The military campaign in Iran could last weeks, according to US and Israeli officials.
“This is an extensive, coordinated, probably multiweek campaign,” Jeremy Bash, the former chief of staff for the CIA and the Department of Defense during the Obama administration, told NBC News Saturday.
Bash compared Operation Epic Fury to other campaigns in recent years, including the January capture of Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduro, saying “those were largely ‘one and done.”
Saturday’s strike “is much larger than we’ve seen before from the Trump administration,” said Bash.
Similarly, Gen. Jack Keane told Fox News it could take several weeks for the US and Israel to take out Iranian leadership and military capabilities.
“The details in this campaign are extraordinarily impressive. This is not about days, this is about weeks. This is a major campaign designed to set the conditions for regime collapse,” Keane said, describing the US and Israeli forces as the “two most proven militaries in the world.”
The first phase of Operation Epic Fury is to target the Iranian leaders and to dismantle the country’s air defense systems, which was ongoing on Saturday, Keane said.
The next phase will involve dismantling the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, civilian militias and Iranian police forces.
“That will be achieved, there is no doubt about that,” said Keane.
In an address Saturday, Trump said the mission’s “objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.”
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Masoud Pezeshkian — both of whom were targeted Saturday — have presumably survived the attack on Tehran.