On March 2, Donald Trump used a Medal of Honor ceremony in the East Room of the White House to elaborate on a time table for his latest, “greatest” adventure: All-out war with Iran.

“We’re already substantially ahead of our time projections, but whatever the time is, it’s ok,” he said. “We projected four to five weeks but we have [the] capability to go far longer than that.”

Four weeks came and went. Then five. Then six. And so on. Thursday marks three months since the Pentagon launched “Operation Epic Fury.”

Major combat operations against Iran started out auspiciously enough (from a tactical perspective) when Ali Khamenei was killed along with several members of his family and inner-circle during a single IDF airstrike on the first day of the war.

In the weeks that followed, the US and Israeli militaries systematically dismantled Iran’s conventional fighting capabilities, destroyed more than three-quarters of the country’s air defenses and significantly degraded its industrial capacity.

But a plan to install Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as interim leader — and who knows how many similarly harebrained regime change schemes — came to naught, there was no Kurdish incursion from Iraq and the Iranian people didn’t rise up. Further, no single IRGC commander was able to claim for himself the role of uncontested strongman. There was no Delcy.

Today, the country’s governed by what one expert recently described as a “brotherhood” — a military triumvirate comprised of Guards lifer and current parliament speaker Bagher Ghalibaf, security chief Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr and acting IRGC commander Ahmad Vahidi, all of whom are ostensibly answerable to the animate remains of Mojtaba Khamenei, who’s in underground storage at an undisclosed location.

Maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, which was flowing mostly unimpeded this time three months ago, is throttled not just by the IRGC’s threats to attack ships attempting to transit the waterway without permission, but by a US naval blockade. Such are the tragicomedies of war: America ended up closing off the very waterway it was trying to protect.

As Lawrence Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King’s College London, put it, writing for Foreign Affairs this week, it’s not so much that Trump stumbled into a “quagmire” in the Vietnam (or Iraq) sense of the term, nor is it likely Iran will be remembered as an example of what Trump himself routinely derides as America’s “forever wars.” Rather, it’s that Trump’s reached a “dead end” with the regime in Tehran.

“Leaving aside the awkward fact that Trump had claimed the strikes against Iranian enrichment plants in June 2025 had ‘obliterated’ the Iranian nuclear program, he now claims that the economic pain caused by this war is a price worth paying to deny Iran a nuclear weapon,” Freedman wrote. “Whether or not the American people agree, Trump’s problem is that he is in no better position to achieve this objective than he was before the war, when serious discussions regarding limits on Iran’s enrichment capacity were apparently underway.”

Some manner of negotiated settlement to end open hostilities and reopen the Strait still seems the most likely outcome, but the fact that the two sides exchanged strikes on the three-month anniversary of the war Thursday cast considerable doubt on many of Trump’s favorite talking points.

The Pentagon said the US downed several Iranian drones threatening commercial vessels in the Strait and subsequently bombed coastal launch sites, marking the second such strikes in the space of four days. For their part, the Guards struck “the American airbase from which the [US] attack originated,” to quote directly from Iranian state media.

Around the same time, Kuwait said its air defenses were engaging “hostile targets,” presumably near American military installations. Later, Kuwaiti officials blamed Iran for a drone and missile attack. The US and UAE joined a chorus of condemnation. Iran, the Emirates said, committed “a flagrant violation of the sovereignty of Kuwait” on Thursday, further “threat[ing] security and stability” in the region.

Speaking of threats to regional stability, Israel’s dropped any pretense to respecting the ceasefire. The IDF’s bombing Lebanon more or less around the clock. On Thursday, warplanes hit targets in Tyre, where Hezbollah operates a network of “command centers,” according to the Israelis.

Meanwhile, Scott Bessent sanctioned the newly-established Persian Gulf Strait Authority, and said anyone who pays tolls to the entity could run afoul of OFAC.

“The Iranian military’s latest attempt to extort global maritime trade is proof that Economic Fury has left the regime desperate for cash,” Bessent said. (And yes, that’s actually the name of Treasury’s pressure campaign against Iran now: “Economic Fury.”)

Trump took it a step further, threatening to bomb Oman if the country participates in an Iranian initiative to control and tax the shipping lane. “Oman will behave just like everybody else,” he said, at a cabinet meeting. “Or else we’ll have to blow them up.”