At least 14 US Air Force tanker aircraft — nine KC-46 Pegasus and five KC-135 Stratotankers — arrived at Ben Gurion Airport in the week leading up to February 27, 2026, forming the visible tip of what open-source analysts would later call the largest buildup of American military forces in the Middle East since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Six additional refueling aircraft were dispatched on February 26 alone, five from Portsmouth International Airport in New Hampshire and one from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina. Within 48 hours, those tankers would help sustain a joint US-Israeli air campaign against Iran that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and reshaped the geopolitical landscape of the entire region.
The deployment was remarkable not just for its scale but for its location. US military aircraft, aside from transport planes delivering equipment, do not routinely operate from Israeli Air Force bases. The tanker force parked on the tarmac at Ben Gurion was twice as large as the entire Israeli Air Force’s own tanker inventory, a fact that signaled both the seriousness of the operation being planned and the depth of US commitment to it. This article examines what was known before the strikes, what the military buildup revealed about planning and intent, what followed on February 28, and what the aftermath means for US foreign policy accountability going forward.
Table of Contents
- Why Were US Refueling Planes Deployed to Ben Gurion Airport Amid Rising Iran Tensions?
- What the Scale of the Buildup Told Us — and What It Didn’t
- Operation Roaring Lion and Operation Epic Fury — What Happened on February 28
- Iran’s Response and the Regional Fallout
- Congressional Authority and the War Powers Question
- The Open-Source Intelligence Factor
- What Comes Next
- Conclusion
Why Were US Refueling Planes Deployed to Ben Gurion Airport Amid Rising Iran Tensions?
Aerial refueling tankers are the unglamorous backbone of any long-range air campaign. The Boeing KC-46 Pegasus has a range of 11,830 kilometers (7,350 miles) and can refuel two aircraft simultaneously, operating day and night in all weather conditions. The older KC-135 Stratotanker has served in this role since the 1950s and remains a workhorse of US Air Force operations. Deploying both airframes to Ben Gurion — a civilian international airport, not a military installation — was an operational choice that made the buildup visible to commercial aviation trackers, journalists, and open-source intelligence analysts almost immediately.
The Military Air Tracking Alliance, a team of roughly 30 open-source analysts, tracked more than 85 fuel tankers and over 170 cargo planes heading into the region since mid-February 2026. C-17 Globemaster heavy transport aircraft also landed at Ben Gurion as part of the buildup, suggesting the movement of heavy equipment and munitions alongside the refueling assets. The US also deployed F-22 Raptors to Israel, an unusual and significant step given that fifth-generation stealth fighters are rarely forward-deployed to allied nations. Aircraft were also staged from Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, broadening the geographic footprint of the operation.
What the Scale of the Buildup Told Us — and What It Didn’t
Comparisons to the 2003 Iraq invasion were not hyperbole. The sheer volume of tanker and cargo traffic into the Middle East theater over a two-week window exceeded anything seen since Operation Iraqi Freedom. However, scale alone does not reveal intent. Military buildups of this kind can serve as coercive diplomacy — positioning forces to compel an adversary to back down without a shot being fired. They can also serve as the logistical groundwork for a strike that has already been decided upon.
In this case, it turned out to be the latter. One limitation of the open-source tracking that made the buildup publicly visible is that it could identify aircraft types and routes but not payloads, orders, or timelines. Analysts could see KC-46s departing new Hampshire but could not confirm whether strike packages had been finalized or whether diplomatic off-ramps were still being explored. This matters for accountability. The public had roughly a week of visible evidence that something significant was being prepared, but elected officials outside the immediate decision-making circle have said they received little advance notice. Whether Congress was adequately consulted under the War Powers Act remains a live legal and political question.
Operation Roaring Lion and Operation Epic Fury — What Happened on February 28
On February 28, 2026, the US and Israel launched a joint military operation against Iran. Israel codenamed its portion “Roaring Lion,” while the US Department of Defense designated it “Operation Epic Fury.” Airstrikes began at approximately 9:45 a.m. Iran Standard Time (1:15 a.m. Eastern), targeting sites in Tehran, Isfahan, Qom, Karaj, and Kermanshah. A US source told CNN that President trump authorized the strike after receiving intelligence that Iran was planning to preemptively launch missiles, framing the operation as a defensive action against an imminent threat.
The strikes were devastating. Israel claimed that a “majority” of Iran’s senior military leaders were killed in the opening wave. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was confirmed killed. Iran’s Red Crescent reported 201 civilians killed and 747 injured by approximately 5:30 p.m. Central European Time on the first day alone — figures that international observers noted were likely to rise. President Trump stated the attacks were aimed at “eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime” and publicly urged Iranians to “take over your government,” language that went well beyond the stated military objectives and into explicit calls for regime change.
