In Defense of Epic Fury
From the resounding success of Midnight Hammer, to the blunder of Epic Fury. Why would we go back in?
Welcome back to the sandbox, everyone! It’s been a long five years since we left, and we know you’ve missed it every single day. We’re proud to announce: CIB is back on the menu! We know some of you thought we were done after Midnight Hammer, but don’t you worry… Reddit Fury is here to stay!
On a more serious note: It is unquestioningly in American Interests that we prevent Iran from getting The Bomb1. However, we already addressed this concern with our first strike on their enrichment facilities last year. The argument that we needed to go in right now for the purposes of preventing nuclear proliferation rings short of the truth here. It’s pretty clear that if our goal was merely to stop Iran from getting The Bomb we could have just done another surgical strike like Midnight Hammer.
So, why strike again? This secondary strike is not as clearly pro-American intersts like last year’s strike. I am aware of only three legitimate reasons for conducting Operation Epic Fury. By legitimate I mean, if Epic Fury was conducted for said reason, it can be argued in good faith that the operation was launched to America’s benefit. There are other reasons2 for this strike that are also compelling, but I will not speak of them here: I want to take our leaders at their word, namely that their actions are to serve our interests, so if by discoursing upon their arguments on their terms they happen to be refuted, accusations of conspiratorial thinking can be readily defeated. Usually most alternative explanations to the official narrative rely on circular reasoning - this line is where ‘alternative explanation’ devolves to ‘baseless conspiracy’, no matter how valid the initial critique of the official narrative may have been - and I want to avoid that here.
Legitimate Reason 1: “Midnight Hammer was insufficient to take out Iran’s Nuclear Enrichment Facilities (NEFs), and we needed to go back in to finish the job for good. The first strike would have merely kicked the can down the road, and we can’t afford letting that happen.”
This argument seems good on paper, but falls apart pretty quick. If we knew that we didn’t get all their NEFs with Midnight Hammer, it would have made more sense to extend the operation and send in follow-up strikes before they had the time to relocate their uranium reserves and hide their NEFs. Why give them any time to recover and reorganize? One of the principles of joint operations is Offensive: “The purpose of action is to seize, retain, and exploit the initiative” (JP 3-0), withholding futher strikes while we had the initiative is a tactical blunder. This decision to abandon the initiative, assuming argument 1 is true, could only be explained by a strategic incentive to practice restraint - perhaps to avoid seeming like the aggressor? Perhaps to stay on the good side of the public good will? Obviously it can’t be either of those things, otherwise we wouldn’t have Epic Fury.
Any strategic reason that we could have that would prevent an immediate follow-up strike after Midnight Hammer would equally prevent Epic Fury, assuming the strategic nature of Epic Fury is the same.
“Air assault is wasted if it is dissipated piecemeal in sporadic attacks between which the enemy has an opportunity to readjust defenses or recuperate.”
—Hap Arnold, General of the Air Force
Playing out this argument, thus, uncovers the three potential outcomes of Midnight Hammer:
First, we actually did get all the NEFs. Per doctrine, we massed our forces, concentrated our efforts, surprised our enemy, and then rightly practiced restraint - only going after the legitimate target, their Nuclear Facilities. This would explain the behavior immediately following Midnight Hammer, and tracks most with Air Force and Joint doctrine. However, it removes the legitimate target for Epic Fury, implying the secondary strike is illegitimate on the grounds of preventing nuclear proliferation.
In fact, this outcome would imply that Epic Fury is a second ‘WMDs in Iraq’ moment, using Nuclear pretext as justification to intervene in a country for other reasons. However, if that is the case, there must be some other reason that is in American interests that is so unsavory we would need to rev up the ol’ reliable. It could be argued that we are using WMDs as a pretext to disguise the fact that the strike is not in American Interests, but this is not what happened with ‘WMDs in Iraq’ - the CIA (not the DoD) lied about WMDs specifically to hide from the international community that we wanted to depose a hostile regime and plunder their oil for ourselves. It was an imperial war that falsified an existential justification to silence backlash in the United Nations. Remember, an offensive war is officially “illegal” according to the UN Charter, of which we are a signatory, which would mean we would have done a hecking illegal. This was something that was a lot more relevant back when we were pretending to be the good guys and that international law was actually a thing beyond ‘I have a bigger stick, so do what I say’ - and when politicians didn’t know they could Just Do Things. More on this later.
