Military Experts Lay Out Remaining Obstacles in Iran War, Herald Successes Thus Far

Former U.S. Central Command head Gen. Frank McKenzie said Wednesday that the U.S. military is “in the heart of the plan” in its war against Iran, pointing to major military achievements against Tehran’s missile and military capabilities, while cautioning that the conflict remains a grinding, long-term campaign.

As the conflict between the U.S., Israel and Iran nears the one-month mark, officials say Iran’s capabilities have been severely degraded, while President Donald Trump has asserted that the war is nearly over and that its objectives have largely been achieved.

At the same time, reports indicate that Iran has rejected Trump administration proposals to negotiate an end to the conflict, while the Pentagon is deploying the military’s highly specialized 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East — raising fresh questions about the trajectory of the war and the broader strategy.

During a webinar hosted by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, McKenzie said the U.S. is “accomplishing the objectives that we set out. CENTCOM is executing a long-prepared campaign plan. This is not something that we’ve drawn up on the back of the envelope day-to-day. These are things that have been studied and refined for many years. If you are sitting down at CENTCOM right now, you are satisfied with where you are.”

McKenzie said one of the clearest indicators of success is that Iran has been unable to generate the kind of large ballistic missile salvos that U.S. military planners had long feared.

“Iran has not been able to mount massive volleys against Israel. Have they been able to fire some number of missiles against our targets? Yes, but not the massive volleys that we thought would make it hard for us to defend,” McKenzie said, attributing that in part to Iran’s own strategic miscalculation.

“The Iranians made a mistake in designing their ballistic missile force. They mistook hardening and burying for security,” McKenzie said. “The truth of warfare today is this: if you can see it, you can hit it. If you can hit it, you can kill it. And even if you dig yourself deep underground with these beautiful missile cities, that just makes it easier for us to strike and destroy these missiles wholesale rather than retail.”

Yaacov Ayish, former head of the IDF’s general staff, also said that “significant progress” has been made. He noted that Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities have subsided.

“When I’m thinking about the amount of ballistic missiles launched by the Iranians compared to what they had planned, I think they are in a very very bad place, and this is due to the fact that not only their command control capabilities were shattered since day one of this war, but also because we [the IDF] are, together with the U.S., hunting their launching capabilities.”

McKenzie said the U.S. is also making progress against Iran’s drone threat, though he acknowledged that it remains an evolving challenge. Throughout the conflict, Tehran has launched over 2,000 low-cost, easy-to-produce drones at targets across the Middle East.

“We are still absorbing how to employ and defend against drones, as is really everybody else,” he said. “The best way to do that is going to be by striking where the drones are manufactured, where they’re launched. The worst way to do it is to defend them in the terminal area.”

McKenzie also addressed the conflict over the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran has effectively blocked one of the world’s most critical oil routes. He said the U.S. has already struck Iran’s major naval assets and is now focused on “preparatory steps in order to clear” it.

“What that means is first clearing those craft, getting rid of Iranian submarines, looking at the fast-attack craft, the small cigarette-boat type vessels that can swarm out from the northern to the southern coast of Iran … to affect shipping in the region,” McKenzie said. “CENTCOM is busy on a program of doing that. I think there’s probably some days left ahead of work to finish that. But it’s progressing.”

He said Iran also retains a “large and capable stack of mines,” and suggested CENTCOM has likely been targeting both the mines and the vessels used to lay them.

“You don’t have to clear the whole Strait of Hormuz,” McKenzie said. “You’ve got to clear a route that you’re going to bring vessels through.”

Ayish noted that he sees “two ways to solve” the tension at the strait.

“One is the diplomatic channel that is under discussion between the U.S. and the Iranians via certain mediators, and there is the military option,” Ayish said. “When you are analyzing the achievements that were achieved, it seems like both options are viable, and I think the major reason for the Iranians to go into this negotiation is because they know that it’s very imminent. Both options are seriously on the table.”

When asked whether CENTCOM had failed to adequately prepare for what had unfolded in the strait, McKenzie rejected that premise.

“I’m not sure I’d agree with that assertion,” he said. “You build your plan off the forces that you have. We’ve always thought there’d be a struggle over this. The nature of warfare is you can’t get everything you want. Sometimes it takes a little while to get that. I think we’re working toward that end right now.”

McKenzie also declined to rule out the possibility of U.S. boots on the ground, an outcome many Democrats and some Republicans have strongly opposed.

“I think it’s certainly something we want the Iranians to worry about,” McKenzie said. “I would certainly leave that on the table, and then I wouldn’t share what I was going to do. I think we want them to be very worried about that.”

Meanwhile, while Ayish noted a goal of achieving “a situation that will allow a regime change in the future in Iran,” McKenzie said the U.S. is not directly pursuing regime change in Tehran, even if it could emerge as a consequence of the campaign, even as Trump told reporters Tuesday that regime change had already been achieved.

“The United States is not pursuing regime change directly. It may be a product of what we’re doing,” McKenzie said. “We’d like to get to a point where there’s going to be some entity in Tehran that will negotiate the objectives we want for this campaign, whether it’s a completely new regime or a version of this regime that is so affected by pressure that they’re willing to make these concessions.”