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■ OPERATION EPIC FURY · COST & FORCE TRACKER
Iran
Direct strikes, a collapsed deal, and the running cost.
DAY 179 · US–IRAN WAR
A corridor drafted in Tehran with Oman came with conditions attached — blockade lifted, oil sanctions dropped, assets unfrozen — and crude fell for a third straight session.
179
Days of war
Since Feb 28
$86.33
Brent crude
Off 2.5% · WTI $80.34 · Trading Economics
THROTTLED
Strait of Hormuz
2 tankers Monday · 10-day average 14 · Kpler
18
U.S. deaths
757 wounded · Pentagon DCAS, Aug 21
- Trump says the water is clear. He posted that the Navy removed or detonated every mine in Hormuz’s international waters. Reuters confirms the post; no Navy or Pentagon statement followed, while Iran–Oman talks still include joint mine-clearing (Reuters · AP).
- The corridor comes with conditions. Araghchi and Badr Albusaidi agreed a temporary joint navigation corridor and joint mine-clearing; Iranian officials say full reopening waits on the naval blockade lifting, oil sanctions dropping and frozen assets returning (Arab News · Press TV).
- The mediators multiply. Pakistan’s army chief Asim Munir left Tehran with nothing signed; Qatar’s prime minister then told Araghchi by phone that Doha backs the corridor talks and a wider settlement (ABC News · Qatar Tribune).
- The other waterway is still live. A Houthi anti-ship ballistic missile set a main-deck fire on the Saudi supertanker Amzan 63nm west of Yanbu Monday; the crew is safe and Bahri called it a security incident (gCaptain · Al Jazeera).
- The tape kept selling the risk. Brent traded near $86.33 and WTI near $80.34 in Wednesday’s Asian hours, a third straight session lower after Tuesday’s $87.12 Brent settle (Trading Economics · Eastern Herald).
- Beijing declined the terms. China’s foreign ministry called the sanctions unilateral measures with no basis in international law; China remains the largest buyer of Iranian crude (The Hill · Anadolu).
- The strait is still counting seafarers. Two mariners were killed in Hormuz between Aug 19 and 21, taking the war’s merchant death toll to 19 across 74 documented attacks since February (USNI News).
WORDS VS. MOVEMENT
Same water, two rulebooks
United States
SAY
Trump calls the Strait of Hormuz “an American territory,” promises the “most crushing economic operation ever taken against any country,” and says Iran “would love to make a deal, but they’re not ready to make the right deal”; Bessent calls Monday’s package “the single greatest financial offensive ever marshalled against an adversary” and promises to sever “every economic lifeline”; the White House release says any entity laundering money for Iran leaves the dollar system and “the clock just started ticking.”
DO
The Navy is running the strait rather than closing it: about 1,300 vessels and 660 million barrels escorted since early May, 40 tankers on Friday alone. CENTCOM’s blockade ledger stands at 71 redirected, three disabled, two boarded, and no strike has landed on Iranian soil in weeks. The designation list arrived Monday: nearly 60 names, five sectoral determinations, a network traced through the UAE, Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland and Malaysia, and no major Chinese bank on it. A day on, the tape had priced it out and crude was more than 3% below where it started.
Iran
SAY
Pezeshkian calls Iran locked in “a full-scale economic, military and security war” and rejects becoming “another Venezuela,” yet defends the June memorandum as the best way out and says it’s “better to end the war today” from “a position of strength”; security council secretary Mohsen Rezaei says the strait stays closed until Washington changes its behavior, promises retaliation “in a seismic manner,” and calls foreign support for the sanctions an act of war.
DO
Tehran administers the closure rather than lifting it: a 45-ship non-compliance list that now reaches Emirati, Saudi and South Korean owners, carrying penalties up to confiscation, and a transit fee schedule whose core article cleared parliament’s national security commission Sunday, for the ships it does authorize. Iraqi tankers were waved through on request. Crossings stay far below pre-war, Oman’s foreign minister is in Tehran, a tanker was disabled off Ash Shishah by an unattributed projectile, and no new Iranian missile launches are confirmed.
