The Iran war started as a test of military capabilities and stockpiles, and the U.S. and Israel had the clear advantage. The U.S. brought some 20 ships and submarines to the fight—including two aircraft carriers—50,000 troops, and hundreds of planes and drones. President Trump declared that he would decide when the war would end, claiming after just days that the U.S. had won.But the momentum of the now three-week war has shifted dramatically since Iran effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz, stranding tankers that usually carry one-fifth of the world’s oil supply through the channel. Trump responded by dispatching reinforcements. Three amphibious ships, carrying more than 5,000 Marines and sailors, are traveling from Asia and will be in the Gulf as soon as Friday, defense officials told us. The Pentagon is preparing to dispatch 2,000 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division, and more troops may soon get orders to deploy.Even that may not be enough to contain the war’s spreading damage to the global economy. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak warned in an interview on Saturday on Israel’s Channel 13 about the prospects of reopening the strait. For such a mission, Barak said, “We would need to deploy two American divisions there and prepare to be there for the long haul.” Two divisions constitute at least 20,000 troops. Naval forces would need to clear mines and escort oil tankers and other commercial vessels, while other troops seek to stop Iranian missiles and drones targeting those operations.Yet Iran’s ability to keep the strait blocked—an act that the United Arab Emirates’s Industry and Advanced Technology Minister Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber has called “economic terrorism” against every nation—doesn’t depend on the country defeating the American expeditionary force. The mere threat of attacks on shipping—or the occasional mine, drone, or missile that reaches a tanker in transit—may be enough for Tehran to achieve its aims. Trump began the war by talking about regime change and eliminating threats from Iran but is now trying to stabilize global energy markets that have been thrown into turmoil by the strait’s closure. The leverage over how the war will end has shifted from Washington to Tehran, and Trump is displaying new interest in negotiating with the regime. The U.S. this week put forward a 15-point plan to end the war, centered on Iran’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs, and Tehran countered with a five-point proposal tackling entirely different issues, including reparations for war damage and recognition of Iran’s authority over the strait.The strategy that Iran is pursuing now—asymmetric warfare against superior U.S. forces—is reminiscent of the methods used by Iraqi insurgents to counter American and allied militaries on the ground more than two decades ago. Back then, the weapons of choice were improvised explosive devices dug into roadsides by Iraq’s insurgents. Today, they are cheap Iranian drones and floating mines. As of last week, U.S. officials believe as many as a dozen Iranian mines are already in the waterway, and some 5,000 more are in reserve. In both cases, low-cost, mobile, and easily concealed weapons pose an outsize threat to far more advanced—and expensive—U.S. weaponry. The U.S. has struck more than 9,000 targets since the war began on February 28, the military says, sinking 140 Iranian naval vessels and degrading roughly 90 percent of Iran’s ballistic-missile and drone capabilities (though the Pentagon has not provided details). But Iran appears to be husbanding its remaining arsenal, reserving ballistic missiles for high-value or symbolic targets (particularly those in the territory of U.S. allies in the Gulf) while relying on drones for more frequent, shorter-range attacks. Like insurgents in Iraq, Iran doesn’t need to win outright; it needs only to endure, using limited force to impose economic and strategic damage. The U.S. and Israel, in contrast, must achieve decisive gains to avoid a strategic loss.The result, Barak told his audience, is a conflict slipping into a war of attrition. America “has won almost every battle, but it hasn’t won a single war in the last 60 years. We need to think about all of this, and I really hope I’m wrong, but I’m very afraid.”Asymmetric warfare is a long-standing strategy of weaker states confronting stronger ones—and Iran has refined it over decades against the U.S., including in Iraq, where Tehran supplied proxies with missiles and small arms. Explosively formed penetrators, known as EFPs, that were capable of piercing armored vehicles killed hundreds of U.S. troops. More recently, Iran equipped Houthi militias with missiles and drones that snarled a U.S. campaign—backed by two aircraft carriers—to defend a different Middle Eastern shipping lane, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.U.S. military planners have long warned that Iran could close the Strait of Hormuz if the regime were threatened. Trump may have framed preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons as a central aim of the conflict but Tehran’s current equivalent of a “nuclear option” is to choke off traffic in the strait. “Iran is using local weapons to generate global impact,” Kelly Grieco of the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank, told us.[Read: The Iran war has four stages. We’re in the second.]A parallel asymmetric fight is unfolding in the air. Iran has no match for the most sophisticated U.S. fighter jets and bombers, which have pounded ballistic-missile warehouses, greatly depleting Iran’s arsenal. But Iran’s number of attacks has risen as the war has progressed, according to Ahmad Sharawi of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which has tracked Iran’s strikes since the war began. Iran launched 18 to 27 attacks in the first week, 24 to 39 in the second, and 25 to 41 in the third.Iran shifted from missiles to drones over that period. Tehran appears now to be reserving ballistic missiles for more distant targets such as Israel; it launched a barrage at Tel Aviv earlier this week. Iran aims fewer ballistic missiles against other Gulf countries these days, reserving those weapons for highly symbolic strikes. Last week, for example, Saudi Arabia intercepted four ballistic missiles bound for Riyadh, just ahead of a nearby meeting of regional foreign ministers. On Saturday, two suspected Iranian ballistic missiles targeted the U.S.