Since the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran began, Iran has been holding the world’s oil supply hostage in the Strait of Hormuz and has been launching missile and drone strikes on its neighbors. While critics argue that this is a response to the allied strikes on Iran, these attacks are directed at countries other than the United States and Israel, which by definition matches the definition of terrorism.
Closing or threatening the strait does not hurt the United States or Israel. The U.S. is energy-independent, and Israel does not depend on the strait. The countries harmed are European nations, as well as Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and developing economies across Asia and Africa that import the majority of their energy through that chokepoint. Those countries have no involvement in the U.S.-Israeli operation against Iran whatsoever. Iran is holding their economies hostage to coerce a political outcome that benefits Tehran.
That is state-sponsored terrorism under the Academic Consensus Definition, the most widely accepted framework, consistent with definitions used by the U.S. State Department, the United Nations Security Council under Resolution 1566 (2004), and the European Union under its Council Framework Decision on Combating Terrorism (2002/475/JHA), updated by EU Directive 2017/541.
All of these define terrorism as criminal acts against civilians or uninvolved parties committed with the intent to intimidate a population or compel a government or international organization to act or abstain from acting.
In a war, a country launches attacks and counterattacks against the country it is fighting. In terrorism, a country launches attacks against other countries in the hope of bringing about a negotiated solution that provides benefits to Tehran and leaves the regime in a position to close down the strait or sponsor the Houthis to do the same in the Red Sea any time it wishes.
Critics of the U.S. actions against Iran claim that the Trump administration failed to demonstrate that the United States was under an imminent threat of attack from Iran. However, Iran’s threat to the United States was real, documented, and had been building for years before the U.S. and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury on February 28, 2026. The threat operated on three levels: an active proxy network killing Americans on a continuous basis, a proven missile and drone arsenal that Iran had already used in combat, and a nuclear program advancing toward weaponization with inspectors blocked from monitoring it.
The most immediate and lethal threat came from Iran’s proxies. Hezbollah, Hamas, Kata’ib Hezbollah, the Houthis, and affiliated militias across Iraq and Syria had been killing Americans for years. Between October 2023 and November 2024 alone, Iran and its proxies conducted more than 180 attacks against U.S. forces in the Middle East, wounding more than 180 service members.
In January 2024, Kata’ib Hezbollah killed three Army Reserve soldiers from Georgia and wounded 34 others in a drone strike on Tower 22, a U.S. logistics base in Jordan, the highest death toll for U.S. troops in the region in at least a decade.
In March 2023, an Iranian drone killed an American contractor and wounded five U.S. service members at a coalition base in Syria. On October 7, 2023, Iran-backed Hamas killed 46 Americans and kidnapped at least 12 more. The Department of War had previously documented that Iranian-backed militias killed at least 608 U.S. troops in Iraq between 2003 and 2011, roughly one in six American combat fatalities during that period. What changed in the decade before Epic Fury was the weapons. EFPs and IEDs gave way to drones, rockets, and ballistic missiles.
Iran fired direct ballistic missile and drone strikes at Israel in April and October 2024, penetrating regional air defenses. U.S. officials stated Iran was producing 100 missiles per month, with the goal of ramping production to the point where the volume of incoming projectiles would overwhelm defensive systems. Israel calculated that Iran aimed to expand its ballistic missile inventory capable of reaching Israel from roughly 2,000 to 10,000, a threshold at which interception becomes unreliable.
China was supplying propellants, guidance systems, and missile components to sustain and accelerate that buildup. Iranian-supplied drones had also been used in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and by Russia against Ukraine, demonstrating both the scale of production and Iran’s willingness to transfer weapons to active combat theaters.
The nuclear program added a longer-range dimension. By February 2025, Iran’s breakout time, the period required to produce enough fissile material for a weapon, had fallen from more than one year under the JCPOA to one week or less. Iran had accumulated 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity by early 2026, enough for up to 10 weapons if further enriched to the 90 percent weapons-grade threshold. The Institute for Science and International Security calculated that Iran could have converted that stockpile into weapons-grade uranium for nine nuclear weapons in three weeks at the Fordow facility alone, with the first quantity achievable in two to three days. Iran had no civilian justification for producing 60 percent enriched uranium at that volume.
Diplomacy had also collapsed. Khamenei rejected nuclear talks in early 2025, restricted IAEA inspectors, and announced a new hardened enrichment facility. The IAEA could not verify the status or location of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile because Iran had withdrawn the designation of experienced inspectors in a move the agency described as political and contrary to the intent of the safeguards framework.
The nuclear threat would have compounded everything else. Iran’s calculation, visible in the pattern of its investments, was to rebuild its nuclear program behind the cover of an expanded missile arsenal, using missile volume to deter another strike while centrifuges spun. A nuclear-armed Iran would have made its proxy network and missile forces effectively untouchable. The U.S. acted before that window closed.
Critics argued the administration did not demonstrate imminence under international law. However, Secretary of State Rubio offered a different framing: Israel was going to strike Iran regardless, and when it did, Iran would target U.S. assets, making a preemptive U.S. strike justified on those grounds. The administration offered multiple justifications at different times, which critics noted undermined the legal case even where the underlying threat data was solid.
The threat record stands on its own. Iran had killed Americans continuously through proxies, had fired ballistic missiles directly at a U.S. ally, was producing missiles at scale with Chinese assistance, had blocked international nuclear inspections, and had accumulated enough near-weapons-grade uranium for multiple bombs. Whether that constitutes legal imminence is a question of international law. Whether it constitutes a serious and compounding threat to American forces and interests is not in dispute.
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