Operation Epic Fury is underway, and Washington is making clear that this is not a quick operation. It is a campaign, built over months and designed to go on for weeks. The region is absorbing the shock: Sirens sound over Gulf capitals, a drone strike hits Aramco’s Ras Tanura facility, the Strait of Hormuz edges toward a de facto shutdown, and oil markets are moving up.
What the strikes have also done is something no summit could: They have pulled the Gulf states together. Feuds that were raging less than a week ago have gone quiet. The Gulf Cooperation Council invoked its mutual defense agreement for the first time, and the message from Riyadh to Manama is now the same: An attack on one is an attack on all.
Also, this week’s Agenda offers original insight on the operation’s scope and intent. Inside Iran, the economy just collapsed further. And, for Beijing, the strikes have exposed the limits of Chinese influence, with Trump and Xi meeting in less than a month.
Rami Al-Amine, Randa Jebai, Min Mitchell, Sukaina Abdallah, and Abdulaziz Alkhamis contributed reporting to the Agenda this week.
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Top of the News
Ongoing Fury
The Iran operation is the result of long preparation. A senior White House official told me that Operation Epic Fury was the product of long-standing contingency planning, refined over time, placed on the shelf, and activated when the political decision was made.
The 30-day repositioning of forces that preceded the strikes, the official said, was “the visible edge of a much longer logistical effort.” The infrastructure now in place is built to sustain weeks of operations, not days. “The objective is broader than punishment,” the official emphasized. The goal includes suppressing air defenses, degrading retaliatory capabilities, and disrupting command-and-control networks, with the aim of severely destabilizing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is designated as a terrorist organization by both the United States and the European Union.
Gen. Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed this plan at a Pentagon briefing on Monday. “Across every domain, land, air, sea, cyber, the U.S. joint force delivered synchronized and layered effects designed to disrupt, degrade, deny, and destroy Iran’s ability to conduct and sustain combat operations,” he said. He called it “historic not only in the operational scope, but in the level of joint integration displayed.”
He noted that the operation is “the culmination of months, and in some cases years, of deliberate planning and refinement against this particular target set.”
Caine closed with a line worth reading carefully. “This work is just beginning,” he said, “and will continue.”
This is not a single operation, Washington is saying, it is a campaign.
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MBN Iran Briefing:
Andres Ilves’ weekly reporting and understanding of what’s going on in Tehran and its impact on the wider world.
Iran on the Ground
Two Crises, One Country
The economic collapse inside Iran did not begin with the strikes. It was already there. What Operation Epic Fury did was accelerate a breakdown already in progress.
The numbers tell the story:
Now the airstrikes have added a supply crisis to an inflation crisis. Power outages have hit several cities. Fuel lines have formed. Shortages of medicines and basic food items have emerged as distribution networks have broken down.
MBN reached several sources inside the country, all of whom asked not to be named. They described worsening conditions, rising anxiety, and deepening uncertainty. Internet access has been cut across large parts of Iran, making verification difficult.
Two crises are layered on top of each other. For ordinary Iranians, conditions are the hardest in recent memory.
Quote of the Day
If the regime survives this current challenge, it would be worse than mere futility. It would showcase the limitations of American and Israeli power. 
– Retired French general Michel Yakovleff, former NATO deputy commander, on France 24, March 1
Regional Signals
The Gulf Tested
Iranian missiles and drones have been crossing Gulf skies since the American-Israeli strikes began. Sirens have sounded in Kuwait, Doha, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Manama. Gulf states shot down most incoming threats using U.S.-supplied systems, but some got through, hitting ports, urban zones, and power plants. At least three to five people have been killed and dozens injured across the region.
The turning point came on Monday. A drone struck an Aramco oil refinery in Ras Tanura, a direct blow to the heart of Saudi Arabia’s economic infrastructure. Until then, the Gulf states were enduring the crisis without taking the bait. After Ras Tanura, the question became whether they would take action.
The Iranian counterattacks have done something that Tehran presumably did not intend. They have unified the Gulf. The leaders of the UAE and Saudi Arabia, countries that had been feuding openly and viciously until the day before the attacks, held their first direct call since late 2025. Prior grievances have been set aside. Gulf states that once maintained stable ties with Tehran and kept their distance from the U.S. have pivoted, opening the door to deeper cooperation with Washington and reserving the right to respond.
The Gulf Cooperation Council invoked Article 51 of the UN Charter and its mutual defense agreement.
Political scientist Abdullah Baabood told MBN the most effective response is not a unilateral strike but coordinated, graduated pressure. “The goal is to narrow Tehran’s room for political and military maneuver,” he said. Analyst Ahmed Khalifa agreed. “Deterrence doesn’t mean war,” he said. “It means making the attack not worth it.”
