According to a Washington Post report published on February 28, 2026, both Saudi Arabia and Israel spent weeks lobbying President Donald Trump behind closed doors to launch military strikes against Iran — efforts that culminated in Operation Epic Fury, one of the most consequential U.S. military actions in the Middle East in decades. The report reveals that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman made multiple private phone calls to Trump over the preceding month urging an attack, even as the Kingdom publicly maintained a preference for diplomacy. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, continued his longstanding public campaign to frame Iran as an existential threat requiring American military intervention. The strikes, which killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several top military and political officials, represented a dramatic escalation from the June 2025 U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
Unlike those earlier, more limited operations, Operation Epic Fury was explicitly aimed at regime change — a far more ambitious and dangerous objective that raises serious questions about how foreign governments influenced an American president’s decision to go to war. Three U.S. service members were killed and five seriously wounded in the operation. This article examines the behind-the-scenes lobbying by Saudi Arabia and Israel, the disconnect between U.S. intelligence assessments and the case made by regional allies, the immediate outcomes of the strikes, and what this means for American foreign policy, congressional oversight, and the broader question of who drives U.S. decisions about war and peace.
Table of Contents
- How Did Saudi Arabia and Israel Lobby Trump for Weeks Before the Iran Strikes?
- What U.S. Intelligence Actually Said About the Iran Threat
- Operation Epic Fury — What Actually Happened on February 28
- The Saudi Double Game — Diplomacy in Public, War in Private
- Congressional Oversight and the Legal Questions
- What Regime Change in Iran Actually Means
- What Comes Next for U.S. Policy in the Middle East
- Conclusion
- Frequently Asked Questions
How Did Saudi Arabia and Israel Lobby Trump for Weeks Before the Iran Strikes?
The lobbying campaign was a coordinated, multi-channel effort. On the Saudi side, Crown Prince MBS personally engaged trump through multiple private phone calls throughout the month leading up to the strikes, pressing the case that the time had come for decisive military action against Tehran. This is notable because Saudi Arabia’s public posture during the same period emphasized diplomacy and restraint — a gap between private pressure and public messaging that speaks to the calculated nature of the campaign. The effort went well beyond phone calls. Saudi Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman, MBS’s brother, traveled to Washington in late January 2026 for a series of closed-door meetings at the Pentagon, the State Department, and the White House. He met directly with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff.
In one private meeting, Khalid bin Salman reportedly told U.S. officials, “At this point, if this doesn’t happen, it will only embolden the regime.” Despite the intensity of these meetings, the Saudi defense minister reportedly left Washington uncertain about the Trump administration’s ultimate intentions — suggesting that even deep inside these negotiations, the final decision remained fluid. On the Israeli side, the lobbying was more public but no less persistent. Netanyahu has spent years arguing that Iran represents an existential threat to Israel, and his government seized on the political moment to push for a strike that went beyond nuclear facilities to target the regime itself. The fact that Israel ultimately participated directly in Operation Epic Fury — striking Khamenei’s compound and reportedly killing the commander of the IRGC, Iran’s defense minister, and the secretary of Iran’s Security Council — shows the lobbying effort was not merely about persuading the U.S. to act, but about coordinating a joint military operation.
What U.S. Intelligence Actually Said About the Iran Threat
One of the most troubling details in the Washington Post report is the disconnect between what American intelligence agencies assessed and what regional allies were arguing. U.S. intelligence assessments reportedly saw no imminent threat from iran at the time the strikes were ordered. This is a critical detail. The justification for Operation Epic Fury did not come from America’s own intelligence community identifying a clear and present danger — it came from the political and strategic arguments of foreign governments. This pattern has uncomfortable historical echoes.
The 2003 invasion of Iraq was similarly driven in part by allied intelligence claims and political pressure that outpaced what U.S. agencies could confirm. The difference here is that the gap between intelligence and action appears to have been even more explicit. Saudi and Israeli officials were not presenting new intelligence about an imminent Iranian attack; they were making a strategic argument that the window for action was closing and that inaction would embolden Tehran. However, if the underlying intelligence does not support the claim that military action is necessary to prevent a specific threat, then the decision to strike becomes a policy choice driven by geopolitics rather than self-defense — a distinction with serious legal and constitutional implications. The absence of an imminent threat also raises questions about whether the war powers Act and congressional notification requirements were properly followed. Presidents have broad authority to order short-term military strikes, but operations aimed at regime change — which the administration openly acknowledged as the goal — go well beyond the scope of what most legal scholars consider permissible without explicit congressional authorization.
