US, Ecuador Launch Joint Military Operations Against Terrorist Organizations
US Southern Command on Tuesday stated that the US military had conducted a joint operation with Ecuadorian forces against “designated terrorist organizations” in Ecuador, as the Trump administration continues to fight narco-terrorism.
“We commend the men and women of the Ecuadorian armed forces for their unwavering commitment to this fight, demonstrating courage and resolve through continued actions against narco-terrorists in their country,” Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Francis L. Donovan, commander of U.S. Southern Command, said in a post on X.
The announcement comes after Donovan visited Ecuador on March 1 for a two-day visit, where he met President Daniel Noboa and senior Ecuadorian defense officials in Quito. They discussed security cooperation and US support of Ecuador’s efforts to combat narco-terrorism.
A Pentagon spox told the Epoch Times that the joint effort does not entail US troops in combat.
“Ecuador is one of the United States’ strongest partners in disrupting and dismantling Designated Terrorist Organizations in the region,” Donnovan said on Tuesday. “The Ecuadorian people have witnessed firsthand the terror, violence, and corruption that these narco-terrorists inflict on communities across the region.”
Noboa announced on Monday that Ecuador had entered a new phase in its fight against narcoterrorism and illegal mining.
“In the month of March, we will conduct joint operations with our regional allies, including the United States,” he said on X. “The security of Ecuadorians is our priority, and we will fight to achieve peace in every corner of the country.”
As the Epoch Times notes further, the operations come amid increased U.S. involvement in the region, including the capture of former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in January.
The Trump administration in September 2025 classified two Ecuadorian cartels, Los Choneros and Los Lobos, as foreign terrorist organizations.
“Los Choneros and Los Lobos have attacked and threatened public officials and their families, security personnel, judges, prosecutors, and journalists in Ecuador,” the U.S. State Department said in a September 2025 statement.
On Feb. 2, the U.S. Coast Guard detained three suspected narco-terrorists northwest of Ecuador during Operation Pacific Viper, an ongoing U.S. Coast Guard-led campaign launched in early August 2025, to undermine drug trafficking in the Eastern Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.
In March 2025, Noboa called for U.S. special forces, with assistance from Brazil and Europe, to dismantle the international narco-terrorist organizations, which have swelled to thousands of armed members.
“We need to have more soldiers to fight this war,” Noboa told the BBC at the time. “Seventy percent of the world’s cocaine exits via Ecuador. We need the help of international forces.”
US, Ecuador Launch Joint Military Operations Against Terrorist Organizations
US Southern Command on Tuesday stated that the US military had conducted a joint operation with Ecuadorian forces against “designated terrorist organizations” in Ecuador, as the Trump administration continues to fight narco-terrorism.
“We commend the men and women of the Ecuadorian armed forces for their unwavering commitment to this fight, demonstrating courage and resolve through continued actions against narco-terrorists in their country,” Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Francis L. Donovan, commander of U.S. Southern Command, said in a post on X.
The announcement comes after Donovan visited Ecuador on March 1 for a two-day visit, where he met President Daniel Noboa and senior Ecuadorian defense officials in Quito. They discussed security cooperation and US support of Ecuador’s efforts to combat narco-terrorism.
A Pentagon spox told the Epoch Times that the joint effort does not entail US troops in combat.
“Ecuador is one of the United States’ strongest partners in disrupting and dismantling Designated Terrorist Organizations in the region,” Donnovan said on Tuesday. “The Ecuadorian people have witnessed firsthand the terror, violence, and corruption that these narco-terrorists inflict on communities across the region.”
Noboa announced on Monday that Ecuador had entered a new phase in its fight against narcoterrorism and illegal mining.
“In the month of March, we will conduct joint operations with our regional allies, including the United States,” he said on X. “The security of Ecuadorians is our priority, and we will fight to achieve peace in every corner of the country.”
As the Epoch Times notes further, the operations come amid increased U.S. involvement in the region, including the capture of former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in January.
The Trump administration in September 2025 classified two Ecuadorian cartels, Los Choneros and Los Lobos, as foreign terrorist organizations.
“Los Choneros and Los Lobos have attacked and threatened public officials and their families, security personnel, judges, prosecutors, and journalists in Ecuador,” the U.S. State Department said in a September 2025 statement.
On Feb. 2, the U.S. Coast Guard detained three suspected narco-terrorists northwest of Ecuador during Operation Pacific Viper, an ongoing U.S. Coast Guard-led campaign launched in early August 2025, to undermine drug trafficking in the Eastern Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.
In March 2025, Noboa called for U.S. special forces, with assistance from Brazil and Europe, to dismantle the international narco-terrorist organizations, which have swelled to thousands of armed members.
“We need to have more soldiers to fight this war,” Noboa told the BBC at the time. “Seventy percent of the world’s cocaine exits via Ecuador. We need the help of international forces.”
Pakistan could set into motion a sequence of events that restores its role as the US’ top regional ally, returns US troops to Afghanistan’s Bagram Airbase if they later team up against the Taliban, and therefore build a new regional order at the geostrategic crossroads of South and Central Asia.
Saudi Arabia has been attacked multiple times by Iran on the pretext that the US military infrastructure on its territory has been used to some extent in the US campaign against Iran, which led to what can be described as the Third Gulf War, in spite of the Saudi-Pakistani Mutual Defense Pact from last September. Iran clearly wasn’t deterred, but Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar still reminded Iran about it in what seems to either be another attempt to deter an escalation or intimate impending involvement in the war.
