It was total obliteration.

A devastating series of strikes that had crippled Iran’s regime and has set the stage for a war that will see the US annihilate any prospect of Iran being a major geopolitical player in the Middle East.

Even US President Donald Trump can’t believe how quickly Iran’s regime has fallen as the US has achieved the fastest victory in modern military history.

All it took was 12 hours.

And now Iran is on the verge of complete collapse.

The US and Israel teamed up to launch a pair of operations running in tandem, but with the same goal, take out Iran’s dictatorial regime.

Operation Epic Fury combined with Operation Roaring Line to deliver an unbelievable amount of air power into Iran in a matter of hours, leaving an already struggling regime in tatters while taking out some of the key military nodes that might have allowed Iran to launch something that might resemble a strong enough retaliation to make the US
and Israel think twice.

The numbers are astounding.

The USIsrael combined force conducted a staggering 900 strikes against Iran in just 12 short hours in a shock and awe campaign that has shaken the entire country to its core.

We’ll be explaining how the US pulled off its 12 hours of destruction in just a few minutes along with what the team up between the US and Israel was designed to achieve.

Along the way, the combined forces have destroyed Iranian air defenses, degraded Iran’s ability to retaliate, and utterly ruined Iran’s command and control capabilities, leaving the country little more than a husk of the military force that it once presented itself to be.

First blasts in Tran were reported at about 5:30 p.m.

Australian Eastern Daylight Time.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports Iranian standard time is about 7 and 1/2 hours behind that reported time, which means the US struck Iran at about 10:00 a.m.

local time.

About an hour after the first explosions were reported, US President Donald Trump announced that the US had begun major combat operations in Iran.

What followed was another 11 hours in which the US and Israel battered Iran’s defenses, leadership, and key military nodes.

As Cappy Army notes in his report on the US-Israeli operation, the 12 hours of destruction wrought on Iran focused primarily on the most important city in the country, Tehran.

There in Tehran is where much of the regime’s command leadership is concentrated, Capy Army says.

And over the population hub, we can also see a shorefire sign that the US and Israel are well on their way to achieving the sort of aerial dominance needed to boot Iran’s ruling regime out of power forever.

The airspace over Thran has gone almost completely dark, which is precisely what we see in regions of Ukraine and Russia, where air travel is being prohibited because of the sheer scale of the military forces being deployed in the airspaces of these countries.

Iran International shared an illuminating map on February 28th that clearly shows civilian air traffic avoiding Iran altogether.

Planes that might have flown over the country just 24 hours before are now being diverted to avoid Iran along with other key hotspots such as Iraq, Kuwait, and Syria that are both targets for Iranian retaliation and sites from which the US is launching its strikes.

Oh, and one more thing.

As part of its 12 hours of destruction, the US has also taken out Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Kam.

The man who has overseen Iran as it struggled to become a respected military and nuclear power is gone forever along with hundreds, perhaps even thousands of his regime’s followers and leaders.

We’ll be exploring what that means and why it set the stage for whatever comes next later in the video.

But for now, we move on to two key questions.

How did the US pull off its 12 hours of obliteration? And what roles did America and Israel play in what has to go down as the worst half day in the entire history of Iran’s brutal regime? We’ll start with the how.

The simple answer is the US used an overwhelming amount of firepower to annihilate Iran before it even had a chance to get out of the starting blocks in this war.

We could spend hours going over every aspect of what the US did, but instead we’ll focus on some of the heaviest hitters.

Starting with the Tomahawk missiles that the US unleashed in massive quantities from its warships.

The over 20 American warships, including destroyers and submarines that have been built up in the region over the past few months, launched dozens of Tomahawk cruise missiles at their targets.

Capani reports some amazing footage has emerged of this Tomahawk blitz, including videos shot from the ground of America’s missiles hugging the terrain as closely as possible as they h hurtled their way to whatever they were sent to destroy.

One such video shows 21 of these cruise missiles flying toward their targets one after the other.

All clearly visible from the ground and all caught in a single video that lasts just over half a minute.

Multiple impacts were reported at strategic locations, all of which Iran’s air defenses, which are primarily made up of systems purchased from Russia and China, along with some built in Iran, failed to stop.

That’s where the lowaltitude flight of the Tomahawks comes into play.

The lower a missile flies to the ground, the harder it is for air defense systems and their radars to see that missile coming.

There are concerns that the US has burned through more of its already limited stockpiles of tomahawks during its 12 hours of epic fury.

However, as Business Insider notes, the RTX Corporation that makes the missile is already working to boost production to 1,000 units per year.

And after this initial attack, the US has likely opened up the opportunity to strike with more precision using other missiles and munitions.

Still, the Tomahawks played a crucial role in the first 12 hours.

The same goes for the fighter jets that the US deployed from its nearby aircraft carriers and military bases.

Cappy army reports that much of the initial 12-hour blitz of Iran’s defenses were carried out by F-35s and FA18E Super Hornets.

It took off from the aircraft carriers that the US is stationed in the Persian Gulf region.

Their strikes hit an Iranian drone platform and multiple ballistic missile launch sites.

