In his briefing on the morning of March 10, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dismissed Iran’s week of strikes across the Gulf as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “flailing recklessly.” It is a reassuring framing. It is also wrong — and dangerously so. Understanding what Tehran is actually doing matters enormously for what comes next.
Iran’s campaign does not look like desperation. It looks like Thomas Schelling. In his classic study of military coercion, Schelling defined risk strategy as the deliberate manipulation of shared danger. This approach exploits the “danger somebody may inadvertently go over the brink, dragging the other with him.”
This is precisely what Tehran is attempting. By widening the conflict and raising economic and political costs of continued fighting, Iran aims to create pressure on Gulf governments, global markets, and ultimately Washington, compelling it to halt the campaign. The first 10 days of fighting, examined carefully, reveal not reckless lashing out but a coherent and escalating coercive logic.
Tehran’s campaign reflects an updated deterrence calculus. After the April 2024 Damascus strike killed senior IRGC officers, Iran telegraphed its retaliatory attack on Israel in advance, signaling restraint. But that caution was not rewarded. Washington and Jerusalem struck again — and again. Tehran has since concluded that restraint, unreciprocated, does not deter. Only costs that are impossible to ignore achieve that effect.
Consider the target selection. According to the Institute of National Security Studies, Tehran has launched more than 750 missiles and 2,000 drones toward the region. Only about 180 targeted Israel — the state that directly struck Iranian territory. The UAE alone absorbed over 1,400 drones, 260 ballistic missiles, and eight cruise missiles. That disparity is not simply an accident of geography. It is a strategic choice.
The campaign also followed a deliberate progression. Early strikes concentrated on military installations hosting U.S. forces, including Al Dharfra Air Base in the UAE, Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, Camp Arifijan in Kuwait, and the U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain. Rather than striking those bases indiscriminately, those attacks repeatedly targeted missile-defense radars and communications nodes. Within days, the campaign expanded to civilian infrastructure, including airports, ports, hotels, and data centers used by the U.S. military and its partners. A drone strike on a logistics unit at Kuwait’s Port Shuaiba killed six American soldiers, suggesting Iranian intelligence had tracked U.S. forces miles from the main base. By midweek, energy infrastructure had entered the target set. Strikes on Saudi Arabia’s Ras Tanura refinery, fuel storage facilities at Fujairah in the UAE, and Qatar’s Ras Laffan LNG complex — the world’s largest — sent European gas futures up 76% in a single week. Oil crossed $110 per barrel.
Each target category serves a distinct coercive purpose. Attacks on military installations raise risks to U.S. personnel. Strikes on airports and ports signal to Gulf governments that hosting U.S. forces carries direct economic consequences. Disruptions to LNG and oil infrastructure send a warning far beyond the Middle East that the costs of this war will not remain local.
The Gulf states are a particularly well-chosen pressure point not because they are combatants, but precisely because they are not. In the weeks before the conflict, Gulf leaders urgently warned Washington against attacking Iran, stressing their territory must not be used for offensive operations. Yet they now find themselves entrapped in a war they neither chose nor supported. Their economies face simultaneous downturns in hydrocarbon, shipping, tourism, and aviation revenues. Their militaries are expending interceptors at a rapid rate. Gulf leaders have publicly called for de-escalation. That is exactly what Iran is counting on.
Some analysts argue that Iran’s strikes are backfiring, pushing Gulf states closer to Washington rather than pressuring it. There is something to this. Gulf anger at Tehran is real. But the asymmetry of interests limits how far that logic runs. Iran is fighting for regime survival. For the Gulf states, this war is not existential. However furious Gulf leaders may be, they have powerful incentives to avoid further escalation. Their economies, their reputations, their carefully constructed images of stability are all at risk. That calculus favors pressure toward de-escalation, not wider war, which is precisely Iran’s bet.
Tehran also still holds cards it has yet to play. Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq oil processing facility remains vulnerable. Expanded attacks on desalination plants could threaten drinking water for tens of millions. And Iran is now signaling readiness to escalate dramatically. It has reportedly laid roughly a dozen mines in the Strait of Hormuz in recent days. Iran possesses thousands of mines to make a sustained closure of the Strait a genuine possibility. That would confront Washington with a terrible dilemma: Attempt to reopen it under withering drone and missile fire, at significant cost to American ships or personnel, or accept a prolonged closure of the waterway — one that could take weeks or months to reverse. The mines laid so far look less like the opening of that campaign than a demonstration that Tehran retains the option — and is prepared to use it.
None of this means Iran’s strategy will succeed. Escalation, once begun, follows its own logic. But dismissing Tehran’s campaign as reckless flailing badly misreads the situation — and risks badly miscalculating what comes next.
