The ceasefire that temporarily halted major combat operations in Operation Epic Fury, the U.S. campaign against Iran that began on Feb. 28, has now collapsed. Just weeks after the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed in mid-June, Iran began attacking commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz, the United States struck Iranian targets in retaliation, and President Donald Trump declared the ceasefire “over.” Iran’s subsequent shutdown of the Strait triggered a shift from tit-for-tat exchanges to sustained combat. The United States has now blockaded Iranian ports; Iran has attacked Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Jordan, and Qatar; oil prices have spiked; and markets have plunged. Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei – son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in Operation Epic Fury’s opening hours – has declared that “revenge is the will of the nation.” This war is starting to take on the feel of a “forever war.”
The post-mortems that began when the fighting paused have now grown urgent as the United States tries to understand what went wrong and where to go from here. Much of the commentary has focused on whether Operation Epic Fury destroyed enough of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and missile capability to justify its human and material costs; whether the Strait of Hormuz will open and, if so, under what conditions; and whether any negotiated settlement can be salvaged. Such outcome-based assessments are both inevitable and necessary. But the deeper question about Operation Epic Fury is whether the decision to go to war, and the strategic design that governed its prosecution, satisfied the foundational requirements of sound strategy. Answering it, as every war college graduate knows, requires turning to Carl von Clausewitz’s masterwork, On War.
Clausewitz, the 19th-century Prussian strategist, wrote about war in the aftermath of the Napoleonic campaigns. His goal was to explain why earlier theories of war proved inadequate during those campaigns, which for the first time involved the mobilization of a nation. But the questions he posed are the same as those that Operation Epic Fury raises today. Did the use of force serve a clearly defined political purpose? Was the right kind of war being fought with the right means? Were the conditions for termination set before the operation began?
Here, I apply six of Clausewitz’s core principles to this U.S. “war of choice”: war as the continuation of political intercourse, matching ends to means, the center of gravity, the culminating point, friction and uncertainty, and the paradoxical trinity. There is little doubt that in purely military terms, Operation Epic Fury has been impressive, for it has measurably degraded Iranian military capabilities with negligible, albeit tragic, casualties. But the strategic design – the architecture linking military action to political purpose – was deficient from the start. That deficiency is evidenced by Ali Khameni’s replacement by hard-liners, the failed diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict, the continued uncertainty surrounding Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile and nuclear ambitions, uncertainty over the future of passage through the Strait of Hormuz, the hemorrhaging of U.S. soft power in what many international law experts and global leaders believe to be an unlawful use of force under Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter, and, most tellingly, continued fighting. In other words, Operation Epic Fury was a limited military success in the service of a strategic failure. Clausewitz’s framework explains why.
War as the Continuation of Political Intercourse
Clausewitz’s most well-known proposition is that “war is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, carried on with other means.” In other words, “the political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and means can never be considered in isolation from their purpose” (On War, p. 87 – all citations are to the 1984 Howard and Paret edition). Thus, he explains, war’s “grammar . . . may be its own, but not its logic” (p. 605). Should war become “divorced from political life . . . the many links that connect the two elements are destroyed and we are left with something pointless and devoid of sense” (p. 605).
The point is simple but fundamental. Before any operational planning occurs, political leadership must clearly articulate the political condition(s) the use of force is intended to produce – not which targets to strike, but rather the change in the adversary’s behavior and the state of affairs sought. Only then will an operational plan, meant to map military means onto political ends, make sense.
Operation Epic Fury will likely be studied in war colleges for decades to come as a paradigmatic failure of this foundational premise. The initial political objective appeared to be regime change, implied by the decapitation strike and Trump’s exhortation to Iranians to “take over your government” – a flight of fancy given the limited scope of the military operations, especially the lack of a ground component to the U.S.-Israeli operation. Within days, Vice President JD Vance characterized regime change as “incidental” to the primary nuclear denial objective. At the same time, Secretary of State Marco Rubio framed the operation around ballistic missiles and the Iranian navy. The White House eventually settled on four stated objectives: obliterating Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal, annihilating its navy, severing proxy support, and ensuring Iran would never acquire a nuclear weapon. The political objective now includes opening the Strait of Hormuz, which was, of course, open when Operation Epic Fury was launched. And the nuclear objective has been toned down to securing an agreement constraining Iran’s capability rather than eliminating it.
These shifting sands reflect a chaotic lack of strategic clarity about the war’s purpose(s). Each shift in the central political objective undermined the planning assumptions that governed the preceding phase. This war has become a testament to Clausewitz’s insight that mistaking means for ends leaves the statesman with something “pointless and devoid of sense.”