Second, we didn’t get all the NEFs and knew there were more. We finished our initial strike, and then bizzarely, refused to press the advantage. We sat back, unnecessarily restrained ourselves, and allowed Iran to continue only mildly inconvenienced by our strike. This would make a lot less sense solely in the context of military action. However, like it or not, the military is subservient to civilian interests. We could have seen the DoD overriden by politicians who saw the immediate backlash and panicked, revoking authorization for follow-up strikes - and when public interest started to swing the other way in support of the strikes, it was already too late and the advantage was lost.
This is a deeply illogical chain of events, but could have happened, and could explain the need for Epic Fury. However, why would politicians who balked after Midnight Hammer sign off on an even more expansive and unpopular campaign? The answer to this is probably AIPAC money, but we’ll get to that later.
Third, we thought we got all the enrichment, but new data surfaced well after the fact that proved otherwise. This is the only argument that could be made that would absolve both the military and politicians. I have my doubts that such an oversight could occur, we are generally very thorough when it comes to surveillance and intelligence gathering. This could have occurred because the IDF/MOSSAD decided to intentionally withhold certain information about enrichment sites while planning Midnight Hammer in order to goad us back in at a later date.
Could they have done this? Yes. Would they have done it? I doubt it. It would be in Israeli interests that we take out all of their NEFs in a single strike, because a provocation like that would result in an immediate scramble to hide/protect their facilities, enriched uranium, and other industries necessary for the production of The Bomb. Even Icarus himself would recognize the folly in doing such a thing: inviting your enemy to better protect the weaponry by which he intends to destroy you, simply so you can call your ally in to finish the job later (especially while he is ready to finish the job now) - such an action is hubris manifest.
If it wasn’t Israeli betrayal, it could also just be incompetence. This incompetence would be uncharacteristic of our military, but it could have happened. Note that this is fundamentally different from the ‘WMDs in Iraq’ angle - we would have genuinely believed we got them all, then genuinely discovered that there were more. I doubt that we would miss entire NEFs the first go around but maybe some were hidden under mountains that we missed, or maybe new ones were hastily made that just recently got brought online.
I think this one is probably the most likely scenario of the three, especially the variant where we did get all the enrichment facilities but they brought more online.
On the topic of using WMDs as a pretext to invade, this situation is very likely not one of them: International Law has been dying a slow and painful death3, in that the institutions of international law have proven themselves impotent to prevent war time and time again. International Law has pretended itself different from Victor’s Justice since its inception, but has not been able to do anything besides administer said Victor’s Justice. For a time, however, politicians well and truly believed in the mythos of International Law - Neoliberals truly did fashion themselves as the good guys, and felt a compulsion to convince the entire world of that, all the time, for everything they did. The cultural phenomenon that resulted in America’s fabrication of a claim that Iraq had The Bomb is the same phenomenon that resulted in Angela Merkel swinging open Germany’s borders and dismantling their own Nuclear Energy programme. The neoliberal movement, and International Law with it, has completely spent its cultural momentum, and will die out with the Baby Boomer generation. Political Realists are the ones who have come in to take their place, and Realists don’t feel the need to justify their actions. They just do.
We know Iran has been enriching weapons-grade uranium. Iran itself has admitted this. Iran even admits that Midnight Hammer lead to the destruction of 440 kg of 60% enriched Uranium, which could have been refined to create about 10 high-yield warheads OR used as-is in dozens of dirty bombs. There is no real need to lie about Iranian nuclear capabilities.
Thus, if it’s not fabrication, and Iran still holds the keys to make a bomb, it is in American interests that we go back to finish the job. Even if Israel paid off every single general and politician to get us to go in, that doesn’t negate the fact that a denuclearized Iran is good for America.
