Will we get tired of the winning before we get tired of the fighting? That political question hangs over all the successes of Operation Epic Fury, even after just four days of hostilities. The news on that question may be better than some believe.
We'll get to that in a moment. First, though, let's review all of the winning. The joint US-Israel war on Iran continues to expand without any effective defense from the regime's forces. The IRGC continues to launch ballistic missiles at Israel and every US partner in the region, barrages that have done mild damage to structures and taken the lives of six American soldiers, but Iran's missile and drone deterrents have done more diplomatic damage to its own regime. We'll get back to that in a moment as well.
This morning, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth briefed the media on the successes of Operation Epic Fury. The highlight of the presentation was the first sinking of an enemy ship by an American submarine since World War II – the Iranian warship Soleimani. Hegseth played the video and declared that the US is "fighting to win," pledging to destroy Iran's military assets no matter their location:
Boom 🔥
— ilana israelov (@izrailov94) March 4, 2026
The U.S. Department of Defense has released footage of the strike on an Iranian warship by an American submarine in the Indian Ocean.
‘They thought they were safe in international waters — and we sank them.’
Pete Hegseth: ‘We are fighting to win.‘#Hegseth #Iran #Israel… pic.twitter.com/unkEJXoN92
“We are fighting to win”
— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) March 4, 2026
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the difference. 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/7aAkToPm0F
Hegseth said the same thing on Sunday. This provided a clear demonstration of that pledge. The US spent many years in conflicts, wringing our collective hands over "proportional" responses, and, worse yet, demanding that our allies fight the same way. The Israelis put up with that for decades, especially in dealing with Hamas, before finally refusing to play the "fight to not lose" game after October 7. Benjamin Netanyahu fought Hamas for more than two years before forcing them to accept disarmament and removal from power as terms for a cease-fire, under Donald Trump's leadership.
Those days have come to an end, Hegseth has declared.
Speaking of ends, though, how long will it take to win? And how does the War Secretary define victory? Reporters pressed for an answer, and Hegseth left it somewhat open-ended:
Top Pentagon officials on Wednesday suggested that the Iran war could extend into a longer conflict — saying the fighting is “far from over” — even as they declined to explain what ultimate victory might look like.
The warnings from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Dan Caine about an enduring conflict were the first from military officials, and they underscored President Donald Trump’s predictions over the past several days that the campaign could last for weeks.
And, in keeping with the president, neither Hegseth nor Caine outlined what an end to the conflict might look like, as the war entered its fifth day amid continued air assaults by Israeli and American forces and sporadic missile reprisals from Iran.
“We’ve only just begun to hunt, dismantle, demoralize, destroy and defeat their capabilities,” Hegseth told reporters at the Pentagon on Wednesday. That statement echoed Trump, who said Monday that “we haven’t even started hitting them hard. The big wave hasn’t even happened. The big one is coming soon.”
Plenty of people picked up on the expanding victory horizon. Earlier in the operation, expectations were set more in the range of one to two weeks. In the last couple of days, the target slipped to three or four weeks. Today, Hegseth kept the horizon hazy, but mentioned a timeframe as long as eight weeks.
Why the slippage? For one thing, as the White House admitted in a briefing, Iran's drones have been tougher to counter than assumed at first. However, a more positive aspect may be that the quick collapse of Iran's defenses have opened up new targets for both Israel and the US. The return of access at Diego Garcia will allow robust sorties from our B-2 stealth bomber fleet. The US began rotating B-52s into action yesterday, vastly escalating the payloads that can be delivered, and an indication that total air supremacy has been achieved. Otherwise, the slow and very large radar targets of B-52s would not be put at risk in this kind of combat.
The Pentagon has kept adding strategic targets to its wish list all along. They are calculating the sortie rates and figuring out the logistics for armaments to come up with the horizon for the end of Operation Epic Fury. As long as losses remain minimal, there will be no military pressure to end the war quickly. Even diplomatic pressure may be dissipating now that Iran has targeted nearly everyone in the region with ballistic missiles and drones, including its putative friends. The Saudis are gearing up for offensive operations against Tehran, Oman and Qatar have repudiated their relationships with the mullahs, and now Iran has managed to anger its last remaining ally in the region:
Turkey summons the Iranian ambassador to Ankara to its foreign ministry to convey its protest and concerns over a ballistic missile fired from Iran that was heading towards its airspace, a Turkish diplomatic source says.
The Turkish Defense Ministry said in a statement Wednesday that a ballistic missile fired from Iran and heading into Turkish airspace after passing Syria and Iraq was destroyed by NATO air and missile defense systems in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, causing no casualties.
The Qataris are not happy and are not buying the Iranian regime's excuses for its attacks on Doha:
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has told his Qatari counterpart Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani that Iranian missile attacks were directed at US interests and not at Qatar.
Qatar’s top diplomat “categorically rejected” that claim and called for an immediate halt to Iran’s attacks, the Qatari Foreign Ministry says on X.
What about domestic political pressure? A number of polls taken before or during the initial phase of Operation Epic Fury suggested that patience may quickly run out among American voters. A new poll from CBS News gives a far more optimistic picture, both on support for the aims of the war and patience with achieving those objectives:
CBS poll found a 76% approval rating for the Iran attacks if the operation lasts only days or weeks.
— Poncheeto🇲🇽🌮🇲🇽🌯🇲🇽 (@RealRedTaylor) March 4, 2026
Do you believe Trump will be able to pull that off? pic.twitter.com/6s74anklbr
The same poll shows overall disapproval for the war, 44/56, with 63% of independents disapproving. The CBS News analysis chalks that up to a lack of clear explanation of the necessity of military action and clear communication of its objectives. The Trump administration has intensified its attempts to rectify those shortfalls; today's briefing from Hegseth is part of that effort. If the White House can make gains on its public-relations efforts for action, those numbers could well improve sharply, And as the one question indicates, the American electorate has some significant patience for allowing Operation Epic Fury to play out before coming to firm conclusions.
Politically, faster is better. However, as Hegseth says, this administration does not fight wars to help polling. They fight wars to win them. That alone will likely provide plenty of political benefit as a side effect down the road – assuming Trump's war on Iran achieves the objectives that Trump clearly lays out.
Editor's Note: For decades, former presidents have been all talk and no action. Now, Donald Trump is eliminating the threat from Iran once and for all.
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