U.S. officials: Iranian military shows it knows how to adapt

A new billboard in Tehran on Tuesday illustrating the succession of Iran’s three supreme leaders
Photo: ‘The New York Times’

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.

“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.”

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.”

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.

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.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth acknowledged on Tuesday that the Pentagon had not expected Iran’s ferocious response.

“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.

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.

read more in our Telegram-channel https://t.me/The_International_Affairs