On February 27, 2026—precisely twenty-four hours before Operation Epic Fury began—Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi sat before CBS’s Margaret Brennan and delivered what may prove to be the most consequential television interview of this conflict. Oman, as the established back-channel between Washington and Tehran, does not speak carelessly. When Albusaidi stated that a peace deal was “within our reach,” he was not offering diplomatic throat-clearing. He was describing the state of active negotiations.
The details he disclosed were, to use the appropriate legal term, material. Islamic Republic of Iran had agreed to zero stockpiling of enriched uranium—a concession that was not in the 2015 JCPOA. Iran had accepted full IAEA verification, including the possibility of American inspectors on Iranian soil, something Tehran had never permitted under any previous administration. Existing enriched stockpiles would be down-blended to natural levels and converted into irreversible fuel within 90 days of a signed agreement.
Albusaidi stated the broad terms of a deal could be agreed “tomorrow.” Technical talks were already scheduled for Vienna on Monday. The next round of principal-level negotiations—Witkoff, Kushner, their Iranian counterparts—was set for the week of March 2.
Washington launched its strikes on Saturday, February 28. The Vienna talks did not happen.
This is the foundational fact of the analysis that follows. The United States and Israel did not embark on a war of necessity. They embarked on a war of choice—and they made that choice while an alternative was concretely available, with a willing mediator, an agreed framework, and a scheduled calendar.
The polling verdict: No rally, no mandate
Wars, historically, generate a surge of public support in their opening hours. The phenomenon—the rally-round-the-flag effect—is so reliable that political scientists treat it as a near-universal constant. Operation Epic Fury may be the exception that rewrites the rule.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted February 28 to March 1—the operation’s first 48 hours—found 43% of Americans disapproving of the strikes, against just 27% in favour, with 29% unsure. No rally. No surge. A war launched to considerable domestic indifference, and outright opposition from a plurality.
The partisan breakdown is telling, but not in the way Trump’s advisers likely hoped. Republican approval stands at 55%, with 32% of Republicans—nearly one in three—undecided. Among Independents, 44% disapprove and only 19% support the operation. Democrats, at 74% opposed, are effectively a monolith against it. Trump’s overall approval rating has ticked down to 39%, the lowest since he took office.
The comparison with March 2003 is stark. Support for the invasion of Iraq ran at 72–76%, with George W. Bush’s approval near 70% and bipartisan backing—83% of Republicans, 52% of Democrats. The difference is not a polling margin. It is a political chasm.
More consequential still is the fragility of the support that does exist. Forty-two percent of Republicans say they would withdraw backing if American soldiers are killed or injured. That condition is no longer theoretical. CENTCOM has already confirmed six service members dead within the first 48 hours. Conditional support is now being tested in real time.
Casualties are one fault line. Economic spillovers are another. Forty-five percent of respondents, including 44% of Independents, say rising fuel prices would erode their backing. Brent crude has already surged 10% to approximately $80 a barrel, with analysts warning of $100 if the Strait of Hormuz is disrupted.
The political arithmetic is straightforward. The midterm primaries began three days after the strikes. Voters, consistently rank cost of living as their primary concern—not foreign policy, not nuclear non-proliferation, not the geopolitical architecture of the Middle East. In midterm America, petrol prices outrank grand strategy. A war of choice that makes fuel more expensive is not, politically speaking, a vote-winner.
The constitutional confrontation: Congress reasserts itself
The domestic opposition to this war of choice is not merely attitudinal—it has acquired a specific institutional form. Representatives Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY), the progressive and the libertarian, introduced H. Con. Res. 38, directing the President to terminate the use of armed forces against Iran absent explicit congressional authorisation.
That a progressive Democrat and a hardline anti-interventionist Republican share the same resolution is itself analytically significant. The anti-war coalition spans the ideological spectrum in ways that the Iraq War opposition—largely concentrated on the left—did not. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries has committed to forcing a floor vote as soon as Congress reconvenes. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) has made the same commitment in the Senate.
Senator Mark Warner, emerging from a classified briefing, told CNN he had heard “at least four different goals in the last eight or nine days,” listing missile capabilities, regime change, the Iranian navy, and various other objectives. “I’m not sure which of those goals, if met, means we’re at an end game,” he added. This is not a partisan complaint. This is a senior Intelligence Committee member stating, plainly, that the administration lacks a coherent definition of victory.
The constitutional argument is straightforward and, importantly, correct. Congress declares war. The President commands it. A war of choice launched without congressional authorisation—and against a backdrop of active diplomacy—is not merely politically controversial. It is a structural challenge to the separation of powers that the founding documents established to prevent precisely this kind of unilateral adventurism.
The War Powers Resolution votes are, procedurally, likely to fail. Republicans hold narrow majorities; Trump would veto any resolution that passed. But the votes create a public record, and public records, as history demonstrates, have a habit of mattering in retrospect.
The strategic vacuum: Four objectives, zero end-state
Trump, at a Medal of Honor ceremony on Monday, articulated four stated objectives for Operation Epic Fury: destroying Iran’s missile capabilities, annihilating its navy, dismantling its nuclear programme, and a fourth category he described vaguely as “a lot of other things.” He added that the operation was proceeding “substantially ahead of schedule” against his own four-to-five-week timeline.
The four-objective framework does, at minimum, constitute a list. What it does not constitute is a definition of the post-war political order Washington intends to create, or maintain, or accept. Destroy Iran’s missiles—then what? If the current government collapses, who governs? If the IRGC survives, as it is designed to do under decentralised command, what precisely has been achieved?
