Early in the morning on February 28, 2026, the United States initiated a historic operation dubbed Operation Epic Fury, a once-in-a-decade chance to end the half-century war waged by the Iranian regime against the American people. Operation Epic Fury delivers on a priority President Donald Trump has emphasized repeatedly — to protect the American people from the Iranian regime’s threats. Not only has Iran threatened and claimed thousands of American lives, but it continues to seek to harm to us.
Operating alongside Israel, whose own operation has been dubbed Operation Roaring Lion, Epic Fury’s achievements in the first several days have been breathtaking: the decimation of Iran’s missiles and military infrastructure, the elimination of the Supreme Leader and of several layers of the regime’s military leadership, and the obliteration of Iran’s navy, to name a few.
Although there is close coordination with Israel and shared operational objectives, the United States has its own clear goals and interests at stake. Previous U.S.-Israel operations such as Operation Midnight Hammer and the Twelve-Day War demonstrated that both countries can operate in parallel while still achieving their own military aims.
The White House has laid out clear objectives to guarantee that Iran can no longer pose a threat to the safety and security of the American people. These have manifested into the use of kinetic force on Iranian missile and drone manufacturing, storage, and launch platforms.
Any future Iranian leadership will be unable to hide behind a growing weapons arsenal to pursue nuclear weapons, arm terrorist proxies, attack U.S. shipping, or even infiltrate the United States’ own backyard. Already, 11 naval ships have been destroyed, decapitating their capacity to export terror around the world. Continued action will be maintained to prevent Iran from posing a direct threat to the United States and American citizens, supported by our allies and partners.
As events continue to unfold, Iran and its proxies will continue to find new ways of escalating. Hezbollah, the Iranian regime’s Lebanon-based proxy, officially entered the conflict in response to the elimination of Ali Khamenei, firing rockets toward Tel Aviv and Haifa. This was the first major attack since the November 2024 ceasefire and stirred a prompt response from Israel, which proceeded to return fire and eliminate Hezbollah intelligence chief Hussein Maklad.
Indeed, over the course of this week, Iran’s missiles and drones have landed in over a dozen countries in and beyond the region. The United Arab Emirates has taken more missiles than has Israel — a result of both geographic proximity and lethal intent. One of Saudi Arabia’s largest oil refineries was hit by an Iranian regime drone.
To protect its citizens, Israel and our other partners in the region will take whatever actions are necessary. Turkey, one of the largest militaries in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), has already intercepted an Iranian missile flying over its airspace. And Qatar has publicly decried the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), arresting a sleeper cell of its operatives, and taking numerous strikes of its own.
Israel has been uniquely targeted by Iran’s proxies for many years and has been keenly focused on the strategic threat it faces from Hezbollah in Lebanon. Although it has degraded much of its military infrastructure and removed most of its leadership over the last several years, it may take bigger actions in the country to eliminate not only Hezbollah’s threat but its overall presence. That is based on the lesson Israel learned on October 7: it cannot tolerate the presence of threats to its existence on its borders. And as a sovereign nation, it has the right to take whatever actions it deems necessary to protect its citizens.
It is not America’s job to manage Israel’s operations, as the Biden administration did. But neither does the administration have the luxury of neglecting the threats facing the American people. The United States operation to eliminate those threats from the Iranian regime will therefore likely continue until that objective is met, even if that is while other nations are taking actions — unilaterally and in unison — to defend their own people.
The cross-coordination between the United States and regional partners will remain important and necessary because the adversary’s threats are global and multifaceted. As successes accrue and shape new conditions on the ground, they could simultaneously create new realities for our regional partners, requiring them to respond to protect their citizens.
For the United States, our objective will remain the same, as it has been for the president since his descent on the golden escalator in 2015: that the Iranian regime can never again threaten the American people.
Benjamin Woolsey and Ethan Tan are Policy Analysts in American Security at the America First Policy Institute.