Legitimate Reason 2: “Israel had already planned a strike unilaterally, and was going to attack Iran with or without our support. We knew this would trigger retaliation strikes on American facilities, which would drag us into the war anyways. In order to minimize casualties, we agreed to support Israel’s strike, primarily targeting their offensive missile capabilities to degrade Iran’s ability to counterattack.”
This argument was forwarded by Marco Rubio, which lends it a lot of weight. Think about it for a few minutes. Obviously, Israel is being a dishonorable and duplicitous, scheming “ally” here - literally using another country’s threat against us as leverage as if it was their own threat, without any of the diplomatic consequences. You mean to tell me the country responsible for the Samson Option, was planning on letting America get bombed if we didn’t help them? I’m shocked, shocked! Well… not that shocked.
Regardless, if this argument is true, we didn’t really have a choice but to help Israel here. Our leadership had to grit their teeth and reassure the neurotic Israel that we had their back, otherwise they would happily strike without us and let us be their human shields. Once the strike was inevitable, if we didn’t get on board and support them, Israel would not be able to do enough damage on their own to prevent retaliation. We needed to help them deliver a knockout blow so that our servicemen are no longer at risk. Warfare in the missile age is all about mass: the difference between dealing negligable damage and critical damage is often the matter of one extra missile per site - and the advantage for the side that strikes first is so high that it would be extremely foolish to concede that operational advantage simply because we’d rather not be involved at all. Strike decisively and ensure your safety through violence of action, or stick your head in the sand and hope you just get left alone? Asserting we should have done the latter is spiritually Libertarian.
What was the alternative? Tip off Iran and hope they forgive us for Midnight Hammer? Abandon all our military bases in the Middle East? Declare war on Israel instead? These alternatives are just not within the realm of geopolitical possibility.
“We could have called their bluff and let them strike alone!”
Sure, until Israel does it anyways, and several thousand servicemen die in Iran’s retaliation strikes instead of the six that died in our timeline. I mean, seriously: everyone on the Fuentes-Owens Right is abandoning ship over six American deaths and a few dozen wounded because… Israel stands more to gain from a weak Iran than America does. Sure, I’ll accept that: Israel is definitely threatened by a powerful Iran than America is.
But consider: Imagine if we did nothing and had our bases struck harder instead? Imagine how you would feel? Would it not be worse? That America knew an Israeli strike was coming and just let it happen, just let our people die? You would immediately jump to claim that the whole strike was a false flag, that Trump did 9/11 2.0, that ‘they hate you this much goyim’, on and on and on!
Not to mention that at that point we would have no choice but to get involved, because what message does it send where we let our servicemen die and do nothing to avenge them? The optics of that scenario are SO much worse (Israel got Americans killed and our response is to send more men to die for Israel?!) we could genuinely face mutinies. China would surely capitalize on this unrest by arming Iran at a minimum, and potentially even making a grab for Taiwan while our hands are tied. Don’t ever find yourself so anti-semitic you end up siding with the interests of Chinese Communists over your own people.
If you really think critically about it for a few minutes (I mean assess things in terms of the most probable courses of action, not detach yourself from reality with your revenge fantasy of choice), no better alternative exists after knowing Israel intends to strike with or without us. People who rabidly criticize American leadership over the decision to strike with Israel don’t seem to get this. “Erm, why didn’t Trump/Hegseth just decide to let our overseas empire implode so we could stick it to Israel? Are they COMPED or something?”
I think “our hands were tied” is a legitimate argument, because we were dealt a bad hand by Israel. We had no real choice but to get involved because every other alternative would lead to more damage. However, we have every right to be mad at Israel for doing this to us. We have every right to not want to associate ourselves with them militarily anymore. We have every political impetus to run on an Anti-Israeli ticket.
