The Iranian military is adjusting its tactics as the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign progresses, senior U.S. defense officials said, even as the Trump administration insists that the United States is winning the war.
In the 11 days since the conflict began, Iran has targeted key American air defense and radar systems in the region, according to U.S. military officials and military experts.
Iranian-backed militias have attacked hotels frequented by American troops. One militia in Iraq launched a drone swarm attack on an upscale hotel in Erbil, demonstrating that Iran was aware that the Pentagon was housing troops in hotels in the region, a senior U.S. military official said.
He and two other officials said that Iran appeared to have accepted that it could not match the United States and Israel on pure firepower. But by simply surviving the barrage, the officials said, the government in Tehran can claim victory.
The Iranian military, the officials said, appears to be targeting what it views as American vulnerabilities: interceptors and air defenses meant to guard troops and assets in the region.
Seven American troops have been killed since the war began, and 140 injured, the Pentagon said. Of that number, 108 have returned to duty.
The U.S. and Israeli strikes have killed about 1,300 people in Iran, according to Iranian officials, while Iranian attacks across the Middle East have killed at least 30.
During a 12-day war with Iran last year, both the United States and Israel saw severe dents in the country’s air defense stockpiles. The United States launched 100 to 250 THAAD interceptors during that war, which constituted 20 percent to 50 percent of the Pentagon’s inventory, according to a December report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The U.S. military also used 80 SM-3 missiles, nearly a fifth of its stockpile, the report said.
“It’s surprising how quickly they learned and implemented lessons from the 12-day war,” said Vali R. Nasr, an Iran expert at Johns Hopkins University. “They learned that what we are lacking is defensive capabilities, like interceptors, THAAD missiles and Patriots.”
Mr. Nasr said Iran, after depleting the American inventory, could still have some launch capability left to target American troops, assets and allies.
Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged on Tuesday that the Iranian military had shifted its tactics. “No plan survives first contact with the enemy,” he said during a news conference. “They’re adapting, as we are.”
General Caine said he did not want to specify how Iran was changing its tactics because “I’d rather not, for operational security reasons, tell them what’s working.”
But in the past, Iran gave ample warning before launching retaliatory strikes, and largely did so only to save face, military experts said. Last year, after President Trump ordered American B-2 stealth bombers to strike three Iranian nuclear facilities, Iran retaliated by launching strikes at Al Udeid military base in Qatar, which houses U.S. troops. Iran made clear before the strikes where it would be targeting.
Nothing like that is happening now. In recent days Iran hit an early-warning radar system at Al Udeid, damaging a sophisticated radar, as reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.
U.S. military communication infrastructure is highly classified, making it difficult to determine which exact systems may have been affected. But the targeted locations appear to indicate that Iran was aiming to disrupt the U.S. military’s ability to communicate and coordinate. The attack also means that Iran is trying to hurt American air defenses, military officials said. Iran also hit three radar domes at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, another camp that houses American troops.
Fifty miles northeast, at the Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait, at least six buildings or structures adjacent to satellite communications infrastructure were damaged or destroyed, according to imagery captured after the strikes.
A Pentagon assessment provided to Congress last week put the cost of a strike on the U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet headquarters complex in Bahrain at about $200 million, according to a congressional official.
In the past, Iran directed all of its drone attacks at Israel. Not so this time. Iran has fired thousands of cheap one-way attack drones at American allies and assets in Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Bahrain.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth acknowledged on Tuesday that the Pentagon had not expected Iran’s ferocious response against its neighbors. But he insisted Iran’s actions were backfiring.
“I can’t say that we anticipated necessarily that’s exactly how they would react, but we knew it was a possibility,” Mr. Hegseth said at the Pentagon news conference with General Caine. “I think it was a demonstration of the desperation of the regime.”
Mr. Hegseth added that it was “a big mistake by the Iranian regime to start targeting its neighbors right away, exposing who they are and what they’re all about, indiscriminate targeting, flailing recklessly at the beginning.”
General Caine said that Iran’s missile and drone strikes had dropped off considerably in recent days because of the punishing U.S. air campaign.
“Our strikes mean we’ve made significant progress in reducing the number of missile and drone attacks out of Iran,” he said. “Ballistic missile attacks continue to trend downward 90 percent from where they’ve started. And one-way attack drones have decreased 83 percent since the beginning of the operation, a testament to our air defenders and our air defense systems.”
But Iran’s attacks have not stopped completely, and two military officials said there was concern that the Pentagon did not have full clarity on all of Iran’s launch sites. The officials also said that Iran had kept many missiles in reserve to strike at important battlefield targets like the American radars.
Pentagon officials told lawmakers in confidential briefings on Capitol Hill last week that Iran still retained as many as 50 percent of its missiles and launchers, but that the air campaign was whittling that down each day.
“If you were to ask ‘what is the thinking enemy thinking,’ well it might be that the first wave of Iranian missiles and drones were door-openers, and they have more advanced missiles, including hypersonic missiles, that could come afterwards,” Mr. Nasr said.
Iran is demonstrating every day that the killing of the country’s supreme leader at the beginning of the war has not totally crippled its ability to fight, the officials and military experts said.
Iran, they said, is not acting like a decapitated regime.
Helene Cooper is a Pentagon correspondent for The Times. She was previously an editor, diplomatic correspondent and White House correspondent.
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