On February 28, 2026, U.S. and Israeli forces began striking targets in Iran, initiating Operation Epic Fury. That was nearly five months ago. Since then, the fighting has never fully stopped. As of this week, the U.S. military has hit dozens of military targets near the Strait of Hormuz and Iranian coastal areas in strikes lasting seven hours. The war that the Trump administration originally said would last four to six weeks has kept going, and the people running it are increasingly dropping the pretense that there’s a clear end in sight.
The United States and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding to end the war in the Middle East on June 17, but the ceasefire appears on the verge of collapse. Both sides trade strikes over alleged violations. The agreement was supposed to kick off a 60-day negotiating window toward a permanent peace deal. Instead, it took less than a month to start coming apart. Iran attacked commercial shipping. The U.S. struck back. Then Iran struck again. Then Trump declared the ceasefire “over” at a NATO summit in Turkey and threatened to hit Iran “very hard tonight, and very hard tomorrow.” The cycle has now become the story itself.
What’s happening at this moment isn’t a war in the dramatic, front-page-every-day sense of February and March. It’s a military confrontation that keeps restarting, where neither side has been able to force a decision, and where the thing both sides are actually fighting over is a 21-mile stretch of water called the Strait of Hormuz that sits at the center of the global economy.
How the War Started, and Why It Didn’t End
President Trump directed a buildup of U.S. military forces near Iran from late December 2025 through late February 2026. The buildup was the largest concentration of American military assets in the region since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and it coincided with the collapse of nuclear negotiations that had been going on since April 2025. In January 2026, Iranian security forces massacred anti-government protesters, handing the White House additional political cover. On February 27, while flying on Air Force One to Texas, Trump authorized the operation.
The stated goals were multiple and not entirely consistent with each other: prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon, respond to the crackdown on protesters, pursue regime change, and secure Iran’s oil and gas resources. On February 28, U.S. and Israeli forces began striking targets in Iran, initiating Operation Epic Fury and Operation Roaring Lion. As of late March, U.S. Central Command reported that the United States had struck over 10,000 targets in Iran, including missile and drone sites, Iranian naval assets, Iran’s military industrial base, and command and control centers associated with the Iranian military and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
One of those strikes, in the opening hours of the war, killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. His death didn’t end the conflict. It deepened it. Current Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, not seen publicly since he was injured early in the war, issued a statement on Saturday through state media, vowing to avenge the death of his father and other Iranian officials killed by the U.S. and Israel. Iran’s military, led by hardline IRGC commanders, responded to the strikes not by collapsing but by adopting a decentralized strategy: missile and drone attacks on U.S. allies across the region, and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to international shipping.
The Strait of Hormuz: What Everyone Is Actually Fighting Over
The deadlock over the waterway, through which roughly 20% of the world’s energy supplies typically move, has disrupted global trade and increased fuel prices around the world. Before the war, about 100 ships passed through the strait every day. Even before the latest round of strikes, traffic had collapsed to a fraction of pre-war levels, with just 191 vessels crossing in the entire month of April, compared to thousands per month beforehand, according to a Kpler analysis.
Iran’s leverage over the waterway has shaped its approach to the conflict since the war began. Mehdi Yazdi, a Tehran-based defense analyst, said Iran’s only deterrent lever is the Strait of Hormuz. “If Iran were to abandon the Strait of Hormuz because of negotiations or anything else, it would not only lose the strait as a pressure lever, but negotiations and other issues would also slip out of Iran’s hands,” he said. Tehran has used that lever relentlessly, closing the strait, partially reopening it under diplomatic pressure, then closing it again when the pressure eased. The pattern has repeated itself so many times since February that shipping companies have largely given up waiting for normalization.
The U.S. conducted a new wave of strikes against Iran’s coastal defense systems and cruise missile storage and launch sites on Wednesday after reimposing a naval blockade of Iranian ports, while Iran threatened to shut off more regional energy exports. The blockade, which CENTCOM reinstated on July 14, targets all vessels going to or from Iranian ports and coastal areas. During the prior blockade that ran from April through late May, Central Command said it turned around more than 140 commercial ships, and struck some vessels that it said didn’t comply.
The International Energy Agency’s executive director, Fatih Birol, told CNBC in April 2026 that the world is “facing the biggest energy security threat in history,” adding that the prolongation of the “double blockade” on the Strait of Hormuz might soon cause a jet fuel shortage in Europe. Oil prices have swung wildly with every new escalation. Brent crude soared 9.59% on Monday to settle at $83.30 per barrel, its highest level since June 12, as traders absorbed Trump’s announcement that the U.S. would reimpose the blockade of Iranian ports.
What the US Military Has Been Hitting, Night After Night
U.S. Central Command announced the third consecutive night of strikes against Iran “at the Commander in Chief’s direction.” “These strikes will continue imposing a heavy cost on Iranian forces and degrade their ability to attack innocent civilians and commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz,” CENTCOM wrote on X. According to CNN’s reporting on the July 13 strikes, a U.S. official said the U.S. was targeting Iranian military assets including coastal surveillance systems, drone and missile capabilities.
The U.S. military said it struck targets across the country, including Bushehr, Chah Bahar, Jask, Konarak, Abu Musa, and Bandar Abbas. These are not random coordinates on a map. They are Iran’s southern coastal infrastructure: the radar networks, missile launch sites, naval bases, and island fortifications that give Iran the ability to monitor, threaten, and attack shipping in the Strait. According to ACLED, the conflict monitoring organization that tracks political violence data in real time, strikes also occurred in May and June targeting Bandar Abbas, Bandar-e Lengeh, Kong, Qeshm Island, and Shahid Raahbar naval base.
