Officially, at least, the war against Iran began on Saturday, February 28, at 1:15 a.m., Eastern Standard Time. In reality, though, Operation Epic Fury of the United States and Israel’s Roaring Lion began at 6:29 in the morning, Middle East Time, on October 7, 2023.
In launching the Al-Aqsa Flood onslaught, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar believed he was initiating the long-desired destruction of the Jewish State and the final triumph of radical Islam. Little could he have conceived that, 875 days later, Israel would not only have survived but emerged as the region’s preeminent military power while Iran, the former jihadist hegemon, was reduced to an embattled remnant. Sinwar, along with a broad list of the Palestinian, Iranian, and Lebanese leaders who started and supported this war, would be dead.
How did that happen? How did a single attack launched across Gaza’s border, that lasted a little over a day and killed 1,200 Israelis, mushroom into a 28-month-long conflict entangling the United States and at least 17 other countries and claiming tens of thousands of lives? What concatenation of events transformed that brutal but localized battle into the full-blown war whose conclusion, as of this writing, remains totally unpredictable? The answer to such questions can be summarized in a single word: miscalculation.
