17MAY

12,300 Targets Struck; Strait Still Closed

2 min read

14:28UTC

The US has fired more Tomahawk missiles than in any campaign in history and destroyed 155 Iranian vessels. The Strait of Hormuz remains shut.

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Key takeaway

Record-breaking bombing has not shifted Iran's posture or reopened Hormuz.

CENTCOM reported on 1 April that US forces have struck over 12,300 targets and fired 850 Tomahawk cruise missiles in Operation Epic Fury, the most in any single US campaign in history ¹. 155 Iranian vessels have been destroyed. B-52 bombers now fly overland inside Iran , a transition from the standoff-only strikes of the war's first 30 days.

The numbers are imposing. The outcome is not. Hormuz remains closed. The toll system operates . Eleven vessels transited on 31 March, 93% below the pre-war baseline ². ACLED concludes that 'full capitulation remains unlikely' and 'the only clear path to decisive victory would be a change of government' ³. Heavy bombing has reinforced Iran's siege mentality rather than breaking it.

CSIS counts 850 Tomahawks expended ⁴. The US Navy's total Tomahawk inventory before the war was approximately 4,000. At current consumption, the stockpile question joins Israel's Arrow-3 depletion as a constraint on sustained operations.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

The US has now struck more targets and fired more cruise missiles than in any war in American history. It has also destroyed 155 Iranian naval vessels. Despite all of this, the Strait of Hormuz is still closed. The question this raises is whether more bombing will change the outcome. The evidence so far says no: Iran is firing fewer missiles per day than at the war's start, but it has not changed its fundamental position.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

The bombing has not changed Iran's strategic calculus because the campaign was designed around target categories, not political outcomes. CENTCOM is striking what it can locate and destroy; Iran's decision to keep Hormuz closed resides in a small number of IRGC commanders whose locations are either unknown or protected by anticipated US domestic opposition to decapitation strikes.

Russia's provision of satellite imagery showing US warship and aircraft locations increases Iran's ability to absorb the campaign by reducing tactical surprise. An adversary that knows where your aircraft are cannot be coerced by those aircraft in the same way as one operating without that intelligence.

The 850 Tomahawk expenditure rate also matters structurally. At pre-war inventory of roughly 4,000, the campaign has consumed 21% of the total supply in 34 days. The US cannot sustain current strike rates indefinitely without accepting munitions constraints that will become visible to Iran and its partners.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources from Ireland and United States

Ireland

United States

Primary parallel: Operation Rolling Thunder (Vietnam, 1965-68), the longest US strategic bombing campaign before this war. The US dropped more tonnage on North Vietnam than in the entire Second World War in the Pacific; North Vietnam's war-fighting capacity was degraded but its strategic posture did not change. ACLED's 'siege mentality' finding maps directly onto the documented North Vietnamese response to sustained bombardment.

Counter-parallel: The 1999 NATO Kosovo campaign succeeded with 78 days of bombing and no ground troops. The difference: Milosevic had no allied power providing intelligence and the campaign had unified Western political backing. Iran has Russian satellite imagery (ID:1834) and China has not joined Western sanctions.

Consensus view: ACLED and RAND both find that aerial campaigns against adversaries with dispersed command structures and high ideological cohesion produce attrition but rarely capitulation. CSIS analyst Tom Karako notes the 850 Tomahawk expenditure leaves the US Navy at roughly 21% of its pre-war Tomahawk inventory, a constraint that will tighten before the strait reopens.

Counter-view: Heritage Foundation analysts argue the B-52 overland transition signals a qualitative escalation that prior targets did not; Iran's remaining command nodes and energy infrastructure are now reachable at higher ordnance loads per sortie, which prior missile strikes could not achieve.

Key tension: Whether the remaining target set can achieve political change that 12,300 previous strikes did not, or whether Iran has already absorbed the campaign's peak leverage.

First Reported In

Update #55 · The Last Door Closes

Irish Times / Majorca Daily Bulletin· 2 Apr 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

B-52s over Iran; 50,000 US troops in

CENTCOM's B-52 overland missions from 31 March are the latest escalation within the 12,300-target campaign; the cumulative figure is reported for the first time this update.

Occurred 31 Mar 2026

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This Event

12,300 Targets Struck; Strait Still Closed

The most intensive US bombing campaign ever has failed to change Iran's strategic calculus or reopen Hormuz.

Led to

US Strikes Civilian Bridge; Eight Commuters Killed

CENTCOM's 12,300+ target campaign expanded to include civilian transport infrastructure for the first time with the B1 bridge strike.

Occurred 3 Apr 2026

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First US jet downed; officer missing

CENTCOM's claim that Iranian air defences were largely destroyed made the F-15E shoot-down operationally and politically devastating, directly contradicting 35 days of official messaging.

Occurred 3 Apr 2026

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Different Perspectives

OpenForum Europe / open-source community

The EUR 350m Sovereign Tech Fund has no Commission host, no budget line, and no commissioner's name attached six weeks after the April conference, while Germany is already paying maintainers to staff international standards bodies. The CRA open-source guidance resolves contributor liability but leaves the financial-donations grey area open with the 11 September reporting clock running.

ASML / Christophe Fouquet

ASML's Q2 guidance miss of roughly EUR 300m below consensus reflects DUV revenue compression set by US export controls, not European policy. Fouquet said 2026 guidance accommodates potential outcomes of ongoing US-China trade discussions; a bipartisan US bill to tighten DUV sales further would accelerate the cross-subsidy thinning Chips Act II's equity authority is designed to address.

Anne Le Henanff / French G7 Presidency

Le Henanff chairs the 29 May Bercy ministerial two days after Brussels adopts the Tech Sovereignty Package, making the G7 communique the first international read of the Omnibus enforcement split and CAIDA's scope. France's Cloud au Centre doctrine is already operational via the Scaleway Health Data Hub contract.

German federal government

Berlin operationalises sovereignty through procurement mandates (the ODF requirement and the Sovereign Tech Standards programme) rather than waiting for Commission legislation. The Bundeskartellamt has still not received the Cohere-Aleph Alpha merger filing, leaving Germany's flagship AI champion in structural limbo six weeks after the deal resolved.

US Trade Representative

The USTR Section 301 investigation into EU digital rules closes with a 24 July 2026 final determination. CAIDA's public-sector cloud restriction sits within the criteria that triggered the 2020 Section 301 action against France's digital services tax, and the US has not signalled whether the Thales-Google S3NS arrangement resolves CLOUD Act jurisdiction concerns.

CISPE / Valentina Mingorance

CISPE shipped its own pass-fail sovereignty badge in April to establish an industry-auditable floor the Commission could adopt. Whether CAIDA inherits the CISPE binary or the multi-tier SEAL approach will determine whether certification is enforceable by public contracting authorities or requires Commission discretion.