In his words, “We have a defence pact with Saudi Arabia. I conveyed to the Iranian side about our defence pact, to which he asked me to ensure that KSA’s land was not used. Then I had shuttle communication, as a result of which, as you can compare, the least attacks from Iran are to Saudi Arabia and Oman.” Objectively speaking, it reflects poorly on Pakistan that Iran ignored Dar’s reminder and still attacked Saudi Arabia, hence why he coped that “the least attacks from Iran are to Saudi Arabia”.
Mutual defense pacts are supposed to deter attacks, not simply reduce the number and intensity thereof, which in any case didn’t even happen like Dar claimed since Iran continues to attack Saudi Arabia with gusto. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are now thrown into the dilemma of either activating their mutual defense pact to significantly escalate the conflict through their joint involvement therein, likely coordinated with their shared US ally if that happens, or tacitly admit that it’s militarily impotent.
The crushing reputational costs of failing to activate their previously hyped-up mutual defense pact place additional pressure upon their policymakers to do so, even if the decision is delayed till after the US and Israel destroy more of Iran’s air defenses and missile launchers to reduce the risks to them. Saudi Arabia hosts US bases and its economy is extremely vulnerable to large-scale disruptions from low-cost drone strikes alone, while Pakistan is a “Major Non-NATO Ally” with very close ties to Trump 2.0.
The aforesaid factors greatly raise the chances of them activating their mutual defense pact. In that case, Saudi Arabia might also lead some of the smaller Gulf Kingdoms that have also been attacked by Iran into battle against it as part of an even larger US-coordinated escalation, which could occur in parallel with Pakistani strikes and/or even limited ground ops on the anti-terrorist pretext of targeting Baloch separatists. Pakistan has three reasons to do this apart from the earlier-mentioned reputational one.
Therefore, by activating its mutual defense pact with Saudi Arabia after Iran’s attacks against its ally, Pakistan can set into motion a sequence of events for building a new regional order with the US at the geostrategic crossroads of South and Central Asia. This outcome could also see them aid their shared Turkish ally’s challenge to Russia in the latter region along its vulnerable southern periphery. These calculations are compelling enough that Pakistan’s involvement in the Third Gulf War can’t be ruled out.
The men in Zhongnanhai do not rattle easily. Decades of patient statecraft, a foreign policy built on studied ambiguity, and an economy engineered to absorb external shocks have granted Beijing’s leadership a remarkable tolerance for turbulence. Operation Epic Fury, the American-Israeli air campaign now dismantling Iran’s military architecture, has produced something unusual in the corridors of Chinese power: visible confusion.
Xi Jinping is scrambling. The word is not used lightly. For a leader who has built his image on strategic composure and long-horizon thinking, the current moment is acutely dangerous. Not because China faces a direct military threat, but because every available response to the crisis in the Persian Gulf leads Beijing into a trap of its own contradictions.
Three Reasons Operation Epic Fury Is Catastrophic for Xi
First, the Iranian counterweight is gone. In 2021, Xi told senior Party officials that “the East is rising and the West is declining,” that America was “the biggest source of chaos in the present-day world,” and that China was entering a period of strategic opportunity. Iran was central to that thesis. Beijing needed a defiant Tehran to keep Washington pinned down in the Gulf, to sustain a sanctions-proof energy corridor, and above all, to stand as living evidence that American power had hard limits. The entire architecture of CCP’s dogma of inevitability, which rested on Iran’s ability to endure, and Epic Fury removed the foundation in a single afternoon.
Khamenei was the man who made the thesis feel real. Beijing’s relationship with the Islamic Republic was never really ideological, but Khamenei’s survival was the single most useful fact in Chinese foreign policy. Here was a man Washington had threatened, sanctioned, plotted against, and encircled for over four decades, and he was still giving Friday sermons. Xi personally signed the comprehensive strategic partnership with Khamenei’s government. He personally authorized the weapons transfers. And he personally wielded the Security Council veto. None of it kept Khamenei alive for one additional hour once Washington decided he was finished.
Second, Xi’s own story is collapsing from the inside. The story he told 1.4 billion people, that America is a declining power incapable of decisive force projection, does not match what happened in seventy-two hours over Tehran. State media can suppress the footage and the censors can scrub Weibo, but the ones who matter most, the military planners, the foreign policy professionals, the provincial officials who read between the lines for a living, know what they saw. And if the story is wrong about Iran, the unavoidable next question is whether it was ever right about anything else.
Third, the energy math turns against Beijing. China bought 1.38 million barrels per day of Iranian oil last year and takes over 80% of everything Iran ships. Half of China’s total oil imports pass through the Strait of Hormuz. With Ayatollah Khamenei now dead and Iran’s military leadership weakened, the Gulf’s strategic balance shifts decisively toward Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, whose energy ties with the United States are strengthening. China’s old selling point was very simple and transactional: we buy your oil and never mention human rights. That pitch loses its utility when Gulf producers already feel protected by an American security guarantee that just proved, on live television, that it works.
The Messaging Trap
Xi’s communications problem may be worse than his strategic one, because there is no good answer. If Beijing endorses the strikes, it loses the “Global South.” If Beijing condemns the strikes, it attaches Chinese prestige to a dead man’s regime, and risks provoking a Trump administration that has just demonstrated, through the act itself, that it does not bluff.
