On February 28th 2026, the United States and Israel launched a preemptive strike against targets in Iran. This came after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump met in the White House on the 11th of February. The Prime Minister had previously been urging Trump to strike Iran after the January protests in Iran. The protesters in Iran fought hard to try to force a change of government there. The protesters attempted to topple the government because of repression and the collapse of the Iranian currency. On June 22nd 2025, Trump had B-2 bomber pilots strike Iran’s nuclear sites as Iran neared close to creating a nuclear weapon. A nuclear weapon is a weapon that harnesses atomic energy and causes mass destruction. Then, in late February, Trump attacked Iran again. This attack marked the second US-operated strike against Iran this year. On the opening day of the attack, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, and other military and political leaders were killed during a strike. Shortly after, the ayatollah’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, became the new leader of Iran. An article published by the New York Post says that the new Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei ¨is unconscious and “unable to be involved in any decision-making.” It also reports that the new ayatollah hasn’t been seen in public since the strikes that killed his father. Since February 28th, Iran has decided to close the Strait of Hormuz to keep American oil ships out of Iran.
The Strait of Hormuz is a body of water between the Omani Musandam Peninsula and Iran, it is where twenty percent of the world’s oil passes through. The World Economic Forum shows that this decision has affected more than Iran and America. It states, “The shipping crisis in the Strait of Hormuz is now “the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market, according to the head of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol. While focus remains on the 11 million barrels of oil and 140 billion cubic metres of gas usually in daily global circulation, the impact extends far beyond energy.” This quote shows how the Strait of Hormuz is extremely important and can affect oil and energy everywhere. When asked where she gets her news, Mrs. Conneely, an 8th-grade history teacher, replied Ground News, a no-bias, facts-based news source. The second question she was asked was do you think this war will affect the United States, and she said that it probably will not because ¨we live in a very privileged country, so it won’t have that big of an effect¨. Overall, Operation Epic Fury is affecting more than America and Iran, and can continue to create more and more problems for everyone.
Sources:
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/iran/live-blog/israel-iran-live-updates-rcna261099
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/04/beyond-oil-lng-commodities-impacted-closure-hormuz-strait/
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/live-updates-u-s-israel-conflict-with-iran-widens
https://www.strausscenter.org/strait-of-hormuz-geography/
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2026/01/what-happened-at-the-protests-in-iran/