The term "primary enemy" is widely employed in strategic doctrine and serves to identify which adversary must be confronted as the foremost priority among a range of hostile options. The concept was addressed by two legendary strategists: the Chinese general Sun Tzu in his "The Art of War," written some 2,500 years ago, and in the Western tradition by the iconic thinker Carl von Clausewitz, who employed the notion of the "center of gravity" with equivalent meaning.

That is precisely what Iran has done from the very moment it came under attack — it identified as its primary target the dozens of U.S. military installations that Washington has used to encircle the Persian state along the shores of the Persian Gulf. These facilities represent the core of American military presence in the region, as well as a critical pillar of support for Israel's defense.

Less than 24 hours had elapsed since the premeditated and politically reckless killing of more than 160 female students in Minab when Iran commenced a systematic missile campaign against those installations — targeting not only Israel, but American positions across the region. This marks a significant operational shift from the conduct Iran displayed during the "12-Day War" of June 2025 — a conflict that some analysts suggest Tehran used to calibrate the tactics it would later deploy against its primary adversary.

In its strikes, Iran applied a precise and impeccable operational logic: targeting radar systems first — some of them highly sophisticated and valued at several billion dollars — effectively rendering both U.S. naval forces and Israel's celebrated Iron Dome "blind and deaf" before the main offensive had fully unfolded.

This campaign, sustained across approximately 30 successive waves of drones and missiles, proceeded to dismantle the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet — a linchpin of American forward presence in the Gulf — along with the logistical infrastructure supporting every American vessel and troop deployment in the region. Infrastructure built over at least three decades, at a cost so staggering the zeroes scarcely fit on a single line.

Iran has, in effect, dismantled a costly military perimeter — a development that carries multiple layers of significance.

The first and most obvious: the U.S. military is not invincible. Second, the technology America markets globally as the ultimate deterrent was "comfortably" outmatched by Iranian weaponry — a fact with both military and commercial implications, raising serious questions about who will want to purchase American arms going forward. Third, the psychological toll on both the Marine Corps and the Trump administration has been extraordinary, given the two preceding points.

The scale of this setback should not be understated. Since World War II, the "most powerful military in the world" — as President Trump has repeatedly proclaimed in what can only be described as boastful rhetoric — had not suffered such a catastrophic defeat in so brief a span of time. Within a single week. Renowned Israeli analyst Alon Mizrahi compared the event to a Pearl Harbor multiplied to the nth power.

The strikes on Israel have been extensively documented across social media platforms — now serving as an alternative news source for millions of users, given the iron censorship imposed by Israeli authorities over the military, infrastructure, and economic damage the country has sustained. Estimates indicate that within the first week alone, losses reached no less than $3 billion, encompassing ports, oil refineries, the Dimona nuclear facility, and most critically, the near-total destruction of the vaunted Iron Dome.

Iran has also delivered an unmistakable message to its Arab neighbors: collaboration with the United States carries a steep price. These nations allowed Washington to use their territory in exchange for a protection that, when put to the test, proved entirely ineffective. In short, what lies twisted in the wreckage of those bases is not only steel — but trust in the United States.

Washington, for its part, has been unable to assemble a credible international coalition to support this conflict — a stark contrast to previous military campaigns. Arab nations that hosted American bases have begun distancing themselves from their alliance with the U.S., with reports emerging that some are moving to withdraw or suspend multi-billion-dollar investment plans in the country. The economic blow is significant, and directly undermines the Trump administration's signature promise to "flood" the United States with foreign investment.

In this context, analysts are observing what may be, for the first time in centuries, an emerging convergence of Sunni and Shia Muslim interests united against a common threat. One might say Trump himself deserves credit for this unlikely development, should it prove durable.

From its European allies, the United States has received reactions ranging from veiled skepticism to outright public rejection. Spain denied Washington the use of military bases on Spanish soil at precisely the moment they were most needed — a decision accompanied by the Spanish Prime Minister's declaration of "no to the war," a phrase that rapidly went viral. With less confrontational but equally pointed tones, Portugal, Italy, Great Britain, France, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark — a nation the White House has particularly antagonized over Greenland — have all signaled their disapproval.

This degree of international "hostility" toward a U.S. military operation is, frankly, unprecedented since at least World War II. While it is true that the justifications offered for attacking Iran were widely regarded as implausible — not unlike pretexts accepted in prior conflicts — Trump is now paying the price for years of disrespect and ignorant arrogance toward nations that might otherwise have been reliable allies.