Operation Epic Fury — What Actually Happened on February 28
The scale of the operation was enormous. The United States and Israel attacked hundreds of targets across Iran using aircraft and Tomahawk cruise missiles on February 28, 2026. This was not a surgical strike against a single facility or a limited retaliatory action — it was a comprehensive military campaign designed to decapitate Iran’s leadership and cripple its command structure. The most significant outcome was the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, age 86, when Israeli forces struck his compound. Two Israeli officials confirmed his death. Israel also reported killing the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s defense minister, and the secretary of Iran’s Security Council.
The elimination of this much of a country’s senior leadership in a single operation is virtually unprecedented in modern warfare and immediately created a power vacuum with unpredictable consequences. The operation came at a cost. Three U.S. service members were killed and five were seriously wounded — losses that the administration will need to account for as the public evaluates whether the strikes were justified. Iran launched retaliatory strikes in response, and Trump stated that operations would “persist until peace secured,” signaling an open-ended military commitment rather than a one-time action. The shift from the more limited June 2025 strikes on nuclear facilities to an explicit regime change operation represents a fundamental escalation in American war aims.
The Saudi Double Game — Diplomacy in Public, War in Private
The contrast between Saudi Arabia’s public and private positions deserves particular scrutiny. While MBS was privately calling Trump to push for strikes, the Kingdom’s official diplomatic posture emphasized restraint and dialogue. This is not unusual in international relations — governments routinely maintain different public and private positions — but the stakes here are exceptionally high. A country that publicly advocates for peace while privately lobbying for war is engaged in a kind of strategic deception that makes it harder for the public, Congress, and the media to accurately assess the forces driving U.S. policy. The tradeoff for Saudi Arabia is significant. By pushing the U.S.
to strike Iran, the Kingdom advances its primary regional objective of weakening its chief rival. But it does so at the cost of American lives and treasure, while positioning itself publicly as a voice for moderation. If the operation succeeds in producing a more favorable regional balance, Saudi Arabia benefits enormously. If it spirals into a broader war, Riyadh can point to its public record of diplomatic rhetoric and distance itself from the consequences. Compare this with Israel’s approach, which was far more public and direct — Netanyahu has never hidden his desire for military action against Iran, making the Israeli lobbying effort more transparent, if no less self-interested. The question for American policymakers and voters is straightforward: should foreign governments, regardless of how close the alliance, be able to exert this kind of behind-the-scenes pressure on decisions about American military action? The fact that U.S. intelligence did not identify an imminent threat makes the foreign lobbying angle even more relevant to the public debate.
Congressional Oversight and the Legal Questions
The legal framework for military action of this scope is genuinely contested, and the Operation Epic Fury strikes sit in a particularly gray area. The president has authority under Article II of the Constitution to respond to imminent threats and to order short-term military operations. But an operation explicitly aimed at regime change — targeting a country’s supreme leader and top military officials — is difficult to characterize as a defensive or limited action. Congress has largely abdicated its war powers responsibilities over the past two decades, and there is no indication that the current Congress was meaningfully consulted before the strikes were launched.
The War Powers Resolution requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces and limits deployments to 60 days without congressional authorization. However, if Trump’s statement that strikes will “persist until peace secured” indicates an open-ended campaign, the 60-day clock becomes immediately relevant. Lawmakers from both parties will face pressure to either authorize continued operations or demand their cessation — a vote that many would prefer to avoid. The limitation here is practical: even members of Congress who object to the strikes may be reluctant to take action that could be characterized as undermining troops in the field or emboldening Iran at a moment of maximum vulnerability. This dynamic has historically worked in the executive branch’s favor, allowing presidents to create facts on the ground that Congress then feels compelled to ratify rather than reverse.
