A Saturday in Late February
Published 4 October 2026
Most histories are written after the shooting stops. This one is being written while it goes on, which is a bit like reviewing a restaurant during the fire. The reporting in this file ends on Friday 2 October 2026. The war it describes has not ended, no final settlement has been signed, and any sentence in the past tense below may be overtaken by a sentence in the present tense tomorrow.
So the rules of this file are plain. Every number has a date. Every claim belongs to the person who made it, not to us. Where two sources disagree, both are shown. Where nobody knows, the file says "unknown" and moves on, because a confident wrong number is worse than an honest blank. It is a record, not a verdict.
Friday night, Saturday morning
The operational story, as the US military told it, starts on the evening of Friday 27 February. Joint Chiefs chairman Dan Caine said President Trump gave final approval at 20:38 GMT that day. At 06:15 GMT on Saturday 28 February, more than 100 aircraft launched, and the US military said it struck more than 1,000 targets in the first 24 hours. Those are the numbers Caine gave Reuters. They are claims by the side doing the striking, not an audited count of anything.
The AP timeline puts the political fact beside the military one: the United States and Israel attacked Iran on 28 February, and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other senior officials were killed. Iran answered with attacks on Israel and across the Gulf, and asserted control over the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow channel that a large share of the world's seaborne oil has to pass through.
That is the first chapter of the war. It is also the only chapter in which the outline is simple.
A world that had just been quiet
It helps to remember how calm the markets were. In February, the EIA's series of physical Brent spot closes ran from $67.72 to $73.17, and the continuous front-month futures contract on the FT/LSEG history traded between $65.19 and $73.00. The futures high came on Friday 27 February, the day before the first strikes. The oil market was, in other words, priced for an ordinary Friday.
India, which buys most of its crude abroad, reacted on the day with a statement that the Hindustan Times reported as a call for restraint and no escalation, civilian safety, dialogue and diplomacy, and respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, according to its report of the statement. The original ministry page could not be read in full, so that wording rests on the newspaper's account.
The shape of the thing
For orientation, here is the war on one line. The dates are the ones the following chapters document, each with its source. Note what the line cannot show: the gaps between events are not quiet. They are filled with ship attacks, drone interceptions and diplomatic messages that no single timeline can hold.
How to read what follows
The chapters run in time order, but each carries its own theme: ceasefires, Hormuz, oil and gas, the nuclear file, Lebanon, India, the politics in Washington and Jerusalem. Where a theme needs a figure from a later date, the chapter says so and flags the jump.
Four terms are used with care throughout. The April ceasefire (announced on Tuesday 7 April in Washington, dated 8 April in the region) is one agreement, not two. The June memorandum of understanding is a different document with different clocks. "Spot" means physical barrels; "futures" means the traded contract. And "alleged" is not a politeness: nearly every attack described here is, at the time of writing, described by one party and denied, disputed or unverified by another.
Onward, then, to the first week, when the most important waterway on earth started to behave like a locked door with a polite sign on it.
Get the next file
One email when a new file is published. No paid service needed.