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi addressed this directly on X: “We’ve had two decades to study defeats of the U.S. military to our immediate east and west. We’ve incorporated lessons accordingly. Bombings in our capital have no impact on our ability to conduct war. Decentralised Mosaic Defense enables us to decide when—and how—the war will end.”
This is not bluster. The IRGC’s structural design is deliberately decentralised precisely to survive decapitation strikes. Khamenei’s death— confirmed by four Israeli security officials—removes a symbolic apex. It does not remove the institutional architecture below it. An IRGC operating without political oversight from the Supreme Leader’s office may, in fact, prove more dangerous than the one Washington has been dealing with for forty years.
Meanwhile, Iran has already struck civilian infrastructure across the Gulf: Dubai International Airport, the Fairmont Palm hotel in Dubai, the Port of Dubai, oil facilities in Haifa, residential areas in Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar. Hezbollah has re-entered the conflict with rockets into northern Israel, the first since the November 2024 ceasefire. The U.S. Embassy in Riyadh was struck by suspected Iranian drones. The U.S. State Department has issued a “DEPART NOW” advisory for all of the Middle East, including Oman—the same country trying to broker the peace.
This is not a contained strike with defined parameters. This is a war of choice that has, within 72 hours, expanded to encompass a dozen countries, a global oil market in shock, and an institutional void in Tehran that nobody—including Washington—has a plan to fill.
Three scenarios and their respective logic
Scenario A — Rapid termination. Trump told The Atlantic that Iran’s emerging leadership has indicated readiness to negotiate. He has agreed to talk. If a successor authority in Tehran concludes that continued resistance extracts higher costs than negotiation, and if Washington accepts a face-saving formula that resembles the deal Oman had already brokered, an off-ramp exists. This scenario requires Trump to accept terms he could have secured without firing a shot—which creates an obvious problem of internal consistency that his advisers will need to manage. Probability: possible, but politically awkward.
Scenario B — Protracted asymmetric conflict. Iran deploys the strategy it has spent two decades developing: distributed drone and missile harassment of U.S. assets, proxy escalation through Hezbollah and Iraqi militias, systematic disruption of Gulf energy infrastructure, and periodic direct strikes to maintain domestic legitimacy. The U.S. achieves air superiority but not political resolution. The conflict grinds into a war of attrition, with American casualties accumulating, oil prices climbing, and midterm voters connecting the dots. Historical parallels: Lebanon 1982–2000, Iraq post-2003. Probability: high, and the most likely near-term trajectory.
Scenario C — Regime collapse and chaos. Khamenei’s death triggers a succession crisis that the IRGC cannot manage. The Islamic Republic fractures between competing power centres. A prolonged civil conflict emerges—call it the Libyan trajectory, or the Syrian one. The United States, having removed the lid, confronts a question it has never answered satisfactorily: it has no coherent plan for post-regime Iran, and never has. Probability: moderate, with consequences disproportionate to its likelihood.
The nuclear paradox: Striking to stop what may now accelerate
The stated casus belli for this war of choice was Iran’s nuclear programme. Trump’s administration has argued that Iran was weeks away from weapons-grade enrichment capacity—a claim Albusaidi disputed, citing IAEA assurances that enrichment had stopped entirely before the strikes began.
The paradox is this: if the strikes destroy the Iranian state’s ability to exercise central control, the nuclear programme—whatever remains of it—passes to actors over whom Washington has even less leverage. Loose nuclear material, and the scientists and engineers who understand it, do not disappear when a government falls. They relocate. The non-proliferation risk from a disintegrating Iran may exceed the non-proliferation risk from an Iran under negotiated constraints—exactly the constraints Oman had reportedly secured. Erwin van Veen, senior research fellow at Clingendael’s Conflict Research Unit, had already identified Europe’s exposure to “a medium-likelihood but high-impact risk scenario encompassing refugee flows, nuclear proliferation, and regional instability” should diplomacy fail.
Talk was on the table
Wars are, among other things, paper trails. The paper trail of this particular war of choice is already extensive, and it is not flattering. An active mediator stated publicly, 24 hours before the strikes, that a comprehensive nuclear deal—superior in scope to any previously achieved—was ready to close within a week. The administration proceeded anyway, without congressional authorisation, without informing its own allies in advance, and without articulating a coherent definition of what success looks like the morning after.
Trump told the Daily Mail he remained open to more talks with Iran, adding “they want to, they want to talk,” but saying, “you should have talked last week, not this week.” This is a striking formulation. It acknowledges that talking was possible. It acknowledges that talking could have achieved the objective. It asserts, without elaborating, that the timing was somehow Iran’s fault. Senator Warner’s question — “which of those goals, if met, means we’re at an end game” — remains unanswered.
The domestic political arithmetic is unforgiving. Conditional Republican support evaporates with casualties and fuel prices; both conditions are already in motion. The constitutional challenge will force every member of Congress to vote, publicly, on whether they endorse a war of choice launched by executive fiat. The mediating country that made this conflict unnecessary is still, reportedly, available and willing to facilitate de-escalation.
What the next four weeks will demonstrate—to adapt Trump’s own timeline—is whether Washington has a plan for the day after, or whether it launched a war of choice on the assumption that the pieces would arrange themselves satisfactorily once the bombs had done their work. History, on this specific question, has a consistent record. It is not a reassuring one.