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Operation Epic Fury was the U.S. code name for its joint military operations with Israel against Iran that began on February 28, 2026, and concluded on May 5. The opening salvo took out the heart of the Iranian regime, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and triggered a torrent of hundreds of retaliatory missiles and thousands of drones from Iran across the Middle East. The attacks have left enormous damage, thousands of people dead in Iran, Lebanon, Israel, and the Gulf Arab states, and millions of people displaced in the region.
Tensions between the United States and Iran stretch back to the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and the subsequent Iran hostage crisis, which set a tone of mutual hostility and deep distrust. The immediate concerns leading up to the 2026 Iran war included Iran’s nuclear program, its ballistic missiles, its military reach in the Middle East region, and failed attempts to renegotiate a nuclear deal after the collapse of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement.
On February 28, 2026, U.S. and Israeli forces launched nearly 900 strikes in 12 hours targeting Iranian missiles, air defenses, military infrastructure, and leadership. The initial wave of strikes killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and dozens of other officials, but it also killed about 170 people when a missile struck a girls’ school adjacent to a naval base in Minab, near Bandar Abbas.
In response to the attacks by the United States and Israel on Iran on February 28, 2026, Iran launched retaliatory missile and drone strikes targeting U.S. embassies, military installations, and oil infrastructure (including vessels in the Strait of Hormuz) throughout the Middle East. Iran hoped its broad retaliation would exact costs and pressure its adversaries into mediation.
The 2026 Iran war disrupted global travel and trade, halted flights in and out of the Middle East, and led to shipping reroutes to avoid the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea.
2026 Iran war, conflict centered on Iran that was initiated by the United States and Israel on February 28, 2026, and has upended the dynamics of the Middle East. The opening salvo took out the heart of the Iranian regime, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and triggered a torrent of hundreds of retaliatory missiles and thousands of drones from Iran across the region. The conflict left enormous damage, thousands of people dead in Iran and Lebanon, dozens dead in Israel and the Gulf Arab states, and millions of people displaced in the region, including more than one-sixth of the population in Lebanon after the war prompted the resumption of the Israel-Hezbollah war. The danger of crossfire and threats from Iran in particular led to severe disruption of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most volatile oil chokepoints, leading to fuel shortages in parts of Asia and rippling effects across the global economy. After more than five weeks of fighting, the United States and Iran agreed on April 7–8 to a ceasefire that included Israel. In the following weeks the conflict shifted to a game of brinkmanship between the United States and Iran over restricted access to the Strait of Hormuz.
The confrontation took place after years of rising tension over Iran’s nuclear program, its ballistic missiles, and its military reach across the Middle East. Attempts to renegotiate a nuclear deal (after the collapse of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA]) in 2025 and 2026 were unsuccessful. Meanwhile, Iran’s posture was in a weakened state after years of sanctions, recent destabilizing protests, damage inflicted during the 12-day War with Israel in June 2025, and the diminished position of Iran’s allies during the Israel-Hamas War. Given Iran’s weakened position, the United States and Israel calculated that they had greater opportunity to advance their objectives through military means than by diplomatic means.
Midmorning on February 28, U.S. and Israeli forces began conducting joint strikes on Iran, numbering nearly 900 in just the first 12 hours of what the United States dubbed Operation Epic Fury. The attacks targeted Iranian missiles and air defenses, other military infrastructure, and Iranian leadership. According to U.S. and Israeli officials, the timing of the initial attack was tied in part to the ability to target Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, before he would go into hiding. Khamenei was killed in the first wave of strikes on February 28, as were dozens of other top Iranian officials. The attacks generated immediate controversy when it was reported that a girls’ school in a town east of Bandar Abbas was struck, killing about 170 people. U.S. forces are believed to have conducted the strikes, according to a preliminary investigation by the U.S. military, while targeting adjacent buildings that belonged to an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) naval base.
