🧵 THREAD 1/25:
Nine Days That Changed Everything. A Full Assessment of Operation Epic Fury.
Before I walk through the documented record of these nine days, I want to establish something clearly. What follows is not opinion. Every claim is sourced from CENTCOM fact sheets, classified Congressional briefings reported by named senators, NIC assessments, independent think tanks including CSIS, ISW, Brookings, Hudson Institute and ACLED, and verified open-source intelligence. I have been tracking this conflict in real time since February 28th. This is what the evidence actually shows.

THE PRELUDE: What Was Happening Before The First Bomb Fell
This war did not begin on February 28th. Its roots run considerably deeper and the pre-war context is essential for understanding every contradiction that followed.
Beginning in late December 2025, massive nationwide anti-regime protests erupted in Iran, driven largely by economic crisis, the collapse of the rial, and rising prices. The protests became the largest in scale since the 1979 revolution, spreading to over 100 cities. The Iranian government responded with violent repression. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent later claimed that Washington engineered a dollar shortage in Iran to send the Iranian rial into freefall and cause the protests. If accurate, and Bessent said this publicly, the United States was conducting economic warfare against Iran months before the first missile was fired.

Simultaneously, nuclear diplomacy was accelerating. On 6 February 2026, Iran and the US held indirect nuclear negotiations in Oman’s capital, Muscat. A second round of nuclear talks was scheduled in Geneva. On 25 February, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated that a “historic” agreement to avert military conflict was “within reach” ahead of renewed talks.
Then came the most consequential 24 hours before the war. On 27 February 2026, Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr Al-Busaidi said a “breakthrough” had been reached and Iran had agreed both to never stockpile enriched uranium and to full verification by the IAEA. Iran had also agreed to irreversibly downgrade its current enriched uranium to the lowest level possible. Al-Busaidi said peace was “within reach.”
Less than 24 hours later, the bombs fell.
The administration’s justification for launching the war despite an active diplomatic breakthrough in progress has never been coherently explained. US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff’s counter-narrative, that Iran had insisted on its inalienable right to enrich uranium in negotiations, directly contradicts Oman’s Foreign Minister’s public statement. One of these accounts is false. The Omani Foreign Minister had no motive to fabricate a breakthrough that dissolved overnight.
General Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, later described the attacks as the “culmination of months, and in some cases, years, of deliberate planning and refinement.” That admission confirmed what the pre-war diplomatic timeline already suggested. This operation was decided long before any final diplomatic failure occurred. The negotiations were not a genuine alternative that collapsed. They were a parallel track running alongside a decision already made.

🔴DAY ONE: February 28, 2026
On February 28, 2026, CENTCOM and Israel launched a massive coordinated preemptive military campaign against Iran, codenamed Operation Epic Fury by the US and Operation Roaring Lion by Israel. The operation marked the most significant US military action in the Middle East since the Iraq War, executed without a formal address to Congress beyond a War Powers notification and a Gang of Eight briefing. President Trump announced the strikes via an eight-minute video on Truth Social at 2:00 AM EST. 🧵 2/24

The stated objectives were to destroy Iran’s ballistic missile infrastructure and nuclear programme, eliminate IRGC leadership, annihilate Iran’s naval capabilities, and neutralise Iranian-backed regional proxies. Regime change, though not formally declared, was widely understood as the campaign’s ultimate ambition.

The opening phase focused on decapitating senior Iranian leadership while degrading missile infrastructure, launch systems, and air defenses. In the hours that followed, Iran initiated large-scale retaliation, expanding the conflict beyond Iranian territory into a region-wide exchange that touched multiple Gulf states and allied military assets.

More than 1,250 targets in Iran were struck in the opening 48 hours. Eleven Iranian ships were destroyed. CENTCOM stated it had neutralised several hundred Iranian drone and missile strikes.
Israel’s contribution was equally staggering. Israel’s Air Force used 200 fighter aircraft and hundreds of munitions to hit roughly 500 targets in the first 24 hours, the largest aerial operation in Israeli history.

Iran’s response was immediate and regional in scope. Iran launched roughly 420 missiles across nine countries and ships at sea in the first 24 hours, directing 39 percent at Israel, 40 percent at the UAE and 11 percent at Qatar.
A strike was reported on Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s compound in Tehran. Subsequent updates confirmed his death. The killing of Khamenei was the single most consequential act of the entire operation and the one whose consequences the administration appeared least prepared to manage.

On the very first evening, a girls school was struck. The Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, housing children aged seven to twelve during morning session, was hit. US forces later confirmed responsibility. The school had been built on a former IRGC base decommissioned approximately fifteen years earlier. The targeting data had never been updated. Multiple independent investigations by CNN, NYT and CBC reached the same conclusion. Jeremy Konyndyk called it a horrific US war crime up there with My Lai. 150 to 180 children were killed.

🔶 THE FIRST CONTRADICTION: Casualty Reporting
On the first day, CENTCOM initially stated it had suffered no casualties, noting that light damage to its facilities had not disrupted operations. At 9:30 AM ET on March 1st, CENTCOM confirmed that three US service members were killed and five others seriously injured. On March 2nd, US fatalities rose to six.
All six were killed in a single Iranian drone strike on a tactical operations centre at the Port of Shuaiba in Kuwait. They were Army reservists from the 103rd Sustainment Command in Des Moines, Iowa. They had names and families. Spc. Declan Coady was 20 years old. The day after their deaths, Trump posted on Truth Social that Iran had “surrendered.”

🔴 DAYS TWO AND THREE: March 1 and 2
On March 1st, Trump announced on Truth Social that the US had accepted an Iranian ceasefire proposal for further negotiations. Iran’s Foreign Minister Larijani rejected this characterisation within hours, stating Iran had made no such offer. This was the first of multiple occasions where Trump publicly declared a diplomatic development that the other party immediately contradicted.
The military campaign continued without pause despite Trump’s ceasefire announcement. By March 1st, the conflict had shifted from standoff strikes to direct air operations over Tehran, signalling degradation of Iran’s integrated air defenses over the capital. Iranian state media described a transition to offensive defense, and retaliatory activity expanded across the region.
A THAAD radar system operated by America was destroyed. The US embassy in Kuwait was struck and subsequently closed indefinitely. The US-flagged tanker Stena Imperative and the Honduras-flagged tanker Athe Nova were also struck.
On March 2nd, three US F-15Es were downed in a friendly fire incident over Kuwait.