US–Iran War Timeline

The 2026 US-Iran war — code-named Operation Epic Fury — began on Feb 28, 2026, when joint US and Israeli strikes hit Iranian military and nuclear installations. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed in the opening salvo, along with the IRGC commander-in-chief, the armed forces chief of staff, and dozens of senior officers. Iran retaliated within hours with hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles, and the IRGC announced the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to US- and Israel-allied shipping — triggering a global oil-price spike that would shadow the rest of the conflict.

The war moved through distinct phases. The first six days were the costliest: roughly $1.88 billion per day in stand-off munitions and interceptors, with CSIS pegging the first 100 hours at $3.7 billion. As the US established air dominance and shifted from $3.5M Tomahawks to $80K JDAMs, the daily rate fell to about $500M through Day 39. Strikes on the Natanz nuclear facility, the killing of IRGC naval commander Alireza Tangsiri, and Iranian retaliation against the Dimona research center marked the peak of direct hostilities. By the time fighting paused, the Pentagon comptroller had placed direct costs at $29 billion — with $24 billion attributed to repairing or replacing the 42 US aircraft the Congressional Research Service catalogued as lost or damaged. That replacement bill lands on top of the peacetime baseline tracked in US military spending in 2026.

A Pakistan-brokered ceasefire took effect on Apr 8, 2026, but it was violated within hours and has held only in a contested form ever since. Trump extended the cessation indefinitely on April 21 and declared hostilities "terminated" in a May 1 War Powers letter, yet US and Iranian forces have continued to exchange fire across the Strait of Hormuz — the US striking Qeshm Island and Bandar Abbas, Iran seizing cargo vessels and striking Gulf states including a June 3 drone attack on Kuwait International Airport. The Lebanon theater escalated into a separate war with thousands of casualties. Meanwhile the human cost mounted: 21 confirmed US KIA (a disputed Washington Post report puts the true toll at 22–23), disputed Iranian military deaths ranging into the thousands, and 4,386 Lebanese civilians killed.

The timeline below merges every dated milestone from our three trackers — war cost, casualties, and the ceasefire status tracker — into one chronological view, newest first. Each entry is tagged by category. Only events that appear in those sourced trackers are included; nothing here is invented. For the standing budgets behind the fighting, see military spending by country and our Iran military spending profile and US defense profile.