Cappy army reveals CNN adds that F-16s and F-22s have also been seen in action in the days that followed America’s initial 12 hours of obliteration, as have twin engine A-10 attack planes.

America’s jets also targeted Iran’s limited naval facilities.

Operation Epic Fury has cost Iran some of the most important assets in its navy, as reported by no less than President Trump himself.

I’ve just been informed that we destroyed and sunk nine Iranian naval ships, some of them relatively large and important.

We’re going after the rest.

They will soon be floating at the bottom of the sea also,” Trump declared.

He added that America’s overwhelming strikes also destroyed Iran’s naval headquarters before sarcastically adding, “Other than that, their navy is doing very well.

” Militani reports that satellite images have already confirmed the sinking of three of Iran’s warships, including a light frigot and a pair of corvettes.

It also seems like three other vessels, including two patrol boats and an auxiliary ship, have also been destroyed.

This is the last thing that Iran wants when its navy is already pretty weak.

Global Firepower reveals that Iran had only seven frigots and three corvettes to begin with.

Though it still has its 25 submarines, at least as we know so far, the loss of any warship limits the naval power that Iran might have tried to exercise in the Strait of Hummus.

Let’s slow down for a second, which is something we’re sure that Iran’s regime wished the US would have done on February 28th.

So far, we’ve seen that America’s 12 hours of destruction has taken out Hommin, and there’s more to come on that.

US tomahawks obliterated key military nodes throughout Iran, and the country’s fighter jets have attacked key targets, including some of the few ships that Iran has that might present anything resembling a threat to America’s naval dominance.

Thanks to the US, Iran has lost its first warship since the 1980s.

And there will almost be more to follow.

But there is more, much more.

Before we dig deeper into what else the US did in its 12-hour blitz, this is the Military Show, and there’s a lot more where this comes from.

Make sure you subscribe today if you’re getting value from our content.

Coming back to the barrage that was America’s 12-hour assault on Iran, it wasn’t just tomahawks that Iran’s regime had to worry about on the missile front.

Beyond whatever the US fighter jets were launching by way of missiles and bombs at Iran, the US also made use of its attacks missiles.

According to military watch magazine, footage released by US central command or sentcom revealed that attackum’s missiles fired from highar launchers also targeted Iran.

It seems likely that the US used these missiles to attack Iran’s radars, further degrading the country’s air defenses along with ballistic missile launch sites that Iran might have used to retaliate against the US.

Other footage upon which military watch magazine report seems to show attacks missiles being used to take out a medium-range ballistic missile launcher as well as an Iranian bar 373 air defense system.

These missiles would have had to be launched from the ground as seen in the footage and the US would have needed to have its launchers positioned fairly close to Iran’s borders given the maximum attackum’s range of 300 km or about 186.

4 mi.

This has led to speculation that the US took advantage of its military bases in Iraq or Turkey to complete this component of the 12-hour blitz.

We don’t know if that is indeed the case as the US hasn’t confirmed where its attackims attacks originated.

However, they are the likely options and the answer doesn’t really change the fact that Iran has to deal with those powerful missiles crashing down on its territory along with tomahawks and everything else that the US and Israel unleashed as part of their attacks against 900 targets in 12 hours.

With all of this firepower, it’s easy to forget about another weapon that the US deployed during its initial assault on Iran, Lucas.

These one-way attack drones are used by Task Force Scorpion Strike, which the US created in the Middle East toward the end of 2025.

Operation Epic Fury marks the first time that this task force has been called into action on this scale, as well as the first time that Lucas Kamicazi drones have been deployed.

CNN says that the American drone is essentially a copy of the Iranian-made Shahid 136.

And SenCom seems to confirm that in a statement.

These lowcost drones modeled after Iran’s Shahid drones are now delivering Americanmade retribution, SenCom declared.

So, Iran got a little taste of its own medicine to go along with the catastrophic display of pure American firepower that it was forced to absorb on February 28th.

What we saw during America’s 12 hours of Epic Fury is simply put, the most impressive collection of US aerial might put into practice in years.

Or, as SenCom puts it, Operation Epic Fury involves the largest regional concentration of American military firepower in a generation.

There seems to be no denying.

And in a few minutes, we’re going to dive into what all of this means for Iran and its regime.

But first, it’s worth exploring in a little more detail how Operation Epic Fury and Operation Roaring Lion work together to utterly Iran in just 12 hours.

After all, though, the US and Israel appear to have the same goal of taking down Iran’s long-standing regime.

Each country took a different role during the opening stages of the conflict.

And it might be argued Israel’s role might have ended up being even more damaging to Iran and its prospects of putting up a fight in this new war.

According to the Institute for the Study of War or ISW, the US and Israel collaborated on a strategy that we can perhaps sum up as destroy and decapitate where America’s air strikes focused primarily on military targets such as the warships and ballistic missile launch sites that we’ve already discussed.

Israel targeted
Iran’s leadership.

It seems likely that Hommin died as a result of the Israeli part of the 12-hour blitz, the ISW claims.

