The Growing Problems of Operation Epic Fury

Costly and Depleting

by Binoy Kampmark / March 14th, 2026

The big drain on military resources has begun. A war apparently already won (and not), against an adversary supposedly without means to fight back, its air force and navy destroyed, its missile capabilities blunted, is now drawing the clumsy colossus of American power into the Middle East with embarrassing effect. The Middle East, where US President Donald Trump promised the “forever wars” would end, promises an end to his beginning.

The ledger of losses keeps rising with giddying pace. The US casualty list, for now, remains manageably low, but the military purse is being raided with manic relish. Operation Epic Fury cost US taxpayers $11.3 billion in munitions over the first six days, an estimate that excludes operating and maintenance costs of the engaged military force or the damage inflicted by Iran. The Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) claims that the first 100 hours of the war cost $3.7 billion, approximating to $891.4 million each day.

Strain is also being placed on inventories. The US prides itself on deluxe, high brand killing and extermination of targets, using chic weaponry and dull doctrine. Expensive homicidal measures do have to be eventually accounted for. According to reporting from Bloomberg, “as the conflict extends toward a third week, the US war effort is showing unexpected signs of strain against an adversary whose military budget is smaller than the GDP of Vermont – but which has an arsenal of missiles and drones unlike anything the US has ever faced.”

Critical munitions are being depleted. With the campaign barely 100 hours old, 168 Tomahawk cruise missiles had been fired. (Each unit costs a mighty $3.6 million.) This is a staggering figure when compared to the rate of procurement: the previous five years had seen the production of 322 Tomahawks. According to a source quoted in the Financial Times, “The navy will be feeling this expenditure for several years.”

While the Pentagon gloats at reducing Iranian strikes by 80% or more, Tehran has gotten more economical with its targeting, successfully striking military and energy infrastructure across the Middle East with telling effect. Ballistic missiles have hit the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, destroying two AN/GSC-52B SATCOM terminals. A costly AN/FPS-132 early warning radar in Qatar – a facility estimated to cost some $1.1 billion – was successfully struck by a ballistic missile.

The AN/TPY-2 radar facilities used by the lauded yet hideously expensive Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system have also been struck in Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan Air Base, Al Ruwais in the UAE, Al Dhafra Air Base in proximity to Abu Dhabi and Jordan’s Muwaffaq Salti Air Base. A sense of how important that facility is to the operation of the battery is provided by N.R. Jenzen, a munitions specialist of Armament Research: “The AN/TPY-2 radar is essentially the heart of the THAAD battery, enabling the launch of interceptor missiles and contributing to a networked air defence picture.” Knocking out the radar blinds the system.

The outstanding feature of many of the strikes is their relative cheapness to the interceptor missiles used to destroy them. “The round’s we’re firing – Patriot rounds, THAAD rounds … these weapon systems, each around is millions of dollars,” laments Arizona Democratic Senator Mark Kelly. “The math on this doesn’t work.” Shahed-136 one-way drones, each one costing $35,000, have played a starring role in upsetting “the math”. CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper has also noted that the majority of wounded US personnel – some 140 troops – have been injured in “one-way strikes.”

This has compelled the Pentagon to pay greater attention to its own Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS), which is now seeing service in some instances against Iranian attacks. But the department is also set to seek more cash, expecting to ask $50 billion in additional funding from Congress. Given the sheer unpopularity of the war, some lawmakers have reservations. “You’ve got to be able to provide us with more information as […] justification,” insists Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “Don’t just take it for granted that the Congress’s role is basically to write the cheque.”

US military power is now being drawn from other theatres of interest to feed the Moloch of war. In a recent cabinet meeting, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung confirmed that Washington might relocate air defence material to the Middle East. Multiple launchers of the THAAD system have been or are in the process of being moved to Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, roughly 70km south of Seoul, with the interceptor missiles destined for the Middle East.

This shifting of pieces has not been without consequence. The THAAD batteries had been sent to South Korea in 2017 to assure it against threats from its nuclear-armed neighbour to the north. Depriving them of projectiles has gotten tongues wagging about increasing vulnerability. Besides, the ostensible security provided by US power for its allies and partners has been shown to be something of a dud, as Iran’s attacks on the Gulf states has so convincingly demonstrated.