The Kind of War
Clarity in setting the political objectives of war, the ends, permits shaping the use of force to achieve them, the means. Accordingly, Clausewitz emphasizes that the “first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish by that test the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature.” (p. 88). He explains,
No one starts a war–or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so–without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it. The former is its political purpose; the latter its operational objective. This is the governing principle which will set its course, prescribe the scale of means and effort which is required, and make its influence felt throughout down to the smallest operational detail. (p. 579)
For Clausewitz, war can be “limited,” in the sense of pursuing bounded aims, or “absolute,” in which the goal is the “enemy’s overthrow” (pp. 610, 578). The political objectives determine which kind of war is required to achieve them, and therefore, inter alia, the scale and composition of forces, the geographical scope of operations, the likely duration of the fighting, coalition architecture, the diplomatic maneuvering required to terminate the conflict, and any post-conflict resources that may be needed. Absent a match between the political objective and the type of war planned, success is unlikely, no matter how well the military executes its operations.
Moreover, war is a two-way proposition. Clausewitz points out that the “degree of force that must be used against the enemy depends on the scale of political demands on either side” (emphasis added). Thus, “We must gauge the strength and situation of the opposing state. We must gauge the character and abilities of its government and people” (pp. 585-586). Without knowing one’s own political objective, it is difficult to assess how hard the enemy will fight to protect it. Without knowing that, the plan becomes speculative, based on hope. And, as every military planner knows, “hope is not a plan.”
Operation Epic Fury pursued a range of objectives simultaneously, each requiring different force structures and operational approaches. To the extent that the end state was the weakening of Iran’s regional military capabilities, the forces available to U.S. Central Command were well-positioned to conduct a limited offensive war to do so.
That said, they proved insufficient to deprive Iran of significant residual military capabilities, as evidenced by Iran’s continued ability to close the Strait of Hormuz and to mount attacks against U.S. forces and partners in the region. And regime change was an altogether different proposition, one requiring Clausewitz’s absolute war. It required a force and operational plans (including non-military lines of effort) capable not only of decapitating Iran but also of ensuring a suitable successor authority. Effective regime change would also require a plan to stabilize the situation internationally and diplomatically. The point that seems to have been missed is that regime change in and of itself is never sufficient; it is the “day after” that matters.
Moreover, regime change was the likeliest way to ensure Iran severed ties with its proxy terrorist groups. Without the means to secure regime change, it is difficult to see how that end could be accomplished. In fact, Operation Epic Fury only deepened Iran’s reliance on asymmetric means, such as proxy operations, to compensate for the degradation of its conventional forces.
And the plan appears to have failed to account for the likely Iranian reaction, which did not treat the conflict as a limited operation against its military infrastructure, certainly not after its supreme leader was killed. For Iran, the conflict appeared existential, one that would justify absorbing high costs. It responded, predictably, with the full toolkit of assets available to it – missile and drone attacks on regional oil facilities and commercial hubs, activation of proxies in Lebanon and Iraq, Houthi operations in the Red Sea, and closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Clausewitz had warned of precisely this dynamic: “[U]ncertainties . . . make it difficult to gauge the amount of resistance to be faced and, in consequence, the means required and the objectives to be set. Since in war too small an effort can result not just in failure but in positive harm, each side is driven to outdo the other, which sets up an interaction” (pp. 585–586). The failure to account for Iranian political objectives and the means Iran would deploy to pursue them produced an asymmetry between U.S. planning assumptions and Iranian strategic behavior, a predictable consequence of ends-means confusion at the outset.
The Center of Gravity
Among Clausewitz’s most important operational concepts is how military force should be directed. He explains,
[O]ne must keep the dominant characteristics of both belligerents in mind. Out of these characteristics a certain center of gravity develops, the hub of all power and movement, on which everything depends. That is the point against which all our energies should be directed” (pp. 595–596).
The center of gravity is not necessarily the adversary’s strongest military capability. Rather, it is the element of the enemy’s political, military, or social structure that, if placed at risk, neutralized, or destroyed, is most likely to cause the enemy to stop resisting. That result may follow either because the enemy no longer has the capacity to continue or because it loses the will to do so after concluding that the costs of further resistance outweigh the expected gains. Clausewitz offers the examples, depending on what the enemy values and the attendant circumstances, of the enemy’s army, capital, alliances, or, of particular significance here, the “personalities of the leaders and public opinion” (p. 596).
Pinpointing the center of gravity determines where the decisive blow must land. Effort directed elsewhere, however destructive, can be helpful, but standing alone is unlikely to produce the strategic effect sought. Importantly, the center of gravity depends in part on the attacker’s political objective. The center of gravity for one aim may not serve that purpose for another.