Other major Iranian leaders that the Israeli Defense Force claims to have taken out include Ali Sham Khani who is Iran’s Defense Council Secretary and Commander Major General Muhammad Pakpur of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard or IRGC.

Other major losses for Iran include its defense minister Aziz Nazir Zade.

All died in the first 12 hours of the war and they were far from the only ones.

Iran International adds that the ISNA news agency reports that thousands of members of the IRGC were killed or wounded due to the US and Israeli strikes against Iran’s military centers.

That figure doesn’t seem to have been confirmed yet.

And Iran International notes that the ISNA is only a semi-official source.

Other figures such as those shared by Al Jazzer suggest that at least 555 Iranians have been killed by the air strike so far.

That figure comes from the Iranian Red Cresant Society, and it’s unclear if it relates solely to civilians or all Iranian casualties, including the country’s leadership.

So, there is still confusion regarding the true scale of death that has occurred in Iran’s regime as a result of the 12-hour blitz.

But we can say one thing for certain, the regime is on shaky ground.

And as the US and Israel follow up on their initial blitz, as the US has already done by unleashing its B2 Spirit stealth bombers against Iran’s underground missile facilities, that ground is going to crumble away.

This is layered, synchronized air power at its peak, Max Afterburner says in his own roundup of the end of a war that has only just started.

And this is what the US military was designed for.

This type of synchronized approach to take down the integrated air defense system and allow the leadership to be struck.

Again, it’s the strategy that the ISW highlights.

America took out the military nodes and Israel focused on Iran’s leadership.

All in a 12-hour window that makes what we’ve seen at the start of the war between the US and Iran perhaps the most impressive display of military might yet seen in the history of modern warfare.

But all this has already happened and it’s been devastating for Iran.

The big and final question we have to ask is what will happen next? Trump has already offered us a hint during the 8-minute speech he delivered just an hour into America’s 12-hour blitz against Iran.

Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.

Its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas, and our allies throughout the world, Trump declared.

In short, the complete collapse of Iran’s ruling regime seems to be on the US and Israeli agendas.

And if that’s the case, then both have made a very good start.

Kane is already dead.

If the reports about the IRGC’s losses are true, plenty of members of Iran’s regime and military who might have been able to spearhead some sort of campaign against the US have followed KA into the ground.

The satellite images that have emerged of the ruined state of K&A’s leadership house also serve as a massive propaganda victory for the US as it will be able to share those images far and wide to showcase not only how powerful the American and Israeli air forces are, but how good their intelligence has to
be for them to hit these kinds of targets so quickly and before Kam and his ilk could escape.

That sort of propaganda could also inspire what the US may hope to be the next phase of the war with Iran, a rebellion against the remnants of the regime by the Iranian people.

Cappy army speculates that Trump has committed himself to his regime overthrow statements as a way of telling the Iranian people who were protesting against that very regime in the months leading up to Operation Epic Fury that the US will support them.

If they rebel
on the ground, the US may be saying that it will use its air strikes to ruin whatever response Iran’s remaining regime tries to formulate with more air strikes.

It’s a case of passing the baton in a sense, and the death of Kina so early in the war may have laid the foundation for an uprising fueled by people power.

However, as Politico reports, such an uprising would have to overcome layers of repressive mechanisms that Iran has built over the last few decades, most of which won’t have disappeared just because hommin is gone.

The IRGC is still very much alive even with the loss of so many members.

And it’s historically difficult to get rid of regimes that are as fundamentally raid in their beliefs as the one that leads Iran.

But then Iran’s people are showing a major appetite for change right now.

Perhaps they will heed the US call and be successful where others before them have failed.

Politico says one thing we can say with almost 100% certainty is that the US support won’t extend to putting boots on the ground in Iran.

Republican Senator Tom Cotton has already made that clear in an interview where he said, “The president has no plan for any kind of large-scale ground forces inside of Iran.

An extended air and naval campaign that builds on the regime shattering success of the initial blitz is far more likely,” Cotton says.

And the US will be hoping that whatever ground force is needed comes from the repressed people of Iran who have been crying out for regime change.

There’s another factor for Iran’s regime to worry about, other states.

The Times of India is already reporting that there may have been some form of sly cooperation between Israel and Saudi Arabia in the buildup to the initial 12-hour series of strikes.

That cooperation may become more overt as the war goes on, as the Saudis have plenty of reasons to want to get rid of an Iranian regime that is unpredictable and has tried to make itself a power player in the Middle East.

The UK has also announced limited involvement in the conflict, though this currently extends to offering the US the use of UK bases after it had previously refused.

However, there is a broader consensus across most of the Gulf states that this war isn’t their fight.

As Al Jazzer reports, that’s even though Iran has retaliated as best as it can against the US and Israeli strikes by launching limited numbers of missiles and drones at American bases in those Gulf states.

But right now, things aren’t looking good for Iran’s regime.

Its leader is dead.

Most of its air defenses are shot.

Much of the IRGC has been destroyed, and the entire regime is in turmoil.

