Operation Epic Fury Is Justified

Operation epic fury, should end soon, before i start. I do acknowledge that it has costs and gas prices in return, and should not last for longer. But it was needed because of 3 main reason.

First is to prevent nuclear capabilities of Iran. Iran and along with a majority of nations signed the NPT which prevents the acquirement or development of any more nuclear weaponry. Iran is breaking this deal apparently because they have been shown to have buying highly enriched uranium, which is used for nuclear weapons. They claimed it was only for nuclear reactors/energy, but this is scientifically false as you cannot use high enriched uranium for a reactor, only low enriched uranium works for reactors. So unless some Iranian military official clicked the wrong item to put in his amazon basket, they obviously are tying to reach nuclear which is not beneficial and dangerous for United States, as well as other countries, because it threatens homeland security. And seeing how unpredictable Iranian government has been, with also publicly proclaiming almost every month “Death to America”, it probably isnt good to let them have that, so we should stop them before they acquire it.

Second of all, there is an extremely oppressive facist regime in Iran. They have always been known to torture their citizens, but you could also say that about other countries like North Korea, but have you heard of North Korea mass geocoding 30k protesters in their streets at the same time? Iran doesn’t have the military to be able to hold off America without it being devastating for us, as well can see with us only having 13 deaths in this conflict overall. That’s why i also think we need to invade Cuba, but that is a separate debate.

Third, the USA is often debated to need to be stopped, because we are not the world police, but the UN hasn’t done anything about this regime for years, and is only taking in billions of dollars from every country without doing anything meaningful, unlike their past. So if we are the only ones able to do something, shouldn’t we? Or are we supposed to let these citizens suffer.

Thanks for kicking off this debate, Pro. I will be arguing that America’s war on Iran is not justified.

On 2/28, the date that Iran’s top leadership was killed, President Trump told the Iranian people in a televised address:

At the start of this war, Trump was explicitly calling for Iranians to rise up in a revolution against the Islamic Republic and install a new regime, saying that the US military would back any rebels.

It soon became clear that the Iranian people were not going to rise up. The war’s initial objective of regime change was a total failure, so Trump moved the goalposts and pretended the war was about other things.

Is the Iranian regime bad like Pro says? Yes. The same could be said for a lot of other bad regimes in the world. But we can’t go around overthrowing every bad regime for many reasons, such as that destabilizing countries can bring about some very bad unintended consequences. The recent history of US involvement in the Middle East should have served as a guide. Trump correctly called the Iraq War a “big fat mistake” in 2016, and this war could be described similarly.

The Iranian regime has proven resilient, and this war let them establish that they can control the Strait of Hormuz, which they had respected as international waters for the past 47 years, but now they can use it to enrich themselves. The war has also spiked prices, for oil and by extension many other goods, and they won’t lower anytime soon. It has also drained US weapons supplies which we may need for a future conflict with Russia or China.

So the initial goal of regime change failed, and the goalposts shifted. Is the new goal to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, as Pro argues? Well, Trump said after the 12 Day War in 2025 that Iran’s nuclear capability was “totally obliterated”, so it’s strange that we have to obliterate it again. I agree that Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon is undesirable. But that’s an argument for a focused strike on their nuclear infrastructure like we did last year, which is not what we’ve done in this war. We have yet to do anything towards getting rid of that underground enriched uranium. If Trump wants to do that, he has two options:

1. Conduct a targeted ground invasion where troops break into the sites and take the uranium or destroy it. Trump doesn’t want to do this because he knows that putting “boots on the ground” will make him even more unpopular.

2. Sign a treaty with Iran to limit its nuclear program, allow international monitoring, etc. This agreement would be along the lines of the JCPOA, which Trump pulled us out of in his first term. But at this point, he’d be lucky to get a weaker version of the JCPOA.

But about a month after the war began, President Trump told Reuters that he “doesn’t care about” the enriched uranium because it’s “so far underground”. Maybe he contradicted himself later, as he often does. If not, then Pro’s whole point is moot, because if the commander-in-chief himself doesn’t care about it, then it’s not a military priority. If anything, Trump’s main priority right now is finding a way out of this mess. It’s unclear what we’re trying to accomplish in this war, and it will leave us worse off than we started, so this war is not justified.

I’d also argue that the main reason we went into this war is because of Israel. But due to the character limit, I’ll have to elaborate on that next round.

Since Pro has forfeited this debate, I’ll just post what I had intended to add when I ran into the character limit.

In an interview with Sharyl Attkisson, Donald Trump said this, referring to why he started Operation Epic Fury: 

So much for “America First”. Trump here confirms that he did not start this war to protect American interests, but rather the interests of various foreign countries. Of these countries, one had given billions of dollars to the president’s son-in-law, another invested $500 million in the Trump family’s crypto firm, and another gifted Trump with a $400 million private jet. But let’s examine the first country he mentioned: Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been lobbying for the United States to go to war with Iran for decades. He tried to drag past presidents into such a war, and they all said no. But on February 11th, 2026, Netanyahu entered the Situation Room and gave President Trump and his team an hour-long presentation encouraging him to launch a regime change war against Iran, painting a rosy picture of how easy regime change would be, and downplaying the risks.

Trump’s team was not on the same wavelength. CIA director John Ratcliffe called the plan “farcical.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio added: “In other words, it’s bullshit.”

According to Rubio, Israel also declared they intended to start this war with or without us, further pressuring us to join in.

But Trump did not listen to his own team’s skepticism. Whether out of genuine concern for Israel or a vain desire for military glory, Trump went along with Bibi’s plan to the letter, 17 days after his presentation. The commander-in-chief could have said no to Israel and pressured them to call it off, as he has done before. But he did not, so the responsibility for getting us into this war ultimately falls on him. 

War is, by its very nature, terrible. It should only be waged as a last resort. A war fought at the behest of a foreign power, which used its status as our “special ally” to manipulate us into fighting a country on the other side of the world which has nothing to do with us, with no regard to how such a war will impact the global economy, international relations, or the pocketbooks of American citizens, is not a just war.

The burden of proof is on those waging war to explain why it must be fought, not on those advocating peace. Neither Pro nor the President of the United States have provided anything resembling a convincing reason why “Operation Epic Fury” should have happened at all.

RIP this site.