There is still a lot we don’t know about America’s bombing of Iran.
What does a “preemptive” strike really mean? Is it a “regime change” war or the bombing just happened to cause a change in regime? What role did allied and regional governments, including Israel and the Gulf states, play in encouraging, shaping, or constraining the operation?
What internal dissent, if any, existed within the U.S. government?
And secondary effects? The global markets, oil prices, and commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz: are those of any concern? Or how about mass migration out of the country? Is it possible Iran could dissolve into a civil war?
Will the bombing last a few days? A week? A month? Is this a protracted conflict? By what metric will success be measured? A destroyed facility? A delayed enrichment timeline? Or a permanent strategic shift? Will proxies like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthi, and militias in Iraq/Syria/Yemen, recalibrate their posture toward the U.S. and Israel?
And, over time, will the bombing harden a China–Russia–Iran axis, or reveal conflicting interests?
What evidence, if it ever surfaced, would most significantly change your judgment of the bombing’s necessity?
At bottom: Why are we at war? With whom? When did it begin? Is this even war in the classical sense, or something more diffuse and managerial?
These are just a few questions that precede certainty in the fog of postmodern war.
You might have noticed I called this a “postmodern” war. Simply because we have yet to get, or collectively construct, any unifying narrative about why we are in this conflict.
No one can agree on anything.
I am not going to go through some long chronology of American intervention in the Middle East. I won’t catalog Iran’s revolutionary history. I will not attempt to detail decades of geopolitical grievances in 600 words or less. Nor will I take a detour into “end of history” abstractions or “clashes of civilization”. And if you are looking for “hot takes” or ways to think in moral certainties — neither will be offered.
But this should be established: there’s no plausible alternative.
President Donald Trump, his administration, the oscillations, the public signaling and reversals, the atmosphere of “will they, won’t they” bluster — there are only few that can be a Great Man of history.
(There are “many such cases” when the intervention skeptics were proven wrong.)
Let’s remember, before Trump, politics operated inside an entropic loop. Procedure, consensus, and, finally, managed conflict. Then it was 2015. Trump introduced all of us to his hyperstition.
He spoke narrative into reality.
Memes became material. And now that memetic force is seemingly increasing volatile, unstable, but it is still formative.
Operation Epic Fury will be understood in what it reveals. Trump and the future of his legacy will be seen through the perspective as to what this action proves. Were the strikes prudence or provocation?
What we do know now is that we are living inside the consequences of decisions made by other men in real time — without the luxury of retrospective clarity. For us, the distant observer, you can be mad or excited and even confused. Just know, history is written by outcomes.
Reliance on American power is really the only strategy now.