Concern from Taiwan about such moves was registered in an interview by Chen Kuan-ting, a legislator and member of the country’s Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee. As US military assets and resources could not “be deployed in two places at the same time”, it was a case of priorities. And those priorities, it was implied, should lie in Asia. “Deploying the main military assets in Asia and confronting the US’s primary competitor here is more in line with US interests.” That may well be what he hopes for, but it is clear that Washington is battling through the another malady Trump had once campaigned against: the debilitating entanglement of a foreign war with ill-defined objectives involving a resourceful, obstinate foe.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

 The US and Israel Have No Plan: Because Collapse Is the Plan

by Lee Camp / March 14th, 2026

I don’t think it’s controversial any longer to proclaim that the ruling class of the US and Israel (USrael™) are idiot psychopaths (idiopaths™). Some around the globe have noticed the two administrations sinking all of us into a possible global economic meltdown / possible nuclear war / probable really shitty 2026 don’t seem to have a “plan” or “strategy” or “inkling” for what happens next. Even the lawmakers who attended a closed-door briefing about the administration’s Persian Incursion exited the room completely baffled as to A) the reasons for this war, B) the plan for this war, and C) the plan for what comes after said war.

The reason these witless millionaire lawmakers don’t understand the true causes of this horrific invasion of Iran is because they either don’t understand or choose to ignore the petrodollar and it’s role in dollar hegemony and then dollar hegemony’s role in making sure the US oligarchs can print enough money to own whole islands where they can sexually abuse minors with abandon. (I discussed the real reasons for the attack on Iran in a recent column here.)

However, the reason our 72% male 78% white Congress can’t get a clear answer from the Trump administration as to what comes next if the USrael™ idiopaths “succeed” in Iran is quite simply because it doesn’t matter to those making the decisions. The idiopaths don’t care. Collapsing the state apparatus is the goal. Asking them what comes next is like asking an arsonist what he’s going to build after he burns down the house. Chances are his response would be nothing more than a bewildered look akin to when you ask your dog for advice on a variable-rate mortgage.

Some normal people — who don’t understand the sinister, soulless aims of the US imperial rulers — like to mention that the US hasn’t won a war since WWII. They like to say, “Every war the US has entered into over the past 50 years has been a disaster for us.” Unfortunately, that’s not true. It’s not true because “normal” people with feelings and souls and payment plans and moral cores can’t comprehend what counts as “winning” for the piping hot bags of douche who run the USraeli™ empire.

The clearest examples are Iraq, Libya, and Syria. Despite the breathless protestations of our various administrations at the time, the goals with the invasion of Iraq, invasion of Libya, and invasion of Syria were never to help the poor, suffering people in those countries. (Shock.) Our ruling psychopaths didn’t ever care about the women or the children or the innocents or the elderly or the pets. They didn’t give a shit. In fact, psychopaths are incapable of giving a shit about others.

The actual goal was to turn those nations into unstable, feeble, incapacitated, failed states. Once in that condition, they A) don’t pose a risk to Israel and B) don’t have the strength or ability to pump oil outside the petrodollar and align with other countries outside USrael’s™ sphere of influence.

• Libya ended up with a lawless state featuring such exciting tourist attractions as open-air slave markets and violent warlords.
• In the years following the 2003 Iraq invasion, Iraqis celebrated with extreme instability, sectarian fighting, and efforts to establish a government amidst violent insurgency.
• Following the fall of the Assad government in Syria, the country has been led by a US-installed rebranded Al Qaeda asshole. The national sport is extreme poverty, and the national flower is ethnic cleansing.

For the people of Iraq, Libya, and Syria, it’s an absolute horror movie. And yet, Americans no longer hear our politicians or our mainstream media announcing that the people of [fill in the blank] need our help. Not any longer. They apparently only needed USraeli™ “help” when there was a risk to the petrodollar. With the safety of the petrodollar secure, USraeli™ freedom bombs are no longer necessary.

USrael™ has no plan for an imaginary post-war Iran because the arsonist does not seek to rebuild the house. Cancer does not ask how to bring the host back to life. The US imperial aim is merely… hell. Hell on earth. No more stability. No more society. No more infrastructure. Essentially no more state. And for the US and Israel, this means no more resistance, no more threat, no more competition to the petrodollar. No more Iranian alliance with China.

Collapse is the plan.

But it increasingly seems that it won’t work. Iran is not Iraq. Iran is not Libya. Iran is not Syria.

