The Pentagon continues to tout the successes of Operation Epic Fury, with War Secretary Pete Hegseth confirming the U.S.-Israeli air campaign has hammered Iran and struck more than 15,000 targets, dismantling Tehran's air defenses and severely crippling its navy.
Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine recently said Iran's ballistic missile launches targeting Israel and Gulf allies have dropped by about 90% since the initial strike, and by nearly every measure, the campaign has dealt a heavy blow to the regime.
Bob Maginnis, president, of Maginnis Strategies, LLC., argues that target lists do not win wars; the military force must produce a durable political outcome.
President Donald Trump initially set a clear objective: deny Iran nuclear weapons and destroy its ability to threaten its neighbors.
After almost three weeks of strikes, Iran's nuclear program is severely disrupted. Key sites like Fordow are believed inoperable or badly degraded, but others like at Isfahan may be hidden or recoverable. Iran also still has a large stockpile of highly enriched uranium, making the program's viability unknown.
Maginnis has seen enough.
"I don't think they're going to make a nuclear weapon any time soon," he submits. "I don't think they have many missiles left. They certainly don't have a navy. We've killed most of their top people."
Meanwhile, Trump has said he wanted to approve Iran's new leader and questioned whether the Islamic Republic itself should survive. Before Iran's Assembly of Experts officially appointed Mojtaba Khamenei, he called the late supreme leader's son "unacceptable."
Since coming to power, the new ayatollah has operated out of public view, leading to questions about the state of his health.
Still, a regime change would require far more than an air campaign, and as Maginnis has told AFN, he does not see an organic solution to the replacement of the ayatollah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
"I believe that the Iranian strategy is to use asymmetric warfare to slow things down, but at the same time keep the tempo up and the cost against the allies as high as possible," he says.
But without a clear objective in Iran, he says Trump's party is becoming "politically vulnerable" ahead of the upcoming midterm elections.
"That's why I call on them to say, 'Let's end this,'" Maginnis concludes. "Collect our toys and whatever, and let's focus on what's really important: the threat from the Chinese."
