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The American Way of War: Military Targeting in Iran
A nation’s warfighting strength is more than the sum of its weapons. Strategic culture also shapes military capability. Some nations demonstrate superior military competency, integrating forces across services, domains, and geographies to accomplish military objectives. Other nations have field leaders with a greater tolerance for risk, drawing on histories that may motivate them to embrace various kinds of military operations.
The regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran, for example, is willing to let its people absorb a great amount of pain for the sake of its revolutionary cause against the “Great Satan” and the “Little Satan”—the United States and Israel, respectively. It cares about its ability to perpetuate its ideological cause, stay in power, maintain control of the Iranian people, and harm its ideological enemies.
The US government, on the other hand, has a very low tolerance for the suffering of the American people and is sensitive even to slight increases in gasoline prices. Americans show greater concern for the Iranian people.
Operation Epic Fury has already eliminated ideological leadership, including the supreme leader, and Basij forces, which repress the Iranian people. It has also significantly degraded the Iranian regime’s ability to prosecute the war, and the blockade is effectively slowing down the regime’s ability to fund its military. While President Donald Trump has given mixed messaging on the importance of protecting Iranian civilians throughout the operation, strategic communications could help US efforts if they emphasized that the war is focused on debilitating the Iranian regime while inflicting the minimum possible pain on the Iranian people.
“It’s important also to look at what the president is threatening here because there’s some confusion surrounding it. The president is threatening to take out bridges and power plants. Now, those are what we call dual-use targets, so civilians use them, and the military, the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], uses them as well. The United States will follow the Laws of Armed Conflict. . . . We would be very careful to hit only those targets that the IRGC is still using to carry out their war effort to transport missiles and drone components. . . . It’s so important that we do differentiate, if we do strike these bridges and power plants, that we have a message inside to the Iranian people to remind them: our war is not with them; we want to leave their country intact so that they can take over their country. Our problem is with the Iran regime, which has been the one repressing them. The greatest harm and threat to the Iranian people does not come from the United States and Israel; it comes from the Iran regime.”
— Rebeccah L. Heinrichs
Director, Keystone Defense Initiative
“Any threat against things that would affect the Iranian people disproportionately, [rather] than the Iran regime itself is not going to change the behavior of this rump regime. The only thing that’s going to change the behavior of the rump regime, if anything at all, is threatening their life, threatening the actual regime leaders, the IRGC. . . . There’s that, and then there’s also just completely cutting off their ability to carry out any kind of attacks at all, which is what I think this blockade against these Iranian ports is going to do because this is the lifeblood into funding the regime. And, again, it’s meant to change their behavior to see if we can get this current rump regime to capitulate.”
— Rebeccah L. Heinrichs
Director, Keystone Defense Initiative
Hudson Highlights
Joel Rayburn | Hudson Institute
“As for how to conduct the campaign, the initial priorities will have to be:
- Disrupt the Iranian regime’s command, control, and communications; suppress or destroy its meager remaining air defenses; and defeat any threat that Iran’s navy might pose to the US fleet
- Eliminate the regime’s ballistic missile and drone capability, which is the regime’s primary means of conducting counterstrikes and imposing costs to coerce the US and Israel
Targets in this initial phase would be:
- Senior regime leadership facilities
- Critical communications hubs
- Critical transportation infrastructure, such as military aircraft and air bases or airports that Iran would use for military purposes
- Broadcast and information sharing infrastructure
- Integrated air defense systems
The next priority would be the Iranian missile strike capability. The key here is to locate and destroy Iranian missile launchers, both short- and medium-range. The launchers are vital because while the Iranians may have considerable missile stockpiles, they cannot use them if they lose their launchers.”
Rebeccah L. Heinrichs | Hudson Institute
“Launch rates plummeted in the first 100 hours of Operation Epic Fury. As of March 25, Iranian missile and drone launch rates have been diminished by over 90 percent, according to US Central Command. Since the onset of the conflict, the United States has struck more than 13,000 Iranian targets. . . . In fewer than six weeks, Tehran has suffered a significant degradation in its ability to project power beyond its borders. In response, the United States announced a two-week ceasefire on April 7. With Iran’s capabilities substantially weakened, the United States is now in a position to lead international efforts to clear the Strait of Hormuz.”
