Never had Israel’s air force pilots and military intelligence officers conducted an operation on such a scale, and finding anything comparable in the history of the US air force would require going back several decades. Over the past five days, the two countries’ militaries have unleashed massive firepower on the Iranian regime. “They are toast,” US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday, March 4, praising the joint US-Israeli operation as “unstoppable” and “unprecedented,” though he did not clarify the Trump administration’s objectives.

In a macho display of bravado and ruthlessness, Hegseth said the US air force might need “a few days, in under a week” to secure the Iranian airspace – while other official figures suggested it might only take “a few more hours.” Once this air superiority is achieved, Israel and the United States will have free rein to continue the campaign they started on Saturday, February 28, to destroy Iran’s missile launchers and manufacturing sites.

“We will be using 500 pound, 1,000 pound and 2,000 pound [up to about 900 kilograms] GPS and laser-guided precision gravity bombs, of which we have a nearly unlimited supply,” Hegseth said. He said these munitions could be used against political targets in Tehran, which raises serious questions about the number of civilian casualties the Trump administration would be willing to accept, even though it has claimed at times that its aim was to “liberate” Iran, by persuading its population to rise up against the regime after the war.

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