Operation Epic Fury makes perfect sense. To understand it, you simply have to ignore previous political and military norms. The simplest explanation is that the war fits Donald Trump’s two primary principles: enrichment and domination. The consensus on the left is that the U.S. war on Iran is impulsive, senseless, incomprehensible, illogical, not strategic, and not in the U.S. national interest.

On one level that is all true. For now, the Islamic Republic under Mojtaba Khamenei appears to be much the same as it was before. Global energy markets are experiencing a severe price shock, more than 1,400 people in Iran have died, Tehran’s air is highly toxic due to U.S.-Israeli bombing, U.S. citizens are stranded in the Mideast, and all around the chaos is palpable.

But if we want to understand this war, we have to set aside a web of myths that pervade the commentary.

Myth #1: There Is No Political Endgame

It’s not clear whether the Iranian regime will fall or what a new government would look like. But for the Israeli government, the war has already been a victory. A weaker Iran makes Israel relatively stronger. Having already weakened Hamas and Hezbollah, Israel decided to go for the trifecta and convinced the U.S. to join in. What does Trump get out of it? Perhaps Club Med Mar-a-Lago or Trump Tower Tel Aviv. Maybe it’s enough that Gulf money may flow to his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s private equity firm as a quid pro quo for launching the war. Trump is not totally selfish; he happily enriches not only himself but his family and selected symbiotic billionaires. Getting richer is the endgame.

Myth #2: It’s Too Expensive

The cost is astronomical, but the public will pay the price while military contractors and oil companies profit. This is an effective part of this government’s mission, which is to transfer wealth from the general public to corporations. National debt does not matter to this government. What matters is getting rich.

Myth #3: It’s Bad for Russia

Iran is a Russian ally, but the benefits of this war for Russia may outweigh the negatives. The U.S. is using so many Patriot missiles in the Iran war that there might not be enough left for Ukraine. There’s also not enough political attention left for Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russia is reaping windfall profits from the spike in oil prices.

Myth #4: High Prices for Oil and Gas Will Encourage the Growth of Renewables

Speaking of windfall profits, the leading financial beneficiary of the war so far looks to be a young liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporter called Venture Global. It is a U.S.-based LNG company sitting on substantial uncontracted spare capacity that it can sell to the highest bidder. Coincidentally or not, its founders are big Trump supporters. Other LNG exporters are also seeing surging stock prices, while traders like Vitol, Trafigura, Shell, and TotalEnergies are likely making a killing on contracted LNG volumes bought at low U.S. prices and sold into Asia and Europe, where markets are spiking.

Oil companies, generally, are looking at a propitious reversal in their fortunes compared to where things were at the beginning of the year. 2026 was expected to be a year of oversupply, and prices were projected to stay low. U.S. companies in particular were pulling back their drilling plans, and many of the big international companies announced reductions in dividends and share buybacks.

But just this week, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook. The EIA raised its forecast for the 2026 average WTI (West Texas Intermediate, or the high-quality crude that serves as the U.S. benchmark for pricing) oil price by over $20 per barrel, saying, “This price forecast is highly dependent on our modeled assumptions of both the duration of conflict in the Middle East and resulting outages in oil production,” meaning it could be higher if the conflict lasts longer. A back-of-the-envelope calculation by Oil Change International suggests that this could generate about $280 million in additional revenue every day for companies producing oil in the U.S. — more than $100 billion over a year. And that’s not counting other fossil fuels.

Trump publicly rubbed his hands in glee at this prospect, stating on social media, “The United States is the largest oil producer in the world, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money.” Ah, the royal “we.” As the vast majority of Americans stress about a gas price spike added to the already rising cost of living, Trump’s insensitive schoolboy boasting was enough to make even the oil industry wince.

Myth #5: The War Is Senseless

To say that the killing and the violence is senseless is to apply normal morality and logic where there is none. For the U.S., the show of force and violence is an end in itself. The goal, always, is to visibly dominate. Whether it’s a contentious Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the kidnapping of Venezuela’s head of state, or a full-out brutal bombing, domination is the point. In a country that maintains a “National Energy Dominance Council,” subservience, logically, is everyone else’s role. And this is stated openly. Europe has been instructed to buy unrealistically gargantuan amounts of liquified natural gas from the U.S. or get hit with devastating tariffs. To those being subjugated, the message is: “Kneel.”

Myth #6: Voters Will Punish the GOP

The conventional wisdom is that even if accountability for an illegal war is a long shot, the war is unpopular, so Trump and the GOP will pay the price at the polls. But this is a post-public opinion government. They know they’re unpopular and can’t win fair elections. That’s why they want to pass the SAVE America Act and the Justice Department is pushing to obtain state voter rolls. They appear to intend to stay in power one way or another.

Myth #7: The War Makes Us Vulnerable

This is probably true for the vast majority of Americans, but not for those who wish to hold on to power. For authoritarians, an attack, either in the U.S. or abroad, could provide a pretext for clamping down on dissent, whether through the Insurrection Act, intensified surveillance, or a declaration of martial law.

Since at least the 1950s, the goal of the right wing and the billionaire class has been to make government smaller and weaker, except for the military. But weakening the economy, legal institutions, public health apparatus, environmental oversight, consumer safety, security, and civic participation will put the vast majority of us in peril. The absence of checks on corporate power means more space for the oligarchs to take more wealth and power for themselves, hollowing out the institutions that undergird a healthy society. That’s why Trump’s appointments to government agencies are enemies of those agencies.

The Trump team might be feeling pleased with the Iran war so far. It is, admittedly, not as clean as the Venezuela operation where, with a minimum of destruction and commitment, the U.S. came to control the sector that matters most to it (Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves), and the new head of state there knows to follow orders lest she be kidnapped or killed. Iran is about three times bigger in population with a much stronger military, and abuts the Strait of Hormuz, where 20 percent of the world’s oil passes through on an ordinary day. Still, the Trump team appears confident in its choices, and even appears to be having fun wreaking havoc, pissing off the world, killing whoever it wants, and doing whatever it pleases.

Given the goals of self-enrichment and domination, they have accomplished a lot.

But attempts to dominate the world always lead to overreach. No empire is permanent. Maybe the Iran war is the moment in which a deeply unpopular U.S. empire catalyzes a wave of mass discontent, exposes the vulnerability of a mafia-style oligarchy of the greedy far outnumbered by the people it subjects to its whims, and it all comes crashing down.

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