Operation Epic Fury: A Work in Progress

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The United States and Iran tentatively agreed to a two-week ceasefire on April 7, during which the two sides intend to negotiate over competing plans for a longer-term cessation of hostilities. Prior to the ceasefire, JINSA’s Iran Policy Project laid out benchmarks to gauge Operation Epic Fury’s success and, to the extent these end states are not achieved, a postwar strategy to prevent the regime from reconstituting its most threatening arsenals.

The current ceasefire comes at a point where, despite the U.S. and Israeli militaries’ operational accomplishments and the claims of American officials, many of these conditions have not been met. This highlights the need to redouble focus on the regime’s most urgent and threatening capabilities. Short of the unlikely scenario in which Tehran agrees to strict, verifiable, immediate, and permanent concessions that conform to these benchmarks and allow America and Israel to retain their freedom of military action, the United States must be prepared to carry out its warnings of resumed combat operations and maximally diminish or eliminate Iran’s nuclear weapons program, missile and drone capabilities, and threats to freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf.

Either way, the United States must avoid anything that strengthens or legitimizes a regime that has not remotely become more moderate, and which does not have time or history on its side. Instead, the United States must expand efforts to promote the Islamic Republic’s ultimate collapse and support the Iranian people’s self-determination.