By Uzma Ehtasham
Three weeks into ‘Operation Epic Fury’, the United States finds itself entangled in a conflict that bears all the hallmarks of a strategic miscalculation. With B-2 stealth bombers now deployed to “eliminate the ability to rebuild” Iranian military capabilities, the Trump administration appears to be doubling down on a policy that even its own advisers warn could lead to catastrophe. The deployment of America’s most advanced strategic bomber, designed for penetrating the most sophisticated air defences, signals not a limited punitive expedition but a sustained campaign of degradation against a nation that has, thus far, proven remarkably resilient.
Yet for all the firepower unleashed from above, the battlefield tells a more complicated story. Reports that Iran successfully damaged five US Air Force refueling aircraft at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia expose the vulnerability of America’s logistical backbone. These KC-135 Stratotankers, the airborne lifeline enabling the bomber campaign, were struck on Saudi soil—a development that quietly undermines the narrative of unchallenged American air supremacy. When a nation cannot guarantee the safety of its support aircraft deep inside an allied country, the entire architecture of its power projection comes into question.
The internal fissures within Washington’s war party are now impossible to ignore. David Sacks, the White House’s own AI and cryptocurrency czar, has taken the unprecedented step of urging the president to “declare victory and get out”. His intervention is remarkable not merely for its candor but for its rationale: that the conflict threatens Silicon Valley’s data centers in the Gulf and the cryptocurrency markets he is tasked with nurturing. When the pursuit of geopolitical objectives begins to collide with the interests of America’s tech oligarchs, the cohesion of the war effort frays. Sacks warned that Iran could retaliate against Gulf desalination plants, rendering the Arabian Peninsula “almost unlivable”—a scenario that would transform a regional conflict into a humanitarian catastrophe of unimaginable proportions.
The president, however, appears deaf to such counsel. Having reportedly rejected a Russian proposal to transfer Iran’s enriched uranium to Moscow—a diplomatic off-ramp that could have de-escalated the nuclear dimension of the crisis—Trump presses on. His warning that Iran must “surrender” or face further destruction suggests an administration committed to total victory in a theatre where such concepts have historically proven illusory.
Meanwhile, the moral calculus of this campaign grows increasingly indefensible. Human Rights Watch has called for a war crimes investigation into the strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab, where at least 160 people—many of them young girls—were killed on the first morning of the war . The evidence assembled by researchers paints a damning picture: highly accurate, guided munitions struck multiple structures within an IRGC compound, but the school itself—walled off from the military facilities, with its own separate entrance, its football pitch and brightly painted walls clearly visible—was directly hit while filled with children. Satellite imagery confirms the school was a distinct civilian structure, not an integrated military facility.
The response from Washington has been characteristically evasive. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth offers only that an investigation is underway, while the president blames Iran without evidence. This is the familiar lexicon of impunity: when the weaponry is American, the target is civilian, and the casualties are children, the preferred response is denial, obfuscation, and the hope that the next news cycle will bury the evidence. As the third week of this conflict unfolds, the strategic picture remains deeply uncertain. America has demonstrated its capacity to strike at will, to degrade facilities, and to project power across the region. Yet the objectives grow no clearer, the endpoint no nearer. The destruction of Iran’s ability to rebuild is a goal without geographical coordinates, a mission without a completion date. It is the language of permanent war.
David Sacks may be an unlikely voice of reason—a cryptocurrency advocate concerned about market volatility and server farms—but his warning deserves attention. “If escalation doesn’t lead anywhere good, then you have to think about how you de-escalate,” he observed. This is the wisdom that has escaped every empire that mistook firepower for strategy that believed bombing could substitute for thinking that imagined a nation’s will could be crushed from 30,000 feet. Iran is not Afghanistan, and Tehran is not Kabul. This is a state with institutional coherence, regional proxies, and the capacity to inflict pain far beyond its borders. The schoolhouse in Minab should serve as more than a statistic in the casualty count; it should stand as a monument to the consequences of policy unmoored from restraint.
(The writer is a public health professional, journalist, and possesses expertise in health communication, having keen interest in national and international affairs, can be reached at uzma@metro-morning.com)
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