The war may not be over yet, but in just 12 hours, the US along with Israel has set the stage for Iran to lose so quickly that it will be a marvel of modern military operations.

Total obliteration has come for Iran’s leadership.

And interestingly, the fall of the Iranian regime may well have a dire impact on another leader who is thousands of miles away.

Somewhere in Russia, Vladimir Putin is trembling at the thought of what a world without a version of Iran that is friendly to Russia will mean for his own regime.

After joint USIsraeli strikes, Iran thought it had the answers.

A wave of drone and missile strikes rocked US bases throughout the Middle East.

The US didn’t take it lying down.

Iran came back with missiles.

And the US retaliated with devastating and instant revenge.

US B2 pilots just did something unbelievable in Iran.

And Tran knows that it’s already lost the war.

reeling from a devastating blitz of American and Israeli strikes that reportedly saw the US carry out 900 strikes in the first 12 hours of its operation along with Israel bombing Iran 1,200 times in 24 hours.

Iran knew it had to strike back.

It tried, but it couldn’t hit the aircraft flying overhead.

They’re too fast, too wellcoordinated, and simply too good for Iran’s weakened air defenses.

But what Iran could do is use its missiles to attack targets that aren’t zipping along at speeds that are faster than sound.

Stationary targets.

Targets like US air bases.

Unleashing a wave of missiles and drones, Iran targeted a slew of US bases throughout the Middle East, instantly transforming a countrywide conflict into a war that is affecting the entire region.

France 24 has the details in a February 28th article where it outlines what Iran hit or tried to hit.

In Bahrain, which is home to the US Navy’s fifth fleet, as well as US naval forces central command, Iran targeted the service center for the US fifth fleet.

Gray plumes of smoke have been seen rising from near the base, which is home to a deep water port that can accommodate US aircraft carriers.

In Iraq, where the US still has forces based in the autonomous Kurdish region, explosions were recorded near the US consulate in Herbiel.

However, the Kurdish security forces saw that the US managed to intercept drones and missiles that flew over Herbiel.

Then onto Jordan’s Muak Salty air base where the US has deployed dozens of military aircraft.

According to early reporting, two ballistic missiles were shot down with only material damage caused.

It keeps on going and if you keep watching, you’re going to learn what the US did to avenge these strikes.

Moving to Q8, which hosts a number of US bases along with depots containing stockpiles of equipment and supplies for US forces.

Iranian missiles targeted the Ali Salm air base.

They were mostly intercepted.

Though Italy, which also has Air Force personnel at the base, says that Iran managed to damage a key runway.

Explosions were also recorded close to the Aludide air base in Qatar which is home to forward components of US central command or sentcom.

Iran also appears to have targeted the Qatari capital of Doha with an attack in the United Arab Emirates which is home to the Aldafra air base that hosts the US 380th Air Expeditionary Wing.

Two witnesses claimed that they have seen smoke rising from the base following a small series of explosions.

Two rounds of Iranian missiles were reportedly intercepted in the UAE, though debris from the destruction of the first wave is reported to have killed a civilian.

And finally, in Syria, an Iranian missile killed four civilians, though the US is reportedly in the process of withdrawing its troops from that country.

This was a massive Iranian attack, a desperate attempt to project power after the US and Israel combined to take out over 1,000 targets on Iranian soil in one day.

The US has suffered casualties as a result of Iran’s missile laden response.

St.

Thomas confirmed that three US service members have been killed in action during what the US is now calling Operation Epic Fury.

Another five sustained serious injuries and US President Donald Trump had cautioned that the lives of American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties.

That often happens in war.

The US wanted revenge.

It got it by using one of the most powerful aerial assets in its arsenal, the B2 Spirit Bomber.

On March 1st, the war zone or TWWZ reported that America’s B2s had entered the air campaign against Iran.

Flying from their base in Whiteman, Missouri, these stealthy bombers reached Iranian airspace during the early hours of March 1st.

And when they arrived, they unleashed hell.

Iran’s missile caves were their biggest targets, and we’ll be explaining why the B2 was the right aircraft for that particular job in just a few moments.

These facilities, which are built deep into Iran’s mountains, are typically used to store missiles.

However, some also have the ability to launch ballistic missiles through fissures built into the underground facilities, which makes them a double threat.

The US logic here is simple.

Take out the caves and you destroy Iran’s missiles, as well as its ability to launch them.

Iran takes a lot of pride in these missile caves.

Almost a year ago, in late March 2025, the Iranian regime even released an 85-second video showcasing the caves and some of Iran’s more advanced missiles and rockets.

Again, this was a projection of power, or at least it was supposed to be.

Iran’s issue was that its propaganda video showcased a major problem that a country that has bunker busting bombs like the US could exploit.

Missiles were being stored out in the open in the missile caves with seemingly no blast doors or other protective measures that would guard the caves if one of those missiles exploded.

A chain reaction would be possible with the right strike.

TWWZ reported in March 2025.

All it would take is the right match to light the fuse and the missile caves would come crumbling down.

The US had just the right match in the B2 spirit.

America’s most impressive stealth bomber was the perfect choice for the revenge it took on Iran.