Operation Epic Fury illustrates Clausewitz’s point about the center of gravity with particular resonance. If the political objective was nuclear denial, the optimal center of gravity was Iran’s highly enriched uranium stockpile and nuclear facilities infrastructure. But the exact location, extent, and accessibility of enriched uranium were uncertain; indeed, the IAEA has been unable to verify the stockpile’s current size, composition, and whereabouts. The very fact that negotiations about Iran’s nuclear capabilities were underway pursuant to the June MOU (para. 8) demonstrated that the stockpile was not a vulnerable center of gravity. Therefore, a different center of gravity had to be identified. On the contrary, Operation Epic Fury had the countervailing effect of highlighting the utility of a nuclear deterrent against future attack.
But if the political objective was regime change, the center of gravity was the Islamic Republic as a governing system. The decapitation strike was a logical move, but it rested on the assumption that Ali Khamenei was somehow irreplaceable, that his removal would break the Iranian leadership’s will to resist. The opposite happened. A successor, his son, was quickly in place, and nationalist sentiment only grew.
But the core center of gravity dilemma has been the failure to resolve which objective the United States was then, and is now, pursuing. Without that, it is nearly impossible to identify the vulnerable center of gravity to achieve that objective. After all, when the Clausewitzian “hub” is ill-defined, military force will be dispersed across competing targets, each operationally significant, none of them decisive. The result, as in this case so far, is a campaign that destroys a great deal and settles little.
The Culminating Point
Clausewitz understood that timing was essential, especially for recognizing when hostilities have reached the “culminating point of victory” – the moment when continued offensive action shifts from generating advantage to producing disadvantage (p. 566). The premise is that operations will eventually exhaust themselves. According to Clausewitz, “a continued advance in an offensive campaign will usually swallow up the superiority with which one began” (p. 570). As the attacker advances, its strength diminishes while the defender’s relative position improves. A point is reached at which continued action no longer produces gains, and instead risks triggering an enemy response that generates consequences disproportionate to any remaining potential military advantage. The goal is to avoid crossing that point: “one must know the point to which it can be carried in order not to overshoot the target; otherwise instead of gaining new advantages, one will disgrace oneself” (p. 570).
To avoid overshooting the culminating point, the attacker must identify it in advance so it knows when its advantage has peaked. At the same time, the diplomatic instrument must be well prepared to exploit the situation once the culminating point is reached. This is essential because military coercion constitutes leverage only if the enemy knows which action will cause it to stop. Without clear settlement terms on the table at the culminating point, the operation is mere force, not a coercive strategy.
Operation Epic Fury starkly illustrates how failing to identify and act on the culminating point can drive an attacker into a mire from which it is difficult to extricate oneself. The surest evidence that the United States has crossed the culminating point is the current strategic situation. The United States now must negotiate for Iranian concessions that were in place before the conflict began, such as transit passage through the Strait of Hormuz. The pre-conflict sanctions regime will likely be dismantled, at least in part. And any conditions regarding enrichment and disposal of enriched uranium are likely to be no better than those under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) framework from which the first Trump administration withdrew in 2018.
It is quite simple. Wherever the culminating point lay (if there ever was one), the United States has already passed it, as the initiative seems to have shifted to Iran despite continued U.S. military superiority. Indeed, in some limited respects, Iran is arguably in a stronger position than before the conflict, with the obvious exception of military wherewithal. Meanwhile, the risks of Iranian retaliation, regional escalation, disruption of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, and an indefinite U.S. commitment are seemingly increasing. This is precisely what Clausewitz predicted would follow from crossing the culminating point without converting military advantage into political result.
But even if the culminating point had been correctly identified, the diplomatic instrument was ill-prepared to exploit it. The evidence lies in the sequential collapse of settlement attempts – the March ceasefire proposal, rejected by Iran as Washington “negotiating with itself”; the fragile April ceasefire that left the Strait of Hormuz contested and the nuclear question unresolved; and the June MOU, which lasted three weeks before Iran began attacking commercial shipping in the waterway the agreement was, in part, supposed to open. Now, serious fighting has resumed, and Trump has declared the maritime blockade is back in place. This is not the pattern of a diplomatic strategy pre-positioned to exploit military leverage at its peak. Rather, it is the pattern of a diplomatic strategy assembled reactively, under pressure, in an ad hoc manner, after most of the leverage that did exist had already been spent.
The timeline tells the story. The day after Operation Epic Fury began, Trump described the conflict as a “four- to five-week” operation. Days later, he labeled it a “little excursion” and declared that the United States was “very far ahead of schedule.” Over four months later, it is clear that if there ever was a culminating point, it has long since passed.
Friction and Uncertainty
Clausewitz understood that war rarely unfolds in practice as envisioned in the original plans: “War is the realm of uncertainty; three quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty” (p. 101). He added, “[e]verything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. The difficulties accumulate and end by producing a kind of friction that is inconceivable unless one has experienced war” (p. 119).
