With its air force, navy, and missile arsenal largely destroyed, Iran has shifted to a war fought with cyberattacks, sea mines, speedboats, and proxy strikes across the region - an asymmetric playbook that has proved far harder for the United States to neutralize than the conventional forces it wiped out in the first days of fighting.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth emphasized the scale of conventional destruction at a Pentagon briefing: "Never before has a modern capable military, which Iran used to have, been so quickly destroyed and made combat-ineffective," "Hvylya" reports, citing The New York Times. But that destruction has only accelerated Iran's pivot to unconventional warfare.
Iran built a formidable cybercorps after the United States and Israel launched a sophisticated cyberattack on its nuclear centrifuges more than 16 years ago. Those hackers have now been called into service, targeting both Israel and the United States. One of the most prominent victims has been Stryker Corporation, a Michigan-based maker of advanced medical equipment whose systems were brought down last week. A hacker group called Handala claimed responsibility, saying the attack was retaliation for a US strike on an elementary school near a military base in southern Iran that, according to Iranian officials, killed at least 175 people, mostly children.
At sea, the threat is equally difficult to counter. Even a single Iranian soldier in a speedboat can fire a mobile missile into a supertanker or attach a limpet mine to its hull - a reality that was laid out bluntly to Trump during an Oval Office meeting when he demanded to know why the Strait of Hormuz could not be immediately reopened. The son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has apparently assumed command after his father's death, has pledged to continue deploying these capabilities.
The conflict has also produced a wave of apparent lone-actor attacks inside the United States attributed to individuals possibly inspired by the war. On Thursday, a man shouting "Allahu akbar" opened fire at Old Dominion University in Virginia before being killed. In Michigan, a naturalized American citizen born in Lebanon drove his vehicle into a reform synagogue housing a school before killing himself. The evidence connecting these attacks to Iranian direction remains murky, but they have added to the sense that the war's consequences extend far beyond the Middle East.
Also read: FT Reveals the Staggering Cost Gap Between Iranian Drones and Western Air Defenses.