U.S. warships are deliberately staying out of the Gulf and beyond the Strait of Hormuz amid rising tensions with Iran, according to a former senior Pentagon strategic analyst, who warned that Tehran possesses hypersonic missiles and "carrier-killer" ballistic missiles capable of striking American naval assets.
Michael Maloof, a former senior security policy analyst in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, said that while Iran has so far deployed only drones in its recent confrontations, its wider arsenal presents a credible threat to U.S. forces in the region.
"In the Gulf itself, even though they may stand off, I think the Iranians have displayed that they have a capability of reaching out to them if they want to now," Maloof said. " They're only using drones at this point, but they have hypersonic, they also have ballistic missiles, which could be carrier killers, if you will. So they have a capability, and you don't see warships inside the Gulf doing any escort. It's primarily helicopters. And so U.S. warships are purposely staying out beyond the Strait of Hormuz at this point."
Maloof also characterized the U.S. military posture as increasingly offensive, despite Washington's stated defensive principles. He noted that the initial Feb 28 U.S. strikes on Iran - conducted alongside Israel - marked a departure from traditional deterrence and raised the prospect of false-flag provocations.
"For the United States, we were supposed to be a defensive nation. But we did a pre-emptive strike on Iran after all, along with Israel. Any good offense is a good defense in the eyes of the military. Also, you can always come up with some false flag that they'll react to. It's all very offensive from the U.S. standpoint," he said.
He added that Iran has made clear its intention to escalate in response, likely targeting U.S. warships and assets in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries that host American forces. "I will say though that Iran has made it clear that they will be escalating on their end when they respond, and this can only mean that they will be hitting U.S. assets. It probably will be aiming more at U.S. warships, if it gets any more critical, and also with the GCC countries that are in the region that house US assets," Maloof said.
Perhaps most significantly, Maloof highlighted what he described as a fundamental mismatch between U.S. military doctrine and Iran's asymmetric warfare strategy. While the U.S. relies on frontal military power, he argued, Iran is systematically degrading American capabilities through targeted strikes on command-and-control networks - an approach that Washington has struggled to counter.
"The U.S. is very frontal in terms of using direct military power. The Iranians are much more asymmetric in their approach, and the U.S. doesn't have a very effective means of dealing with that. The Iranians are not trying to match ship for ship or plane for plane, they can't do that. So what they're doing is going after what I would call a digital brain of the war machine, like radar systems, command control, and information data centers that are sprinkled throughout the Middle East and in the GCC countries, and that's been very effective in making a number of the U.S. assets incapable of being used effectively."
According to Maloof, the impact of such tactics is already visible on the ground. The U.S. has been forced to pull back from approximately half of the 34 military locations it maintains around Iran - a significant strategic contraction.
The analysis come at a time of heightened volatility in the Middle East, with Iranian leaders vowing retaliation for recent strikes and the U.S. maintaining a significant naval presence just beyond the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint through which roughly one-fifth of global oil supply transits.
US warships keeping distance from Gulf as Iran's asymmetric capabilities grow, former Pentagon analyst says
