28th of February the United States Military and the I.D.F (Israel Defense Forces) launched a preemptive attack on Iran with the explicit expressed goals of regime change, as well as destruction of Iran’s nuclear program and ballistic missile arsenal. The Iranians responded harshly firing thousands of missiles and drones back at literally every other country in the region except for Yemen. This all began on the 28th of February with US airstrikes on key Iranian sites, including the residence of Ayatollah Ali Kamani killing him as well as other top Iranian officials. This created a recent leadership crisis. This leadership crisis has been resolved with the ayatollah’s son taking power in Iran.
The US has deployed lots of assets in its fight against the Iranians with over 200 fixed wing combat aircraft, plus 2 carrier strike groups with their accompanying fixed wing assets. This strike force has systematically destroyed or degraded Iranian air defense assets in a Sead (suppression of enemy air defense) and Dead (destruction of enemy air defense campaign), allowing coalition forces to conduct deep strike missions into Iran. These missions have caused significant losses to Iran’s air and naval forces with over 90 vessels sunk since the start of the operation. These have ranged from small speed and fishing boats to frigate and submarines. The US has also claimed to have destroyed almost 200 ballistic missile launchers of the IRGC (Iranian revolutionary guard crop) aerospace forces.
The war has caused a lot of damage to the region with retaliatory strikes being reported in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, Iraq, Jordan, Azerbaijan, Türkiye, Syria, Israel, and Cyprus where UK bases are located. Iran has also retaliated by closing the strait of Hormuz and firing on multiple ships who have attempted to run the gauntlet of the strait of Hormuz. This has resulted in severe damage to multiple ships including flagged oil takers operating in the gulf. This has caused a rise in oil and gas prices.
On the ground in Iran thousands of targets have been hit, and the Iranian air defense appears to be thoroughly saturated or destroyed. Iranian air defense operators have proven themself unable to seriously resist coalition air attacks against the country. With images of the destruction of multiple batteries of SA-65 and HQ-9B. Iran has lost a lot of its Airforce and ballistic missile launchers as well. Iran’s armed forces have been hampered by constantly losing senior military commanders in airstrikes by the US and Isreal. This has caused a leadership crisis in Iran that has disproportionately affected Iran’s military due to most of the senior officials killed by Israel being military officers. Overall, the situation continues to be volatile and will likely continue for several more weeks said Trump and Pete Hegseth (secretary of War), however this could change with Trump saying that the US was ahead of schedule according to Al Jazeera. So, we will just have to wait and see what happens next.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/30/politics/us-military-equipment-middle-east-iran
https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2026/3/14/trump-claims-us-way-ahead-of-schedule-in-iran
