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We are three days into a war Americans didn’t vote for.
On Saturday, the United States and Israel launched “Operation Epic Fury,” a joint military operation that killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, led to civilian casualties, shut down the Strait of Hormuz, sparked retaliatory strikes across seven countries, and has already claimed the lives of four American service members. President Trump says to expect more American deaths, and “that’s the way it is.”
I brought in my friend, Rantt Media co-founder and foreign policy expert Adam Ali, to help make sense of what’s happening. Not with talking points, but with the kind of long-view analysis that is completely absent from this administration’s decision-making.
What we found is an operation that was militarily executed but strategically hollow, launched by a president who doesn’t understand what he broke, doesn’t have a plan to fix it, and won’t be around to deal with the potential decades-long consequences.
This is not a distraction. This is the story.
You can watch our full conversation above and read key takeaways below.
Trump Is Speedrunning Some Of America’s Worst Mistakes
Trump launched this war faster and with less of a public case made than George W. Bush launched the Iraq War. And that’s saying something.
For all its failures, the Bush administration assembled congressional authorization, made a case (although false) at the UN, and built a coalition before invading Iraq. In spite of that, it still led to a massive power vacuum that destabilized the region for decades. We could be headed there again.
Trump launched Operation Epic Fury from Mar-a-Lago, notified only the Gang of Eight, and gave the American people pre-recorded Truth Social videos instead of a presidential address.
The classified intelligence briefing that authorized this war happened at a private club. Adam flagged the yellow-background documents visible in photos from that night. That’s code-word level classification being handled at Mar-a-Lago. The degree of unseriousness is staggering.
Adam made a critical point: you do not move command and control assets of this scale without a plan to use them. He saw the same pattern in December 2021 with Russia’s buildup before Ukraine. The strikes were planned. Everything that comes after wasn’t.
The administration has cycled through multiple justifications in 72 hours: imminent threat, nuclear capability, freedom for the Iranian people, and regime change. The Pentagon then briefed Congress that Iran had no plans to strike U.S. forces unless attacked first, blowing up the imminent threat claim entirely.
Trump tore up the JCPOA in his first term because he wanted to erase Obama’s legacy. Iran was complying. Enrichment accelerated after the deal collapsed. Trump created this crisis and is now pretending to solve it. Iran was potentially a decade away from long-range missiles that could strike the U.S. There was no coherent justification other than Donald’s egomaniacal impulsivity.
The Regime Is Still Standing
Killing Khamenei was the easy part. Everything after is where this falls apart.
The Council on Foreign Relations said it immediately after Khamenei’s death: taking out the Supreme Leader is not the same as regime change. The IRGC is the regime. Wargaming prior to these strikes showed that hardline IRGC elements would be the first to fill any vacuum left by Khamenei’s death.
Trump floated a Venezuela-style outcome, swap the top leader and keep the structure in place. But Iran is a lot more complicated than Venezuela. We may have decapitated a figurehead while leaving the actual power structure completely intact.
Khamenei, brutal as he was, had endorsed the JCPOA and was known to constrain the most extreme IRGC factions. Whoever fills that vacuum may be worse. If you thought he was extreme, wait.
Iran had four levels of succession pre-planned. They were prepared for this. There’s even speculation that Khamenei, who was battling cancer, may have preferred martyrdom to going into hiding. We may have given them exactly what they wanted.
The internet in Iran is blacked out. No Starlink access. If the goal was empowering dissidents to rise up, the conditions for that don’t exist. Opposition forces have been burned too many times to move without credible, sustained support. The administration did not do the groundwork.
Trump Only Speaks the Language of Dominance. Iran Didn’t Get the Memo.
This is what happens when a president governs by content and mistakes luck for strategy.
Adam made a point that doesn’t require a psychological profiler to understand: Trump only speaks the language of dominance. Every world leader who has tried to win him over through deal-making or concessions has failed. Maduro thought he had charmed Trump with his folksy manner and his concessions. The New York Times reported he was confident he had won Trump over. Then Trump saw the Maduro dance video and made up his mind. The invasion followed.
The same dynamic played out in Geneva. Iranian negotiators thought they were winning Trump over. They thought they were close to a deal. Oman raced to Washington to warn the U.S. team that they were misreading the room. The bombs fell anyway.