-U.K. base at Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean, marking the farthest distance attempted by an Iranian missile. (One reportedly failed while the other was intercepted. Iran has denied responsibility for the attack.)Iranian attacks on closer foes, such as Qatar, the UAE, and other targets in Saudi Arabia, have been left to fleets of drones that appear to be aimed at disrupting civilian infrastructure and creating economic chaos. A successful strike on the UAE’s Port of Fujairah—a key global-energy hub—was quickly followed by another. Iran also struck Kuwait’s Mina al-Ahmadi refinery, which is capable of processing up to 730,000 barrels of oil a day; drones hit last Thursday and Friday, sparking multiple fires.“The targeting of civilian infrastructure is designed to inflict maximum damage on these countries to push Gulf countries to pressure Trump” to figure out how to stem the damage, Sharawi told us. “This is a clear way Iran is trying to undermine a collective stronger enemy.”Iran’s targets for its drones and missiles are fixed: oil refineries, desalination plants, and other key economic infrastructure. The U.S. and Israel also have struck thousands of fixed targets in Iran, such as missile-production facilities and warehouses.But for the U.S. to gain the upper hand, “it must hit Iran’s mobile targets—launchers, drones, smaller attack boats that plant sea mines,” Greico told us, “which is much harder.”United States military history is ripe with examples of how hard that is.When the U.S. launched Operation Earnest Will in 1987 to safeguard commercial vessels in the Gulf during the Iran-Iraq War, the first escort mission ended in calamity, when a U.S.-flagged oil tanker, the Bridgeton, struck a mine. Another mine blew a hole in the hull of a Navy frigate, the USS Samuel Roberts, the following year.In the Gulf War in 1991, the amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli, which was serving as flagship for a demining mission off Kuwait, accidentally steamed into a minefield that ripped a 16-by-20-foot hole in its bow. Several hours later, the guided missile cruiser USS Princeton detonated another mine.[Read: The glaring oversight in the U.S. war plan]Countermine warfare typically involves two elements: hunting, where vessels or aircraft use sonar and other means to track down mines, and sweeping, where ships drag equipment through the water to neutralize mines. In addition to minehunter and sweeper ships, the Navy uses the MH-53E Sea Dragon helicopter, which can drag countermine equipment behind it in the water. (The Navy has also long trained dolphins and sea lions to detect and mark mines.)The U.S. military’s mine-destroying forces are in transition. In 2025, the Navy finally made good on a plan to decommission half of its remaining fleet of eight Avenger-class minesweepers. Those ships, built primarily of wood, plastic, and fiberglass (which have a lower magnetic signature) to avoid detonating mines, were designed to provide a highly maneuverable way to penetrate minefields.But those ships are aging out of service, and their design requires U.S. sailors to navigate in minefields. Littoral combat ships, shallow-water vessels that can be equipped with countermine equipment, had been regarded in the Navy as a lesser option. But those are now on the front lines, in part because their countermining is conducted remotely, keeping sailors at a safe distance. “As someone who captained three ships, I think if we have the capability to put America’s sons and daughters at more limited risk, that’s a good thing,” Sam Howard, a retired Navy captain who commanded the minehunter USS Raven, told us.U.S. Central Command has declined to comment on its countermine plans. As of last week, the Navy’s four remaining Avenger-class minesweepers were in Japan, not the Middle East. And two of the replacement littoral combat ships the Navy usually keeps in Bahrain were in Singapore for maintenance, while a third was in the Indian Ocean.Experts note that demining operations can’t even begin until CENTCOM reduces the missile and drone threat, leaving U.S. forces uncertain about how many mines may be floating below the surface of the strait. So U.S. forces continue to pound Iranian positions, destroying naval vessels and submarines and even debuting a new 5,000-pound bomb against anti-ship missiles buried deep underground.[Read: The Pentagon cut its civilian safeguards before the Iran war ]When CENTCOM’s commander, Admiral Brad Cooper, is ready to clear the Strait of Hormuz, he is likely to send F-16 and F-18 jets to take out remaining Iranian small attack craft; establish overhead surveillance; then bring in Navy destroyers to protect the ships searching for mines, Mark Montgomery, a retired rear admiral who is now at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told us.When demining begins, U.S. planes and armed helicopters will conduct combat air patrols overhead, and the Navy will conduct several sweeps before the first escorts attempt to transit, Montgomery said. A heightened U.S. naval presence will have to remain to prevent Iran from laying new mines.But a handful of attacks by mines, missiles, or drones might be enough to scare off commercial shipping, which has already been reduced by more than 90 percent. Even after that, Iran is likely to retain its ability to manufacture and launch drones. Montgomery told us that U.S. fighter jets can use precision munitions to shoot those down. Underwater explosives are a greater challenge. “I’m not sweating those,” Montgomery said of the drones. “I’m sweating the mines.”As reporters covering America’s long counterinsurgency up close, we have seen and felt how a U.S. enemy can persist through asymmetrical warfare. For years, Iraq’s insurgents planted explosives that would detonate as soon as an American vehicle ran over them. Our job when traveling in a Humvee was to pull in the gunner, whose head was above the vehicle, as soon as we heard the explosion and before the vehicle rolled over him—an unforgettable sound and a lingering fear. Even now, we wince at the sight of disturbance at the edge of a roadway, a telltale sign in Iraq of an explosive hiding just below the surface.Ultimately, the U.S. never defeated the threat of improvised explosive devices in Iraq, but instead built better systems and equipment to protect troops, such as mine-resistant-ambush protected vehicles, or MRAPs, that were designed to withstand an IED blast. The Pentagon rushed the MRAPs out to the forces, years into the war in Iraq, after a lesson painfully learned: No matter how many strikes the U.S. launches against insurgents, America’s foes always find a way to build one more explosive. And sometimes, that is enough.