The United States is rushing fresh squadrons of F‑15 and F‑35 fighters into the Iran war theatre as Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) pounds US bases and regional allies with relentless missile and drone barrages, officials say. Operation “Epic Fury” has now morphed from a punishing air campaign into a full‑blown regional slugfest with no clear endgame.

Newly arrived F‑15E Strike Eagles and stealth F‑35s are dispersing across airfields in the UAE, Qatar and Jordan, tasked with hunting mobile missile launchers, drone swarms and fast‑attack boats that survived the opening US–Israeli onslaught. Pentagon planners argue that only high‑tempo, precision airpower can keep ahead of the IRGC’s “20th wave” of retaliatory strikes.

On the ground, US troops are spending more nights in bunkers than in barracks. Footage from inside key bases shows repeated sprint‑to‑shelter drills as sirens howl and Patriots fire, while social media fills with images of burning fuel tanks and shredded hangars from the latest Iranian hits. Casualty figures on both sides are climbing, even as leaders trade boasts of “decisive victories.”

Diplomats are warning that Epic Fury has opened a geopolitical Pandora’s box: oil prices spiking, shipping insurers fleeing the Gulf, and nervous Arab governments squeezed between dependence on US protection and fear of becoming Iranian targets.

As F‑35s roar off desert runways into yet another night of strikes, one question now hangs over Washington, Tehran and every capital in between: is this air surge the last hard push before talks — or the point of no return in a war neither side truly knows how to stop?