War, Allies, and the World America Is Making

Thirty-three days into Operation Epic Fury, the President of the United States of America addressed the American people – and many others around the world – about the goals and achievements of the American-Israeli campaign against Iran. Trump’s address offered some clarity on the objectives of the war, but it provided minimal new insights into the military campaign.

Ultimately, the speech by the American president failed to provide any narrative about what victory looked like in the war, or how long it might take. Beyond a recounting of the length of previous American wars, which came across as scolding his audience for being impatient, we still have no clearer view on how this war ends.

Alongside the vital issue of how this war ends resides a deeper and more crucial question: what has the war against Iran done to the structure of American alliances? The answer, which is starting to reveal itself but is sure to be the subject of much debate, portends a geopolitical landscape shaped by Operation Epic Fury and Trump’s address that will outlast the war by years, and perhaps decades.

In this quick assessment, I examine the background to Trump’s speech today and then review Trump’s speech and its implications. I review the impact of the war on America’s European and Middle East allies, particularly alliance dynamics, and three scenarios for the trajectory of the war from here.

Any serious analysis of the current situation must begin not with the events of February 2026, but with those of June 2025. Operation Midnight Hammer — a 37-hour targeted strike campaign against Iran’s key nuclear facilities — was the first rung on the escalation ladder. That operation was, by design, limited: a counterproliferation strike intended to set back Iran’s nuclear timeline without triggering a full-scale war. CSIS analysis noted that it differed drastically from what followed, being confined to nuclear targets rather than the comprehensive target set that Epic Fury has pursued.

Operation Epic Fury commenced on 28 February 2026. President Trump announced the strikes not through a congressional address, but via an eight-minute video posted to Truth Social. Beyond a War Powers notification and a briefing to the Gang of Eight, Congress was not consulted. The four stated military objectives were unambiguous: destroy Iran’s missile arsenal and production capacity, annihilate its navy, degrade its proxy networks, and guarantee Iran could never acquire a nuclear weapon. The desired political outcome was, equally unambiguously, regime change from within. The message at the close of Trump’s announcement was directed not to Washington’s allies or to Tehran’s leadership, but to the Iranian people: the hour of your freedom is at hand.

The manner of that announcement set the tone for everything that followed in the war and in America’s alliance relationships. America’s partners in Europe, in the Gulf, and across the Indo-Pacific learned about the commencement of the largest U.S. military campaign in twenty years from a social media post in the middle of the night. The strategic and political consequences of that choice by the Trump administration continue to reverberate.

Thirty-three days after H-Hour, the operational data that is openly available points to a campaign of extraordinary scale and intensity. U.S. forces have struck more than 12,300 targets. The Iranian Navy has been effectively destroyed as a conventional fighting force. Major surface combatants were largely eliminated at pier before they could sortie. A U.S. submarine sank the frigate IRIN Dena off Sri Lanka on 4 March. The IRGC Navy commander Alireza Tangsiri, architect of the Strait of Hormuz blockade strategy, was killed by Israeli forces on 27 March. Iran’s drone assault rate has fallen by an estimated 95 percent from its peak. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed in the opening hours. Israeli intelligence estimates place Iranian missile production at zero and missile launchers neutralised at over 70 percent.

The costs have not been one-sided. Iran’s retaliatory campaign, designated Operation True Promise 4, has hit American and allied installations across Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the UAE. Six American service members have been killed by Iranian fire, another six in a plane crash in Iraq, and 348 personnel wounded as of 31 March. Many U.S. bases in the region have been damaged. The Crowne Plaza Hotel in Manama was struck. Saudi Aramco’s Ras Tanura facility was hit. Amazon Web Services confirmed its UAE data centres were physically attacked. The Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s traded oil flows, remains contested and partially closed.

Against the backdrop of sustained high-intensity warfare, President Trump’s 2 April address carried the unmistakable tone of a commander announcing an endgame. He spoke of “victories like few people have ever seen”. He declared America on track to complete all military targets within two to three weeks. Trump also informed his audience that he remained committed to ensuring that Iran never gained a nuclear weapon, nor the long-range missiles that might deliver such a weapon against the American homeland. He stated that while “the United States had never declared regime change as a war aim”, regime change had nonetheless occurred.

The most strategically significant element of the address was Trump’s prospective ultimatum: if no deal was reached, the United States would strike each of Iran’s electrical generation plants, probably simultaneously. This was an attempt at compellence: a conditional threat of overwhelming future force designed to make compliance rational without the threat necessarily being executed.