Iran’s government was quick to prevent a vacuum in leadership, and its swift movement to replace leaders killed in the conflict indicated both the stability of the regime and the resolve of Iran’s hard-liners in the face of conflict. Ali Larijani, a broadly trusted senior official who had been serving as the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, was believed to have been the de facto leader of Iran in the immediate aftermath of Khamenei’s death and following preparations to that effect before the war began. Mojtaba Khamenei, who was considered more hawkish and repressive than his father, was appointed supreme leader in early March despite protests from U.S. Pres. Donald Trump that he would consider that appointment “unacceptable.” When Larijani was killed on March 17, he was replaced by Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, an appointment that reflected the paramountcy of the IRGC over the political or clerical establishments in Iran’s wartime decision-making.
Meanwhile, retaliatory missile and drone strikes by Iran embroiled the region. They followed a familiar pattern of horizontal escalation, according to the international security scholar Robert A. Pape writing in Foreign Affairs. Iran’s war strategy widened the arena of conflict, thereby extending the conflict beyond mere military might and into the political and economic realms, with the aim of withstanding bombardment until the conflict would become too costly for the United States and Israel to be willing to sustain. Iranian strikes targeted U.S. embassies and military installations in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Iraq, Oman, and Jordan. NATO forces struck down Iranian drones and missiles near the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey (Türkiye).
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Iranian attacks also targeted oil infrastructure in the region—including vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil passes—as well as commercial hubs in neighboring countries that aid the U.S. military. By late March officials in the IRGC suggested Iran may push its Houthi allies in Yemen to block Bab el-Mandeb Strait to disrupt shipping in the Red Sea and further strain global markets. It remained unclear whether the Houthi movement, which in 2025 had reached a ceasefire with the United States in relation to its attacks on Red Sea shipping, was willing to confront U.S. pressure directly, but on March 28 it launched missiles and drones toward Israel and opened a new front in the expanding regional conflict.
The Strait of Hormuz increasingly became a focal point of the war in March, particularly as other countries hesitated to enter the conflict in order to enforce safe passage. On March 21 Trump threatened to target Iran’s civilian energy infrastructure if Iran did not agree to allow ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz without interference. He then extended the threat to Kharg Island, the terminal for nearly all of Iran’s oil exports, and to desalination plants on March 30. Days later he set a deadline for Iran of April 7 and took to social media with a series of increasingly vehement posts. On the morning of April 7 he wrote in one such post that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
On April 7–8 Trump announced on social media that he had agreed to a two-week ceasefire brokered by Pakistan. Moments later, Iranian officials confirmed that Khamenei had approved the ceasefire after a last-minute nudge by China. Transportation through the Strait of Hormuz continued to move at a trickle and remained a major point of contention in efforts to forge a more lasting ceasefire. Direct negotiations took place in Islamabad, Pakistan, on April 11–12 between U.S. Vice Pres. JD Vance and Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf—the highest-level direct engagement between the United States and Iran since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. But when those talks failed to produce an agreement, Trump ordered the U.S. Navy to begin a blockade of the strait to prevent the passage of any ships transiting through Iranian ports. As the ceasefire’s two-week deadline came to a close, Trump announced that the United States would continue to cease fire until the Iranian delegation could present the U.S. delegation with a proposal to end the war that was backed by all factions of the Iranian government. No deadline was set for the extension of the U.S. ceasefire, and proposals put forward by either side to end the war were met with rejection in the weeks ahead.
The conflict also saw the resumption of hostilities between Israel and Iran’s close ally Hezbollah in Lebanon, which had been observing a fragile ceasefire since 2024 (see Israel-Hezbollah war). Despite the ceasefire, which required the disarmament of Hezbollah and the withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) from southern Lebanon, Hezbollah had been seeking to restore its military capabilities and the IDF had continued to strike targets in southern Lebanon almost daily. After the opening wave of attacks on Iran on February 28, the IDF conducted air strikes on Hezbollah’s infrastructure and warned the militant group against getting involved in the conflict with Iran. On March 2, Hezbollah launched missiles and drones into Israel, prompting an escalation in Israeli air strikes that reached north to southern Beirut. A drone believed to have been launched by Hezbollah also struck a base in Cyprus used by the British Royal Air Force. In the following days Israel issued sweeping evacuation orders across southern Lebanon, displacing more than 1,100,000 people by late March.
