ELEVEN days into the strikes inflicted upon Iran, there is one conspicuous result: It is not going according to plan.
“Operation Epic Fury”, as it is called, was geared to plunge the Islamic Republic into profound political instability.
It was a “capitation strike” – the targeted elimination of an adversary’s top leadership to paralyse its command structure and trigger political collapse.
The blitzkrieg of missiles pounded Teheran and other other key cities. During the first salvo, a girls’ primary school in Minab, in Iran’s Hormozgan province, was struck, killing at least 165 schoolgirls and several teachers.
Absurdly, the attacks came just as negotiators from the United States and Iran made “substantial progress” towards an agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear programme.
It was another nasty episode of deja vu for Iran.
The same thing happened in mid-2025 when Israel and the United States attacked the Islamic republic while negotiations were still going on, resulting in a 12-day conflict.
Israel launched attacks on June 13, sparking a conflict with reciprocal airstrikes, during which several top Iranian military leaders and nuclear scientists were killed.
The bombings of underground facilities set back Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme, but didn’t completely destroy the sites or its nuclear capabilities.
US president Donald Trump had claimed that the strikes were a “spectacular military success”, boasting that Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities had been “obliterated”, before announcing that Iran and Israel had agreed to a “complete and total” ceasefire.
But eight months into the truce and a new round of negotiations, the US narrative changed from “obliterated” to “close to assembling a nuclear bomb”.
Trump alleged that Iran was pursuing weapons-grade capabilities – claims not supported by intelligence reports even from the United States.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran was enriching uranium, but its activities did not indicate any threat of creating nuclear weapons.
What was the main reason for Trump’s decision to strike Iran this time? The short answer: He was goaded by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
As aptly described on March 3 by The New Republic, an American magazine focused on domestic politics and news, it did not erase its non-existent nuclear programme, respond to a nonsensical threat to American elections, or to implement a poorly conceived regime change.
“We did it because Israel asked us to,” the magazine stated.
The timing of the strikes was also determined by intelligence that enabled the assassination of Ali Khamenei.
The decision was probably made under the notion that Iran had been weakened by protests and a crackdown that left thousands dead. If Trump had expected Iran’s complete surrender, it was a huge misjudgment.
A classified report by the US National Intelligence Council (NIC), completed a week before the strikes, concluded that a large-scale military campaign against Iran was unlikely to overthrow its regime.
NIC comprises veteran analysts from the United States’ 18 intelligence agencies.
The report predicted that Iran’s clerical and military set-up would likely maintain control, adding that even if its supreme leader was killed, succession procedures involving the Assembly of Experts and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) would ensure continuity of power.
It also doubted that Iran’s fragmented opposition could quickly take control of the country.
Did Trump get the memo? It looks like he did but decided to start the war anyway after being egged on by Israel.
The cost of the decision has been colossal. As The New York Times reported on Sunday, the United States has already spent US$6bil, but it remains unclear what a victory in this conflict might look like.
“Approximately US$4bil of the United States’ first-week war costs were spent on ammunition, mainly on interceptors to shoot down Iranian missiles”, it said, noting that Israeli and American forces struck about 4,000 targets in Iran, including ballistic missile positions, military headquarters and naval facilities.
But it noted that despite the large-scale aerial campaign, Teheran retained a significant portion of its military potential.
The IRGC, armed with hypersonic missiles and Shahed drones, have claimed to have destroyed 10 advanced US radars costing US$5bil, and three Terminal High Altitude Area Defence batteries, which make up about 30% of the US’ global supply.
The destruction of these radars in Israel and the United States’ allies in the Gulf Cooperation Council states, hosting key US military bases, could lead to a critical shift in the regional military and political balance.
The IRGC also claimed on Monday that the United States’ ammunition reserves were beginning to run out, and it was now seeking a way to exit the conflict – which is costing the United States about US$1.43bil a day with the projected amount to rise to US$43bil for 30 days, US$86bil for 60 days and US$129bil for 90 days – and save face.
According to the US Central Command, around 50,000 troops and numerous military assets are now deployed in the region, contributing to the high expenses.
The economic cost includes skyrocketing oil prices, as infrastructure critical to the production and transportation of oil and gas worldwide are being affected.
Despite Trump’s bluster and bravado, his administration appears to be clueless over how the conflict is going to end. There is confusion in the ranks and contradictory statements by the top two persons running it.
“I think the war is very complete, pretty much. They have no navy, no communications, they’ve got no Air Force,” Trump told CBS on Monday, adding that the United States was “very far” ahead of the initial four to five-week time frame.
But his Department of Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth shared a post on X declaring, “We have only just begun.”
Both can’t be right.
Media consultant M. Veera Pandiyan likes this quote by Bertrand Russell: “War does not determine who is right – only who is left.”
The views expressed here are the writer’s own.
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