So Beijing chose the remaining option: hide behind the United Nations. Mao Ning called the killing “a grave violation of sovereignty.” The language sounds forceful, but the Belt and Road countries are watching, and what they see so far is a confused superpower reading from a script while American carriers do the actual deciding.
Every Iranian Move Is a Chinese Loss
The truly vicious part of Beijing’s situation is that Iran’s entire playbook for retaliation was designed to punish Washington, but the geography and economics of each weapon mean the damage lands on China instead. Iranian missiles aimed at Gulf states threaten the very oil infrastructure and port facilities that Chinese companies have spent billions investing in across the region.
The Strait of Hormuz is worse. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard announced within hours that no ship would pass through the channel, a threat designed as leverage against the West, except that the United States has a shale industry and a crisis-proof strategic petroleum reserve. In fact, according to Kayrros, as of March 31, 2025, China had only filled 56% percent of its above-ground strategic and commercial storage facilities.
Which means that nearly 45% of China’s own oil imports now sit/would sit hostage to a blockade that was never meant to hurt Beijing. The Houthis have resumed attacks on Red Sea shipping, every flare-up in Iraq threatens oil concessions that Chinese companies spent billions building, and the sum of Iran’s resistance amounts to a systematic disruption of Chinese commercial interests across every waterway and energy corridor Beijing depends on, executed in Khamenei’s name, with no regard for who actually pays the price.
Counting Moves
The clearest sign of Beijing’s disorientation is the absence of action: no emergency summits, no diplomatic maneuvers, no military repositioning, even as a Chinese citizen was killed in crossfire in Tehran and over 300 nationals were evacuated. The sum total of Beijing’s response to the largest American military operation in a generation remains a press conference.
Xi bet a decade of foreign policy on Khamenei’s ability to withstand American pressure, and the bet did not pay off. Operation Epic Fury was designed to break the Islamic Republic, but it may also have exposed the uncomfortable truth that Chinese influence in the Middle East was only as durable as the assumption that no one would ever call it into question, and in Zhongnanhai, they know it.
A total of 501 Afghan nationals are currently suing the German government after previously granted commitments to admit them into the country were withdrawn.
The cases are directed against Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), which revoked earlier pledges by the previous federal government to allow the individuals to resettle in Germany. The total number of legal cases was revealed following a parliamentary inquiry by the Left Party.
Despite the growing number of legal challenges, the Federal Ministry of the Interior has stated that a change in policy is “not intended,” Welt reported.
Most of the plaintiffs are currently in Pakistan, where authorities have called on Afghan nationals without long-term status to leave the country immediately. Many of those affected had previously received assurances of admission under resettlement programs introduced following the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021.
The legal action is being backed by left-wing NGOs as well as politicians from The Left. Clara Bünger, the party’s asylum spokesperson, described it as “shameful” that Afghans must sue to enforce what she said were firm pledges made by Berlin, and demanded that all original commitments be implemented without delay.
Their situation has deteriorated significantly in recent months. In July 2025, Pakistan began detaining Afghan nationals who had been earmarked for relocation to Germany but remained stuck in Islamabad after German authorities failed to complete their cases within the agreed timeframes. Around 2,500 Afghans were left in legal limbo as German background checks and visa procedures dragged on far beyond the three-month validity of Pakistani visas — often taking up to eight months.
A total of 501 Afghan nationals are currently suing the German government after previously granted commitments to admit them into the country were withdrawn.
The cases are directed against Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), which revoked earlier pledges by the previous federal government to allow the individuals to resettle in Germany. The total number of legal cases was revealed following a parliamentary inquiry by the Left Party.
Despite the growing number of legal challenges, the Federal Ministry of the Interior has stated that a change in policy is “not intended,” Welt reported.
Most of the plaintiffs are currently in Pakistan, where authorities have called on Afghan nationals without long-term status to leave the country immediately. Many of those affected had previously received assurances of admission under resettlement programs introduced following the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021.
The legal action is being backed by left-wing NGOs as well as politicians from The Left. Clara Bünger, the party’s asylum spokesperson, described it as “shameful” that Afghans must sue to enforce what she said were firm pledges made by Berlin, and demanded that all original commitments be implemented without delay.
Their situation has deteriorated significantly in recent months. In July 2025, Pakistan began detaining Afghan nationals who had been earmarked for relocation to Germany but remained stuck in Islamabad after German authorities failed to complete their cases within the agreed timeframes. Around 2,500 Afghans were left in legal limbo as German background checks and visa procedures dragged on far beyond the three-month validity of Pakistani visas — often taking up to eight months.
Islamabad had repeatedly warned Berlin that it could no longer tolerate the presence of thousands of Afghans with expired documents awaiting onward travel. With no resolution forthcoming, Pakistani authorities began arresting those whose status had lapsed and initiated deportation proceedings.
Alternative for Germany (AfD) co-leader Alice Weidel praised Islamabad last year for doing what the German government wouldn’t. “Pakistan is deporting Afghans to their homeland, whom the conservative coalition government wanted to bring to Germany, thus thwarting these plans. A good thing! The German government must finally end the voluntary admission of Afghans,” she said.
The vetting procedures had already been exposed as deeply flawed. Last year, Bild reported that only one in eight Afghans who entered Germany through special protection programs had been fully vetted by security authorities beforehand. More than 31,000 Afghans, including family members, were said to have arrived without complete background checks.
