Operation Epic Fury - How It Unfolded
via The Epoch Times
The Pentagon, restrained for decades from attacking Iran, needed less than 10 hours to launch after getting the ‘go order’ from the president.
by John Haughey, The Epoch Times
The Pentagon had been choreographing a prospective massive attack on Iran since 1980.
In December 2025, President Donald Trump told military planners he would need that devastating option if the Shia regime continued moving toward making a nuclear bomb.
Trump’s move came after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
With that request, the countdown to Operation Epic Fury kicked off.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Dan Caine told reporters March 2 that the President’s December request prompted Pentagon leaders to start “setting the force and setting the theater,” in case the president needed to act.
After U.S. negotiators, led by special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, left Geneva on Feb. 26 without concessions from Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, the die was cast.
The next day, the president called the Pentagon from Air Force One as it was en route to Corpus Christi, Texas, where he was scheduled to campaign for Republican primary candidates.
Caine recalled the exact moment he got the call: “H hour,” a military term for the time at which an operation begins, was 3:38 p.m. EST on Friday, Feb. 27, when the Pentagon “received the final go order from President Trump.”
“The president directed, and I quote: ‘Operation Epic Fury is approved. No aborts. Good luck,’” Caine said.
With that one call, he said, “across the globe, [U.S. military] operation centers came alive,” and Adm. Brad Cooper, Central Command commander at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, assumed operational command in the theater.