Can Kasapoğlu | Hudson Institute
“Despite the battlefield achievements of Epic Fury, the operation has left several critical strategic factors unaddressed: The campaign lacks a coherent architecture of political warfare. . . . The campaign has not yet exploited Iran’s dual-military structure. . . . The campaign has yet to cultivate an organized opposition. . . . The campaign has yet to constitute a maritime-security coalition for the Strait of Hormuz. . . . The campaign has not severed the intelligence pipeline between Russia and the IRGC. . . . The campaign has not cultivated a counter-value deterrence posture in the Gulf. . . . The true center of gravity in Iran is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as an institution. . . . Deliberately combining military pressure with political warfare and pinpoint intelligence operations can erode the institutional control of the guard and widen the range of positive outcomes that are plausible endgames for the current conflict.”
Michael Doran | The Free Press
“Iran’s conventional navy and air force were never the real threat. Those forces were outdated, limited, and secondary to the Revolutionary Guards’ asymmetric arsenal: missile arrays, drone swarms, coastal batteries, and an advancing nuclear program. The route to decisive victory runs through its destruction. . . . The IRGC’s missile and drone teams remain active and effective. They conduct target acquisition, threaten neighbors, and—most critically—hold the Strait of Hormuz at risk. . . . The first step is to break the back of the missile and drone teams. Yet this remains extraordinarily difficult. . . . Tehran anticipated this kind of conflict and built its resilience around the ‘mosaic defense’ doctrine, developed by the IRGC in the mid-2000s. Authority is fragmented into semiautonomous provincial commands, each capable of operating independently if central control collapses. Decapitation does not end the fight; it diffuses it.”
Key Insights
Marco Rubio | United States Department of State
“The United States would not deliberately target a school. Our objectives are missiles—both the ability to manufacture them and the ability to launch them—and the one-way attack drones. That would be our focus. . . . We would have no interest, and frankly no incentive, to target civilian infrastructure. The Iranians are, on the other hand, targeting civilian infrastructure. You guys have seen it; I’m sure you’ve seen it. They’re hitting hotels; they’re hitting embassies; they’re hitting airports; they’re hitting oil infrastructure. . . . They are a terroristic regime. They sponsor terrorism, and they participate in terrorism.”
Brad Cooper | United States Department of War
“The principal objective is to prevent the Islamic Republic from being able to project power from its own borders to affect both Americans as well as regional partners. And we’re focused on three principal military objectives: eliminating the ballistic missiles, eliminating drones, and sinking the Navy (as well as eliminating the manufacturing for each of those three areas). . . . My main message [to the Iranian people] is this: First and foremost, we are attacking the regime and the Islamic Republic, not the wonderful people. The second piece is: Continue to heed our advice. We’ve had multiple messages that have come out that have said, ‘Beware. The government doesn’t care about you. They’re launching missiles and drones from populated areas. You need to stay inside for right now.’ Third, there will be a clear signal at some point, as the president has indicated, for you to be able to come out.”
Karen Gibson | Center for Strategic and International Studies
“We ensure we differentiate between military and civilian targets, military and civilian use. If something’s dual-use, it may be a valid target, but we don’t go against strictly civilian targets. There has to be precaution and proportionality, that we are always striving for minimal collateral damage to minimize human suffering, and that there is a necessity. You’re not going after something just because it is required to further a specific war aim. . . . I think the US military really prides itself, understandably, on precision and lethality. I used to say, ‘You don’t need to spend billions of dollars on an intelligence community if you want to strike targets like the Syrian regime and just roll barrel bombs out the back of a helicopter.’ They don’t care about collateral damage. [For US targeteers,] it’s understanding the pattern of life, and then sometimes choosing the time of day, or day of the week, and the type of munitions that will minimize the number of innocents that are potentially killed in that strike.”