Berlin has insisted that those flown in were primarily former local staff who had supported the German military during its deployment in Afghanistan. However, reports indicated that only a small proportion of passengers on recent charter flights were former employees of the Bundeswehr or their close relatives.
Security concerns were also raised by the German Police Union, which repeatedly called for Afghan relocation flights from Pakistan to be suspended, citing identity verification problems and potential risks. The union last year urged then-Chancellor Olaf Scholz to halt the program altogether.
In January of this year, it emerged that the federal government had attempted to reduce the backlog by offering financial compensation to Afghans willing to relinquish their resettlement pledges and drop litigation proceedings. According to a report cited by Die Zeit, around 700 individuals were contacted and offered several thousand euros to permanently withdraw from the admission schemes. By the end of the year, only 167 had accepted, while 357 rejected the proposal outright, leaving the majority still awaiting a decision on their future.
In “Historic Day For Nuclear Industry”, Novel Technology Reactor Gets First Federal Permit In A Decade To Start Building
In a move that’s got America’s energy bureaucrats finally moving at something approaching market speed, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has handed TerraPower – the Bill Gates-backed outfit pushing the Natrium advanced reactor – the first commercial nuclear construction permit issued in nearly a decade.
After years of regulatory theater and the usual alphabet-soup delays, the NRC unanimously approved the permit on March 4, 2026, for the Kemmerer Power Station Unit 1 in southwestern Wyoming. Construction on the actual reactor can now commence, with TerraPower signaling work will kick off “in the coming weeks.”
When actual construction of the reactor breaks ground, the US will finally appear on this chart of countries which currently have nuclear reactors under construction, where China is at 38, Russia and India at 6… and the US is below Iran and Pakistan with 0.
For once, this isn’t just another ribbon-cutting for legacy light-water tech that’s been choking on paperwork since the Carter administration. The Natrium is a sodium-cooled fast reactor — pool-type design, paired with a molten-salt energy storage system that lets it ramp output like a gas peaker plant while running baseload clean. The reactor uses High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU) fuel, which as we explained in our nuclear primer for investors, is enriched to around 15-20% U-235, and allows for smaller, more efficient reactor cores. Reactor capacity clocks in at 345 MWe, with the storage boost potentially pushing it higher for grid flexibility.
It’s the kind of innovation that actually addresses intermittency complaints from the wind-and-solar crowd without pretending batteries the size of small cities are economically sane.
In a shocking reversal to its standard operating procedure (and we use the term loosely, since US nuclear regulators haven’t really done anything in decades), the NRC’s staff reviewed the application (filed back in March 2024) in just 18 months — a blistering pace compared to the initial 27-month estimate. Translation: even the regulators are now feeling the heat from exploding AI/data-center demand and the obvious reality that coal retirements + renewables alone won’t keep the lights on.
This marks the first approval for a non-light-water commercial reactor in over 40 years. Historic? You bet. Overdue? Even more so.
TerraPower CEO Chris Levesque didn’t mince words: “Today is a historic day for the United States’ nuclear industry.” The company has already been moving dirt on non-nuclear portions since 2024 (thanks to earlier exemptions and state permits from Wyoming’s Industrial Siting Council in 2025), including the “energy island” components. Full commercial operation targets 2030, with costs estimated up to $4 billion for this demo plant — backed by DOE’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program cost-share (up to $2 billion federal, matched by TerraPower and partners).
And the momentum isn’t stopping at one unit. TerraPower inked a massive deal with Meta earlier this year for up to eight Natrium plants, potentially delivering gigawatts of firm, carbon-free power to feed the AI beast. Gates, ever the optimist on nuclear, has long positioned this as the scalable path forward — and with tech giants scrambling for reliable baseload to avoid blackouts or diesel generators at data centers, the economics are starting to look less speculative.
Critics will no doubt whine about sodium’s reactivity (fire risks, anyone?), the first-of-a-kind premiums, or whatever regulatory bogeyman they can dredge up. But let’s be real: the old paradigm delivered Vogtle-style overruns and decade-long builds. Advanced designs like Natrium promise modular construction, passive safety features, and actual cost/time discipline – exactly what the grid needs as electrification ramps and fossil plants retire. Small and mobile modular reactors like those built by Oklo and Nano Nuclear will be even more important for powering up the “behind the meter” data center revolution which at least check was short about 100 Gigawatts in the coming years .
While the legacy nuclear lobby clings to 1970s tech and endless EIS reruns, TerraPower is proving that American innovation – backed by private capital and a (finally) cooperative regulator – can deliver. The Wyoming project isn’t just replacing a retiring coal plant; it’s a blueprint for weaning the grid off intermittent fantasies and toward dispatchable, high-density power that doesn’t bankrupt ratepayers.
Nuclear’s back, baby. And this time, it’s not waiting for permission slips from the 20th century. And as the atoms are about to start splitting in Kemmerer, the energy establishment is feeling the ground shake.
The Pentagon had been choreographing a prospective massive attack on Iran since 1980, but it wasn’t until December 2025 that U.S. President Donald Trump, after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington, told military planners to give him that devastating option in case the fundamentalist Shia regime refused to end its uranium enrichment program.