We also have every right to refuse to escalate the conflict beyond slinging missiles. If this explanation for Epic Fury is correct, we will very likely not see an escalation on the American side beyond what has already been done. We have accomplished our sole strategic objective - prevent Iran from retaliating - and can now sit back (which we more or less have). Our next strategic objective is to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which cannot be solved with a ground campaign, because Iran’s drone capabilities will allow them to continue to exert pressure on the strait regardless of if they have access to the coast. A naval campaign might be necessary to destroy Iran’s submarine fleet, but beyond that, I’m not sure what the next steps would be to reopen the strait. Iran seems content to let their own economy implode, in this way they are like a dead crocodile - both beasts stay chomped down on their prey even after death.
Legitimate Reason 3: “We need to put the squeeze on China, and cutting off their oil imports from Iran is the way to do it”
China is significant because we are presently in a Cold War with China. The details of this are a topic for another day, but in short, America is in an arms race with China over [the] next generation [of] military technology, the strength of our economies, and the health and populations of our countries. At any point, if China believes it can invade Taiwan and hold it, they probably will, and this has the capacity to escalate to a World War. America losing access to Taiwan would grind our technology to a halt by halting access to computer chips that we don’t have the technology or skills to make and would cost in the neighborhood of $500B-$1T to even learn to do domestically.
This is generally viewed as a ‘cherry on top’ argument by the people I have spoken to on this matter, but nonetheless, it deserves some argumentation.
China is a net-importer of oil. This means they can’t even sustain their own peacetime industries off of the resources currently under their direct control - much less sustain a military campaign on top. In 2025, China imported an estimated 22% of their oil from Iran, Venezuela, and Russia - over half of that figure is Iranian5. This is to say nothing about the rest of the gulf states, China is the final destination for 37.7% of the oil that passes through the gulf6. America can, then, significantly harm Chinese economic output by letting the strait remain closed, causing the price of energy in China to rise disproportionally to the rest of the world. This is not dissimilar to how we treated Japan in the mid-late 30s. More on this later.
America is a net-exporter of oil. We will not be as harmed by a prolonged conflict in the Middle East because if push comes to shove, we can freeze exports and keep all our oil to ourselves. Gas prices are currently rising because we are still pegged to the international economy: our domestic producers are able to export oil at the global rate and so they do, because it fetches higher elsewhere than here. Domestic producers do this until the local price reaches equilibrium with the global price. This is basic market forces at work, and so long as the world remains globalized with no barriers to international trade, our gas prices will remain high. However, if we banned oil exports, all of a sudden we will have more oil than we know what to do with. Local prices will plummet while global prices shoot even higher, and Americans live comfortably while Europe and Asia implode. We would also probably refill and expand our strategic reserve, which still remains drained after the Biden administration emptied it out to drop prices in a comically transparent ploy to win the midterms7.
We won’t ever do this unless necessity demands it, because doing so would permanently damage relations with Europe, Japan/Korea, and China. We would throw our allies in Europe and Asia under the bus and force them to suck up to Russia, effectively abandoning the American Empire like how England abandoned their empire in the 60s. China, on the other hand, will further be backed into a corner, likely needing to implement austere measures to ensure there is enough to go around. This will kill off any notion of neutrality between our two nations, and could potentially serve as a flashpoint for war. China is aware of their overreliance on American oil, and has been weening itself off our exports for the past two years8.
Will the events in Iran lead to a second Pearl Harbor? Maybe. The difference between Japan and China in this analogy is that Japan was actively fighting a war when we turned off the tap. This means their offensive campaign had to grind to a halt while they figured out new sources of fuel - nobody would sell it to them anymore, so their only courses of action were to withdraw from China or risk it all to secure the Dutch and French oil deposits for themselves. A withdrawal from China despite their military success was something Japan would never do, so they needed to take these deposits. Doing so would cause America to declare war on them, and Japan knew this, so they decided to strike America before invading Indonesia and Malaya.
China, on the other hand, is not fighting any war. This oil squeeze will hurt them economically, but I doubt they will feel such an existential pressure to go out and fight a war for oil of all things. Additionally, America has the bargaining chip of “Iran is to blame, we are also being hurt by this”, which is significantly less of a provocation than the explicit oil embargo we did to Imperial Japan. If anything, they will likely eat the blow and become more reliant on Russian Natural Gas. It will force them to suck up to Russia, though, which will either bring the two nations closer or make China indignant and feel humiliated by being reliant on a nation they haven’t directly puppeted. Russia, as weak as it is, isn’t so weak that China could just steamroll it and take what they want for themselves like the rest of their African and Arab partners, so it is harder for them to maintain their façade of total Chinese domination.
