The Strait of Hormuz remains the primary flashpoint in the conflict.
Page A2From§Eachthe sunrise edition — 3 September 2026
Pentagon quietly retires 'Operation Epic Fury,' Trump still vows to hit Iran 'anytime we want'
As it ran on the front
Six months ago, Trump said the Iran war would be over in four to five weeks. It wasn't, and by May 5 the Pentagon had already quietly closed the books on the name it gave that promise — "Operation Epic Fury" ended, on paper, while the war kept running under no name at all.
Last month, with the war still going, an Air Force email told service members to stop calling it that anyway. Epic Fury had been retired since spring; someone still had to remind the troops the operation they were fighting no longer had a name to fight under.…
…(cont) On Aug. 27, Trump's own quarterly ethics filing surfaced: more than a thousand stock transactions in June, several in energy companies posting record profits off a war he started and hadn't ended. That same week, Trump took to Truth Social to call a Fox News correspondent's report on the war "particularly inaccurate" and told anchor Bret Baier to straighten out his flunkies — the disclosure had barely landed before the correction did.
The next day, Aug. 28, marked six months since the war began. The White House said nothing. No statement, no briefing, just a Friday with a war in its seventh month and no acknowledgment it had entered one.
By Aug. 31, Trump was posting an AI-generated video of U.S. forces bombing Kharg Island, Iran's main oil export terminal — a target American forces hadn't hit. The real strikes that week landed on Larak Island, hundreds of miles away.
Two days later, Iran accused the United States of a war crime: a strike near the Strait of Hormuz that killed at least four people at a wedding. Trump's approval rating had by then reached a record low, 33%, with midterms closing in and the military stretched thin.
On Wednesday, Trump called the latest strikes a "very heavy attack" and said the U.S. is prepared to hit Iran anytime we want. A military spokesman said officials were looking into whether people at that wedding had been killed by American strikes. By afternoon, Iran was claiming its own strikes on U.S. bases in Kuwait and the UAE, with the Strait of Hormuz still the channel everything runs through.
The name went quiet in spring. The threats got loud in September. What didn't move is what's underneath both: the Strait of Hormuz, where the fighting keeps landing, and a president whose June stock trades moved with the energy companies profiting from the war fought over it.
“They didn't stop the war, they stopped saying its name — that's not peace, that's a company rebranding after the recall. Same missiles, same strait, different letterhead, and the guy signing off on "anytime we want" is the same guy whose stock filing shows a thousand trades in the companies that get paid every time the price of oil jumps. You don't threaten a country "anytime we want" for free — somebody's always collecting on the anytime.”
The receipts
In today's issue: ▪ Iran war approach shifts ▪ Trump gives Paxton a boost ▪ Warsh makes key Fed speech ▪ Leavitt’s last day Today marks six months since the start of the war with Iran, which President Trump said would last for four to five…
President Trump is under pressure to avoid an escalatory spiral after launching the largest wave of strikes on Iran in weeks, with the U.S. military strained and the midterm elections rapidly approaching. Trump on Wednesday downplayed the Iran war's negative impact on Republican candidates.
The Pentagon says "Operation Epic Fury" ended on May 5, after an Air Force email last month told service members to stop using the name for ongoing Iran operations.
The White House made no major public recognition Friday of the six-month anniversary of the Iran war, a conflict President Donald Trump predicted earlier this year would last only a matter of weeks. Neither Trump nor his administration…
The illegal war with Iran that President Donald Trump said would be over in a matter of weeks entered its sixth month on Friday, and there is little sign of it wrapping up in the near future. A Friday report in The Washington Post marking the six-month anniversary of the illegal war noted that Trump's ability to decisively win the…
In a mandated filing with the Office of Government Ethics released Thursday, President Donald Trump was found to have made more than 1,000 stock transactions in June, including thousands of dollars invested in energy companies that were…
Iran accused the United States of war crimes on Wednesday over a strike that they say killed multiple civilians at a wedding party near the Strait of Hormuz. CBS News' Weijia Jiang reports.
Fox News host Bret Baier defended his colleague after President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social panning his show’s segment on the latest Iran war news. Trump posted on social media on Thursday evening telling Baier to “straighten out…
US President Donald Trump published a string of unhinged posts to his social media platform overnight and into Monday morning, including an artificial intelligence-generated video attempting to depict American forces bombing Kharg Island—Iran's primary oil export terminal. The post, which drew mockery from Iranian officials and alarm…
The U.S. military was looking into Iran's allegations that people at a wedding party were killed in the American strikes, a spokesman said.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.