The strategic calculus here involves several competing considerations, and the diplomatic terrain leading to Saturday's joint US-Israeli assault on Iran was considerably more complex than the headlines suggest. What began as a last-chance negotiating session in Geneva ended in a rupture that, according to reporting by NBC News and the Sydney Morning Herald, convinced President Donald Trump that military force was the only remaining option. The United States and Israel launched coordinated military operations against the Iranian regime on 28 February 2026, following a conclusion reached in Washington and Jerusalem that diplomacy had been exhausted and that a nuclear-armed Iran posed an unacceptable security threat.
Three factors merit particular attention in understanding how this moment arrived. First, the failure of the Geneva talks themselves. A last chance to avert war played out in Geneva, where Trump administration officials told Iranian counterparts they must not take certain steps needed to build a nuclear bomb — and as the US delegation laid out its position that Iran could not enrich uranium for the next ten years, the Iranian side refused. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told the Americans that Iran had an "inalienable right" to enrich uranium. According to NBC News, US negotiators had even offered to provide Iran with free nuclear fuel as an inducement, but Araghchi's response to the American offer was "we don't need any favours from you." When asked by NBC News why he ultimately ordered the attack, Trump's answer was characteristically blunt: "They weren't willing to stop their nuclear research. They weren't willing to say they will not have a nuclear weapon. Very simple."
The second factor is the peculiar intelligence detail that reportedly hardened Trump's resolve. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that a seven-page proposal was on the table when Trump learned what sources describe as a "tantalising fact" about Iran's nuclear capability. US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff said Iran began recent nuclear talks by insisting on its "inalienable right" to enrich uranium, rejecting a US proposal for zero enrichment, and even boasting that its 460 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium could produce 11 nuclear bombs. That disclosure appears to have altered the political calculus in Washington decisively. Trump envoy Witkoff said on 21 February that Iran was "probably a week away from having industrial grade bomb-making material." Independent nuclear policy experts reviewed by PolitiFact expressed scepticism about some of these characterisations, and the New York Times cited three unnamed American officials with access to intelligence about Iran's missile programmes who said Trump exaggerated the immediacy of the threat to the US.
The third factor is the deep ambiguity, even within the Trump administration, about what the operation was actually meant to achieve. Trump said in a video message when the invasion began that his objective was to "defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime," adding that the US military would raze Iran's missile silos, prevent it from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon, destroy its terrorist proxy network and sink its navy — and he urged the Iranian people to topple the leadership that has ruled the country since 1979. Yet Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters the war is "not a so-called regime change war," saying the effort is to stop Iran from building a "conventional shield" for its nuclear programme. Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered yet another characterisation, arguing the mission was in part a preemptive strike because "we knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that would precipitate an attack against American forces" — "we were not going to sit there and absorb a blow before we responded."
The operation's most immediate and verifiable consequence was the death of Iran's Supreme Leader. Trump confirmed that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had been killed in the assault late on Saturday afternoon, and Israeli security officials had indicated earlier in the day that the ayatollah had been killed after his secure compound was bombed. The initial air raid inflicted a heavy blow on the regime, but the decapitation strike neither toppled the regime nor produced an immediate wave of popular opposition. Iran retaliated swiftly and broadly. Iran has launched strikes across nine countries in the region: Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Preliminary figures stand at 787 dead in Iran, at least 11 in Israel, six US soldiers, and eight killed in Gulf states.
What often goes unmentioned in the public discourse is the legal and constitutional dimension of the conflict on the American side. The strikes, which began on Saturday, were launched without congressional authorisation, despite Article 1 of the Constitution giving Congress, not the president, the power to declare war. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote that "the administration has not provided Congress and the American people with critical details about the scope and immediacy of the threat." Historical precedent suggests caution: regime change operations in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan all began with confident statements about objectives and timelines that proved wildly optimistic. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries invoked precisely those precedents, warning that the administration had not articulated a plan to ensure US forces are not entangled in a "forever war" and that "this notion of regime change has never been successful, as most recently indicated by its failure in Iraq, its failure in Libya and its failure in Afghanistan."
