Operation Epic Fury – What am I missing?
By: Obie Usategui
3/11/2023

Today, marks the 11th day since the start of Operation Epic Fury, name given to the Trump’s war on Iran. First and foremost, I do not know about you, but…does it not seem this war has been going on for a lot longer than a meager 11 days? I do not know if it has to do with the saturation coverage is has been given by most of the news agencies. It just feels like the war has been ongoing for weeks, months. But…not 11 days.

Typically, and historically, anytime Trump says he will do something, it happens and it happens swiftly. Promises made, promises kept – one of the qualities I most admire of his character and personality. I am spoiled, but given everything that prefaced the war on Iran, I was expecting this to be one of those unhesitant blows to Iran, in which we were going to obliterate the Islamic Republic in a matter of hours. Yes, I know, a little wishful thinking too. In retrospect, I was obviously wrong in my ambitious outlook. Again, maybe Trump style has spoiled me to where I mistakenly believed we could take over a country in hours, moreover when the one of the countries had the military superiority of a U.S., and the other country infinitely less powerful; a war between the U.S., and Iran, as far as I was concerned was a “David and Goliath” type of conflict. I think Maduro’s overthrow in Venezuela really spoiled me.

All of it, prior to the start of the war, independently and combined, led me to believe it would be, again, a matter of days and it would all be over. I thought that, in addition to the U.S. blasting the Ayatollahs out of this earth for good, I also thought that the Iranian people would take advantage of the U.S.’s actions and have a massive upheaval that would, once and for all, end the reign of the radical Islamic Republic. Well, notably, not much of all that I expected has really happened, has it?

If you listen to the news, including some of the Left radical agencies, in these 11 days since the war began, the U.S. has struck more than 50,000 targets inside Iran. We have managed to take out, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and dozens of other high-ranking officials. U.S. forces have struck and sunk more than 60 Iranian naval ships, effectively destroying an entire class of warships – these to mention a few, yet the war goes on.

Then again, no matter which way you look at the whole picture, Iran has not surrendered, has it? Some way, somehow, they keep fighting. From what I know, Iran continues to rely on ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones to endanger and attack targets, including assets across the Middle East and beyond. Their missiles and drones serve both as short- and long-term range precision strike forces, capable of penetrating even the best U.S., and Israeli reginal defenses “when fired in dense barrages, at single targets from multiple flight paths, and/or in strike packages that combine missile and drone systems.”

So…wait a minute here. Are you then telling me that Iran’s military capabilities were not as weak as we thought they were? Is the war going to end with an Iran surrender as we all thought it would? What about the Iranian people, where are they? Yes, as many as 30,000 were slaughtered in the streets of Iran back on January 8th and ninth, merely for protesting this brutal genocidal regime. So…are Iranians so afraid of their government that even with the U.S.’s intervention people are not willing to revolt against the Islamic Regime?

Last, I hear in the news is that Iran is now planning to close the Strait of Hormuz which serves and the principal pivotal transportation route for 20% of the world’s total petroleum liquid consumption. Iran’s threats have already paved the way for member countries of the International Energy Agency [IEA] to release a record of 400 million barrels of oil from their strategic reserves, including 172 million barrels from the U.S. alone, this as a common-sense deterrent to prices of gasoline going sky-high, which would translate into a sure Republican disaster on the forthcoming Midterm elections.

My last topic of concern, once the Islamic Republic finally collapses, question is who will follow? I thought their naming of Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was, simply put, a joke. More of the same garbage? I have also seen Prince Reza Pahlavi, son of the deposed late Shah of Iran, coming out as a potential opposition leader, really? Are we all suffering from the short memory syndrome again? Have we elected to forget that it was this guy’s father, Mohammad Rezza Pahlavi who was overthrown in the 1979 Iranian Revolution due to widespread discontent under the latter’s so-called “White Revolution” whereby Pahlavi’s “SAVAK” secret police was known for their repressive torture, imprisonment, and execution of political opponents.

Bottom line of my narrative today friends, I do not know if you will agree with me or not, but I find this Iran war to be far different than what I expected to begin with. Do not know if Trump might have miscalculated the expectations, much like I have. The more I look at this war in the bigger scope of things, the more I have to condemn that son-of-a-bitch Barack Hussein Obama. To think that this Obama SOB gave Iran $1.7 billion dollars with an initial downpayment of $400 million delivered by plane in cash, just goes to tell me that this SOB and the whole entire democratic coalition of snakes were out to destroy our nation by helping and abetting the enemy. Imagine someone giving the Japanese Empire $400 million dollars in the aftermath of a Pearl Harbor attack? No different.

Based on what I have seen thus far of this war, I have no doubts in my mind whatsoever that Iran was stronger militarily than we first thought they were, courtesy of Barack Obama and all democratic administrations. I have no doubts whatsoever that Iran was a lot closer to having full nuclear-power capabilities than we ever thought they were. I have no doubts that they would have used those nuclear capabilities to try and eradicate Israel and the U.S. from the face of the earth, inevitably leading the world to Armageddon if not stopped like we are today.

Operation Epic Fury is estimated to be costing the United States between $890 million and $1 billion dollars per day, which may appear to be a high price to pay for liberating a nation, then again, be that as it may, I personally find this to be a bargain price for finally overthrowing the leading export of terrorism from the face of the earth. Only wish we could have done it in a shorter period, however, I will settle for however long it takes, if we do it in a way that it cannot do a Phoenix flight and rise from the ashes. By the way, where are all our NATO and European allies? Would like to know how you all feel about what is going on. God bless the United States of America.