The United States and Israel launched strikes against Iranian military infrastructure beginning on February 28, 2026, targeting missile sites, command centers, and senior leadership in what the White House has branded Operation Epic Fury. Iranian state media reported that the campaign killed Iran’s Supreme Leader, a claim that has not been independently verified. Iran’s retaliatory missile fire was estimated to have caused about $800 million in damage to U.S.-used bases across the Middle East within the first two weeks, according to a BBC-cited assessment. As the conflict enters its third week, diplomatic channels have fractured, global oil markets face disruption from a threatened closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and a friendly-fire incident involving Kuwaiti forces has exposed the operational risks of a widening war.
February 28 Strike Wave and Initial Targets
The first joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran began on February 28, with Israel’s military confirming it had conducted the opening salvo. The targets were Iran’s missile infrastructure and conventional military assets, a direct effort to degrade Tehran’s ability to strike Israel or threaten U.S. forces in the region. The campaign also reached beyond military hardware. According to analysis by the Council on Foreign Relations, large-scale strikes targeted Iranian military assets and the Islamic Republic’s top leadership; the tracker references reports that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed.
That claim, however, requires careful handling. The report of Khamenei’s death originated with Iranian state outlets, and public accounts have varied on whether and how it has been confirmed by the parties to the conflict. The initial strike wave reportedly hit military, government, and intelligence sites, but precise casualty figures for Iranian personnel remain absent from official U.S. government documents. This gap matters: without confirmed battle damage assessments, claims about the campaign’s effectiveness rest on incomplete evidence and politically interested narratives from all sides.
Open-source assessments suggest the strikes were geographically broad, with targets across Iran including missile depots, radar installations, and bases linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. By hitting both fixed launch sites and command-and-control facilities, U.S. and Israeli planners sought to blunt Iran’s ability to coordinate salvos at range. Yet Iran’s subsequent response demonstrated that significant parts of its missile force and decision-making apparatus remained intact.
Iran’s Retaliation and the $800 Million Price Tag
Tehran’s response was swift and costly. Iranian missile strikes on military bases used by the U.S. across the Middle East caused approximately $800 million (£600 million) in damage during the first two weeks of fighting, according to the BBC. The strikes damaged infrastructure and facilities, forcing commanders to disperse assets and relocate some operations farther from Iranian launch arcs.
The retaliatory strikes also reached Israeli territory. Iranian missiles were reported to have struck in the vicinity of sensitive sites in Israel, raising fears about the potential for escalation. The symbolism was clear: Iran wanted to show it could threaten critical strategic sites even under intense bombardment. While there were no confirmed reports of radioactive leaks or structural damage, the episode underscored how quickly the confrontation could escalate.
Iran coupled its missile salvos with threats to choke off maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for roughly a fifth of global oil shipments. On March 21, U.S. President Donald Trump responded by issuing Iran a 48-hour deadline to reopen the waterway, tying the military campaign directly to global energy security. If Tehran refuses to comply, the threat of further escalation hangs over already volatile oil markets, with insurers raising premiums and some shippers rerouting tankers around the Cape of Good Hope at far higher cost.
Friendly Fire Over Kuwait
The fog of war produced its own casualties on the coalition side. Kuwait mistakenly shot down three American F-15 jets during Iranian attacks, a friendly-fire incident confirmed by U.S. Central Command. According to the initial account, Kuwaiti air defenses, already on high alert as Iranian missiles streaked toward U.S.-linked facilities, misidentified the American fighters as hostile aircraft. The episode exposed the danger of operating in congested airspace where multiple nations are firing simultaneously at incoming missiles while coalition aircraft conduct offensive sorties.
This incident carries strategic weight beyond the immediate loss of aircraft. It raises questions about coordination protocols between the U.S. military and Gulf state partners who are not formal belligerents but host American forces and rely heavily on U.S. security guarantees. If allied air defenses cannot reliably distinguish friendly from hostile aircraft during high-tempo operations, the risk of additional losses grows with every new wave of Iranian retaliation. CENTCOM’s public acknowledgment of the shootdown suggests the Pentagon wants to get ahead of any narrative that the coalition is fracturing under pressure, but the damage to trust between Washington and Kuwait City may prove harder to repair than the jets themselves.
For Kuwait, the incident is politically sensitive at home, where lawmakers have long debated the risks of deep military cooperation with Washington. For the U.S., it highlights a structural vulnerability: any prolonged air campaign that depends on regional basing rights must also invest in shared identification systems, training, and real-time data links to prevent partners from inadvertently targeting American assets.
Washington’s Official Justification
The White House framed the operation in maximalist terms. A document published under the title “Operation Epic Fury: Decisive American Power to Crush Iran’s Terror Regime” laid out the administration’s stated objectives and public justification for the strikes, including attributable quotes from the press secretary. The messaging casts Iran as the central driver of regional instability and portrays the campaign as a necessary effort to dismantle terrorist networks, protect U.S. personnel, and restore deterrence after a series of Iranian-backed attacks.
What the official narrative omits is as telling as what it includes. Troop deployment numbers for U.S. forces involved in the operation are not detailed in primary government resources, leaving analysts to infer the scale of the buildup from ship movements and air traffic. Long-term impacts on Iran’s nuclear program, the issue that has driven two decades of sanctions and diplomacy, remain largely unaddressed in White House statements. The administration has focused its public case on the destruction of conventional military targets and leadership decapitation, sidestepping the harder question of whether these strikes bring Iran’s nuclear ambitions closer to or further from a negotiated limit.
Nor has Washington clearly articulated an endgame. Officials speak of “restoring deterrence” and “degrading capabilities,” but offer few benchmarks for success or criteria for winding down operations. That ambiguity risks mission creep, especially if Iranian proxies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, or Yemen expand their own attacks in response. With each new exchange of fire, the political cost of de-escalation may rise for leaders on all sides, even as the humanitarian and economic toll mounts.
Escalation Risks and Regional Fallout
As Operation Epic Fury moves into its third week, the strategic picture is unsettled. Iran has demonstrated that it can absorb heavy blows and still launch damaging missile barrages. The U.S. and Israel have shown they are willing to strike at the heart of Iran’s leadership and military infrastructure. Gulf partners are both indispensable and vulnerable, as the Kuwaiti friendly-fire incident underscored. Meanwhile, the Strait of Hormuz remains a potential flashpoint whose closure could send energy prices soaring and tip fragile economies toward recession.
Diplomatic off-ramps are narrowing. With Iran’s leadership shaken, and Washington publicly committed to a maximalist framing of the conflict, compromise may be harder to sell domestically in either capital. Yet without some form of negotiated de-escalation, the region faces the prospect of a grinding confrontation that tests missile defenses, strains alliances, and leaves civilians across the Middle East living under the shadow of the next siren.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