The economic shockwaves from the conflict are already being felt in Australia. The 2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis began on 28 February following the joint US-Israeli strikes, after which Iran launched retaliatory missile and drone attacks while its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps issued warnings prohibiting vessel passage through the strait. Shipping through the strait, which carries one-fifth of the oil consumed globally as well as large quantities of gas, has ground to a near halt amid Iranian attacks on oil tankers. Oil prices rose sharply, with Brent crude increasing by 10 to 13% in initial trading, and analysts forecasting potential rises to $100 per barrel or higher if disruptions persist. Westpac's economics team has modelled the scenarios for Australia specifically, warning that if shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is affected for up to a month, Brent could spike to US$113 per barrel, and a disruption of three or more months could see the price of Brent rise to US$185 per barrel. The Reserve Bank of Australia will be watching those figures closely, given that a sustained oil price shock of that magnitude would complicate any future rate decisions considerably.
On the market side, 9News reports that the ASX 200 dropped sharply for a third consecutive day of substantial losses. Wall Street has fared no better. Some traders on Wall Street have begun invoking the term "TACO" — Trump Always Chickens Out — a phrase that emerged after Trump reversed course on Liberation Day tariffs, betting that market pressure will force a similar retreat here. The US Studies Centre's Jared Mondschein told 9News that there are areas where Trump is sensitive to pushback, and that he "often comes to a more negotiated outcome or settlement," though Mondschein was quick to add that predicting Trump's next move remains a fool's errand.
From Canberra's perspective, the implications are threefold. First, the Albanese government moved quickly to express support, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese one of the first world leaders to publicly endorse the US-Israeli military action, saying: "We support the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent Iran continuing to threaten international peace and security." Second, that support came with a clear limit: Defence Minister Richard Marles confirmed Australia is not participating in the current US and Israeli military actions against Iran. Third, the government's posture has drawn pointed domestic criticism. The Australian Greens argued that "Labor has made Australia a part of this war by allowing Pine Gap and other US military bases here to be used to gather intelligence and target US bombs and missiles." Legal scholars, writing in The Conversation, have noted that all statements made to date by the Albanese government regarding the legality of the US and Israeli conduct have been in the "say nothing" category, with the government saying at most that any legal justification needs to be made by the US and Israel.
The evidence, though incomplete, suggests the conflict is entering a phase where the original stated objectives and the operational reality are diverging rapidly. The Brookings Institution's analysts argue that for Trump, the best option may now be a "Venezuela scenario" — striking a deal with whoever comes to replace Khamenei — since Trump and his base have no interest in a long, drawn-out war in the Middle East. Iran, for its part, appears to be pursuing a mirror strategy: expanding the war as quickly as possible to create the greatest diplomatic pressure on Trump to end it, while signalling its own interest in negotiations. The International Atomic Energy Agency has been unable to access the nuclear sites that were struck, leaving the actual degree of damage to Iran's programme a matter of disputed claim rather than verified fact.
What the weeks ahead demand is clear-eyed analysis rather than tribal allegiance to either the hawks or the doves. The Iranian regime's nuclear ambitions and its decades-long record of regional proxy violence were genuine and serious problems that diplomacy had repeatedly failed to resolve. Those are facts that critics of the operation tend to minimise. Equally, the evidence for the immediacy of the threat was contested even within US intelligence circles, the operation was launched without legislative authorisation, and the administration has offered shifting rationales that do not inspire confidence in the coherence of a post-conflict plan. Those are facts that supporters of the operation tend to minimise. Australia's interest lies in a swift, contained resolution that preserves freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, avoids a prolonged regional war that would send inflation surging at home, and upholds the international rules-based order that has underwritten this country's security and prosperity for eight decades. Whether Operation Epic Fury advances or undermines those interests remains, for now, genuinely uncertain.