And not just because it has the bunker busting bombs needed to cause a chain reaction of explosions in Iran’s missile caves.

Those caves have another vulnerability.

They don’t even need to be destroyed completely to be taken offline.

All the US had to do was seal them off by striking entrances and the fissures built into the caves, which reduces Iran’s ability to use its massive stockpiles.

After that, surveillance and repeated strikes to take out any openings that Iran tries to form put the US in a position where it can attack elsewhere in the country while minimizing Iran’s attempts to retaliate.

So, the strategy was in place.

The B2 bombers had arrived.

All the US had to do was light the match.

Before we get to that, let’s look at what the B2 Spirit brings to the fight in Iran that no other US aircraft delivers.

TWWZ’s Tyler Rogueway offers some basics in an expost where he claims that the B2 makes direct attacks against Iranian targets possible that no other platform can pull off.

A single B2 can carry up to 80 JDAM bombs, each of which weighs 500 lb, and when dropped in large enough quantities, deliver more than enough firepower to seal off Iran’s missile caves, preventing the country’s crumbling regime from pulling off a repeat of what it did against US bases across the Middle East.

Entire airfields infrastructure gone on a single pass is how Rogerway puts it.

And when you add mops or massive ordinance penetrators into the mix, you get the bunker busting capabilities that make the B2 the perfect choice for taking out Iran’s missile caves and if the US chooses, the country’s underground missile facilities.

Max After Burner had even more to say.

This is what the B2 does best.

Going in when it’s least expected and hitting sensitive sights so no one sees it coming and it’s complete shock and awe.

In other words, the B2 combines its immense firepower with stealth capabilities that allow it to get in, strike, and get out before Iran knows what hit it.

Afterburner adds that it looks like the US deployed four to six of its B2s in Iran.

And he notes that each is capable of carrying two of the 30,000lb mops that are each capable of penetrating over 200 ft and will strike at speeds exceeding 625 mph.

The B2 is the point of the spear for the next phase of America’s aerial assault.

And in a moment, we’re going to reveal precisely what the US pulled off in its revenge strike, as well as what Iran has lost during Operation Epic Fury so far.

But before we go deeper into that, if this is the kind of insight that you want, make sure you’re subscribed to the Military Show.

We break it down like this every single week.

When America’s B2s blasted out of Whiteman, Missouri, their pilots knew that they had a 32-hour round trip on their dockets.

The UKers denied forward basing, though that may be changing now, as you’ll learn if you stick with us.

So the bombers had to fly thousands of miles, drop their ordinance, and then fly back all in one massive trip.

The US deployed KC135 Strata tankers to make up for the lack of forward basing.

These enormous aircraft enable aerial refueling, which keeps the B2s in the skies for as long as the US needs them.

Now, we mentioned that the B2 can be loaded with 500 lb Jade dams and mops that can penetrate deep underground.

But these weren’t the weapons that the US chose to use on March 1st.

Remember what we told you about the Iranian missile caves and their key vulnerability earlier in the video? You only need to destroy the entrances, exits, and fissures, and you get a missile cave that becomes a non-factor.

The US knew this, so it likely loaded the B2s with a different type of JDAM.

TWWZ speculates that this was the Blue 109 warhead that is equipped with the GBU31 JDAM, which creates a 2,000lb bunker buster that is more than capable of destroying Iran’s missile caves, or at least capable of destroying missile launch apertures and
runner entrances that lead into those caves.

It looks like TWWZ speculation was correct.

In the wake of its B2 bombing run, Sentcom announced precisely what the US used last night.

USB B2 stealth bombers armed with 2,000lb bombs struck Iran’s hardened ballistic missile facilities.

“No nation should ever doubt America’s resolve,” Sencom said in a March 1st expost, which was accompanied by a video showing B2s in flight.

“The mention of 2,000 bombs in that post suggests that TWWZ was right on the money when it speculated on the use of the blue 109 warhead.

And now we’re starting to see evidence of the damage that America’s B2s caused.

Satellite images are starting to come to light showcasing what has happened to the missile caves that the US has targeted.

Shared by Brady Afric on X, one series of photographs demonstrates that Iran’s Tabre North missile base has been wrecked by the B2s with the pictures showcasing the precise types of collapsed tunnel entrances that we told you earlier are enough to put many of these types of bases out of commission.

Newsweek reports that the US also appears to have taken out a radar system at Iran’s Zahedan Air Base, though it’s unclear if this was done by the B2s or if the radar was destroyed as part of the 2,000 plus strikes conducted by the US and Israel during its initial thunderstorm of strikes against Iran.

The same outlet reports that Iran’s drone and cruise missile storage bunkers in Connor have been destroyed.

What we see here is the systematic destruction of the one major threat that Iran poses to the US.

Iran struck US bases with missiles.

The US and its B2s have mostly taken those missiles out of the picture.

But beyond that, what this now means is that the US can follow up with more strikes conducted by its carrierbased assets.

After all, Iran’s ballistic missiles posed a threat to the carriers that the US has stationed in the Persian Gulf.