Friction operates at all levels of war – strategic, operational, and tactical. It can stem from poor intelligence, incompetent leaders, flawed assumptions, unanticipated enemy action or adaptation, domestic and international political reactions, economic disruption, and many other factors. A sound strategy must therefore remain viable even when key planning assumptions prove wrong. To do so, political and military leaders and planners must be alert to the distinction between what they know and what they expect, consider alternative developments, and retain sufficient flexibility to adapt military and diplomatic lines of effort. Campaign plans cannot depend on optimistic assumptions proving correct; they must be resilient in the face of the friction of actual war.
Operation Epic Fury appears to have relied on precisely such a chain of optimistic assumptions: that killing Iran’s supreme leader would destabilize the regime or spark popular revolt; that Iran’s nuclear capability could be extinguished despite uncertainty about the location of its enriched uranium; that Iran would regard the operation as limited despite the decapitation campaign; that Iran would not close the Strait of Hormuz; that the conflict would not spread to the Gulf States; and that attrition of Iranian military capabilities would lead to diplomatic concessions. None proved correct.
The Clausewitzian lesson is not that the United States should have anticipated the precise course the conflict would take. Rather, it is that its strategic design proved fragile when its central assumptions encountered friction. OEF was optimized for the opening attack, when U.S. military superiority was greatest, rather than for the uncertain political and military struggle that followed.
The Paradoxical Trinity
War, Clausewitz argues, is never a purely military phenomenon. Rather, it is always shaped by the so-called “Paradoxical Trinity” – three forces that together define its character: “primordial violence, hatred, and enmity”; the “play of chance and probability”; and its subordination to policy, which “makes it subject to reason alone” (p. 89). These forces correspond to the people, the commander and his army, and the government, respectively, and they must remain aligned throughout the conflict. As Clausewitz observes, a “theory that ignores any one of them or seeks to fix an arbitrary relationship between them would conflict with reality to such an extent that for this reason alone it would be totally useless” (p. 89).
Operation Epic Fury misaligned all three. At the level of the people, the regime change aspiration assumed that killing Khamenei would rupture Iranian society and spark popular revolt. It did not. His successor was in place within hours; the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps took charge in large part, and nationalist fervor grew in the face of U.S. and Israeli attacks on the Iranian leadership. On the U.S. side, popular support eroded rapidly as the supposed objectives kept shifting, the House of Representatives voted to limit the president’s war powers in Iran (a non-binding rebuke), and the war’s economic disruption drove up consumer prices and rattled the stock market.
At the level of the government, the U.S. political direction of the war was never coherent. As discussed above, regime change, nuclear denial, destruction of the Iranian armed forces, and Strait access were asserted, abandoned, and reasserted at different moments by different officials. The governmental element of the trinity requires that rational policy calculation govern the resort to force and execution of the campaign. When the government’s setting of political objectives appeared uncertain, it was difficult for the other two elements to remain aligned. After all, a commander cannot confidently calibrate military means to unclear ends, while the people cannot be expected to continue supporting a war whose purpose keeps shifting at the whim of the government’s leaders. Iran suffered no comparable failure at this level. Condemnable as Iran’s policies and objectives are, its government maintained a consistent political purpose throughout: resist, impose costs, and negotiate from strength.
At the level of the commander and his army, the operational achievements were impressive amid this chaos, as the military instrument performed with skill and discipline. But as Clausewitz observed, military performance cannot compensate for failures at the other two levels.
Concluding Thoughts
I have set forth my views on the lawfulness of the decision to attack Iran elsewhere. Simply put, there was no basis in international law for Operation Epic Fury (see my analysis with Tess Bridgeman and Ryan Goodman and the international law experts’ letter).
But not only was the operation unlawful, the decision to launch it violated foundational principles of war that have guided strategic and operational decision-making for well over a century. I have highlighted six from Clausewitz’s On War, although there are more that bring into question the strategic wisdom of the operation, such as those dealing with alliances and war termination. Given their prominence in strategic thinking, it would seem that this was a war decided upon and guided at the strategic level of war by those who lacked not only the training, experience, and understanding to apply them effectively, but also the wisdom to listen to professionals in the security community, in and out of uniform, who surely knew them well.
Ultimately, though, the most fundamental error was the most basic one – proceeding into war without clear political objectives, without understanding where Operation Epic Fury needed to take the United States strategically. I am reminded, in this regard, of the exchange between Alice and the Cheshire Cat in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where–” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
“So long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”
The United States will eventually get somewhere in this conflict, but I doubt the administration knows where. I certainly don’t.
