As the United States and Iran trade increasingly ferocious blows, President Donald Trump is reportedly weighing ramped-up operations against Tehran once again.
He threatened this week to target the country’s critical civilian infrastructure – power plants and bridges, for example – every time Iran fires into the Strait of Hormuz.
But with a new surge of U.S. forces into the region in recent days, the war is quickly becoming less a test of American military dominance than its limits.
Why We Wrote This
The United States military has dismantled Iran’s navy and other assets, yet the conflict still risks becoming a costly forever war. It also highlights U.S. military constraints and rising casualties.
The five-month-long conflict has exposed America’s strategic vulnerabilities and reflected poorly on the Pentagon’s reputation, some analysts add. U.S. firepower, overwhelming though it may be, has so far failed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or bring the regime back to the negotiating table.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday told Congress that the conflict has cost the country some $37.5 billion to date, drawing bipartisan criticism from some lawmakers, who cite an unclear long-term endgame, escalating financial and human costs, and diminishing U.S. weapons stockpiles.
These critiques intensified when the deaths of four U.S. service members killed in action last week were subtracted from an official Pentagon tally Thursday. It was an effort, some speculated, to downplay the casualties following the now-defunct April ceasefire.
The acting Pentagon press secretary called it a technical glitch. Still, the reports fueled concerns that, regardless of how officials parse it, operations in Iran are increasingly at risk of becoming a forever war, said Sen. Patty Murray, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee.
The administration bears much of the blame for demonstrating a “distinct inability” to see over the strategic horizon, says retired Col. Peter Mansoor, a professor of military history at Ohio State University.
But as Iran has continued to absorb attacks and retaliate against American bases in the Middle East, the U.S. military must take responsibility for its strategic shortfalls as well, says retired Col. Mark Cancian, a defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
This includes the “glaring failure” of the Navy to secure the Strait of Hormuz, he adds, through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil supply ran before the U.S. and Israel launched the current conflict Feb. 28.
As the U.S. has moved into what some analysts call “full-blown reaction mode,” the war has also become a test of the credibility of U.S. military deterrence now that the war’s aims have shifted from denying the regime nuclear arms to reopening the strait. Meanwhile, Iran – a country that now has no navy due to U.S. strikes – is flexing its previously unexercised power to close the strategic waterway with speedboats and drones.
Timing and preparation
As a young Marine Corps officer, Mr. Cancian recalls taking part in amphibious planning exercises to capture islands such as Abu Musa, Qeshm, and the oil export hub of Kharg, that would be key to controlling the strait.
The U.S. Navy “has been thinking about this problem for 45 years – and I mean that literally,” he says. “And so the fact that we seem to be helpless now that the moment has arrived is astonishing.”
Now the war is at a stalemate, in part because political leaders expected an easy victory and wanted to avoid casualties, which may have limited military planning.
“However, blaming the political establishment alone is too easy. Much criticism must also fall on the military, particularly the Navy,” which “has not given senior decision makers acceptable options because of historical, glaring gaps in capability that it has not addressed,” he wrote in an analysis last week.
This includes mine clearance – the loss of the skill has long been “bemoaned” in professional military journals, Mr. Cancian notes – as well as convoy operations against “asymmetric adversaries in constricted waters.”
Were the strait still open, the U.S. could likely live with the current status quo, having “greatly damaged the Iranian nuclear program, military forces, defense industry, and particularly Iran’s ability to manufacture ballistic missiles,” he adds. “Time would be on our side.”
Who is in charge?
Time is not on America’s side at the moment. Less than one quarter of those polled last month by Reuters/Ipsos think the war has been worth the lives and money the U.S. has spent on it.
The same number of Americans, only 23% – including just half of Republicans – think the U.S. is in a stronger strategic position than it was before the war.
Majid Asgaripour/WANA/Reuters/File
Most Americans don’t fault the U.S. military for this loss of influence, since they understand that officers rightfully operate under civilian control, says Monica Duffy Toft, director of the Center for Strategic Studies at Tufts University’s Fletcher School.
But depending on how willing they are to speak truth to power, military leaders could bear some responsibility “if they didn’t give [administration officials] advice beyond tactical and operational targeting,” Dr. Mansoor says.
He cites Eliot Cohen, a scholar of civil-military relations, who writes that military leaders and their civilian bosses should engage in an “unequal” two-way dialogue – one “where civilians eventually can order the military to do what they demand, but the military should have its say before that happens,” Dr. Mansoor says.
Yet since dozens of senior military leaders have been removed, blocked, or forced out of their jobs by Mr. Hegseth, those who remain “may not feel open to this unequal dialogue that needs to take place,” he adds.
More broadly, America’s reputation as a purveyor of soft power as well as “formidable” military might is suffering, Dr. Toft says, in part because Iran is no longer deterred from doing what it previously didn’t dare to do – including closing the strait.
“It’s demonstrating that the United States is not as strong as we would like,’’ she adds. “It undermines our ability to influence.”