Or: A War Being Run By People Who Have Never Had To Pay a Bill

Fourteen days ago, the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran. The operation killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on the first day, destroyed most of Iran’s navy, struck over 5,000 targets, and effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly one fifth of the world’s oil supply passes daily.

The Dow is down. Oil is over $100 a barrel. Gas is $3.60 a gallon and climbing. The US economy added 116,000 jobs in all of 2025, the fewest outside of a recession since 2002. Inflation was already running at 2.8 percent before the war started. Economists are now putting recession odds at 35 percent.

The Trump administration has offered several evolving explanations for why the attacks were necessary and what the US ultimately hopes to achieve, at times exaggerated or at odds with US intelligence.

This is the column that explains how we got here and who is responsible for the bill.

The Secretary of War

Pete Hegseth was a Fox News host. He is now the Secretary of Defense, a title he has informally rebranded as Secretary of War, because subtlety is for people who are not trying to signal something.

At the onset of Operation Epic Fury, Hegseth said: “No stupid rules of engagement, no nation building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars. We fight to win and we don’t waste time or lives.”

That was two weeks ago. Since then, the Strait of Hormuz has been functionally closed. Iran has fired missiles at US bases across the Middle East. Six American soldiers are dead. Eleven US servicemembers have been killed in total. The first hundred hours of the operation cost an estimated $3.7 billion, roughly $891 million a day, most of it unbudgeted.

On March 4, Hegseth stood at the Pentagon podium and promised to rain “death and destruction from the sky, all day long,” declared Iran “toast,” and said US pilots have “maximum authorities granted personally by the president and yours truly.”

On March 10, he said Iran was “badly losing” and accused Iran of firing missiles from schools and hospitals. He did not address the fact that the WHO had identified 13 Iranian health infrastructure sites that had been struck by US and Israeli forces.

On March 13, a reporter asked why US ships were not escorting oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, given that Iran was threatening to sink any vessel attempting transit. Hegseth said the US was dealing with it and that people did not “need to worry about it.” Oil was trading at $93 a barrel at the time of that briefing.

On March 14, he promised “no quarter, no mercy for our enemies,” a phrase that has been considered a violation of international law since the Hague Convention of 1899 and is specifically prohibited by the US Marine Corps’ own rules of engagement.

This is the man in charge of the most expensive military operation since the invasion of Iraq.

One veteran leader described Hegseth as someone who “wouldn’t feel safe leaving Pete Hegseth in charge of putting together a DoorDash order.” That person, Janessa Goldbeck, is the CEO of Vet Voice Foundation. She said it to The Guardian. She was not speaking metaphorically.

The Goals. All of Them.

Here is what the Trump administration has said the war is for, in order of announcement. [NBC News]

March 2: End a 47-year war. March 2: Iran refused to negotiate. March 2: No nuclear weapons, ever. March 2: Stop Iran from funding terrorist proxies. March 2: Sink the Iranian navy. March 2: Regime change… the Iranian people should take over. March 4: Destroy missiles, the navy, and the nuclear pathway. March 6: Unconditional surrender. March 7: Actually, the US will help pick Iran’s new government. March 11: The war is “already won.” March 11: The US still needs to “finish the job.” March 13: It could end “soon.” March 13: Or it might need to go “further.” March 15: Trump is ready to declare victory. March 15: Iran has not agreed to stop fighting.

Senator Richard Blumenthal summarized it plainly: “The president’s been all over the place.” Karoline Leavitt called that a “fake narrative.” She did this on X. The goals continued to shift.

Trump wrote on Truth Social that US munition stockpiles have “never been higher or better,” one day after the Wall Street Journal reported that the US was racing to destroy Iran’s missile force before running out of interceptors.

These two things cannot both be true. One of them is.

The Economy Nobody Planned For

Before the war started, oil was trading at $67 a barrel.

Within days of the strikes, Brent crude surged over $80 a barrel. Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz disrupted roughly 20 percent of global oil supplies. Analysts forecast prices could reach $100 per barrel if disruptions persisted, adding 0.8 percent to global inflation.

The prices reached $100 a barrel. They kept going.

The average US gas price was $2.94 a month before the war. By last Thursday it was $3.60 a gallon, up more than 17 percent since the strikes began. Oil briefly hit $119 a barrel on Monday before easing back.

Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, put it plainly: “Most low-income families don’t have savings. They will run up credit card debt, they will borrow from payday lenders. Those are the kinds of actions people take when they can’t pay basic expenses.”

Oxford Economics ran the numbers. If global oil prices average around $140 a barrel for two months, it would be enough to push parts of the global economy into a mild recession, with the US nearing a temporary standstill and unemployment rising. World inflation would spike to 5.8 percent.

The US economy grew just 0.7 percent last quarter, before the war. Recession odds hit 35 percent on Monday when oil briefly reached $119 a barrel, up from 20 percent in early February.

Trump’s response to questions about oil prices was that higher energy costs are “a very small price to pay” and that prices will drop once the mission concludes.

The mission does not have a defined conclusion.

The Strait Nobody Planned For

Reports emerged that before launching Operation Epic Fury, the US military lacked a concrete plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Hegseth dismissed the reports as false and said, “We have a plan for every option here.”

RBC Capital Markets responded to that assurance by publishing a note saying there was “significant skepticism that a robust US Navy tanker escort service will be operational soon,” citing capacity constraints and the fact that Iran’s capabilities “will pose a bigger challenge than the US faced during the Tanker Wars of the 1980s.”

The Energy Secretary posted on X that the US Navy had successfully escorted a tanker through the Strait. The White House then told reporters that no such escort had occurred. Oil prices dropped sharply, then spiked again. The Energy Secretary deleted his post.

This is what competent wartime energy policy looks like, apparently.

The Part About God

In March 2026, soon after the start of the war, military commanders told service members that the conflict was “part of God’s divine plan” and that President Trump was anointed by Jesus. One commander quoted the Book of Revelation and said the war will bring the second coming of Jesus Christ. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation received more than 200 complaints from 50 military installations, saying such statements violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

This is not a satirical embellishment. This happened. Members of Congress have requested an investigation.

The people running this war believe it is divinely ordained. The Strait of Hormuz does not care about divine ordainment. It cares about whether ships can pass through it without getting hit by Iranian missiles. Currently they cannot. Your gas prices reflect this.

Where We Are

Fourteen days in. Oil at $93 and climbing. Eleven American soldiers dead. Over 1,400 Iranian civilians dead. The Strait functionally closed. Recession odds at 35 percent. No defined victory condition. The Secretary of Defense promising no quarter on the same day his own agency’s website says that violates international law. A president who has declared the war won and not yet won in the same week.

Fred Kaplan at Slate put the core problem precisely: “The ultimate asymmetry is that someone like Donald Trump is the commander in chief of the world’s most powerful military, and someone like Pete Hegseth is the top official of what he calls the Department of War, and American politics is so paralyzed that even those near the top of power, who know the awfulness of this mismatch, can do nothing to steer the nation on a different course.”

The Dow is down. Eggs are still nine dollars. Gas is going up. The war is going great.

You can tell because Pete Hegseth said so.

George Wicks writes the only column at the Post Meridiem Post. He does not have a plan for the Strait of Hormuz either, but he was not the one who closed it.

Photo by setengah limasore via Unsplash