A student asked me the other day what right America had to go to war with Iran. My response to the student was that America’s moral and ethical right was clear, particularly if you date this war to 1979 and the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran. While Americans should feel some uncertainty as to the prudential timing of the war and its objectives, there should be no uncertainty whatsoever as to the righteousness of ending the ayatollahs’ blight upon the Middle East and our own security. And yet, moral questions aside, how should we consider the uncertainty around the timing and objectives of Operation Epic Fury?
With regard to the uncertainty surrounding the ultimate results of Epic Fury, we must remember that the outcome of war is always rooted in innumerable contingencies and that many great powers have found themselves bested by theoretically weaker opponents. That being said, the level of doubt and uncertainty exuding from X, Substack, and the halls of Congress is disproportionate to the verifiable facts on the ground. With minimal casualties, America and Israel have continued the work of the Twelve Day War in June 2025, to further degrade Iran’s terror proxies, missile capabilities, and nuclear program. On top of that, the regime’s leadership has been decimated.
Though Iran appears to have succeeded in temporarily closing the Strait of Hormuz, this was Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei’s sole strong card to have played. While higher oil prices may be a significant price to pay for the time being, the truth is that it would be more expensive to leave the Iranian regime in-place and self-confident in its ability to hold the global economy hostage. As Peter Navarro, White House Senior Counselor for Trade, wrote in the Wall Street Journal on March 12, the level of uncertainty in global oil markets stemming from the presence of Iran’s theocratic regime adds roughly $5 to $15 per barrel to global oil prices under normal circumstances. This “Iran terror premium” costs the global economy between $100 billion to $450 billion per year; while the dramatic increase in oil prices over the last couple weeks commands headlines, what goes underdiscussed is the quiet yet persistent drag inflicted upon the world by Iran’s regime. Trump, being aware of how important to his legacy the demise of the current anti-U.S. regime in Tehran would be, is unlikely to be fazed by a period of higher oil prices.
But doubt persists. Just what is the end goal here? Will we have to put boots on the ground? Why can’t the administration be clearer in its objectives? Here, I would caution against going off of public statements made in the moment, often made in passing to members of the press that then get sliced and diced to make them maximally consumable in the social media world. Rather, look to the actual policy documents that the Trump administration has put out on Iran. There, we find a very well-defined strategic picture.
In February of last year, President Trump signed National Security Presidential Memorandum 2 (NSPM-2) that reintroduced a “maximum pressure” policy on Iran. Critically, though, NSPM-2 outlined specific Iranian threat vectors and America’s position on them:
“It is the policy of the United States that Iran be denied a nuclear weapon and intercontinental ballistic missiles; that Iran’s network and campaign of regional aggression be neutralized; that the IRGC and its surrogates be disrupted, degraded, or denied access to the resources that sustain their destabilizing activities; and to counter Iran’s aggressive development of missiles and other asymmetric and conventional weapons capabilities.”
No nukes or ICBMs, no regional aggression, degraded IRGC and proxies.
The memorandum goes on to articulate particular actions the U.S. would then take to implement this policy, though with the Department of War noticeably absent, indicating a preference by the administration to leverage diplomacy and economic power, at least initially.
Then came the Twelve Day War in June of 2025 and later that year the publication of both the National Security Strategy (NSS) and the National Defense Strategy (NDS).
In both of these documents, the administration reaffirms Iran as the Middle East’s chief source of instability and America’s commitment to preventing Tehran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. The NDS goes further than the NSS in noting that post-Operation Midnight Hammer, Iran continued immovable in its attempts to rebuild its nuclear program, missile stockpiles, and terror network. In confronting such intransigence, the NDS outlined the following response:
“… DoW will empower regional allies and partners to take primary responsibility for deterring and defending against Iran and its proxies…. As we do, DoW will maintain our ability to take focused, decisive action to defend U.S. interests. Through this approach, we can set and reinforce conditions for lasting peace through strength in the region.”
No nukes, no ballistic missiles, no regional terror proxies as the objectives with US-backed Israeli and Arab allies providing the enforcement mechanism.
I would argue that’s exactly what we see unfolding in Epic Fury. The anti-government protests that broke out earlier this year may have just been a fortuitous coincidence that then opened the possibility of adding regime change to the list of the administration’s policy objectives, but we should be clear that “regime change” to the Trump administration is not “regime change” as it was known in the Bush and Obama administrations. Again, the NSS is helpful here as it eschews the paradigm of regime change for purposes of building liberal democracies, turning instead to a paradigm of national sovereignty and interests, and the defense of the same. This would suggest that “regime change” in Iran does not require the rise of a liberal democracy to be successful; it just needs to provide a regime more positively disposed to the U.S., or at least not actively endangering American security and interests.
This all points to a policy preference for limited war on the part of the Trump administration. I say “preference” because, as I note above, war is contingent. Iran may still have some tricks up its sleeves, other countries may join the fray, a mass casualty terror attack in the US could occur, any of which would require an adjustment to the administration’s calculus.
For now, though, what can be seen dimly in this fog of war is a morally justified, just war that is being prosecuted in line with the stated policies and objectives of the present administration. My question for the concerned is, in the face of an immoral, intransigent enemy bent on causing death and economic devastation: What is the alternative?