Regardless of its actual effects, striking a nation that just so happens to be a top Chinese oil partner while disguising its intent with grand-standing moral language is becoming a pattern of the Trump-Hegseth military; first with Venezuela, and now with Iran. The logic behind this is clear - we will burden their economy with steeper and steeper oil prices to make any sustained military operation in Taiwan dehabilitatingly expensive, if not outright impossible, and we will do so without explicitly giving them a reason to strike us back. This is a GREAT thing for the US-Chinese Cold War, because we won’t face a similar burden for the reasons I mentioned above. However, we won’t actually see any of these benefits so long as the economy remains sufficiently globalized.
There. We have two good reasons for attacking Iran. Even if none of these reasons were being considered by the fanatical Israelis who wanted to fulfill religious prophecies, or the neurotic Israelis who are in a permanent state of panic over the mere existance of non-compliant Muslim states, or the warmongering Israelis who just wanted to see some goyim flesh burn, or any other fantastical theory you could have, those two reasons remain and provide more than enough justification for the strikes.
The second reason I forwarded, that Israel forced our hand, isn’t “good” in the traditional sense, but it does shift a lot of the blame away from American leadership, who have effectively been forced to choose the least-bad option due to Israel’s unscrupulousness. It defeats the claim that Epic Fury was an unforced blunder, by at least refuting its ‘unforced’ nature.
So far, American deaths lie in the single digits, and injuries lie in the low triple. If this is considered a ‘failure’ worthy of jumping ship over, you need to reassess where your loyalties actually lie. A single day during the GWOT would lead to casualty counts higher than every military act in Trump 2.0 combined.
It is frustrating how unrealistic and fantastical the expectations of the average person is these days. Anything less than a total, unquestioning, resounding, decisive victory, won in a single battle and without any room for dispute is somehow PROOF that Trump is Satan incarnate and has duped every single White person in the world into dying for Israel. And the funny thing? Trump managed to deliver that TWICE! And BOTH times, before the information sector caught up with the victory on the ground, you saw those SAME people trying to detract, cast doubts, and readily jump ship!
These are some of the most lopsided military operations in human history, with casualty ratios outmatching even that of Desert Storm, and you still get people claiming it’s OVER for us, and that things are unrecoverable, and Trump REALLY did it this time! etc.
The modern mind lives in a realm completely detached from reality. We really do need to nuke the internet before normies get any dumber.
Is the American political establishment broadly subservient to Israel? Yeah, probably, AIPAC ensures this. Does that mean every single thing America does is secretly to Israel’s benefit at the expense of our own?
Your answer to that question will both stratrify your IQ and determine where you lie on the growing RW Schism. It also probably serves as a binary modulator for belief in entryism.
If this needs to be explained to you, there are a great deal of articles that have already been written that go over this in great detail.
https://www.tbsnews.net/worldbiz/middle-east/jewish-symbolism-surrounds-timing-us-israel-attack-iran-1373206
https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/israel-iran-attack-02-28-26-hnk-intl?post-id=cmm60wotj001m3b6pawhvknhc
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2025/jun/26/are-we-witnessing-the-death-of-international-law
https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/where-china-gets-its-oil-crude-imports-in-2025-reveal-stockpiling-and-changing-fortunes-of-certain-suppliers-including-those-sanctioned/
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-oil-trade-through-the-strait-of-hormuz-by-country/
Biden decided to drain the SPR from April 1st to October 31st, ceasing the drain only when prices wouldn’t rise before the midterms - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/biden-release-1-mln-barrels-oil-day-ease-pump-prices-2022-03-31/
And it was never refilled - https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Fact-Checking-the-Biden-Administrations-SPR-Narrative.html
https://www.newstarget.com/2025-01-06-us-oil-exports-china-plummet-shifting-tides.html
Thanks for the citation, good article.
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