Iran is a powerful and ancient society of 90 million people. Those who understand Iran far better than I do say Iranians will fight to the end. The US will not fight to the end because the majority of Americans don’t even know why we’re fighting at all. In fact, polling shows most Americans think Trump went to war with Iran to distract from the Epstein files.

Lee Camp is an American comedian, writer, podcaster, news journalist and news commentator. Read other articles by Lee, or visit Lee's website.

 Operation Epic Folly

by Michael K. Smith / March 14th, 2026

If America attacks … Iranians will unite, forgetting their differences with their government, and they will fiercely and tenaciously defend their country.

— Shirin Ebadi, Iran’s 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate¹

The only thing truly epic about the current U.S.-Israeli war on Iran is the chasm between the facts on the ground and the media spectacle put forth by President Trump and his fawning aides.

Folly is the best term to capture the reality of a president who until very recently presented himself as uniquely qualified to bring peace to the world via his “Art of the Deal” genius, then turned on a dime to endlessly repeat that the U.S. would inflict maximum damage and suffering on Iran, a country he had said would be a particularly bad place to try and carry out regime change, not to mention a policy he claimed to have rejected no matter where it might be recommended, wisdom he allegedly learned from the disastrous U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

After steady coaching from Benjamin Netanyahu, however, he changed his mind, becoming convinced that a quick decapitation of Iran’s leadership would lead Iran’s suffering masses to topple the mullahs and install an American-friendly government. He claimed that Iran’s clerical regime would fall in 48 hours.

That prediction failed so fast it didn’t even allow time for a G.W. Bush style “Mission Accomplished” declaration to whet the appetite for the inevitable anti-climax of disintegration and civil war a few months later. In this as in so many other areas Trump is a prodigy, failing almost as fast as he can dream up fresh lunacies to aggravate the world with. As the Ugly American, he’s way overqualified.

Since February 28 we have been treated to desperate, ever-changing, and contradictory attempts to justify the unjustifiable initiation of war, and an equally desperate, ever-changing, and contradictory attempt to define its objectives and limits, something that has proven impossible for an administration that was counting on ending the war with a single massive blow. Hence the ever-lengthening list of childish inventions: “bring the Iranians back to the negotiating table,” “obliterate the Iran nuclear program,” “liberate the people,” “strike a deal Venezuelan style,” “complete regime change,” etc. etc. None of it has anything to do with reality.

For Trump and his henchmen, where reality is not merely tinged with fantasy but subsumed by it, “nothing is impossible” is a necessary watchword. For them, thoughtlessness is a virtue, as shown by Trump’s nonchalance in admitting that they hadn’t found a replacement yet for the murdered Iranian head of state because the U.S.-Israeli attacks were so successful that all the potential replacements had also been killed. No need for woke nonsense like knowing what you’re doing.

With gas prices soaring and Americans already coming home in body bags, an obviously desperate Trump yearns to declare victory and withdraw, but he cannot do so, because the Iranian government is still very much in place. Lacking an exit strategy, his war doctrine is “flexible,” by necessity, since he has no idea how he fell into the current trap, let alone how to get out of it. Ever the narcissist, however, he gives himself an “A” for effort, assessing the initial phase of the U.S. war as a 15 on a scale of 10.

In other words, we’re watching another reality TV episode, full of kitsch and cliches, with Pete Hegseth comparing the mass killing to a football game. Iranian leaders knew the first few “plays,” said the war secretary, because they had been scripted before the war started, but once the “game” was underway they didn’t “know what plays to call, let alone how to get in the huddle.” Filled with adolescent pride at unleashing massive waves of lethality, he claimed the U.S. was “fighting to win,” even as Trump showed eagerness to negotiate a way out, an option that Tehran flatly rejected.

Badly conceived, sloppily improvised, and based on the repetition of past errors and disasters, the Trump and Bibi war moves from tragedy to farce and back again, only this time on a vaster scale and with potentially far graver consequences.²

It’s difficult to recall a greater folly.

ENDNOTES:

• 1
  Quoted from David Barsamian (with Noam Chomsky, Ervand Abrahamian, Nahid Mozaffari), Targeting Iran, (City Lights, 2007).
• 2
  See Maciek Wisniewski, “Operation Epic Farce,” La Jornada (Spanish), March 7, 2026.

Michael K. Smith is the author of Portraits of Empire. He co-blogs with Frank Scott at www.legalienate.blogspot.com. Read other articles by Michael.