Pete Hegseth | United States Department of War
“You see, had Iran refused our terms, the next targets would have been their power plants, their bridges and oil and energy infrastructure—targets they could not defend and could not realistically rebuild. It would have taken them decades. . . . Remember, this is a terror regime, a military regime, [which] used all of these things for dual-use to fund their military, to fund their terror campaigns. We had a lot of legitimate targets. They knew exactly the scope of what we were capable of. We hit some military targets on Kharg, which is a bit of a signal. They can’t defend it. And so, Iran ultimately understood their ability, their future to produce, to generate power, to fuel their terrorist regime was in our hands. It was in President Trump’s hands. That’s why they came to the table. He ultimately said we can take it all from you. Your ability to export energy will be taken away.”
Nazanin Boniadi | Council on Foreign Relations
“[In] the early days of the war, in late February, [Iranian] people were, indeed, celebrating when Ali Khamenei was killed, and some of the heads of the regime were killed. And then started the mixture of despair and hope. One person told me, my children are afraid of the bombs. I’m afraid for their future if this regime remains in power. And going to today, after the bridge in Karaj fell and was struck, and then, of course, calls to send Iran to the Stone Age, et cetera, and ending Iranian civilization. Iranians, really the ones we were speaking to, at least I was speaking to, started to panic. . . . What has happened is people have rallied on the soil of Iran around their national identity. But that is not the same as rallying around the Islamic Republic or its flag. . . . So I don’t think it’s been a complete failure in decapitating the regime, weakening the regime. It’s just that, as Ladan said, we haven’t had the full scope of a multilayered approach to finish the job. Which is maybe not saying, ‘End Iranian civilization.’ Instead of that, maybe targeting strategically and having a plan in place to incentivize defections, to fracture the regime, and to empower the people.”
Keith Kellogg | Fox News
“I would just say ‘Let’s not negotiate anymore.’ Let’s just walk away; let’s finish the job. . . . The [US] president gave them [Iran] ample opportunity. It was very gracious, an attempt to talk our way through it. Now let’s just finish it out, and I think we can finish it out. We can strangle them economically; we’re doing that with the blockade. Let’s compound the problem. . . . And instead of bombing like their power plants, bomb something that really hurts them [like] their fuel industry or something like that, instead of going after things that hurt the people. . . . Problems for their leadership is not that ‘Oh, they just bombed this factory.’ It’s command, control, and what they actually control in their economic standards. Take away that economic ability. So I would say, eventually they’re going to fall. If you want it to take a long time, do it with a blockade. [If you want to] do it with a shorter time, compound the problem, create issues for them that they have no ability to operate with and control.”
Top Reads
Options for the United States to Resolve the Iran Nuclear Challenge
Heather Williams and Joseph Rodgers | Center for Strategic and International Studies
Iranian Foreign Ministry Official: US Using New Ballistic Missiles
Ryan Mancini | The Hill
“That Is Not Who We Are”: Some Republicans Break with Trump over Iran Threats
Sarah Beth Hensley and Justin Gomez | ABC News
Trump Ally Says Attacking Civilian Targets Would Be “Huge Mistake”
Siobhan Hughes and Terell Wright | Wall Street Journal
Does Just War Doctrine Require Moral Certainty?
Edward Feser | First Things
Mr. President, Don’t Bomb Iran’s Civilian Infrastructure
Eli Lake | The Free Press
Trump Orders US Military to “Shoot and Kill” Iranian Small Boats Choking Strait of Hormuz
Jon Gambrell, Jamey Keaten, and Aamer Madhani | Associated Press
Secretary of State Marco Rubio with Trey Yingst of Fox News Channel
Marco Rubio | United States Department of State
Iran Update Special Report, March 18, 2026
Avery Borens et al. | Institute for the Study of War
Why Trump Is Obliterating One Iranian Army but Sparing Another
Geoff Earle | New York Post
Operation Epic Fury and International Law
Reed D. Rubinstein | United States Department of State
