Reading the signs: what may be ahead in the Middle East
In Operation Epic Fury, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has said that the war is not ‘widening,’ but rather U.S. military might is simply increasing. The signals being sent from D.C. have been slightly mixed – so what can we expect to come next?
Opinion-analysis by Summer Lane | March 13, 2026
Over the past 13 days, the world’s focus has narrowed significantly, zooming in on the Middle East as Operation Epic Fury, a joint U.S.-Israeli combat mission, has been beating the Iranian regime into the dirt, shrinking its naval fleet, and decapacitating its ballistic missile capabilities.
While the Department of War has loudly and unflinchingly projected this operation as an unadulterated picture of American military supremacy, there’s a lot more to warfare than the morale-boosting statements coming out of the Pentagon.
The objectives have been made abundantly clear: destroy Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities, annihilate the Iranian Navy, prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and terminate Iran’s ability to execute terror worldwide through its many proxies.
This may seem straightforward, but it’s much more difficult to do than one may think. The threshold for Iranian victory is very low: they simply must survive. Ideologically, the terror regime – not the oppressed populace who longs to be free – only needs to get through this war, before they may try to resurrect its mission. This is the dangerous reality of Iran, and this is why, now that the U.S. has engaged overseas, we have no choice but to win decisively. A resurrected Iran would be an Iran of lethal vengeance, and it would only make things worse for America’s embattled ally, Israel. In other words, the Middle East would be right back to square one – again.
Amid the squalls and chaos of warfare, another conundrum has bluntly emerged: the chokepoint on the Strait of Hormuz. This key channel of the Middle East is responsible for the flow of 20 percent of the world’s oil and petroleum supply, and right now, Iran is squeezing it for all its worth.
When asked by reporters why the Pentagon did not plan for the volatility of what could happen in the Strait of Hormuz, Secretary Hegseth shot back, “We planned for it. We recognized it, because ultimately, we want to do it sequentially that makes the most sense for what we want to achieve…It’s like this whole idea of the war ‘widening.’ That’s what the press wants to make it look like, like it’s ‘widening, and chaos.’ No, we’re actually closing in on grabbing hold of and controlling what objectives we want to achieve and how we want to achieve them.”
He described this as “shaping operations” and “setting the conditions.”
Meanwhile, in the homeland, oil markets are roiling (understandably) amid the unknown future, and the stock market is not nearly as rosy as it was just a few weeks ago. What’s going to happen next?
Oil prices
In 2022, former President Joe Biden cracked open the Strategic Petroleum Reserves to assuage catastrophically high oil prices, and he did so again just before the 2024 presidential election in a desperate bid to make gas prices look a lot better than they were.
In 2022, President Trump – then out of office – fired off a statement: “So after 50 years of being virtually empty, I built up our oil reserves during my administration, and low energy prices, to 100% full. It’s called the Strategic National Reserves, and it hasn’t been full for many decades. In fact, it’s been mostly empty.”
Upon taking office once again in 2025, President Trump immediately declared a National Energy Emergency and vowed in his Inaugural Address, “We will bring prices down, fill our strategic reserves up again right to the top, and export American energy all over the world.”
According to the Department of Energy, the SPR’s full authorized capacity is around 727 million barrels, and the current stock sits at 415 million barrels. In other words, the SPR is just under 60 percent full right now.
And this week, President Trump announced that he would be tapping into the SPR amid oil market spikes and international trepidation amid the fog of war in Iran.
“We’re going to be doing it very quickly, and then we’ll fill it up – we’ll fill up OUR reserves,” President Trump said.
So, what does this mean? Is the president expecting this conflict to be protracted? Or is this merely a short-term mechanism to insulate the American people from the economic pain of the Strait of Hormuz’s stoppage?
Certainly, the United States’ effective seizure of the world’s largest oil reserves in the world in Venezuela should serve to keep us totally energy independent during this conflict, so why tap into the SPR? These are difficult and complex questions, with no clear answer, but it suggests that, at the very least, President Trump is confident that he can refill the SPR immediately.
What is the writing on the wall?
On Friday, reports emerged confirming the deployment of the USS Tripoli and its Marine expeditionary unit to the Middle East. As reported by LindellTV, this potentially brings as many as 2,500 U.S. Marines into the embattled region, stoking fears of an intensifying conflict.
The Secretary of War has utterly dismissed the possibility of this conflict growing wider.
“Another example of a fake headline that I saw yesterday: ‘WAR WIDENING,’” Hegseth told reporters on Friday. “Here’s a real headline for you, for a real, patriotic press. Iran Shrinking, Going Underground…the only thing that is widening is our advantage.”
How can Americans react to these mixed signals? Intensifying attacks, increasing pressure against Iran, and a dip into the Strategic Petroleum Reserves suggest that the conflict is a little more serious than the Pentagon is letting on. Holding U.S. Marines just offshore is a militarily wise move, of course. They could be used in a variety of ways – like securing the Strait of Hormuz, or evacuating civilians from the region. It would be catastrophic, politically, to send in U.S. ground troops to the Middle East. Americans simply do not support that kind of action. President Trump and the Pentagon are well aware of this.
The bad news? Domestic issues have been relegated to the sidelines amid the fire and fury being rained upon Iran. This is not a good thing, considering the midterm elections have already begun in earnest.
The Iran operation needs to be wrapped up as quickly as possible, but some of the signals being sent out of Washington suggest they are prepared for a longer conflict. Americans must pray that this does not happen, and that leadership can bring this war to a close swiftly and efficiently for the sake of America – and the world.
Photo: Pixabay