With that request, the countdown to Operation Epic Fury kicked off.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Dan Caine told reporters during a March 2 press conference that with the president’s December request, the Pentagon began “setting the force and setting the theater” and shifted forces into place over the previous 30 days to “provide the president with credible options should action be required.”
After U.S. negotiators, led by special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, left Geneva on Feb. 26 without concessions from Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, the die was cast.
The next day, the president called the Pentagon from Air Force One as it was en route to Corpus Christi, Texas, where he was scheduled to campaign for Republican primary candidates.
Caine recalled the exact moment he got the call: “H hour,” a military term for the time at which an operation begins, was 3:38 p.m. EST on Friday, Feb. 27, when the Pentagon “received the final go order from President Trump.”
“The president directed, and I quote: ‘Operation Epic Fury is approved. No aborts. Good luck,’” Caine said.
With that one call, he said, “across the globe, [U.S. military] operation centers came alive,” and Adm. Brad Cooper, Central Command commander at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, assumed operational command in the theater.
When Trump issued the “go order” at 3:38 p.m. Feb. 27, it was just after midnight Feb. 28 in Tehran. In the nearly 10 hours between H hour and the actual launch of the attack, Caine said, “in the region, every element of the joint force made their final preparations.”
“Air defense batteries readied themselves, checking their systems to respond to Iranian attacks,” he said. “Pilots and crews rehearsed their strike packages for the final time. Air crews began loading their final weapons, and two carrier strike groups began to move towards their launching point.”
“As dawn crept up, across the Central Command [area of operations], skies surged to life,” Caine said.
“More than 100 aircraft launched from land and sea—fighters, tankers, airborne early warning, electronic attack, bombers from the states, and unmanned platforms—forming a single synchronized wave.”
That wave arrived over Iran at 1:15 a.m. EST, 9:45 a.m. in Tehran.
That timeline was accelerated by “a trigger event conducted by the Israeli Defense Forces, enabled by the U.S. intelligence community” from the standard night attack to a mid-morning opening salvo that killed Iranian leader Ali Khamenei and up to 48 of the nation’s military leaders at a Tehran compound.
That was among more than 1,000 targets struck in the first 24 hours of the aerial, missile, and drone assault.
“The full strength of America’s armed forces came together in a unified purpose against a capable and determined adversary,” Caine said.
“This deployment included thousands of service members from all branches, hundreds of advanced fourth- and fifth-generation fighters, dozens of refueling tankers, the Lincoln and Ford carrier strike groups and their embarked air wings, sustained flow of munitions, fuel supplies … all supported with command and control, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance network. And the flow of forces continues today.”
The nation’s highest-ranking military officer laid out the order of battle and what forces, as of March 2, were engaged in Operation Epic Fury, a rapid assembly of forces that “demonstrated the joint forces ability to adapt and project power at the time and place of [the United States’] choosing” that included “several combat firsts” to be made public “at some point in the future.”
Before the first missile struck, Caine said, “the first movers” were Space Force, Army, and Air Force electronics and cyber warfare technicians “layering non-kinetic effects, disrupting and degrading and blinding Iran’s ability to see, communicate, and respond.”
With Iranian communications disrupted and its air defenses “without the ability to see, coordinate, or respond effectively,” U.S. and Israeli air forces, with “swift, precise, and overwhelming strikes,” established local air superiority immediately, he said, setting the stage for a campaign the Pentagon maintains it can sustain, and expand if needed, for weeks.
Combat Firsts
With Iranian air defenses hacked or blinded before the opening salvo, the assault began with waves of Tomahawk cruise missiles—long-range precision weapons capable of striking targets hundreds of miles inland—launched by the aircraft carriers USS Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea and USS Gerald R. Ford in the eastern Mediterranean Sea and their battlegroup destroyers.
The USS Gerald R. Ford, which had been deployed to the region in June 2025 during the 12-Day War that badly damaged, but did not destroy, Iran’s uranium enrichment program and was then dispatched to the southern Caribbean to lead Operation Southern Spear off Venezuela, was ordered back to the Sixth Fleet in January and is now in its eighth month of sustained operations.
It is to be relieved eventually by the USS George H.W. Bush, a Nimitz-class carrier undergoing post-overhaul sea trials.
With missiles outbound, hundreds of Air Force F-15s, F-16s, and stealth F-22 Raptors merged with carrier-launched F/A-18 Hornets, stealth F-35s, and EA-18G electronic warfare jets in the massive aerial attack against Iranian air defenses and missile-launch sites.
The fighters were later joined by Air Force stealth B-2 Spirit bombers that flew 17 hours from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, which had struck suspected nuclear complexes with 30,000-pound “penetrator” munitions in June 2025.
In the opening phases of the Feb. 28 assault, they targeted ballistic missile sites with 2,000-pound precision-guided bombs, confirming that the focus was on degrading Iran’s air defenses and communications.
Ground-based Army precision strike missiles from the M142 high-mobility artillery rocket system mounted on “shoot and scoot” mobile launchers added to the fray, lobbing short-range ballistics into Iran from bases in the Gulf states, the first time the short-range ballistic missile system was used in combat.
The Pentagon has acknowledged that Operation Epic Fury is also the debut of a new low-cost uncrewed combat attack system (LUCAS) drone—a one-way “suicide” drone reverse-engineered to mimic Iran’s Shahed 136 drone, which it has exported en masse to Russia for use in Ukraine.