As the US takes Iran’s missile threat offline, those carriers can position themselves closer to Iran’s territory, which only speeds up the rate of strikes that the US can carry out.

After Burner explains, stating that it’s likely F-22s that paved the way for the B2s that the US unleashed, likely by destroying air defenses and creating safe aerial corridors.

Now that Iran’s missile caves have collapsed, carrier assets like the F-18s launched from the USS Abraham Lincoln will likely start blasting off every 30 minutes to utterly ruin more of Iran’s key military nodes.

Israel has also gone allin and will benefit from America’s missile cave destruction.

Afterburner adds 200 jets F-35s, custom Israeli electronic warfare jets, F-15s from Israel, F-15E from the US will add to something called Lucas, which is a one-way attack drone that is akin to an upgraded version of Iran’s own Shahid 136.

So, if Iran thought the
worst was over following the flight of the B2s, it is sorely mistaken.

Much more is coming.

We’ll come back to that topic in a few moments, but before we get to that, let’s sum up the situation for Iran as it stands right now.

On the ballistic missile front, it would be inaccurate to claim that Iran has completely lost the ability to fire missiles at the US, Israel, and other targets.

We don’t have full confirmation of what America’s B2s destroyed during their bombing run.

So, more information is needed to determine just how crippled Iran’s missile capabilities are.

But what Iran’s collapsing regime has to deal with is that its missile threat is being taken away.

We said earlier that missiles form the backbone of the attacking threat that Iran presents to the United States.

According to the New York Times, Iran is believed to have over 3,000 missiles in its stockpiles, though some estimates claim that the country planned to build its stockpiles up to 8,000 by the end of 2027.

Immediately, America’s B2 bombers have forced Iran to pump the brakes on those plans.

Iran is trying to build dozens of missiles per month, the New York Times reports.

But every successful American and Israeli strike is destined to slow that production rate down.

Add Iran expending missiles from the diminishing launch sites that it has.

And you also get a country that is eating into stockpiles that it’s attempting to replenish.

Some of Iran’s missiles are advanced enough to cause serious damage to US interests in the Middle East.

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies highlights some of them with particularly heavy hitters, including the Sagil 2, which has a range of 2,000 km or about 1,240 mi, and the Koram Sha, which flies for between 2,000 and 3,000 km or 1,240 and 1,864 mi.

These are the types of missiles that America’s B2 bombers have tried to take out of the picture with their devastating run of strikes, and it looks like it has worked.

The New York Times reports that Israeli officials are claiming that Operation Epic Fury, which is combining with Israel’s own Operation Roaring Lion, has shut down about half of Iran’s missile capabilities already, adding to the air strikes conducted against Iran by the US and Israel in June 2025.

These most recent operations have contributed to the destruction of around 200 of Iran’s ballistic missile launchers along with the rendering of dozens more inoperable, the official claims.

So with each subsequent strike the US carries out, we may yet see B2’s fly again very soon, Iran’s missile capabilities are collapsing, just like its regime.

Preliminary figures being reported by Al Jazzer in its live tracker of the war between Iran and the US and Israel suggest that at least 555 people have been killed across Iran.

Among them is the most valuable target in the country when it comes to prompting regime change, Supreme Leader Ali Kam himself.

After a day or so of speculation that the head of Iran’s regime had been killed in the massive air strikes pummeling his country, Alazer reported on February 28th that Iranian state TV had confirmed KA’s death and ordered a 40-day mourning period for his passing.

Kam didn’t even live long enough in a conflict he started to watch America’s B2s destroy Iran’s missile caves.

And he leaves Iran facing an immediate future where it has to figure out who is going to lead the country at a time when bombs and missiles are still flying overhead.

After Burner reports that a three-member interim leadership council has been created to choose KA’s successor, that council has a problem on its hands as America’s strikes are whittling away at the entire regime structure in Iran.

For
each leader that is considered, there may well be a bomb or missile on route that could take that potential leader out.

Iranians are celebrating even as the state instructs them to mourn.

One of those Iranians, an engineer named Massud Godarat Abadi, who moved to the US at age 27 to escape KA’s regime, told CNBC, “Kune is dead.

This is the best day of my life.

This is a glorious day for Iran.

I believe his death could mark the beginning of a new chapter in our nation’s history.

In the long run, I hope this moment will prove transformative.

” However, losing common does not automatically lead to regime change in Iran.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is still operational, though it’s being weakened as each day passes.

and more US and Israeli missiles and bombs strike deep into the heart of Iran.

And to make matters worse for that bewildered force, another country is about to get involved in the fight.

You may remember that we told you earlier that the UK had refused to allow the US to use its bases in the Middle East for America’s B2 bombing run.

That won’t happen again.

On March 1st, the UK’s Prime Minister, Saki Stalmer, announced that the US will be allowed to use UK bases in future strikes against Iran’s missile sites.

This isn’t to say that the UK is going to be sending its own aircraft into the fray.

It appears to simply be opening up RAF Fairfooting Glsters along with Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to the US.

That’s good for America.