What Regime Change in Iran Actually Means
The stated goal of regime change distinguishes Operation Epic Fury from virtually every U.S. military action in the Middle East since the 2003 Iraq invasion — and that comparison should give everyone pause. The killing of Khamenei and top military officials creates a power vacuum, but it does not by itself produce a new government. Iran is a country of roughly 88 million people with complex internal politics, and the assumption that decapitating its leadership will lead to a favorable political outcome is the same assumption that proved catastrophically wrong in Iraq and Libya.
The immediate retaliatory strikes by Iran demonstrate that the country’s military infrastructure was not entirely destroyed, and the IRGC in particular has distributed command structures designed to survive exactly this kind of attack. The path from killing a country’s leaders to establishing a stable, less hostile government is long, uncertain, and historically littered with failures. American policymakers would do well to remember that the last time the U.S. engineered regime change in Iran — the 1953 CIA-backed coup against Mohammad Mosaddegh — it produced consequences that are still reverberating seven decades later.
What Comes Next for U.S. Policy in the Middle East
The weeks ahead will be defined by three questions. First, whether Iran’s retaliatory strikes escalate into a broader regional war involving proxies in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and elsewhere. Second, whether Congress asserts any meaningful role in authorizing or constraining continued military operations. Third, whether the American public, already weary of Middle Eastern conflicts, accepts an open-ended military commitment aimed at regime change in a country of nearly 90 million people.
The Washington Post report has already shifted the political conversation by exposing the degree to which foreign lobbying shaped the decision to strike. Regardless of one’s view on the merits of confronting Iran, the revelation that the operation was driven more by the strategic preferences of Saudi Arabia and Israel than by U.S. intelligence assessments of an imminent threat will fuel debate about whether American foreign policy is being made in Washington or in Riyadh and Jerusalem. That debate is overdue, and the consequences of getting the answer wrong could not be higher.
Conclusion
The Washington Post’s reporting makes clear that Operation Epic Fury was not a response to an imminent threat identified by American intelligence, but rather the culmination of a weeks-long lobbying campaign by Saudi Arabia and Israel. Crown Prince MBS privately pressured Trump through phone calls and high-level diplomatic meetings while publicly favoring diplomacy, and Netanyahu continued his years-long push for U.S. military action against Tehran. The result was a massive joint U.S.-Israeli strike that killed Iran’s supreme leader and top military officials, cost three American service members their lives, and committed the United States to an open-ended regime change campaign.
The stakes extend far beyond the immediate military outcomes. Questions about congressional authorization, the role of foreign lobbying in American war decisions, and the historical track record of regime change in the Middle East all demand serious public scrutiny. Whether one views the strikes as a necessary action against a dangerous adversary or a reckless escalation driven by foreign interests, the facts reported by the Washington Post ensure that the debate will center on who really made this decision and why. Americans deserve honest answers before this campaign goes any further.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did U.S. intelligence identify an imminent threat from Iran before the strikes?
No. According to the Washington Post report, U.S. intelligence assessments saw no imminent threat from Iran. The push for strikes came primarily from Saudi Arabia and Israel, which argued on strategic grounds that the time to act was now.
What was Saudi Arabia’s public position on striking Iran?
Saudi Arabia publicly favored a diplomatic solution. However, behind closed doors, Crown Prince MBS was making multiple private phone calls to Trump urging military action, and Saudi Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman held closed-door meetings with senior U.S. officials in Washington pushing for strikes.
How is Operation Epic Fury different from the June 2025 strikes on Iran?
The June 2025 U.S. strikes targeted Iranian nuclear facilities — a more limited objective. Operation Epic Fury, launched on February 28, 2026, was explicitly aimed at regime change, targeting Iran’s senior leadership and hundreds of military sites across the country.
Were there American casualties in Operation Epic Fury?
Yes. Three U.S. service members were killed and five were seriously wounded during the operation. Iran also launched retaliatory strikes following the attack.
Who was killed in the strikes?
Israeli forces struck the compound of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, age 86, killing him. Israel also reported killing the commander of the IRGC, Iran’s defense minister, and the secretary of Iran’s Security Council.
Has Congress authorized continued military operations against Iran?
As of the time of reporting, there has been no public indication of formal congressional authorization for the regime change operation. Trump stated that strikes would “persist until peace secured,” raising questions about the War Powers Resolution’s 60-day limit on unauthorized military deployments.