Among the forces participating in the attack are Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drones carrying Hellfire missiles and guided bombs, twin-engine A-10 attack aircraft directed by E-3 Sentry and E-2 Hawkeye airborne surveillance and EA-11A BACN “Wi-Fi in the sky” reconnaissance jets, and KC-135 and KC-46 aerial refueling tankers.
Under attack from Iranian and Shia militias, there are about 2,400 U.S. soldiers in Syria and Iraq, including in Erbil, Iraq.
About 2,000 are from the Iowa National Guard, who are to be relieved by a unit from the 10th Mountain Division this spring.
At least 250 guardsmen left Iraq in mid-February, and on Feb. 27—before the attack was launched—the Iowa National Guard announced that 650 more were headed home.
It is uncertain what their status is now.
The U.S. base in Erbil is among installations across the region under sporadic Iranian and militia attacks.
Trump and War Secretary Pete Hegseth have not ruled out dispatching “boots on the ground,” although there is no indication that Army and Marine infantry forces have been ordered to deploy.
Why The GOP Could Defy Precedent And Win The Midterms
Historically, the party in power almost always loses seats in midterm elections. There are only two exceptions to this rule. In 1934, under Franklin D. Roosevelt, and then in 2002, under George W. Bush. Are there signs that 2026 could be another precedent-shattering year? A new Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll survey conducted late last month suggests it could be.
The poll has the generic congressional ballot tied at 50-50. Not only are these numbers on their face bad for the Democratic Party, but they also represent a significant shift from the Harvard CAPS/Harris January poll, when Republicans trailed Democrats by eight points.
The shift in the horse race is striking on its own. Perhaps the real question is why the GOP appears to have a fighting chance this year of defying precedent.
Pollsters handed respondents sample messages from both parties and asked whether they found them believable. 54% called the Republican pitch credible: “Republicans say that they are returning responsibility to government by arresting criminals, closing the borders, keeping taxes low, and lowering energy costs. We can’t go back to the Democrats, who were allowing our cities and way of life to deteriorate and prices on energy and food to soar while fraud took billions and billions of dollars of their giveaway programs.”
Only 48% said the same of the Democratic counter, which promised free housing, free transportation, healthcare for all, free student loan relief, and a shakedown of billionaires to pay for it. Among likely midterm voters, the GOP message drives a 46-37 advantage in vote intent. The Democratic freebie platform produces a net one-point edge for Democrats among the same group — a rounding error.
Does that mean things can’t change? Not all at. In fact, 61% of respondents said they’d be receptive to the message that “we need to stop Donald Trump. He is a runaway dictator, and we need a check on his power by returning the Congress to the Democrats. His tariffs are increasing prices, and he is off on foreign adventures.” That certainly implies that Democrat messaging can work; however, after both parties’ full messaging was laid out to poll respondents, Republicans moved to a 51-49 lead on the ballot, a two-point GOP shift.
Trump’s approval also gives the GOP signs of hope. His net approval improved from -6 points in January to -3 in February. Among likely midterm voters, he’s net positive at 50-47. The trajectory matters as much as the snapshot, and it’s up.
Beneath the horse race, the structural terrain looks even less hospitable for Democrats.
On economic management, voters trust the Trump administration over congressional Democrats 53-47. On whether today’s economy reflects Biden-era or Trump-era policy, 59% say Trump, yet 52% say things are better now than under Biden. Republicans are credited and rewarded for that, a double-win for the GOP. While both parties’ approval ratings are underwater, the GOP edges out the Democratic Party by three points.
The policy map reinforces the GOP’s positioning for the midterms. Lowering prescription drug prices commands a staggering 80% support. Deporting illegal immigrants who have committed crimes earns 75%. A full-scale crackdown on federal fraud comes in at 71%. Capping credit-card interest rates at 10% pulls 69%, and strengthening border security to close the border draws 67%. The same pattern showed up with President Trump’s State of the Union proposals. Banning members of Congress from trading individual stocks garnered 72% support, while federal retirement matching accounts attracted 70%.
On the issue of election integrity, it’s all great numbers for the GOP. Support for national voter ID gets 81% support. Removing non-citizens from voter rolls comes in at 80%. Requiring proof of citizenship to vote earns 75%. The SAVE America Act, which packages those provisions together, wins 71% overall support, including backing from half of Democrats and 69% of independents. When voters are asked to choose what matters more, 54% say preventing fraud outweighs maximizing access. Democrats have bet heavily that voter-integrity legislation is a political loser. This poll says otherwise.
The ideological fundamentals aren’t moving in the left’s direction either. Capitalism beats socialism 59-41 as voters’ preferred economic system, with 76% saying America should run mostly as a free-enterprise country. 91% say people should own their own homes and private property. 84% want grocery stores to be private, not state-run. This is not good news for the party of Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Zohran Mamdani.
None of this means November is a lock for the GOP. Eight months is a lifetime in American politics. But the picture that emerges from this data is of a Republican Party whose core arguments are resonating with a majority of the public, giving them a real chance to defy precedent.
Keep in mind that the poll was taken before Iran… so the next one should be interesting.