Iran’s Response and the Regional Fallout
Iran declared 40 days of mourning and launched retaliatory attacks targeting Israel and reportedly 27 US bases across the Middle East, including installations in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. The breadth of Iran’s retaliation — striking at US assets in countries that are nominally American allies — introduced a cascading set of diplomatic crises. Gulf states that had quietly tolerated US basing arrangements for decades suddenly faced domestic political pressure over their role in enabling the strikes.
The tradeoff at the heart of the operation is stark. Proponents argue that eliminating Khamenei and degrading Iran’s military leadership removed an existential threat to Israel and disrupted Iran’s nuclear ambitions in a way that sanctions and diplomacy had failed to achieve. Critics counter that the civilian death toll, the retaliatory attacks on US bases, and the destabilization of Gulf partnerships represent costs that were either underestimated or deliberately minimized in the decision-making process. The long-term consequences — including whether Iran’s fractured leadership reconstitutes around more radical elements or collapses into internal chaos — remain genuinely uncertain.
Congressional Authority and the War Powers Question
The speed and secrecy of the operation raise serious questions about executive war-making authority. The War Powers Resolution of 1973 requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to military action and limits unauthorized deployments to 60 days. The Trump administration’s position — that the strikes were a response to imminent Iranian aggression — invokes the same self-defense rationale that previous administrations have used to bypass congressional authorization, from Libya in 2011 to the Soleimani strike in 2020. However, the scale here is categorically different.
This was not a single drone strike on a military commander. It was a sustained air campaign across multiple Iranian cities, conducted jointly with a foreign military, resulting in the death of a head of state and hundreds of civilians. Whether the intelligence about an imminent Iranian missile launch justified this level of response — and whether that intelligence will be made available to congressional oversight committees — is a question that will likely define the legal and political debate for months. The precedent being set matters: if a president can authorize an operation of this magnitude based on classified intelligence without prior congressional approval, the War Powers Resolution is effectively a dead letter.
The Open-Source Intelligence Factor
One underappreciated aspect of this episode is the role that open-source intelligence played in making the buildup publicly visible before the strikes occurred. The Military Air Tracking Alliance’s work — tracking tail numbers, departure airports, and flight paths using publicly available data — gave journalists and analysts a real-time picture of military preparations that would have been classified in previous eras. Commercial satellite imagery of Ben Gurion Airport showing rows of KC-46s and KC-135s circulated widely on social media days before the first bombs fell.
This transparency cuts both ways. It informed public debate and gave journalists a basis for pressing government officials about military intentions. But it also meant that Iran’s leadership could see the same information, which may have accelerated their own preparations and contributed to the intelligence assessment that a preemptive Iranian strike was imminent. The relationship between open-source visibility and operational security is a tension that defense planners will be grappling with for years.
What Comes Next
The immediate aftermath of the February 28 strikes is still unfolding, but several dynamics are already clear. Iran’s political succession, the status of its nuclear program after the strikes on Isfahan, and the durability of its retaliatory capability will shape the region for the foreseeable future. The US military presence in the Middle East, which the Trump administration had previously signaled it wanted to reduce, is now larger and more exposed than at any point since the height of the Iraq War.
For American citizens and policymakers concerned with government accountability, the key questions are procedural as much as strategic. Who authorized what, when, and on the basis of what evidence? Were the civilian casualties proportionate to the military objectives? And will Congress assert its constitutional role in decisions about war and peace, or will the scale of the fait accompli make oversight an afterthought? These are not abstract questions. They are the questions that determine whether the United States goes to war as a democracy or as something else.
Conclusion
The deployment of US refueling tankers to Ben Gurion Airport was the most visible signal of what became the largest American military operation in the Middle East in over two decades. From the KC-46s departing New Hampshire to the F-22s staged in Israel, the buildup was tracked in near real-time by open-source analysts, yet its ultimate purpose — a joint strike that killed Iran’s supreme leader and struck targets across five cities — was not publicly confirmed until bombs were already falling. The civilian toll, the retaliatory attacks on US bases across the Gulf, and the diplomatic fallout with regional partners represent consequences that will take years to fully reckon with.
What remains most urgent is the accountability question. The American public deserves a full accounting of the intelligence that justified the strikes, the decision-making process that authorized them, and the legal basis under which they were conducted. Congressional oversight committees have both the authority and the obligation to demand answers. Whether they do so — and whether the executive branch cooperates — will say as much about the state of American governance as the strikes themselves said about American military power.