The real story behind Operation Epic Failure

Trump and “War” Secretary Pete Hegseth say Operation Epic Fury has destroyed Iran’s military capacity.“We’ve taken out their navy, we’ve taken out their air force, we’ve taken out their leaders,” Trump said Tuesday.At a Pentagon briefing on April 8, shortly after Trump declared a ceasefire with Iran, Hegseth said “Operation Epic Fury was a historic and overwhelming victory on the battlefield, a capital V military victory.” He added, “By any measure, Epic Fury decimated Iran’s military and rendered it combat ineffective for years to come.”But CBS News’s Jennifer Jacobs, Eleanor Watson, and James LaPorta report a very different reality. They interviewed “multiple officials with knowledge of intelligence,” who say the Islamic Republic of Iran “maintains more military capabilities than the White House or Pentagon has publicly admitted.”According to three of the officials, about half of Iran’s stockpile of ballistic missiles and its associated launch systems were still intact as of the start of the ceasefire in early April. Roughly 60 percent of the naval arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is still in existence, the officials said, including fast-attack speed boats. Although the U.S. and Israel have destroyed much of Iran’s conventional navy, the naval arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, equipped with many smaller vessels, remains partly intact, and it’s that navy that’s hampering oil shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.On Wednesday, Iranian gunboats attacked several commercial ships in the strait, shortly after Trump announced he was unilaterally extending a ceasefire to allow more time for peace talks.Iranian air power has been significantly degraded but not erased. U.S. officials say that about two-thirds of Iran’s air force is still believed to be operational.According to a written statement submitted to a House Armed Services Committee by Marine Lt. Gen. James Adams, head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, “Iran retains thousands of missiles and one-way attack UAVs that can threaten U.S. and partner forces throughout the region, despite degradations to its capabilities from both attrition and expenditure.”The regime in Tehran is showing itself to be far more tenacious and hardline than the regime it replaced. Iran seems more committed to building a nuclear bomb than it was before Trump’s war, and is less constrained than it was after the agreement negotiated by the Obama administration. And the Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed, not by the United States but by Iran — causing global oil prices to resume their upward trajectory. (Reminder: It was open before Operation Epic Fury.)Epic Fury is likely to go down as an epic failure. What will Trump do next? No one knows. What do you think?Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.