In 2015, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was sold to the American public and to the world as the definitive answer to Iran’s nuclear threat. The agreement placed extensive restrictions on uranium enrichment, centrifuge capacity, and stockpile levels, but said almost nothing about the one thing that would actually deliver a nuclear warhead to its target: ballistic missiles. Nothing about cruise missiles either. No limits on the development, testing, production, or deployment of the very weapons systems that transform a nuclear device from a dangerous secret in a bunker into a weapon that can destroy a city. A bomb is only as threatening as your ability to deliver it, and the JCPOA left Iran’s ability to deliver it completely unconstrained.
For Iran, this distinction matters more than it does for almost any other country on earth.
Decades of international sanctions have left Tehran with one of the weakest air forces in the region, an aging fleet incapable of penetrating the air defenses of Israel or any major Gulf state. Iran cannot deliver a nuclear weapon by aircraft. It cannot do so by sea with any reliability. The ballistic missile is the only component that gives the rest of the nuclear program strategic value.
What makes this failure even more consequential is who stepped in to exploit it.
Over the past two years, China has emerged as the principal external supplier of Iran’s ballistic missile program, providing everything from chemical precursors for solid rocket fuel to satellite guidance through its BeiDou-3 navigation network, which replaced American GPS across Iran’s entire military architecture. The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned several Chinese entities for supplying the IRGC with chemicals used in missile fuel production.
Intelligence revealed Iranian cargo ships unloading shipments of sodium perchlorate at Bandar Abbas, a substance that bypasses existing monitoring mechanisms, in quantities sufficient to produce propellant for approximately 800 new missiles in a single delivery.
Beijing had also been negotiating the sale of CM-302 supersonic anti-ship missiles to Tehran, a system designed to sink aircraft carriers. In December 2025, American special forces raided a merchant vessel in the Indian Ocean carrying Chinese military cargo bound for the Revolutionary Guards.
By the time Operation Epic Fury launched, Iran possessed the largest ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East, an estimated 2,000 missiles of varying ranges dispersed across hardened underground facilities, rebuilt and resupplied in large part by Chinese industrial networks.
The Deferral
But let’s take a step back and look at what happened:
The Obama administration’s decision to exclude missiles from the 2015 JCPOA agreement represented a calculated concession, and more fundamentally, an act of deliberate deferral. In fact, both China and Russia categorically refused to include missile restrictions in the multilateral negotiations, and Tehran declared its indigenous missile development a non-negotiable sovereign right.
Naturally, the Obama team, determined to secure a landmark diplomatic achievement before leaving office, separated the nuclear file from the missile file entirely, treating them as two distinct problems when they formed two halves of the same threat.
Obama especially framed the deal in aspirational terms, saying it provided “an opportunity to move in a new direction,” but the direction left the missile program entirely unaddressed. In the language of UN Security Council Resolution 2231, the provisions on missiles merely “called upon” Iran not to conduct certain activities, far weaker than the binding prohibition in the prior Resolution 1929, which had explicitly prohibited Iran from pursuing ballistic missile technology capable of delivering nuclear warheads.
The administration even watered down the enforcement language of that earlier resolution to get the deal through, reasoning that missiles could be addressed later. That word, “later,” defined the entire approach. Iran tested ballistic missiles within weeks of the JCPOA entering into force, and no mechanism existed to stop it.
Free from constraint, Iran used the decade that followed to transform its missile program from a crude deterrent into a sophisticated, mass-produced strategic arsenal. It perfected guidance systems, extended ranges to cover all of the Middle East and parts of Europe, transitioned from liquid to solid-fuel propulsion, and constructed hardened underground launch facilities designed to withstand aerial bombardment. The interesting part? None of this violated a single provision of the deal.
And the missiles served a purpose beyond delivery: Iran aimed to amass such an overwhelming conventional arsenal that military action against its nuclear program would become prohibitively costly. Secretary of State Marco Rubio put today the math in stark terms: “They can build 100 ballistic missiles a month. We build 6 or 7 interceptors a month.” Each interceptor costs between $1 million and $15 million, while each Iranian missile costs between $200,000 and $500,000.
But the missiles did not stop at Israel’s borders. In the opening hours of Operation Epic Fury, Iranian retaliatory strikes slammed into civilian areas across Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Manama; debris from intercepted projectiles rained near Kuwait International Airport. In the UAE alone, three people were killed and at least 58 wounded. Iran, in this sense, was (and still is) holding Arab capitals hostage, using its missile arsenal as a coercive instrument to punish the Gulf states for daring to deepen their alignment with Washington and/or Jerusalem.
The cruelest irony is that Riyadh and Abu Dhabi saw this coming. Neither was consulted as a stakeholder during the JCPOA negotiations, and both warned — publicly and repeatedly — that any deal leaving Iran’s missile program untouched would one day endanger their populations. They were dismissed as alarmist. Iranian warheads landing on Gulf Arab soil have now settled the argument.
The Reversal
Rubio’s articulation of the objectives behind Epic Fury collapsed a distinction that three decades of American diplomacy had fought to preserve. “The objectives of this operation are to destroy their ballistic missile capability and make sure they can’t rebuild, and make sure that they can’t hide behind that to have a nuclear program,” he said. One sentence fused what the JCPOA had deliberately kept apart, the nuclear file and the missile file, and redefined what an acceptable Iran looks like.
The urgency is real. Israeli defense planners had tracked how Chinese components, machine tools, and technical guidance were accelerating Iranian production lines, and their projections pointed toward catastrophe: 5,000 missiles by 2027, potentially 10,000 by the end of the decade. Every warhead carried a Chinese fingerprint, from solid-fuel propellant chemistry to the precision guidance systems that turned inaccurate rockets into weapons capable of striking downtown Abu Dhabi. Beijing was not merely trading with Tehran.