Iran Isn’t ‘Flailing’ — It’s Executing a Coercive Risk Strategy
By Kelly A. Grieco
Defense Policy & Posture
Iran’s strategy of drone and missile strikes is neither random nor desperate; rather, it is a coherent strategy designed to steadily increase the political and economic costs of continued U.S. and Israeli military operations. Iran’s goal is not merely to put an end to the current fighting but to inflict sufficient pain to ensure the United States and Israel do not repeat this again. Understanding the logic behind Iran’s actions is essential in coming to realistic assessments about the course of the conflict and preventing dangerous miscalculations.
In his briefing on the morning of March 10, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dismissed Iran’s week of strikes across the Gulf as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “flailing recklessly.” It is a reassuring framing. It is also wrong — and dangerously so. Understanding what Tehran is actually doing matters enormously for what comes next.
Iran’s campaign does not look like desperation. It looks like Thomas Schelling. In his classic study of military coercion, Schelling defined risk strategy as the deliberate manipulation of shared danger. This approach exploits the “danger somebody may inadvertently go over the brink, dragging the other with him.”
This is precisely what Tehran is attempting. By widening the conflict and raising economic and political costs of continued fighting, Iran aims to create pressure on Gulf governments, global markets, and ultimately Washington, compelling it to halt the campaign. The first 10 days of fighting, examined carefully, reveal not reckless lashing out but a coherent and escalating coercive logic.
Tehran’s campaign reflects an updated deterrence calculus. After the April 2024 Damascus strike killed senior IRGC officers, Iran telegraphed its retaliatory attack on Israel in advance, signaling restraint. But that caution was not rewarded. Washington and Jerusalem struck again — and again. Tehran has since concluded that restraint, unreciprocated, does not deter. Only costs that are impossible to ignore achieve that effect.
Consider the target selection. According to the Institute of National Security Studies, Tehran has launched more than 750 missiles and 2,000 drones toward the region. Only about 180 targeted Israel — the state that directly struck Iranian territory. The UAE alone absorbed over 1,400 drones, 260 ballistic missiles, and eight cruise missiles. That disparity is not simply an accident of geography. It is a strategic choice.
The campaign also followed a deliberate progression. Early strikes concentrated on military installations hosting U.S. forces, including Al Dharfra Air Base in the UAE, Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, Camp Arifijan in Kuwait, and the U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain. Rather than striking those bases indiscriminately, those attacks repeatedly targeted missile-defense radars and communications nodes. Within days, the campaign expanded to civilian infrastructure, including airports, ports, hotels, and data centers used by the U.S. military and its partners. A drone strike on a logistics unit at Kuwait’s Port Shuaiba killed six American soldiers, suggesting Iranian intelligence had tracked U.S. forces miles from the main base. By midweek, energy infrastructure had entered the target set. Strikes on Saudi Arabia’s Ras Tanura refinery, fuel storage facilities at Fujairah in the UAE, and Qatar’s Ras Laffan LNG complex — the world’s largest — sent European gas futures up 76% in a single week. Oil crossed $110 per barrel.
Each target category serves a distinct coercive purpose. Attacks on military installations raise risks to U.S. personnel. Strikes on airports and ports signal to Gulf governments that hosting U.S. forces carries direct economic consequences. Disruptions to LNG and oil infrastructure send a warning far beyond the Middle East that the costs of this war will not remain local.
The Gulf states are a particularly well-chosen pressure point not because they are combatants, but precisely because they are not. In the weeks before the conflict, Gulf leaders urgently warned Washington against attacking Iran, stressing their territory must not be used for offensive operations. Yet they now find themselves entrapped in a war they neither chose nor supported. Their economies face simultaneous downturns in hydrocarbon, shipping, tourism, and aviation revenues. Their militaries are expending interceptors at a rapid rate. Gulf leaders have publicly called for de-escalation. That is exactly what Iran is counting on.
Some analysts argue that Iran’s strikes are backfiring, pushing Gulf states closer to Washington rather than pressuring it. There is something to this. Gulf anger at Tehran is real. But the asymmetry of interests limits how far that logic runs. Iran is fighting for regime survival. For the Gulf states, this war is not existential. However furious Gulf leaders may be, they have powerful incentives to avoid further escalation. Their economies, their reputations, their carefully constructed images of stability are all at risk. That calculus favors pressure toward de-escalation, not wider war, which is precisely Iran’s bet.
Tehran also still holds cards it has yet to play. Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq oil processing facility remains vulnerable. Expanded attacks on desalination plants could threaten drinking water for tens of millions. And Iran is now signaling readiness to escalate dramatically. It has reportedly laid roughly a dozen mines in the Strait of Hormuz in recent days. Iran possesses thousands of mines to make a sustained closure of the Strait a genuine possibility. That would confront Washington with a terrible dilemma: Attempt to reopen it under withering drone and missile fire, at significant cost to American ships or personnel, or accept a prolonged closure of the waterway — one that could take weeks or months to reverse. The mines laid so far look less like the opening of that campaign than a demonstration that Tehran retains the option — and is prepared to use it.
None of this means Iran’s strategy will succeed. Escalation, once begun, follows its own logic. But dismissing Tehran’s campaign as reckless flailing badly misreads the situation — and risks badly miscalculating what comes next.
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