a barrel before
ending the year around $70. Their middle scenario, a
prolonged conflict with significant disruptions to the
Strait of Hormuz, projects oil reaching $100 a barrel.
Their tail risk scenario, in which Iran successfully targets
energy infrastructure across the region and sustains A genuine
blockade of the Strait, projects Brent crude rising above $130.00
a barrel, $130.00 a barrel. For context, the last time oil
was near that level was during the post Ukraine invasion energy
crisis of 2022. At that price, the economic pain
felt by ordinary families across Britain, Europe and the United
States would be severe and sustained.
Petrol at the pump, energy bills, food prices, airline
tickets, mortgage stress driven by central banks keeping rates
higher for longer to fight inflation, All of it connected
through a chain of economic causation to what is happening
in the skies over Tehran. The Federal Reserve and the
European Central Bank are watching this conflict with
acute anxiety. American inflation has been
above targets since 2021. the Fed have been widely expected to
cut interest rates twice this year.
Those cuts are now endowed. The European Central Bank's
calculus is different. European inflation is better
anchored, but higher energy prices feed through into
European production costs and consumer prices.
Regardless, the war is not just reshaping.
Geopolitics is reshaping the economic outlook for hundreds of
millions of people who will never fire a weapon or hear an
air raid siren. Russia is emerging as an
unexpected beneficiary of this conflict, and the irony is
sharp. Russia, which is loudly
condemned Operation Epic Fury, stands to gain enormously from
high oil prices and from the drain this conflict places on
American munition stockpiles. Multiple analysts have noted
this week that every Tomahawk missile fired at Iran is 1 fewer
available for potential use in Europe.
Every B2 sortie over Tehran is 1 fewer available for other
contingencies. The Wall Street Journal reported
on Thursday that Russia's invasion of Ukraine has already
significantly depleted Western weapons stockpiles and that
Operation Epic Fury is adding to that depletion at a pace that is
causing genuine concern among NATO planners.
The war that Trump launched to make America stronger may, in
this one specific dimension, be making NATO's deterrence of
Russia marginally weaker. China sent a special envoy to
the Middle East on Thursday to begin mediation efforts.
Beijing's Foreign Minister Wang He announced the deployment of
the envoy, saying China was deeply concerned about the
humanitarian situation and the threat to global energy
security. China's interest in resolving
this conflict is direct and urgent.
Roughly 1/3 of China's oil imports transit the Strait of
Hormuz. Every day the Strait remains
effectively closed is a day that Chinese industrial production,
Chinese energy security, and the Chinese economy are under
pressure. The country most loudly
condemning this war has the most immediate economic incentive to
end it. China's diplomatic entry into
the mediation process, alongside Oman's existing efforts, creates
the possibility of a more multilateral diplomatic
framework for any eventual ceasefire negotiation.
Lebanon's humanitarian situation deteriorated sharply on
Thursday. The Lebanese government reported
83,847 displaced persons registered in reception centers.
Lebanon's Prime Minister Nawaf Salaam ordered the prevention of
IRGC activity in Lebanon, saying anyone with ties to the
Revolutionary Guards should be arrested and returned to Iran.
Lebanon reinstated visa requirements for Iranian
citizens entering the country. The Lebanese army located and
seized rocket launchers in villages in southern Lebanon in
an effort to prevent further fire into northern Israel and
Navy. Berry, the speaker of Lebanon's
parliament and a long standing Hezbollah ally, described the
Israeli threat to evacuate a population from South of the
Lidani River as a catastrophe and warned of severe
humanitarian and security consequences.
The scale of regional displacement is now staggering.
In Lebanon alone, nearly 84,000 registered displaced people.
In Iran, millions of people in cities under bombardment with no
reliable Internet or mobile communications. 10s of thousands
of foreign nationals stranded across Gulf states unable to fly
home. 20,000 seafarers and 15,000 cruise ship passengers
stranded in the Persian Gulf. Afghan refugees at a United
States military camp outside Doha, watching missile
interceptions in the sky directly above their heads, with
no hardened shelter. The human scale of this conflict
extends far beyond the bombs and the missiles and the death
tolls. It encompasses 10s of millions
of ordinary people whose lives have been shattered by a war
that began with an 8 minute video on Truth Social one week
ago. Seven days ago, the world was
watching nuclear talks in Geneva.
Oman's foreign minister was declaring that peace was within
reach. Today, the Iranian Air Force is
gone. The Iranian Navy is at the
bottom of the Persian Gulf. The supreme leader is dead. 1045
Iranians are confirmed dead. 6 American service members are
dead. The Assembly of Experts is
meeting under bombardment to choose a supreme leader that
Trump says is unacceptable. Iran is threatening to strike
Damona, a cleric is calling for Trump's blood.
Kurdish forces are massing at Iran's northern border and NATO
members air defenses have fired on Iranian missiles.
China has sent a mediator. And the cost of this war is
climbing by $1 billion every single day.
Iran's missiles have dropped 90%, but Iran has not
surrendered. Its foreign minister says Iran
did not ask for a ceasefire last time, and it is not asking for
one now. Its intelligence operatives are
reaching out to the CIA in secret.
Its religious leaders are giving incendiary sermons in public.
And somewhere in Iran, in a building that may or may not
have been bombed today, ADA clerics are trying to choose a
new supreme leader for a country that is simultaneously being
bombed into rubble and fighting back with everything it is left.
That is episode 7 of Epic Fury, the US Iran war podcast.
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