It won’t have to risk strata tankers as much in future B2 deployments.

Plus, America’s B2 pilots may be able to take a little more time to zero in on their targets rather than having to get everything done in one go as part of 32-hour bombing runs.

As for the next few days, Trump has announced that Iran has a few offramps if it feels as though it’s absorbed enough punishment.

In an interview with Axios, the US president said, “I can go long and take over the whole thing or end it in 2 or 3 days and tell the Iranians, see you again in a few years if you start rebuilding your nuclear and missile programs.

” In other words, Iran has one option.

End its nuclear weapons ambitions.

Will Iran take the off-ramp? If it doesn’t, this may only be the first of many times that we report on B2 bombers crippling the Iranian regime’s missile capabilities.

And when combined with America’s carrier force along with Israel, the sheer amount of air power being deployed against Iran may end up destroying its already fragile regime for good.

They have no navy.

It’s been knocked out.

Those were the words of US President Donald Trump on March 3rd.

following 48 hours that had utterly ruined Iran’s naval fleet.

Iran challenged the US.

That was a mistake.

Bombs and missiles flew and Iran’s entire fleet was wiped out in just 2 days.

This is historically bad for Iran and it’s only going to get worse for a regime that is collapsing before our eyes.

After initial American and Israeli strikes on Iran wiped out a huge chunk of the country’s leadership, Iran responded with attacks on several US military bases.

Okay.

The US said, “We see your base attacks and will raise you with the destruction of your entire naval fleet.

” US Tomahawks flew in an operation that overwhelmed any strategy that Iran’s navy had, and the results speak for themselves.

Iran has lost 11 of its warships along with several of its attack submarines.

And the US has unleashed a devastating wave of firepower that serves as a reminder to Iran’s crumbling regime, as if one was needed, that anything Iran can try is just going to be met with a bigger and far more devastating response from the US.

In a few minutes, we’re going to explain how the US left Iran’s entire navy crippled in just 48 hours.

Before we do, let’s take a deeper look at the results.

We can sum it up in seven words.

The Gulf of Oman has been emptied.

That’s according to the US Central Command or Sentcom, which took to X to explain what it pulled off in just 2 days.

2 days ago, the Iranian regime had 11 ships in the Gulf of Oman.

Today, they have zero.

The Iranian regime has harassed and attacked international shipping in the Gulf of Oman for decades.

Those days are over, Sencom declared.

There’s a hint here about why the US took aim at Iran’s navy, which we’ll get into later.

But the big news here is that some of Iran’s most important warships are out of the war just days into the fight, destroying Iran’s naval posture in an instant.

And we don’t have to take Sentcom’s word for it.

Satellite photographs are already emerging that showcase the scale of the damage that America’s strikes have caused.

The Iris Macran, which is Iran’s first forward base ship, is down.

That vessel was struck while it was morowed in Bandar Abbas, Naval News reports.

And it means that the US has taken out what was once an oil tanker, but has since become a military vessel capable of supporting helicopter operations.

With a displacement of 120,000 tons, the Iris Macran was among the largest vessels in the Middle East region.

Now, satellite photographs show fires on its birth and smoke streaming out of the warship’s central portion.

A Jamaran class corvette that was stationed at Pier in Chabahar has also been taken out.

Armed with anti-ship and surfaceto-air missiles along with torpedoes, this type of ship was supposed to be central to Iran’s naval strategy.

Iran has six of them and at least one now stuck at Connor Naval Base with smoke streaming out of it.

The list goes on and on.

The Telegraph reveals that satellite imagery captured by Planet Labs shows the Bandara Bass region where at least 11 of Iran’s warships were docked as recently as February 22nd is now blanketed in a smog of thick black smoke following America’s heavy bombing campaign.

The remains of the Iris Macran can be seen in the photos that the Telegraph shares.

However, the biggest hit came against Iran’s best warship, the Iris Shahed Bagari.

The closest thing that Iran has to an aircraft carrier, the Iris Shahed Bairi is the center of Iran’s mobile drone threat.

Referred to by W as a mother ship, the vessel has been used by Iran to launch drones at US bases and Gulf countries from the moment that the US campaign against Iran began.

Like the Irish Macran, the Irish Shahid Begari started life as a commercial ship that Iran converted into a warship, which perhaps gives us an idea of why Iran’s navy isn’t all the country’s regime needed to be.

What we’ve seen over the past 48 hours is what weapons built for war can do when they target commercial ships converted for war.

The UK Defense Journal adds that the Irish Shahed BARI has also been converted to launch and retrieve helicopters, making it an even bigger threat than its drone usage implies.

But now it’s gone.

I guess you could say it’s the first aircraft carrier to be sunk since World War II, Cappy Army, says Riley in his coverage of the US Blitz of Iran’s naval assets.

That might be a little bit of a stretch, at least when comparing the Irish Shahid Begari to US carriers such as the USS Abraham Lincoln, which has been playing a key role in this story, but the warship was among Iran’s best.

And its loss will sting because it means that the country’s strategy of unleashing drones against America’s bases and vessels has just taken a massive hit.

already reeling Iran’s regime would have been wondering how it could get any worse during the 48 hours of destruction that the US unleashed.