The Chinese government was industrializing Iran’s capacity to hold the Middle East at gunpoint. Whatever Beijing’s full calculus, the military consequences of that investment are legible on at least three levels.
First, every interceptor the United States fires over the Middle East represents one fewer available for the Western Pacific. THAAD batteries, Patriot systems, and SM-3 carrying naval vessels all draw from the same overstretched production lines. By accelerating Iran’s missile output, China imposed a war of attrition on American munitions without deploying a single soldier.
Second, Every Iranian salvo also forces the United States to reveal electronic warfare capabilities, radar signatures, and interceptor performance data in real combat conditions, giving Chinese military intelligence a live laboratory to study American defense systems without ever confronting them directly.
Third, if the United States proved unable to shield its Arab partners from sustained bombardment, every ally watching from Tokyo to Manila to Taipei would draw the same conclusion: Washington’s promises have material limits.
The drain on American readiness had already begun.
During the twelve-day war in 2025, the United States burned through roughly 150 THAAD interceptors, munitions that take years to produce and that feed the same queue supporting Pacific deterrence.
Only a few dozen replacements followed. Iran was rebuilding faster than America could reload. Left unchecked, the math led to a devastating fork: accept Iranian nuclear breakout behind a missile shield too thick to penetrate, or fight a war in the Middle East with stockpiles earmarked for the Taiwan Strait. Beijing had engineered precisely this dilemma. Operation Epic Fury represented the decision to prevent that choice from ever arriving. By destroying the missiles, the United States turned years of Chinese strategic investment and billions in transferred technology to ash.
Tanker Hit By “Large Explosion” In Waters Off Kuwait, Causing Oil Spill
In the most dramatic escalation yet involving shipping in the Persian Gulf, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO), a British naval authority responsible for monitoring shipping safety in high-risk areas, said it received a report that around 1040pm UTC, a “large explosion” took place on a tanker 30 nautical miles south east off Mubarak Al Kebeer, on the coast of Kuwait. “There is oil in the water coming from a cargo tank”, which could have a disastrous environmental impact, especially if its reaches the desalinization plants that keep much of the Gulf population alive.
The tanker, which was at anchor in the Khor al-Zubair lightering zone – a critical area for loading Iraqi heavy fuel oil exports – began taking on water following the blast. Oil was seen leaking from a damaged cargo tank into the surrounding waters, prompting concerns over potential environmental impacts. Despite the severity, no fires were reported, and all crew members remained safe and accounted for. Kuwait’s interior ministry later clarified that the incident took place outside the country’s territorial waters, at least 60 kilometers from the port
BREAKING A tanker was hit by a “large explosion” in the waters off Kuwait, causing an oil spill, British maritime security agency UKMTO said Thursday pic.twitter.com/i8mLJVn9bs
The targeted area off Kuwait is particularly significant as it lies within Iraq’s primary oil export corridor, a zone previously considered outside the main conflict perimeter. Iraq, not directly involved in the US-Iran war, has already reduced oil production due to storage shortages and loading delays caused by the broader disruptions. No group or nation has claimed responsibility for the Kuwait incident, but analysts suggest it could be linked to Iranian proxies or other actors exploiting the chaos.
The report, which was sourced to the Master of a tanker at anchor, comes as the fifth day of the conflict draw to a close, but no near end is in sight after Israel and the US hit Iran in joint strikes on several key sites on Saturday, February 28. Iran has retaliated by striking sites across the Middle East, and hitting several ships in the gulf as part of its blockade of the Straits of Hormuz.
UKMTO said vessels are advised to transit with caution and report any suspicious activity to the maritime operation.
This incident is hardly isolated, and is part of a widening conflict in the Middle East. The Persian Gulf has become increasingly volatile since the outbreak of hostilities between the United States and Iran, with multiple attacks on commercial and military vessels reported in recent days. For instance, prior to the explosion, a US submarine sank an Iranian frigate near Sri Lanka, an Iranian corvette was set ablaze at Bandar Abbas, and Qatar’s LNG terminals suffered outages. These events have stranded hundreds of ships, including oil tankers, outside the Strait of Hormuz—a chokepoint for about 20% of global oil supplies.
Other recent maritime attacks in the region include a seafarer killed in an explosion off Oman on March 1 and a Russian-flagged LNG tanker sinking in the Mediterranean, blamed by Moscow on Ukrainian sea drones. These incidents underscore the expanding scope of the conflict, turning once-safe waters into high-risk zones for global trade.
The attack has immediate ramifications for energy markets. With Iraqi exports potentially hampered, oil prices could face upward pressure, exacerbating the disruptions already pricing in closures rather than mere interruptions. Shipping insurers and commodity traders are on high alert, as the Gulf’s transformation into a “hunting ground” without clear boundaries threatens further escalations.
Environmentally, the oil spill poses risks to marine life and coastal ecosystems in the Persian Gulf, a region already vulnerable to pollution from decades of oil activities. Cleanup efforts will likely be complicated by the ongoing security threats.
As investigations continue, the international community watches closely, with calls for enhanced maritime security to protect vital trade routes. This event serves as a stark reminder of how regional conflicts can ripple into global economic and environmental challenges.
