By Mohamad Hammoud
US President Donald Trump is reportedly looking to wind down "Operation Epic Fury". This follows a string of intelligence failures that have left the US-"Israeli" alliance stuck in a far messier conflict than anyone expected. The White House keeps talking up total victory. However, behind the scenes Trump is at odds with his own advisors over whether they gave him straight intel to justify the offensive. Reuters sources say US intelligence now believes the Iranian government is still standing and firmly in control - even after the assassination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and two weeks of relentless strikes. Trump has privately vented his frustration. He blames Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Secretary of State Marco Rubio for handing him what he’s called a "fantasy" picture of Iranian and Hezbollah capabilities.
Resilience in the South and Intelligence Failure
The biggest flashpoint is Hezbollah’s staying power in southern Lebanon, which has thrown the entire Western timeline into disarray. Haaretz analyst Amos Harel says planners were seduced by an “intoxication of power” - convinced a swift decapitation strike would leave resistance movements rudderless. It didn’t. Harel warned that despite losing senior commanders, Hezbollah never lost its chain of command. It kept fighting, launching precision missiles and drone swarms that left both Western and “Israeli” military intelligence flat-footed and exposed. Rather than the clean demilitarization they promised, “Israeli” forces are now bogged down in grinding ground clashes at Khiam and other strategic sites - where Hezbollah has fiercely repelled every single advance as recently as March 10.
The Myth of Imminent Threat and Strategic Failure
Leading realist scholars are blunt: the American-led campaign was doomed by its own logic. According to international relations theorist John Mearsheimer, the US has “already lost” the war on Iran because it entered without a clear exit strategy and assumed military pressure would trigger an internal collapse in Tehran. That collapse never came. Instead, he argues, Washington and “Tel Aviv” badly overestimated its ability to knock out Tehran’s nuclear and missile programs - and in doing so, failed to stop Iran’s nuclear path while leaving “Israel” wide open to devastating counter-strikes. Equally damning, Truthout reported there was never any credible evidence Iran was even planning a pre-emptive attack. Omani mediators said a diplomatic deal was “within reach” just one day before the February 28 strikes began. The administration walked past a real off-ramp and chose war anyway - and US forces are now paying the price.
Economic Paralysis and the Hormuz Defiance
The gap between Washington's rhetoric and the reality on the ground has left the administration paralyzed as energy prices spike and costs keep climbing. The “Israeli” economy alone is bleeding an estimated 9.4 billion shekels a week - reserve mobilization has gutted domestic industry, and “red” alert restrictions show no sign of lifting, per Daily Sabah. Trump looks visibly blindsided by Iran's defiance. He warned that any move to close the Strait of Hormuz would trigger a devastating response - Iran went ahead and closed it anyway. Security official Ali Larijani didn't mince words, calling Trump's warnings “empty threats.” By March 12, at least 14 vessels had been struck in the Gulf. The ultimatum was ignored. The message from Tehran couldn't be clearer.
Diplomatic Isolation and the Search for an Exit
As the conflict drags on, something else is becoming impossible to ignore: the resistance is rebuilding its military inventory - right under a supposedly “maximum” surveillance regime. A senior “Israeli” official admitted to the Middle East Monitor that the military “made a mistake,” badly underestimating how fast and how hard Lebanon would hit back. The war has already outlasted last June's 12-day conflict, and there is still no decisive victory in sight. The diplomatic wreckage is piling up too. Reports of civilian casualties are now surfacing - including the bombing of a girls' school in Minab - and Al Jazeera says satellite imagery points to either a grave intelligence failure or a deliberate strike. Either way, it is feeding a narrative of Western hypocrisy that the administration has no good answer for.
Conclusion: The Limits of Dominance
The rosy intelligence from Witkoff and Rubio has collided hard with reality, and the White House is now firmly on the back foot. Rubio has already started walking back his public statements, edging closer to Trump’s own growing skepticism about the war’s progress, per The Guardian. With oil markets rattled and legislative pressure building at home, the administration is quietly searching for a way out of a war it never fully thought through. Iranian and Lebanese forces didn’t fold — they pushed back. The promised "speed and violence" never broke the adversary. It just left Washington negotiating from a position it never expected to be in.
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