President Trump gives critical update on Operation Epic Fury

President Trump delivered brief remarks this morning during a Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House, identifying clear military objectives, as well as a potential timeline for the operation

by Summer Lane | March 2, 2026

President Donald Trump participated in a Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House on Monday, but before the proceedings began in earnest, he provided a brief update on the status of Operation Epic Fury.

“Today, the United States military continues to carry out large-scale combat operations in Iran to eliminate the great threats posed to America by this terrible terrorist regime,” the president said.

He continued, “Following our obliteration of Iran’s nuclear program in Operation Midnight Hammer…we warned Iran not to make any attempt to rebuild at a different location because they weren’t able to use the ones we so powerfully blew up. But they ignored those warnings and refused to cease their pursuit of nuclear weapons. In addition, the regime’s conventional ballistic missile program was growing rapidly and dramatically, and this posed a very clear and colossal threat to America and our forces stationed overseas.”

President Trump said that the Iranian regime had been in possession of missiles capable of hitting Europe and both local and overseas American military bases, “and would soon have had missiles capable of reaching our beautiful America.”

“An Iranian regime armed with long-range missiles and nuclear weapons would be an intolerable threat to the Middle East but also to the American people,” President Trump stated. “Our country itself would be under threat, and it was very nearly under threat.”

The president said that this moment was “our last best chance to strike” and to “eliminate the intolerable threats posed by this sick and sinister regime.”

He laid out four clear objectives that the U.S. military was seeking to achieve in this joint operation with Israel:

• First, to destroy Iran’s missile capabilities and its ability to produce brand new missiles,
• Second, to annihilate the Iranian Navy. The president confirmed on Monday that ten Iranian ships had already been terminated by U.S. strikes,
• Third, to ensure that the “world’s number one sponsor of terror can never obtain a nuclear weapon,”
• And finally, to ensure that the Iranian regime “cannot continue to arm, fund, and direct terrorist armies outside of their borders.”

The president also acknowledged in his remarks the four American servicemembers who perished over the weekend during these Iranian operations. “ In their memory, we continue this mission with ferocious and unyielding resolve to crush the threat this terrorist regime poses to the American people,” President Trump said.

He added, “We have the strongest and most powerful, by far, military in the world and we will easily prevail.”

The president said that the operation was already “substantially ahead of our time projections,” noting that senior leadership originally projected the operation to last “four to five weeks,” but “we have the capability to go far longer than that.”

“We also projected four weeks to terminate the military leadership, and as you know, we did that in about an hour,” President Trump remarked.