Whether Iran believes them is the question the region is waiting to have answered.
Read a deeper analysis here
Economic Signals
Hormuz on Edge
The Strait of Hormuz is effectively at a standstill. No formal closure has been declared, but a former CIA officer told MBN that conditions are rapidly shifting from high risk to a de facto shutdown for commercial traffic. The U.S. Navy has told the shipping industry it cannot guarantee the safety of commercial vessels in the Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, the Arabian Sea, or the Strait itself. Around 150 ships are now stranded near the passage through which one-fifth of the world’s oil and 20 percent of global LNG supply normally flows.
Iran has been striking energy infrastructure across the Gulf since the first day of the conflict. Refineries have halted operations. LNG production has been suspended at several sites. “From day one, Iran decided to hit Arab economies,” energy expert Laury Haytayan told MBN. “Iran is targeting oil and gas infrastructure, and it has the ability to hit all of them.”
Oil is hovering around the low‑$80s a barrel, up roughly 10 percent from pre‑strike levels. European benchmark gas is up around 40–45 percent since late last week, and Asian spot LNG prices have climbed by a similar ~40 percent over the same period..
Haytayan put the worst case plainly. A complete Hormuz closure means that 20 million barrels a day stop reaching markets. “Oil prices could exceed $100 a barrel if the conflict widens,” she said. “The energy sector has become a pressure tool.”
The region supplying a fifth of the world’s oil is now a war zone. The question is no longer whether that affects global markets. It already has. The question is how much worse it might get.
Joe Kawly brings you raw conversations with ambassadors, envoys and negotiators behind the hardest foreign policy decisions.
Global Signals
Beijing’s Exposed Hand
The killing of Supreme Leader Khamenei and the strikes on Iran have exposed the limits of Chinese influence in the Middle East. Beijing had few tools before the bombs fell. It has fewer now.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi called the campaign “unacceptable” on Sunday, condemning what he described as “the blatant killing of a sovereign leader” and urging an immediate ceasefire. That is the full extent of China’s response so far. Rhetorical protest is Beijing’s response when hard power is unavailable.
The economic stakes are significant. Iran supplies roughly 10 to 15 percent of China’s seaborne oil imports. Any disruption to traffic through Hormuz compounds that exposure. Yet according to MBN’s China Tracker, China’s deepest regional investments sit in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, both close U.S. partners. Beijing cannot afford to alienate either of them.
That tension defines China’s position. Saudi Arabia and the UAE host U.S. military assets that were central to the campaign. Beijing publicly condemns the strikes while its most important regional investments depend on those same governments remaining stable.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping hosts President Trump in Beijing from March 31 to April 2. Iran will be on the agenda alongside trade, Taiwan, and technology. The two sides may find common ground on open sea lanes and energy flows, interests they share regardless of how they got here.
For now, Beijing’s role is reactive. It can hedge. It cannot shape what comes next.
Read the story on the China Tracker
Lebanon Watch
Hezbollah’s Other War
Something unusual happened when Hezbollah claimed responsibility for rocket fire into Israel. The statement confused politicians, journalists, and analysts operating within the party’s own orbit. The confusion related both to the form and the substance of the attack.
Start with the signature. The statement was not issued under Hezbollah’s media relations office, its official voice. It was signed by “the Islamic Resistance,” a designation the party used before Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000. The language, according to the Lebanese news site Al-Mudun, departs from the rhetoric Hezbollah has used over the past twenty years.
Then came the deletions. A former minister affiliated with the party posted on X, suggesting the rockets were Israeli-directed. He deleted it after the statement dropped. A journalist at Al-Akhbar, the newspaper close to Hezbollah, wrote before the statement that the party had not issued anything and that it was neither expected nor logical that it would. She deleted her post, too. Al-Manar, Hezbollah’s own television channel, was notably slow to air the statement.
Al-Mudun reported that the disorder reflects a split between two factions: A political wing represented by Secretary-General Naim Qassem, and a military wing closer to the Revolutionary Guard that wants to open a Lebanese front in response to Khamenei’s killing.
The deletions suggest the political wing was caught off guard. The signature suggests the military wing did not wait for permission.
Joe Kawly
Joe Kawly is a veteran global affairs journalist with over two decades of frontline reporting across Washington, D.C. and the Middle East. A CNN Journalism Fellow and Georgetown University graduate, his work focuses on U.S. foreign policy, Arab world politics, and diplomacy. With deep regional insight and narrative clarity, Joe focuses on making complex global dynamics clear, human, and relevant.