A limited invasion began on March 17 amid reports that a broader ground offensive was likely. On March 24 Israeli minister of defense Israel Katz announced plans for the IDF to occupy southern Lebanon up to the Litani River, a swath of territory that the IDF had previously occupied in 1982 during the Lebanese Civil War (1975–90) until Israeli forces withdrew in 2000.
After the United States and Iran announced their ceasefire in early April, there was disagreement among the parties on whether Lebanon was included. Just hours after the announcement the IDF conducted a blitz across Lebanon that killed hundreds of people and wounded more than 1,000 others, straining the ceasefire between the United States and Iran. The United States then pushed Israel to lower the temperature and engage in negotiations to end the conflict in Lebanon. On April 14 the United States hosted the highest level engagement between Israel and Lebanon since 1993 and, on April 16, Trump announced a 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah that was set to begin the following day. A week later the formal ceasefire was extended by three weeks, although Israel and Hezbollah traded frequent fire during that period. Commitments to a ceasefire were repeatedly renewed, but few signs indicated that an end to the hostilities was in sight. On May 30 IDF ground forces crossed north of the Litani River for the first time since the 2006 Lebanon War, a 34-day confrontation between the IDF and Hezbollah after Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others during a cross-border attack.
Tensions ebbed and flowed throughout the duration of the ceasefire reached by the United States and Iran, although it largely held. Attacks took place, albeit infrequently and with restraint, while negotiations reportedly came close in May to producing a memorandum of understanding that would lead to the war’s end. Among the clearest obstacles, however, was the ongoing conflict in Lebanon. Iran continued to press for an end to Israeli attacks in Lebanon as a condition for any lasting end to the war with the United States and Israel. After the IDF struck southern Beirut on June 7, days after the latest ceasefire in the Lebanon conflict, Iran launched waves of ballistic missiles toward Israel and prompted retaliation from Israel. The brief exchange of fire marked the first time since the ceasefire in early April that Iran and Israel had engaged in direct confrontation.
The outbreak of conflict between three widely impactful countries led to a burst of reactions, ranging from anticipation to condemnation to confrontation. Many observers, including Iranians in the diaspora, hoped for the collapse of the oppressive Islamic Republic of Iran and a decisive end to its nuclear program and military reach. Within Iran, some Iranians celebrated Khamenei’s death while proponents of the regime mourned; security forces stepped up their presence in Tehran to crack down on celebrations and public dissent. Oman, which attempted to mediate negotiations between the United States and Iran, expressed disappointment that the “active and serious negotiations” were abandoned. Russia, Iran’s ally, condemned the U.S. and Israeli strikes as destabilizing but showed little interest in intervening on Iran’s behalf. Some countries questioned the legal basis of the initial U.S. and Israeli attack, while others urged Iran to show restraint in its response and condemned its attacks on its neighbors. Spain, a NATO member that had already squabbled with U.S. demands during the second Trump administration, refused to allow the United States to use its air bases, leading Trump to threaten to cut trade with the country.
The war had immediate impacts on global travel and trade. Flights in and out of the Middle East came to a near-complete stop, stranding residents, expatriates, and tourists alike, even as Iran struck the region’s most crowded cities and luxury hotels. When Dubai International Airport, one of the world’s busiest, was damaged by drone strikes during the second day of the conflict, it temporarily halted all flights and reopened in only a limited capacity a few days later.
Shipping lines rerouted to avoid the Strait of Hormuz—even before Iran threatened to fire on ships passing through the strait—as well as the Red Sea, where the Iran-allied Houthi movement had previously attacked ships in response to the Israel-Hamas War. Although commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz dropped more than 90 percent after the outbreak of conflict, Iran’s attacks on traffic in March caused a further decline. It then selectively approved the transit of some ships, including some Iranian ships, some ships belonging to countries that negotiated safe passage with Iran, and some ships that were willing to pay Iran a hefty toll. The disruption of oil flows out of the Persian Gulf quickly led to fuel shortages and rationing in parts of Asia east of the gulf, which rely heavily on oil supplied through the Strait of Hormuz, as well as a sharp increase in price in the global oil market. Prices surged from about $70 per barrel just before the war to an average of $103 per barrel in March. While the increase was disruptive for much of the global economy, the surge led to a windfall for Iran, which in March saw an average boost in oil revenue of nearly $25 million per day, and Russia, which saw an average increase of about $150 million per day in the same period.
