Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivered a blunt message to Iran on Thursday: what you've seen so far is just the opening act.
Speaking at a press conference in Tampa, Hegseth said the combined US-Israeli operation against the Iranian regime is about to escalate significantly, and that Tehran's hope of outlasting American resolve amounts to a fatal miscalculation.
"The amount of firepower over Iran and over Tehran is about to surge dramatically."
Hours later, President Trump stood at the White House and issued his own warning, this time directly to the men carrying guns for the regime.
"I'm once again calling on all members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the military and the police to lay down their arms. Now is the time to stand up for the Iranian people and help take back your country."
Trump offered immunity to those who comply. For those who don't, he promised "guaranteed death."
Six days into the conflict that began with a US-Israeli strike that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several senior officials, the war has expanded across the Gulf and beyond. Iran has answered with everything it has. It is not enough.
Thursday night brought what was described as Iran's "most intense barrage" yet, with hundreds of drones and missiles targeting Israel and US allies across the region. The scope of Iran's retaliation tells you something about the regime's strategy and its desperation.
Consider the target list:
Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev called the strikes on his country "terrorism," demanded an apology, and threatened retaliation. Iran's ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Alireza Enayati, tried to distance Tehran from the drone attack on the US embassy in Riyadh, Daily Mail reports, claiming Iran had "no role." That denial strains credulity when every neighboring country is pulling shrapnel out of civilian infrastructure courtesy of Iranian ordnance.
The regime is lashing out at virtually every nation within missile range. This is not the behavior of a government executing a coherent military strategy. It is the behavior of a regime that knows it is losing and wants to inflict as much pain as possible on the way down.
Hegseth's press conference left no ambiguity about American staying power. He addressed directly the regime's apparent theory that the US would lose its appetite for sustained operations.
"Iran is hoping that we cannot sustain this, which is a really bad miscalculation. Our munitions are full up and our will is ironclad."
He described an escalating tempo of bomber runs and expanded capabilities, noting that while access to British bases was "unfortunate" in its delay, the coalition worked through it.
"But we got there. We got there, and that's now part of the way that we're operationalising bomber runs... It's more fighter squadrons, it's more capabilities, it's more defensive capabilities, and it's more bomber pulses more frequently."
The Israeli Air Force, meanwhile, has dropped more than 5,000 munitions on Iran since the conflict began Saturday. IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said the US and Israel had been "strategically isolating" Iran and pounding it "without pause," delivering a campaign "unlike any it has known." He confirmed the operation was proceeding at its planned pace.
Trump claimed the Iranian navy "is gone," citing "24 ships in three days." An Iranian warship, the Iris Dena, was hit by a torpedo, killing at least 87 Iranian sailors, with 70 more missing and presumed drowned. Hegseth described it as a "quiet death." Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called the sinking "an atrocity at sea, 2,000 miles away from Iran's shores" and warned the US would "bitterly regret" it. Sri Lankan officials evacuated more than 200 crew members from a second Iranian naval vessel off their coast, with President Anura Kumara Dissanayake announcing his navy would take custody of the ship and move it to Trincomalee for safekeeping.
When your warships are surrendering to Sri Lanka, the war is not going well.
The Defense Secretary also turned his attention to Britain, criticizing Sir Keir Starmer for not granting access to British bases "from day one." The UK eventually gave the US permission to use bases including Diego Garcia, but only for defensive missions, and only after days of hesitation.
The timeline of British responses reads like a case study in institutional paralysis. UK ministers refused to say whether they believed the strikes were legal. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper declared it "not in the UK's interests" to support the US attacks. Starmer said his government "does not believe in regime change from the skies." He later told Parliament he had not spoken to Trump since the first day of the conflict.
Eventually, the UK announced HMS Dragon would deploy from Portsmouth, though it would not be ready to sail for Cyprus until next week. The government's rescue flight from Oman was grounded by a technical issue before finally taking off the next day.
France, by contrast, committed frigates and the Charles de Gaulle carrier strike group. Greece sent two warships. Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands all agreed to send ships to protect Cyprus. Britain's closest ally was fighting a war, and London spent the week explaining why it couldn't quite bring itself to help.
Starmer accused Trump of lacking a "viable, thought-through plan." This is from a government that couldn't get a rescue flight off the ground.
Inside Iran, the picture grows darker by the hour. The Israeli military announced it was "moving to the next phase of the operation" to "further dismantle the regime and its military capabilities." Israel has continued to pound Tehran since Saturday. Trump said he would personally have "a heck of a say" in who runs Iran going forward, and indicated that Mojtaba Khamenei, the Supreme Leader's second-oldest son, who had been tipped as his successor after gaining Revolutionary Guard support, was "unlikely."
The regime's remaining voices are reaching for the only thing they have left: rhetoric. Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi Amoli used state television to call for "the shedding of Zionist blood, the shedding of Trump's blood." This is what a collapsing regime sounds like. Not strategy, not diplomacy, just rage broadcast into a void.
Trump, for his part, said Iranian officials had already started calling to ask about a deal.
"I said, 'You're being a little bit late', and we want to fight now more than they do."
Iran's ambassador denies involvement in attacks that bear Iranian fingerprints. Its foreign minister threatens consequences from a government that cannot protect its own navy. Its clerics call for blood on state television while their military infrastructure burns. The regime spent decades building a network of proxies, missiles, and nuclear ambitions, all premised on the assumption that America would never actually act.
That assumption died Saturday, along with the Supreme Leader. What remains is a regime discovering, in real time, the distance between bluster and power.
