The US-Israel attacks on Iran, codenamed ‘Operation Epic Fury’, carries the weight of its words. Far from being a strategic concept, ‘Fury’ is an emotion — raw, violent, born of frustration and vengeance. Add the word ‘Epic’ and the meaning deepens to be monumental, all-consuming, and destructive.
In a nutshell, ‘Operation Epic Fury’ is a name that simply promises destruction on a grand scale.
Compared to the names the United States gave to its previous military adventures in the Middle East and elsewhere, it does not pretend to liberate, rebuild, or protect.
The US operation in Afghanistan in 2001 was called ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’, after the original name, ‘Operation Infinite Justice’, was quietly dropped after Muslim scholars warned it sounded blasphemous. The Iraq 2003 war was called ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’. Liberation served as a sophisticated alibi for invasion. The 2011 Libya operation was named ‘Operation Odyssey Dawn’, as if to serve some poetic justice.
Whatever the real motivations, geopolitical, economic, or strategic, behind these previous operations, the real intent was dressed in the language of goodness and morality.
‘Operation Epic Fury’ does the world a service. It drops the pretence entirely. True to its name, there’s no moral goal, no benevolence, no vision, and no strategy. It is rage in its purest and unadulterated form, a rage that propels the military machinery of the world’s biggest power, a rage that seems guided by whims.
Neither was there a justifiable provocation when diplomatic engagement with Iran was going on, nor was there an analysis of the possible outcomes. The architects of this war did not plan anything because they didn’t do their homework at all, or not well enough.
Probably, they see Iran as just another extension of the Middle East or a part of it. They can neither grasp its geography, nor its history or its cultural underpinnings.
Unlike the flat deserts of Iraq or the open terrain of Libya, Iran is a country of mountains, plateaus and dense urban centres. Its topography has repelled invaders for centuries — from Alexander the Great to the Ottoman Empire. Though this does not provide any relief from air strikes, any ground campaign can easily neutralise technological superiority.
Unlike the many Gulf countries, Iran is not a post-World War II construct. It is one of the world’s oldest continuous civilisations, with a recorded history spanning more than 3,000 years. Persian identity, woven into the warp and weft of its language, culture, and sense of nationhood, runs deep. It brings divisive groups within closer and united in the face of external challenges.
Consider, for instance, the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, forced on the region by the US. The war claimed up to one million Iranian lives but didn’t break the state. Instead, it strengthened national cohesion.
For decades, many within Iran were battling the repressive Khamenei government, as demonstrated by the mass protests in January. They revealed that real fractures between the state and significant parts of Iranian society, particularly the younger generation, were deepening. But, in Iran, where cultural and historic richness of the land nourishes a potently strong national pride, internal differences do not translate to welcoming a foreign invader.
For most Iranians battling internal repression, a foreign aggressor is a far greater evil.
Iran has also had a different power structure. It is not ruled by a single-family dynasty or a personality cult dependent on one man. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei commanded religious authority across Shia Muslims well beyond Iran’s borders, even among the broader Muslim communities. He was like a cult figure indeed. Yet, the Iranian state has a more diffuse and distributed power structure, involving the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, elected institutions, clerical councils, and competing factions.
Annihilating the octogenarian and ailing cult figure does not collapse it.
Iran’s military might is not something that can be destroyed like a house of cards. Its ballistic missile programme is the largest in the Middle East. Besides, it operates an extensive network of proxies across the region in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Gaza.
The planners of the present attack were perhaps oblivious of how Iran had tested its military capability in 2020 when the United States assassinated General Qasem Soleimani, Khamenei’s right-hand man, to avenge the death. It demonstrated the ability to strike US military bases directly, injuring 110 US personnel in Iraq.
They are probably also blind to how China could, or already is, backing Iran. Iran also holds strategic advantage over the world’s most important oil transit route via the Strait of Hormuz – something that significantly shapes the calculus which the American and Israeli planners of this war have not calculated.
As many strategists have pointed out, the United States has more to lose in this region than it acknowledges. Dozens of military bases across the Gulf, Jordan, and Iraq sit within range of Iranian missiles and proxy forces. The energy infrastructure, including the Strait of Hormuz, through which approximately 20% of the world’s oil passes, is at immense risk and threatens global supplies.
What then did the US readily jumped into a war, especially at a time when diplomatic channels with Iran were still open and a diplomatic engagement was being pursued.
There was no verified Iranian attack or threat to US forces, territory or infrastructure. The stated US rationale, so far, has been changing almost daily. One was that it was a preemptive strike based on intelligence assessments. That rings like the hollow echoes of the patently false ‘weapons-of-mass-destruction’ justification for the 2003 Iraq invasion.
President Donald Trump’s reported assertion that he had a “very strong feeling” about an imminent Iranian threat does not constitute a legal or moral basis for war. Under international law, preemptive war requires clear evidence of an imminent attack. A feeling cannot be pedalled as evidence. That’s equivalent to presenting thought crime as policy.
It was Israel that struck first. And Israel’s conduct over the preceding year and half has already drawn international condemnation. The International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel’s actions in Gaza were genocidal and indicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes. Israel was already under international legal scrutiny.
The other justification being out forth is ‘regime change’ but there is no successor, and if Trump is to be believed, the probable successors are “all dead”. So did a superpower jump into a war without a ‘Plan B’?
US Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, even offered a timeline of ‘eight weeks’ for the war, though there is not an iota of clue as to how this calculation was made when neither the triggers, nor the war strategy is known.
Such clumsiness, horrifyingly, betrays that there is also no exit plan. America’s military capacity is not unlimited, and there are reports about the US having exhausted its ammunition in repeated wars; it is under strain.
‘Operation Epic Fury’ is not a war with a vision, strategy, or goal. It is not even a war with a clear adversary that can be defeated and replaced. It is, as the name suggests, an unleashing of monumental, directionless rage against one of the world’s oldest nations.
There is a time-tested old truth about fury. It doesn’t burn only what it is aimed at. It can burn everything around.
The consequences of this strike are unlikely to be contained. By attacking Khamenei, and by starting an unprovoked war, the US-Israel have touched Iran’s raw nerve. If the US were to want this to end, Iran is less likely to relent easily. It is already hitting the US military and economic installations in a bid to strangle the country, and with that it, much of the world.
Closer home, a US submarine sinking an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean, while raising serious questions about Indian vulnerability, even complicity, demonstrates how far the battlefield has moved. In chaotic times like these, the nuclear risk is becoming more real.
The fire that has been lit will not stay in Iran. It will spread through the region and beyond, through global markets. The fury will engulf everything, even its creator.
The only question is how much of the world burns with it before it finds an escape route.
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