That windfall for Iran was disrupted, however, when on April 13 the U.S. Navy began preventing ships that had docked at Iranian ports from passing through the strait. The U.S. blockade threatened to strain Iran’s economy as it prevented the import of staple goods and Iran’s storage for exports was set to reach capacity in May, potentially forcing reductions in oil production that could be costly to reverse. On May 4 U.S. forces undertook an operation (dubbed Project Freedom) to guide vessels stranded in the Persian Gulf through the strait. Two U.S.-flagged commercial vessels passed through the strait, but the operation was reportedly met with deadly confrontations between U.S. and Iranian forces. Iran also struck multiple oil infrastructure targets in the United Arab Emirates. On May 5 Trump announced the operation would be paused amid “great progress” toward a deal with Iran.
Relations between Iran and the United States have long been tense. The United States and Israel were both close allies with Iran’s government until the 1979 Islamic Revolution. But U.S. intervention in Iranian affairs became a sore spot for Iranians, particularly after U.S. involvement in the 1953 coup d’état propped up the unpopular Pahlavi monarchy. When the revolution took place, the revolutionaries blamed the United States and Israel for the region’s greatest grievances. The Iran hostage crisis only served to heighten tensions.
Matters escalated significantly in the early 2000s when Iran was revealed to have a suspiciously secret nuclear program and, as U.S.-led forces toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq that fiercely opposed Iranian expansion, Iran expanded its reach across the region (see Axis of Resistance). Efforts to contain Iran diplomatically proved fragile, especially after 2018, when the United States withdrew from the 2015 JCPOA.
In 2024, during the Israel-Hamas War, Israel significantly diminished Iran’s reach in the Middle East, tipping the regional balance of power in Israel’s favor. Most notably, Israel decapitated Iran’s close ally Hezbollah in Lebanon in September–November, which in turn facilitated Ahmed al-Sharaa’s toppling of pro-Iran Syrian Pres. Bashar al-Assad in December. Meanwhile, direct exchange of fire between Israel and Iran in April and in October exposed vulnerabilities in Iran’s air defenses and damaged some of Iran’s key military assets.
The 12-Day War in June 2025 was the first test of open conflict between the two Middle East powers. Israel quickly debilitated Iran’s air defenses and caused significant damage to Iran’s military and nuclear infrastructure. The conflict ended after the United States struck underground nuclear facilities in Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan using U.S. GBU-57 A/B “bunker buster” bombs, an operation that Trump said was intended to be a limited, one-off mission. A preliminary, low-confidence report from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency—in what the Trump administration characterized as a “political” leak to the press—assessed that Iran had moved much of its stockpile of enriched uranium before the U.S. strikes took place and that the strikes, which did not collapse the underground facilities according to the report, set back Iran’s ability to produce nuclear weapons by only a matter of months. The following day John Ratcliffe, the director of the CIA, said new information indicated severe damage to the nuclear facilities that would take years for Iran to rebuild.
In the aftermath of the 12-Day War, Iran’s currency entered a free fall, exacerbated by the imposition in September of new international sanctions. The economic spiral led to the outbreak of protests on December 28, 2025, which, at the encouragement of the United States, spread in January 2026 across Iran (see 2026 Iranian protests). Trump threatened U.S. intervention if Iranian security forces killed protesters. Nevertheless, on January 8 security forces unleashed a brutal crackdown, killing at least 30,000 people, according to officials in Iran’s Ministry of Health. In the weeks that followed, the United States undertook its largest military buildup in the Middle East since its 2003 invasion of Iraq.
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