U.S. Central Command said the strikes targeted Iranian military air-defense systems, coastal radar sites, missile and drone capabilities, and small boats. Iran’s response has been to strike back at the U.S. military’s regional footprint. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said on Wednesday it had struck U.S. military targets in the region, including in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan. The United Arab Emirates’ Defense Ministry said two of its tankers were targeted by Iranian cruise missiles while transiting the shipping lane of the Strait of Hormuz in Omani waters, killing one person.
The scope of the regional fallout has been significant. Jordan has intercepted multiple Iranian missiles. Qatar and the UAE have both shot down incoming drones. Oman said it had rescued 23 crew members from a commercial vessel after a strike early Sunday hit the vessel off its coast, forcing the crew to abandon ship. India said one of its nationals remained missing after the strike on the Cypriot-flagged GFS Galaxy, which the United States blamed on Iran.
The Ceasefire That Wasn’t
The U.S. and Iran signed a 14-point memorandum of understanding on June 17 after two months of stalled talks. The interim agreement formalized the ceasefire, ended the U.S. naval blockade, reopened the Strait of Hormuz, and dangled a range of economic incentives in front of Iran, including a broad waiver on oil sanctions. The framework deal kicked off a 60-day negotiating period to reach a permanent agreement and resolve several unanswered questions, largely about the future of Iran’s nuclear program.
It didn’t hold. The agreement’s language on the Strait was ambiguous from the start. Iran was required to use “its best efforts” for the safe passage of commercial vessels, a phrase that left enormous room for interpretation. The 60-day ceasefire was always shaky. The latest attacks are an escalation from the contained back-and-forth that defined previous flareups: a common pattern in which Iran hits commercial shipping, the U.S. responds with limited retaliatory strikes, and Iran responds with attacks on Gulf allies of the U.S., including Bahrain and Kuwait.
While attending the NATO summit on July 8, President Trump said he believed the interim truce had ended and threatened further attacks. That declaration didn’t stop diplomats from continuing to work. Iran’s foreign minister has been in contact with mediators in Oman, Qatar, and Pakistan. Oman has drafted a proposal to manage strait traffic through two separate corridors, one under Iranian oversight and one under Omani management. But every time talks gain momentum, another strike or ship attack pulls the situation back to the edge.
Analysts say that while the U.S. and Iran have gone back to sparring as they did before the interim ceasefire deal was signed, they are unlikely to return to full-scale war, though a risk of further escalation remains.
Iran’s Military Position and the Nuclear Question
The Trump administration‘s public line has been that Iran’s military has been “crushed.” The intelligence picture, based on reporting from multiple outlets, is more complicated. Iran is assessed to have retained a significant portion of its prewar missile stockpile and has reportedly restored access to most of its missile sites along the Strait of Hormuz, where Iranian missiles could threaten U.S. ships.
Iran’s nuclear program remains unresolved. A few days after the war began, it was reported that Iran had stored highly enriched uranium in an underground facility that was undamaged by U.S. bombings in 2025. Subsequently, Iran denied the IAEA access to nuclear facilities that had been bombed, but did provide access to all unaffected facilities. The fundamental question that triggered the entire conflict, whether Iran is moving toward a nuclear weapon, has not been answered, and the chaos of active fighting has made it considerably harder for international inspectors to find out.
Trump declined to give a timeline to reporters on an end to the U.S.-Iran conflict. While he reiterated a threat of using additional military force if Washington was unsatisfied with diplomacy, Trump also ruled out the possibility of using nuclear weapons. The war has now lasted well beyond the initial administration timeline, and the costs for U.S. households, for global energy markets, for the region’s civilian population continue to mount.
Read More: 15 Famous People You Didn’t Know Had Military Backgrounds
Where Things Stand
The United States has restarted its maritime blockade against Iran, as the standoff over the Strait of Hormuz intensifies. “U.S. forces resumed the naval blockade against vessels transiting to and from Iranian ports and coastal areas today at 4 p.m. ET,” U.S. Central Command said in a statement Tuesday. As of this writing, the U.S. military has more than 20 Navy warships and hundreds of military aircraft operating across the Middle East. The strikes are continuing. Iran is attacking Gulf neighbors and commercial ships. Diplomats are still talking.
The pattern of this war has become its defining feature: a cycle of strikes and counter-strikes, ceasefires that collapse under the weight of their own ambiguities, and a waterway that both sides claim to control and neither fully does. The United States House of Representatives passed the War Powers Resolution, which aims to prevent further escalation in the war against Iran until hostilities are authorized by Congress. Although the measure must pass through the Senate and is likely to be vetoed by President Trump, the move reflects growing congressional concern over the conflict.
The human cost keeps accumulating on both sides. The Human Rights Activists News Agency has documented 1,701 civilian deaths in Iran. The full casualty picture, military and civilian, remains unknown. What is known is that the war has already lasted far longer than its architects projected, the ceasefire it produced has already broken down once, and the conditions that would allow a durable peace deal, agreement on the nuclear program, resolution of the Strait’s status, verification that Iran will accept, remain as unresolved as they were on February 27, the night Trump authorized the first strikes from Air Force One. There is no shortage of talks happening. There is a very real shortage of agreement on what any final deal would actually look like.
AI Disclaimer: This article was created with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed by a human editor.