A logical question arises: what was the point of decades of accusations, isolation campaigns, and slander against the Iranian Revolution — which effectively branded that country a "rogue state" — if none of it is functioning as intended?

Another colossal miscalculation was the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — not only Iran's supreme political leader, but the spiritual guide of one of the two main branches of Islam, Shia Islam. Khamenei holds a position for Shia Muslims roughly analogous to that of the Pope for Catholics, with millions of followers worldwide.

Analyzing the assassination through what might be called reverse political sociology, Trump — true to form — appears to have calculated that eliminating the leadership would plunge the Iranian resistance into crisis and swiftly cause "the tyrannical Persian regime" to collapse. In reality, the killing stands as arguably the gravest and most decisive political error of this entire conflict. Trump, or his Israeli counterparts, simply forgot Clausewitz's foundational insight that war is the continuation of politics by other means.

American intelligence has fared particularly poorly throughout this episode. How was it possible to ignore or underestimate the existence of what is known as the "mosaic system" — a decentralized command structure through which the Persian leadership has pre-designated up to four successive replacements in the event of the principal leader's death, cascading indefinitely down the chain?

Another significant intelligence failure: Iranian authorities reportedly identified General Ismail Qaani, head of the Quds Force, as a Mossad asset — a discovery that was likely made some time ago and subsequently exploited to feed contaminated, worthless intelligence to the enemy. A technique as old as espionage itself.

The CIA/Mossad effort to topple the Tehran government through "popular mobilization" and unconventional warfare methods has also failed categorically. Here again, reverse sociology applies — the invasion has generated greater national unity among Iranians, even bridging traditional rifts with ethnic minorities such as Kurds, Azeris, and Baluchis. Some of their leaders have now publicly declared their support for Tehran in the form of a "jihad against the great Satan" — meaning Trump.

Meanwhile, Israel faces mounting threats from Iran's longtime proxy forces operating in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Syria — all of whom have not only expressed solidarity with the Iranian government but are, according to available public reporting, already engaged in active combat against Israel.

Turning to the domestic front — the political quagmire into which Trump has led his own country — one finds what may paradoxically prove to be the most important front of all: the anti-war movement within the United States itself, where the administration could suffer its most strategic defeat.

The situation bears some resemblance to the aftermath of the Venezuela incursion, though multiplied by a factor of one hundred. American society's deep-seated aversion to foreign military adventurism was already evident in the brief episode of January 3rd. That sensitivity is now considerably heightened, compounded by the compounding disasters of the Trump administration's own making.

Cataloguing the full domestic fallout against the Trump administration — just one week into the invasion — would require considerably more space than is available here. Noteworthy is the reaction in Congress, once again marginalized from the decision-making process despite clear constitutional mandates to the contrary, and a debate that can only be described as surreal: centered on the rationale for attacking what was — by Trump's own declaration in June 2025 — an already-destroyed Iranian military nuclear program.

Also striking are the bewildering public contradictions offered by senior officials such as Secretary Rubio, including whether Washington has a coherent strategy or is operating in a subordinate role to Israel. Looming in the background, like a persistent shadow, is the suggestion that the invasion serves as a distraction from the growing — some would say unstoppable — scandal surrounding the Jeffrey Epstein files.

And once again, the specter that matters most electorally: how will the MAGA base react to what amounts to a spectacular betrayal by their messianic leader — a man who promised zero foreign military entanglements, let alone a conflict that even the White House now grudgingly acknowledges could last a minimum of eight weeks? And zero "regime change" — a commitment Trump himself made during his last visit to Saudi Arabia in May of last year. Remarkable.

A full accounting of the economic consequences this war holds for the United States — and for the world at large — would require a lengthy study replete with figures. For the invaders, contending with expenditures of one billion dollars per day, rising oil prices driven by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, accelerating inflation, plunging stock markets, and above all, the potentially fatal question: how severely has the petrodollar system been wounded? As has been noted previously, if the petrodollar collapses, the financial underpinning of the American empire may prove decisive. The word that comes to mind is: madness.

Iran is striking at the primary enemy — its own, and that of much of the rest of the world. Its victory — not guaranteed, but reasonably probable — would represent an extraordinary contribution to humanity at large: halting the uncontrolled war machine of a declining empire, and marking the beginning of the end of the American far-right government. As this column has argued, Trumpism is no accident — it is, in all likelihood, the only form through which the empire believes it can survive. Across social media, one phrase has begun to circulate widely: the imperial operation "Epic Fury" has transformed into "Epic Failure."
 

Translated by Sergio A. Paneque Díaz / CubaSí Translation Staff