SOURCES: U.S. Treasury (Aug 24 — nearly 60 entities, individuals and vessels designated; five sectoral determinations; countries given “a defined timeline”) · White House (Aug 24 — “The clock just started ticking”; removal from the U.S. dollar system) · OilPrice (Aug 24 — no major Chinese bank designated; Chinese imports 534,000 b/d in Aug vs 823,000 in Jul) · IranWire (Aug 24 — dollar at roughly 202,000 tomans on the open market, an all-time low) · Shafaq (Aug 23 — 189,700 tomans at the start of the week, 153,000 on Jun 17) · AP (Aug 24 — Baghaei: “Our hands are not tied”; Iran–Oman talks on jointly managing the strait) · Euronews (Aug 24 — five sectoral determinations: digital assets, technology, gold, aviation, shipping) · NPR (Aug 24 — Rezaei: “not even a single drop of oil will leave the region”) · Trading Economics (Aug 26 — Brent near $86.33 and WTI near $80.34, a third consecutive session lower) · Reuters via EnergyNow (Aug 24 — Friday settles: Brent $94.39, WTI $87.06) · HNGN (Aug 24 — two to three VLCCs a day through Hormuz since Jul 7, against about eight pre-war) · Press TV (Aug 25 — Iran–Oman joint statement: phased framework; reopening tied to US compliance with the Islamabad memorandum) · Reuters (Aug 24 — Persian Gulf Strait Authority blacklists 45 tankers; ~8m b/d still transiting) · TASS (Aug 23 — CENTCOM: 70 vessels redirected, three disabled, two boarded) · IRNA via GlobalSecurity (Aug 23 — national security commission approves Article 3) · Lloyd’s List Intelligence (Aug 19 — 73 Hormuz transits Aug 10–16, down from 91) · Seoul Economic Daily (Aug 25 — Brent settles $92.17, off 2.35%; muted market reaction absent China) · Bloomberg (Jul 6 — Trump says he expects to host Xi in the US around Sep 24) · Argus (Aug 25 — Windward: no outbound Hormuz transits in 24 hours; four inbound Monday) · The National (Aug 25 — Munir and Naqvi in Tehran; Naqvi reports “significant progress”) · CBS News (Aug 25 — Hegseth on the strait; Madanizadeh’s two-year plan; CENTCOM at 71 vessels redirected) · UKMTO Warning 120-26 (Aug 24 — oil tanker struck in the engine room 9nm northeast of Ash Shishah, Oman) · Arab News (Aug 25 — vessel disabled, crew safe, projectile unattributed and unclaimed) · TheStreet (Aug 25 — July PCE and Nvidia’s quarter both due Wednesday; Warsh at Jackson Hole) · Truth Social (Aug 25 — Trump says the Navy removed or detonated all mines in Hormuz’s international waters) · Reuters (Aug 25 — independently confirms Trump made the claim; flows still far below prewar levels) · Jerusalem Post (Aug 25 — the post carried without Navy confirmation or Iranian response; Space Force “watching every square inch”) · KOMO (Aug 25 — zero-tolerance warning; vessel attacks continued through August) · Oman News Agency via Dubai 92 (Aug 25 — phased plan: temporary joint navigation corridor and joint mine-clearing; technical talks on a permanent corridor) · Arab News (Aug 25 — Iran ties full reopening to lifting the naval blockade, dropping oil sanctions and unfreezing assets abroad) · ABC News (Aug 25 — Pakistan’s army chief closes a Tehran visit on de-escalation and reopening the strait) · The Hill (Aug 25 — Beijing opposes unilateral sanctions with no basis in international law) · Anadolu via anews (Aug 25 — China the world’s largest buyer of Iranian oil) · USNI News (Aug 21 — two mariners killed Aug 19–21; 19 merchant deaths and 74 documented attacks since February) · gCaptain (Aug 24 — anti-ship ballistic missile hits the VLCC Amzan 63nm west of Yanbu; main-deck fire, crew safe) · Al Jazeera (Aug 24 — Houthis claim the attack on the Saudi tanker) · Reuters via Cyprus Mail (Aug 25 — Kpler: two commodity vessels through Hormuz Monday against a 10-day average of 14; Vortexa: 5m b/d) · Tribune (Aug 25 — CNN: Trump spoke with Munir before the Tehran visit; Ghalibaf on the breached June memorandum) · Qatar Tribune (Aug 25 — Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani and Araghchi by phone on the temporary joint navigational corridor and mine-clearing) · Eastern Herald (Aug 25 — Tuesday settles: Brent $87.12 off 5.48%, WTI $82.36 off 3.12%; Brent–WTI spread narrows from $7.16)
🏔️ THEATRE MAP — GULF / HORMUZ
The full force-laydown map — carriers, bases, named strike sites, incidents, and the Jun 9–10 strike corridor — lives on Track the Troops →
FOR THE RECORD
The Islamabad Memorandum — signed Jun 17 at Versailles, declared “over” in Ankara Jul 8. What was signed, and where each clause ended up.
THE ISLAMABAD MOU · 14 POINTS
Signed Jun 17 — Trump at Versailles, Pezeshkian by electronic exchange, Pakistan’s prime minister as broker. In effect at signature; the Geneva ceremony was scrapped as redundant. The full text reached NPR within a day.
