Foreign Policy > Operation Epic Fury

Iran Update: Are You Tired of Winning Yet?

It looks as though the Iranian regime can’t last much longer.

Kenneth R. Timmerman | March 16, 2026

Friday the 13th marked the beginning of the third week of the Iran war.  And despite the doom and gloom from Democrats in Congress and their spokespeople in the media, we are winning.  Big time.

According to the secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dan Caine, we have destroyed 90% of Iran’s ballistic missiles and 95% of their drones, and we are well on the way to destroying their ability not just to assemble more, but to manufacture missile and drone components.

We have sunk all major combatants of the Iranian navy and are now turning to their mosquito boats, the speedboats hand-fitted with a couple of launch tubes that Iran hoped to use to “swarm” U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf.

Our aircraft dominate the skies to the extent that they can loiter over target areas, waiting for missile launchers to pop up and then take them out.  How are that state-of-the-art Chinese radar working for you?

The Iranians have had some success, however.

On Wednesday, they managed to strike five commercial ships using drones: two tankers, a container ship, a bulk carrier, and a cargo vessel.  Four were hit inside the Persian Gulf, the fifth in the Gulf of Oman.

The clear goal of the attacks was to shut down the Strait of Hormuz to all but Chinese and Iranian vessels and drive oil prices through the roof.  Within hours, oil prices again spiked over $100 per barrel.

President Trump responded by announcing that the U.S. would provide political risk insurance and escort ships through the Strait.

He also announced that we would release 170 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and temporarily waive sanctions on Russian oil.  That calmed both the oil and the stock markets, without the U.S. Navy escorting a single vessel.  Democrats predictably screamed that we were allowing Putin to profit from the war.

On Friday night, the president announced that we had launched a “massive attack” on Kharg Island, Iran’s biggest oil export terminal.

It was a brilliant strategic move on the part of the president.  By taking out all the military targets but sparing Iran’s oil export infrastructure, the president sent a message to the Iranian people: It’s your turn.

You don’t need to remind any Iranian of the significance of his nation’s oil or the dependence of the regime on the revenue it generates.  The event that triggered the revolution against the Shah was not Khomeini’s return in January 1979, but the general strike by oil field workers one month earlier.

Without oil exports, the regime cannot pay its military or the Basij.  Without oil exports, the regime dies, and the people of Iran know this.  The next step is for us to take control of the oil export terminal itself, or alternatively to place it under naval blockade.

Taking control of Iran’s oil resources will have a huge psychological impact on the regime and signal to the Iranian people that the regime’s days are numbered.  We should announce that we are holding them in escrow for the Iranian people, once they have seized control of their government.

So far, Iran’s strategy has been a bust. They thought that by attacking the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, they would so terrify the Gulf Arabs that they would beg the United States to end the war.

Instead, the Gulf Arabs joined the fight.

This week, the Iranians doubled down, launching missiles on Oman, Turkey, Qatar, and Iraq, apparently desperate to get those steadfast Iranian allies to join with the U.S. as well.

Inside Iran, the news is getting better by the day.

The regime leadership has apparently fled Tehran for Mashad, on the border with Afghanistan, and Ayatollah Junior has gone to ground.  Hegseth says he believes he has been wounded and is “probably disfigured.”

We have been getting reports of Israeli drone strikes on checkpoints set up by the Basij, the regime’s militia, which has been terrorizing the Iranian population for years.

In one video clip I watched, Basijis are frantically waving traffic and pedestrians away from what had been planned as a funeral cortege for fallen militiamen because of an Israeli drone strike.

This is a strategy aimed at emboldening the Iranian people to rise.  And that is what I think ultimately will happen.

I believe that the U.S. should encourage and support liberated zones along Iran’s borders.  This can start in the northwest provinces bordering Iraqi Kurdistan and spread down to the strategic oil fields near Ahwaz in the south, as well as to the eastern border with Pakistan.

Iran’s periphery is inhabited by ethnic minorities, predominantly Sunni Muslims, who have been treated like third-class citizens by this regime for 47 years.  Their time has come.

I have been to the Iranian Kurdish training camps in northern Iraq many times, and I describe these brave fighters in The Iran House: Tales of Revolution, Persecution, War, and Intrigue.

The United States can provide overwatch to prevent regime massacres, just as we did in Iraqi Kurdistan in the 1990s.  If these ethnic militias join forces with the nationalist and republican forces in Iran’s heartland, the regime will be over.

Ultimately, that is the name of the game.  Not until we break the regime’s will to fight can we declare victory.  Taking Kharg Island and supporting the Iranian people as they liberate their own territory are the next steps to victory.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.

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