The White House is now apparently using Russian tactics to convince the American public that the war in Iran is not, in fact, a war. When asked by reporters at the White House on Thursday whether the most intense sustained air campaign by American forces since the invasion of Iraq would be over by the midterms, Vice President JD Vance replied: “I wouldn’t call it a war.” Vladimir Putin said much the same thing when he invaded Ukraine. Russia was not fighting a war either, the Kremlin insisted; it was merely conducting a “special military operation.” If that comparison strikes you as shocking, consider the contours of the two conflicts.
A vastly more powerful military launched a punishing offensive against a smaller, less well-equipped adversary, inflicted enormous damage without achieving a decisive resolution, and then found itself drawn into a longer, grinding conflict with no clear way out. The motivations behind the wars may be different, and they’re playing out in different theaters, but the pattern is eerily similar. Now, so too is the attempt by those in power to control how the public understands, and even what it is allowed to call, the obvious war unfolding in front of them.
Let us take a moment to assess what exactly has happened since February 28, when the U.S. launched Operation Epic Fury. The opening U.S.-Israeli attack killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, along with the commander of the Revolutionary Guard, the defense minister and various other senior officials. According to the U.S. military’s own accounting, the first 38 days of major combat operations involved more than 10,200 sorties and 13,500 strikes.
Central Command (CENTCOM) says those attacks damaged or destroyed more than 85 percent of Iran’s ballistic missile, drone and naval defense industrial base, while knocking out 82 percent of its air-defense missile systems. The U.S. sent carrier strike groups and warships into the region, later imposing a military blockade on Iranian ports. Meanwhile, American and allied air defenses intercepted more than 6,000 Iranian attack drones and 1,500 ballistic missiles fired at U.S. forces, Israel and American partners across the Middle East.
More than 50,000 U.S. service members remain deployed across the region. The fighting has killed 18 U.S. service members and at least 8,000 people across Iran, Lebanon, Israel and the Gulf states. More than 750 U.S. service members have been wounded.
Last month, during a lull in the fighting, the U.S. Treasury unveiled a sanctions package likened to an “economic D-day” that is designed to make Iran an “economic outcast” and cut the adversary off from all available forms of economic support. In the announcement, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent openly declared that Iran had been “at war against America” for 47 years.
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