- Permanent end of operations on all fronts — Lebanon included — no future war, threats of force, or interference
- Mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity
- 60 days to a final Deal, extendable by mutual consent
- Blockade comes off — removal begins at signature, complete within 30 days; US forces leave Iran’s periphery 30 days after the final Deal
- Hormuz reopens — Iran de-mines and runs safe passage, free for 60 days; the strait’s future administration to be settled with Oman
- $300B reconstruction plan for Iran, assembled by the US with regional partners
- All sanctions terminated — UNSC, IAEA and unilateral US, primary and secondary, on a schedule set in the final Deal
- No Iranian bomb, reaffirmed — the stockpile down-blended on-site under IAEA supervision; enrichment itself deferred to the final Deal
- Status-quo freeze — Iran’s nuclear program holds where it is; no new US sanctions or regional deployments
- Oil moves immediately — Treasury waivers for Iranian crude and the banking, insurance and shipping around it
- Frozen assets made usable to Iran’s central bank once release procedures are agreed
- A joint compliance monitor to police implementation
- Sequencing — final-deal talks open only once the ceasefire, blockade lift, safe passage, waivers and asset release are moving
- A binding UNSC resolution to seal the final Deal
HOW IT DIED · 21 DAYS
In effect Jun 17. Pronounced “over” Jul 8. The unraveling, clause by clause:
- Jun 17 — the ink still wet. Tehran rules out negotiating missiles or shipping uranium abroad, and says strait fees start when the free days lapse; Washington had promised Hormuz “permanently toll-free.” Ghalibaf calls the text “a record of US failure.”
- Jun 18–19 — Lebanon breaks first. ¶1 covers “all fronts, including Lebanon” — Israel says it signed nothing and isn’t bound. South Lebanon logs the deadliest day of the whole war; the first talks slip.
- Late June — a narrow channel. Convoys move by permission on approved routes; the strait runs about a third full; oil eases to $72. Khamenei’s funerals freeze the talks through Jul 9. Doha briefs “positive progress.”
- Jul 7 — the ships burn. Iranian missiles hit a Qatari gas carrier and a Saudi crude tanker inside the strait the paper reopened. Free passage (¶5) dies at sea.
- Jul 8 — pronounced dead. US aircraft strike 80-plus coastal targets; Iran answers at bases in Bahrain and Kuwait. Trump, in Ankara, declares the memorandum “over” and “a waste of time.”
- Jul 14 — back to February. The blockade ¶4 lifted is reimposed and ships are turned back; the IRGC calls Hormuz closed again. The 60-day clock (¶3) stops at Day 27, 33 unused.
WHAT’S LEFT OF IT
Dead on the ground: the all-fronts ceasefire (¶1), the blockade lift (¶4), free passage (¶5) — all reversed by Jul 14.
Never tested: the $300B reconstruction plan (¶6) and sanctions termination (¶7) — parked in a final Deal whose talks ¶13 conditioned on a ceasefire that didn’t hold.
Never resolved: whether anyone may charge for the strait — Washington says nobody tolls an international waterway; Tehran says its coast, its services, its fees — and whether a paper Israel never signed could bind Lebanon.
Read the shape: the signed text ran 14 points, not Washington’s nine — structurally Tehran’s draft, down to the Oman dialogue on strait administration. 60 days of runway; the paper lived 21.
IRAN WAR COSTS
Where the money goes. Public DoD, CBO & think-tank reporting — re-pegged to Day 138.
SPENDING ESTIMATES
$80–100B
TOTAL EST. COST
~$650M
AVG DAILY BURN
$530–660
COST PER TAXPAYER
The Receipts
The $80–100B is the all-in internal estimate US officials describe; the Pentagon’s acknowledged direct-operations figure is $37.5B — Hegseth’s Jul 21 number to Senate Appropriations, which runs through Sept 30 and excludes base repairs. The tab opened at $11.3B for the war’s first six days and has been revised up at every briefing since: $25B in April, $29B in May, $30B in June. CSIS puts the true cost nearer $40B, in a range of $34–42B. Outside tallies run toward $200B once aircraft replacement (42 lost or damaged, per CRS), base repair, and economy-wide costs load in; an $87B war supplemental sits with Congress. The average daily burn reads lower than April’s $810M peg only because the ledger now spans two long lulls. Not on any ledger: 18 US service members killed, 447 wounded as of DoD’s Jul 21 count. Taxpayer figure: ~152M federal filers against the internal estimate. Re-pegged Jul 15 · Day 138.