American forces have been striking targets along Iran’s Persian Gulf coast for almost a week.
Iranian media reported that eight people were killed as bridges, communications infrastructure and a maritime surveillance tower were hit across Hormozgan and Sistan-Baluchistan provinces.
Rebeccah Heinrichs, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, says the concentration of attacks along Iran’s southern coastline—and increasingly farther inland—suggests the United States is moving beyond retaliation against individual strikes and targeting the infrastructure that allows Tehran to sustain and eventually rebuild the military capabilities underpinning its operations around the Strait of Hormuz.
“Up until very recently, the United States was primarily focused on doing retaliatory strikes exclusively along the coastline of Iran,” Heinrichs told Eye for Iran. . “
‘Protecting maritime traffic’
The attacks came after President Donald Trump warned that bridges and power infrastructure could become targets if Tehran refused to return to negotiations.
Iranian military officials, meanwhile, said the conflict would “spread to new areas” if US operations continued.
“I suspect that the United States has had these targets on their list,” she said. “President Trump has gone back to Admiral Cooper and said, ‘What else do we need to hit?’”
The likely focus, she added, was Iran’s ability to replenish the military capabilities it uses around the Strait of Hormuz.
Among the sites struck was a maritime surveillance tower in Chabahar. Iran described it as a facility monitoring commercial shipping, while US Central Command said it formed part of an IRGC network used to track vessels transiting the strait and coordinate attacks against them.
CENTCOM said destroying the tower would directly reduce the Revolutionary Guards’ ability to threaten maritime traffic.
The targeting of bridges in Hormozgan province also points to an expanding set of military objectives.
Heinrichs said Washington had sought to limit civilian harm, but argued that some dual-use infrastructure could become a legitimate military target if it substantially enabled IRGC operations.
“There are some targets that the United States could legitimately hit,” she said. “They may create some harm, of course, to the civilian population, but they also primarily enable and facilitate the IRGC to repress their people and to continue their war effort.”
A limited ground role?
The widening campaign has also fuelled speculation about whether Washington could eventually deploy ground forces inside Iran.
Heinrichs dismissed the prospect of a large-scale invasion, saying any deployment would more likely involve special operations forces tasked with securing or removing nuclear material rather than occupying territory.
“If President Trump were to go with any contingency that would entail some element of US ground forces, it would almost certainly be because the United States wants to remove any nuclear material that is still inside Iran,” she said.
For now, however, Heinrichs believes the campaign remains centred on the Strait of Hormuz.
The initial phase significantly weakened Iran’s military leadership and its capacity to project power beyond its borders, she said. Washington has now moved into what she described as “the battle over the Strait of Hormuz.”
Taken together, the latest strikes point to a campaign that is evolving beyond retaliation. Rather than simply responding to Iranian attacks, Washington appears increasingly focused on preventing Tehran from regenerating the military infrastructure underpinning its operations around the Strait of Hormuz.
