The Pentagon, restrained for decades from attacking Iran, needed less than 10 hours to launch after getting the ‘go order’ from the president.
The Pentagon had been choreographing a prospective massive attack on Iran since 1980. But it wasn’t until December 2025 that President Donald Trump told military planners to give him that devastating option, in case the fundamentalist Shia regime refused to end its uranium enrichment program. The move came after a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington.
With that request, the countdown to Operation Epic Fury kicked off.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Dan Caine told reporters during a March 2 press conference that with the president’s December request, the Pentagon began “setting the force and setting the theater” and shifted forces into place over the previous 30 days to “provide the president with credible options should action be required.”
After U.S. negotiators, led by special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, left Geneva on Feb. 26 without concessions from Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, the die was cast.
The next day, the president called the Pentagon from Air Force One as it was en route to Corpus Christi, Texas, where he was scheduled to campaign for Republican primary candidates.
Caine recalled the exact moment he got the call: “H hour,” a military term for the time at which an operation begins, was 3:38 p.m. EST on Friday, Feb. 27, when the Pentagon “received the final go order from President Trump.”
“The president directed, and I quote: ‘Operation Epic Fury is approved. No aborts. Good luck,’” Caine said.
With that one call, he said, “across the globe, [U.S. military] operation centers came alive,” and Adm. Brad Cooper, Central Command commander at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, assumed operational command in the theater.
When Trump issued the “go order” at 3:38 p.m. Feb. 27, it was just after midnight Feb. 28 in Tehran. In the nearly 10 hours between H hour and the actual launch of the attack, Caine said, “in the region, every element of the joint force made their final preparations.”
“Air defense batteries readied themselves, checking their systems to respond to Iranian attacks,” he said. “Pilots and crews rehearsed their strike packages for the final time. Air crews began loading their final weapons, and two carrier strike groups began to move towards their launching point.”
“As dawn crept up, across the Central Command [area of operations], skies surged to life,” Caine said.
“More than 100 aircraft launched from land and sea—fighters, tankers, airborne early warning, electronic attack, bombers from the states, and unmanned platforms—forming a single synchronized wave.”
That wave arrived over Iran at 1:15 a.m. EST, 9:45 a.m. in Tehran.
That timeline was accelerated by “a trigger event conducted by the Israeli Defense Forces, enabled by the U.S. intelligence community.” That moved the standard night attack to a mid-morning opening salvo that killed Iranian leader Ali Khamenei and up to 48 of the nation’s military leaders at a Tehran compound.
That was among more than 1,000 targets struck in the first 24 hours of the aerial, missile, and drone assault.
“The full strength of America’s armed forces came together in a unified purpose against a capable and determined adversary,” Caine said.
“This deployment included thousands of service members from all branches, hundreds of advanced fourth- and fifth-generation fighters, dozens of refueling tankers, the Lincoln and Ford carrier strike groups and their embarked air wings, sustained flow of munitions, fuel supplies … all supported with command and control, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance network. And the flow of forces continues today.”
The nation’s highest-ranking military officer laid out the order of battle and what forces, as of March 2, were engaged in Operation Epic Fury.
The rapid assembly of forces “demonstrated the joint force’s ability to adapt and project power at the time and place of our nation’s choosing,” Caine said. That included “several combat firsts” to be made public “at some point in the future.”
Before the first missile struck, Caine said, “the first movers” were Space Force, Army, and Air Force electronics and cyber warfare technicians “layering non-kinetic effects, disrupting and degrading and blinding Iran’s ability to see, communicate, and respond.”
With Iranian communications disrupted and its air defenses “without the ability to see, coordinate, or respond effectively,” U.S. and Israeli air forces, with “swift, precise, and overwhelming strikes,” established local air superiority immediately, he said, setting the stage for a campaign the Pentagon maintains it can sustain, and expand if needed, for weeks.
By John Haughey
