CBS revealed Thursday an Air Force email from August in which the Pentagon instructed personnel to stop referring to ongoing U.S. military activities involving Iran as “Operation Epic Fury.” The email was sent approximately three months after the Trump administration declared that the operation had ended.
2+Responding to the report, the Pentagon said Operation Epic Fury officially concluded on May 5—the same day Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters at the White House: “The operation is over. We’re done with that phase of it. We’re now moving to ‘Project Liberty.’”
A Defense Department official told CBS that following the April ceasefire, the administration stated that Operation Epic Fury ended May 5. Subsequent activity, the official said, included freedom-of-navigation operations and strikes intended to further reduce threats posed by the IRGC to commercial shipping, Gulf states and U.S. forces.
2+The situation is unusual for the United States. Historically, the U.S. military has published formal start and end dates for named military operations, creating a public record of when one mission ended and another began. Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, for example, began on Oct. 7, 2001, and ended on Dec. 31, 2014, before transitioning to Operation Freedom’s Sentinel. The Pentagon has used such dates to define phases of military campaigns and determine eligibility for military decorations. They also provide Congress, service members and the public with a clear way to track the scope and duration of U.S. military involvement overseas.
2+President Donald Trump formally notified Congress on July 7 that U.S. “military operations” against Iran had resumed, in a letter addressed to Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, president pro tempore of the Senate. Around the same time, U.S.-Iran negotiations collapsed and Trump declared that the April ceasefire was “over.” As of Thursday, it remains unclear under what formal designation the latest U.S. military attacks against Iran are being conducted—raising questions in the United States over how service members killed or wounded after Operation Epic Fury formally ended will be classified.