Iran responded to Operation Epic Fury with more force than this administration expected. They struck Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan, and Israel simultaneously. They shut down the Strait of Hormuz. They hit the 5th Fleet radar dome in Bahrain with a Shaheed drone. The scale of that retaliation visibly rattled Trump, which is why his public statements became increasingly scattered and contradictory.
While all of this unfolded, Trump was workshopping war justifications with reporters. In a New York Times interview, he floated a Venezuela-style outcome and suggested the IRGC might just hand their weapons to the Iranian people. That’s delusional. Those are not coherent predictions. Those are a man riding high off his Venezuela luck, applying a smash-and-grab playbook to a theocratic state of 90 million people.
The Pentagon was leaking warnings from General Caine to the public the week before these strikes. By February 23rd, those leaks were a news story. Days later, General Caine was standing next to Pete Hegseth, defending the operation. We know why there were leaks. The military brass has fought Iranian proxies. They’ve lost people under their command to them. They knew this was different from Venezuela. And they were overruled.
The Regional Domino Effect Is Just Beginning
Iran didn’t just retaliate against the U.S. and Israel. They struck nearly every Arab state in the region. We haven’t seen the full consequences yet.
Iran launched strikes on Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan. The Strait of Hormuz carries one-fifth of the world’s oil supply. It’s been shut down. Oil futures surged on the first day of trading.
A hardline government filling the vacuum in Iran could aggressively try to make Iraq a buffer state, exploiting Shia-majority demographics against Sunni powers to its west and south. Saudi Arabia has historically acted as the counterweight to Iranian influence. That balance is now in serious jeopardy.
The Sunni Gulf states are nominal allies, but they have populations to manage. When high-rise landmarks in Dubai are being struck, and airports in Qatar are shutting down, that creates domestic political pressure that those governments cannot ignore.
Europe is already drawing conclusions. Macron is establishing a nuclear steering group because European nations can no longer rely on the American nuclear umbrella. Germany is rearming. These are not temporary reactions. These are structural shifts in the world order that will outlast this administration. That’s how you lose the world, piece by piece.
Trump Hoodwinked His Base, and the Polls Prove Americans Know It
Trump and Vance called themselves the “pro-peace ticket” in 2024. That myth is dead.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll taken the day of the strikes found 43% of Americans disapprove, with only 27% approving. Independents disapprove 52 to 20. Even among Republicans, 42% say they’d be less likely to support the operation if it led to U.S. casualties. Four Americans are already dead, and Trump has publicly said to expect more.
Tucker Carlson spoke out. Marjorie Taylor Greene spoke out. Rep. Thomas Massie opposes it. These are people who were on those rally stages when Trump promised no new wars. The MAGA coalition is fracturing in real time.
Adam spoke to young men who were MAGA-curious going into this weekend. Iran was the final straw. These are voters who grew up watching Iraq and Afghanistan collapse in slow motion. They knew what forever war looked like. They thought they were voting against it.
The leading indicator to watch: Trump’s support among Republicans. When that softens, the bottom falls out. That’s when he loses Congress. Non-college voters, a demographic he specifically won on the peace message, are already slipping. Watch that number heading into the midterms.
Democrats need to be bold here and lead with the right argument. Yes, Trump didn’t seek congressional authorization. But that’s not the headline. The headline is that this is a dumb war. A poorly conceived, strategically hollow war of choice that is killing children and has no defined end state. Make that case loudly and don’t let up.
Bottom Line
This is a war of choice, not necessity. Diplomacy hadn’t run its course. Iran was negotiating in Geneva and thought they were making progress. Then the bombs fell anyway, because Trump governs by content, thinks in dominance, and surrounded himself with sycophants who told him this would go like Venezuela.
It isn’t going to be like Venezuela. Iran is a theocratic state of 90 million people with an entrenched security apparatus, pre-planned succession, and decades of institutional hatred for the United States. The reverberations of what happened over the last 72 hours, regionally, globally, politically, haven’t even fully surfaced yet. As Adam put it, we’re dealing with blowback that could be measured in decades.
The people making these decisions won’t be around to manage the fallout. We will.
Call your representatives. Show up in 2026. And if you want analysis that rises above the noise and helps you understand what’s happening, become a paid subscriber to Ahmed Baba News. Also, subscribe to Adam Ali on Substack for more of his analysis.
