What Is Really Happening with the 2026 Iran War?

Iraq has been fighting America for more than 47 years. America’s 2026 Iran War – Operation Epic Fury -- began on February 28 when joint US and Israeli strikes hit Iranian military and nuclear installations and has passed through several periods of active fighting alternating with times of negotiation.

This site has a timeline of everything that has happened in the war – from February 28, 2026, “Khamenei killed in opening strikes” to August 11, 2026, “Trump demands Iran pay compensation, claims Hormuz “open” as deal stalls.” 

Americans do not want war – particularly long, drawn-out ones. One in three Americans support the Iran war, according to this site. Approval ratings go only so far with President Donald Trump. He looks at a problem, and he finds a possible solution. If it works, good. If it does not work, he looks for another possible solution. He is not afraid to act when he thinks that he is right. He recognizes that there have been numerous US Presidents over the past 47 years who saw the problem with Iran but failed to solve it. Now that Iran was close to having a nuclear weapon, Trump felt that he had no other choice. 

Victor Davis Hanson is a wise and honest man who sees things in ways that most people do not. He recently discussed the following information on his podcast, “Iran Has One Last Chance Before Trump Hits Back.” 

[Leaks from government sources about depletion of our weaponry to fight Iran]

… people have been leaking that there are not enough Patriot missiles, for example, or Harpoon missiles, older ones, Tomahawk missiles. We’ve heard there are not enough bunker busters. I don’t know if any of this is true, but it’s been leaking.

And the problem, why Trump is so angry, is we have enough, we have about 40% or 50%, likely, of our arsenal, which is too low. This has been going on for a long time. [He said that Obama and Biden cut the defense budget], and we don’t have enough stuff. But the problem that makes people angry is we have enough to handle Iran. We don’t have enough to handle Iran, give Ukraine enough to protect Kyiv, and then deter Cina from attacking Taiwan. So, the more you say that and leak it, the more likely China might believe it and want to try.

While we’re engaged with Ukraine and Iran, they might want to try to see if they could go into Taiwan, and we wouldn’t have enough missiles. That’s the worry.

The second thing about Trump and the Iran war, we’ve had five or six of these where he says the negotiations are going great. And then they break down, and then he hits them once or twice, and then they beg him, beg him, beg him to get back, and then everything’s close to an agreement. But the Iranians don’t tell the truth, and then he gets frustrated.

And the problem with this is that on Feb. 28, you know, we had 250 days before the midterms. So, after 38 days of kinetic operations, we stopped. We stopped because about 80%, 90% of everything they had was destroyed. But we didn’t know that they had these little mosquito boats hidden everywhere, and we didn’t know to what degree they had drones and missiles hidden. And they had a lot.

So, when we kept saying we’re destroying 90% of their air capacity as far as missiles and drones, we didn’t know what the denominator was. We didn’t know 90% of what. 10,000? 20,000? It could be a lot, 10%. And so, they started threatening the Gulf.

At that point, the Gulf freaked out. And they had wanted us to go in there and eliminate Iran. But now that they got hit, they didn’t want to commit with their 600 aircraft and join us because they thought we wouldn’t take them out completely. So, then people came to Trump, I guess, this week and said, you’re out of time. We’re only 90 days. If you’re going to solve this, you can’t keep saying this because – so, last week they dreamed up, we’re going to unload the greatest military campaign in the air since World War II. And they were. And then that panicked Iran. And they say now they’re going to open the Strait of Hormuz. I don’t think you can trust them. But the point is they got the message that now this was the last chance. So, if they break this, and I think they will, Trump will have no choice, if he is to have any credibility, unless he continues with that program.