It could get worse and it did.

The Telegraph explains, reporting, “US forces have also mostly destroyed the headquarters of the Iranian naval fleet in the port of Bander Abbas, while Ali Shamani, an admiral in Iran’s elite revolutionary guard corps, IRGC, has been killed in an Israeli air strike.

So Iran has lost its entire fleet in the Gulf of Oman.

Its naval headquarters has been devastated and one of its top admirals is 6 ft under.

This isn’t just bad for Iran, it’s historically bad.

And there will be Iranians of a certain age who will feel a massive sense of deja vu right now.

Iran has been here before, watching on helplessly as the US crippled the country’s entire fleet.

This has to feel like Operation Praying Mantis, only with a major twist that we’ll explain if you stick with us.

During the late 1970s and into the 80s, Iran made a habit of attacking the US.

1979 saw Iranian revolutionaries take 52 Americans hostage, holding them for 444 days.

The US launched the Desert One rescue mission, which failed catastrophically and left eight US service members dead.

In 1983, an Iranian suicide bomber killed 241 US Marines and sailors in Beirut.

And four years later, the US experienced more Middle East humiliation when an Iraqi jet attacked the USS Stark, killing 37 US sailors.

Then came April 18th, 1988.

Operation Praying Mantis was launched, and in a matter of hours, the US destroyed a pair of Iranian oil platforms, a missile boat, two frigots, and three armed speedboats.

In a matter of hours, half of Iran’s navy had been crippled in what was the worst blow delivered in modern times to a navy that had existed since the first Persian Empire over 2,500 years ago.

Note the word was.

Operation Praying Mantis will feel like a picnic compared to what just happened to Iran’s navy.

Now, here’s the twist.

While older Iranians will be feeling a sense of dja vu over what just happened, they’ll also be asking themselves how it happened at all.

Iran has been preparing for this type of fight with the United States ever since Operation Praying Mantis.

That single day led to a complete rewrite of Iranian naval doctrine to ensure that nothing like the 1980s embarrassment would ever happen again.

They came up with a plan to overwhelm American ships with swarms of fast attack boats, Cappy Army explains, adding, “They planned to fire land-based anti-hship missiles at US forces.

They had a whole strategy of using their submarines to ambush US vessels.

Knowing that it couldn’t stack up to the US on the pure naval firepower front, Iran had developed a layered and asymmetric strategy that was supposed to see its fast attack boats slip in and out of range, delivering shots as they went.

All while Iran’s submarines and missiles pelted anything that the US sent Iran’s way.

But nothing went according to Iran’s plan.

And the reason why is that Iran have been preparing for an attack like Operation Praying Mantis and the US delivered something entirely different.

But before we go deeper into that, if this is the kind of insight you want more of, make sure you’re subscribed to the Military Show.

We break it down like this every single week.

Iran’s biggest problem during America’s 48 hour blitz of its navy was that it never saw the particular tactics that the US used coming.

A naval doctrine created in the 1990s to counter the type of threat that ruined Iran’s navy in the late 80s was never going to work.

Iran had planned for what amounted to a ship-to- ship fight, which is where its fast attack boats would have a chance to excel.

The Iranian regime thought its navy would be able to confine the much larger US ships in constricted waters, such as the Strait of Hummus, which we’ll be covering in a few minutes.

Stuck in those waters, America’s ships would be sitting ducks for the missiles launched from the fast boats, along with torpedoes fired by submarines and drones launched from Iran’s makeshift aircraft carriers.

But by 2026, the US knew what
Iran was going to do.

Persistent drone coverage combined with other forms of intelligence meant that the US knew where Iran’s boats were at all times.

Iranian warships haven’t been able to get close to what the US has sent to the Persian Gulf region because military tech, as surprising as this appears to have been for Iran, has advanced since the 1990s.

So has America’s strategy.

Iran ended up bringing a knife to a gunfight and the US said, “Screw you.

” America wasn’t about to play the fast boat game.

Its strategy was simple and utterly devastating.

Ruin Iran’s fleet using Tomahawk missiles launched from so far away that Iran’s entire naval strategy wouldn’t be able to make it out of port.

The US used the anti-ship missiles that Iran was expecting it to use during Operation Praying Mantis.

But in 2026, as part of Operation Epic Fury, the US unleashed Tomahawk cruise missiles at Iran’s Navy.

Those missiles have a much longer standoff range than anything that Iran expected the US to use, which means the warships and platforms used to launch them never get within range of Iran’s warships.

The Iris Macran was a casualty of this very strategy as tomahawk missiles launched from hundreds of miles away slammed into the ship.

One after the other and in such rapid succession that whatever defenses Iran had loaded into the vessel never had a chance to stop what the US unleashed.

Those tomahawks were likely launched by the Alley Burke class destroyers that Iran expected to be getting up close and personal with its fast attack boats.

And with their 1,600 km or around 1,000mi range, those missiles were the only thing that Iran’s idling warships saw before they were destroyed.

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