As the mainstream media tells it, Operation Epic Fury is “quickly becoming a disaster.” “The U.S. has been caught flat-footed.” “Helpless America” cowers before “a bullying Iran.” The whole operation is one giant “miscalculation.” Every armchair doctor prescribes the same remedy: the Trump administration should declare defeat, take its over-priced toys back to the home barracks, and drink its sorrows away from a stream of self-flagellating tears. How dare the object of all this Derangement Syndrome ever believe America could be a winner again?

The simple answer is that President Trump dares to believe in America because America is awesome, and because our unparalleled military is currently putting on a once-in-a-generation display of dominance. The media is hung up on every small mishap, the side-effect of rising oil prices, and the unknowns about what the Iranians are thinking or where their surviving leadership is hiding. “The proper term for this is the fog of war,” Ilan Berman, senior vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council, explained on “Washington Watch.” “And it happens in every conflict. But … all the uncertainty, all the churn, all the turmoil is being amplified by social media, and by the way, the conflict is being reported.”

“If you break through the noise, and if you take a look at what’s actually happening — if you listen to political leaders, it’s not so clear — if you listen to military leaders, it’s actually very clear … that there’s a sort of a clear, methodical plan,” argued Berman. “And it’s progressing ‘at pace.’ … It’s very clear that the plan is phased, and it’s methodical.”

“The first phase was that strategic surprise that we saw at the end of February with the decapitation of the regime, the killing of Iran’s supreme leader,” Berman listed. “The second phase is what we’re nearing the end of now, which is the elimination of Iran’s offensive capabilities: its ability to shoot drones, to fire missiles, to hold American allies and American assets in the region at risk. And what comes next is the elimination of Iran’s defensive capabilities, basically degrading Iran’s defense-industrial base so Iran can’t rebuild those capabilities.”

National Review’s Noah Rothman records that the initial decapitation strikes “neutralized roughly 40 senior Iranian leadership figures,” followed by “Iran’s armed forces and intelligence leaders, national security figureheads, senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Basij paramilitary commanders, and the brainpower behind Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.”

In the second and third weeks of war, Rothman continued, the U.S. and Israel completely demolished both the Iranian Air Force and its Navy of 120 ships. They disabled most of Iran’s air and missile bases. And, of course, “Iran’s once formidable network of terrorist proxies across the Middle East was decimated” over the past two years of war.

From there, Operation Epic Fury began targeting Iran’s military infrastructure, targeting nuclear facilities, “missile-production facilities, drone manufacturers, explosives-production plants, and sensitive electronics developers,” Rothman added. “Before the end of the third week of fighting, the United States had achieved command of the skies in southern Iran sufficient to deploy vulnerable air assets” that could strafe attack boats, shoot drones in flight, or drop bombs without stealth technology. The U.S. and Israel have eliminated 70% of Iran’s missile launchers, struck buried missile garages, and loiter above bunkers watching for activity.

All this was achieved with only a handful of U.S. deaths and a few hundred injuries. From a tactical perspective, it’s hard to imagine how Operation Epic Fury could have been any more successful. “[Twenty-five] days in, the greatest military the world has ever known is ahead of schedule and performing exceptionally day by day,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt exulted this week. “From the outset, President Trump and the Department of War estimated it would take approximately four to six weeks to achieve this critical mission.”

Of course, strategic victories are always more important and longer-lasting than tactical ones. Thus far, America’s war effort has exposed a “trilateral strategic pact” signed by Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran to be so many empty promises, demonstrated the shortcomings in Russian and Chinese anti-air defenses offered for sale abroad, and turned the rest of the Persian Gulf countries firmly against Iran and towards the U.S. and Israel.

Yet, while those are nice side effects of the war, they aren’t sufficient to justify America’s involvement in the war or exit from it. Key members of Congress from both parties are now asking the administration for more answers about its war aims, especially after the Pentagon requested an extra $200 billion in funding.

Those are legitimate questions because “it’s not clear exactly what the ultimate objectives … actually are,” Berman noted. The question is rendered more crucial by the recent deployment of thousands of U.S. Marines and paratroopers to the Middle East. “Like the vast majority of Americans, I’m firmly against the idea of a large-scale troop deployment in Iran itself,” said Berman. “I don’t want boots on the ground in Iran. I don’t want anything resembling the repeat of Iraq.”

However, “there is a problem that the administration has to solve,” he added. “When the U.S. and Israel bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities in the summer of last year, there was something on the order of 440kg of highly enriched uranium —uranium that is enriched to 60% purity, which [was] left in these ruined facilities. … Somebody has to get ahold of this fissile material, whether the Iranians … turn it over, or a third party, or the U.S. itself.” He suggested “the window of opportunity” for a U.S.-led extraction effort will close if a ceasefire agreement is reached.

Iran has managed to create a second problem for the United States during the war. In a close imitation of their proxy Hamas versus Israel, Iranian officials appear to be pursuing an asymmetrical strategy of losing the military battlefield while winning the diplomatic, economic, and geopolitical struggle. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is extorting commercial ships, charging them a $2 million ransom to traverse the Strait of Hormuz in safety, behaving as if the international thoroughfare were their own private canal.

Iran is trying to wring out the Strait of Hormuz like the neck of the global energy market, believing those Western wimps will then whine their way out of the war. If the tactic holds, then the Iranian regime will establish the principle that the Strait of Hormuz is theirs, and that they can shut off 20% of the world’s oil supply whenever anyone attacks them — making it impossible to ever attack them again.

But Iran never reckoned on the contingency that the commander in chief of the flotilla sitting just outside their harbor believes in total victory. Oil price shocks may cause some pain and consternation, but they have not yet driven the Trump administration to surrender. Overnight Wednesday, Israel killed the commander of the IRGC Navy, responsible for the Strait choke-out strategy.

After President Trump’s ultimatum to up the stakes last weekend, the Iranian regime apparently responded by offering to negotiate, releasing 10 oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz to show that they are serious, said President Trump. The president recently communicated a 15-point peace plan to the Iranian regime through a Pakistani intermediary, which demanded the regime dismantle and renounce its nuclear program, limit its missiles, and reopen the Strait of Hormuz to international shipping. Iranian officials rejected the list of demands, but it shows the objectives Trump is fighting to obtain in the war.

The five-day pause Trump declared in order to give diplomacy a chance expires on Friday, and the U.S. is moving forces into position for potential future attacks. “There does not need to be any more death and destruction, but if Iran fails to accept the reality of the current moment, if they fail to understand that they have been defeated militarily and will continue to be, President Trump will ensure they are hit harder than they have ever been hit before,” Leavitt warned.

The next test will prove the most interesting. The Iranian regime is relying on its death grip over the Strait of Hormuz — since indeed that is its only card left to play. The test will be whether America’s (and Israel’s) undisputed — and now unchallenged — military superiority can pry that death grip free. Soaring gas prices may be painful for a few weeks, but America survived them in 2022 without even having the end of one of the world’s worst regimes to show for it.