Introduction
The Memorandum of Understanding is in place but the kinetic attacks have not stopped and the volcano remains bubbling. The war demonstrated that the US and Israel could strike Iranian targets at will and with precision. But Iran showed that it could impose costs in return. The important aspect is the manner in which the battlefield has shifted and the degree to which warfare accelerated by technology, algorithms and AI can remain controllable.
Although this conflict has been framed as a conventional, the way it panned out points to hybrid warfare. According to the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, “hybrid threats are methods and activities that are targeted towards vulnerabilities of the opponent” where the “range of methods and activities is wide.
The Iran War showed how this type of warfare is no longer confined to proxy attacks, covert action, terrorism, sabotage, or grey-zone pressure. Those remain central, but they now operate inside a wider strategic environment: commercial shipping, insurance markets, data centres, production of missiles and ammunition, rare earths, AI-enabled targeting, and alliances.
The targets are those that enable the use of military power. This was visible in the manner that Iran did not need to defeat the US but create conditions that made the surrounding political-economic system unable to absorb unsustainable pain. It is not simply that Iran leveraged the Strait of Hormuz but there are broader lessons for warfare.
Centre of Gravity
The first strike by the US and Israel was on the Iranian leadership identified as the the centre of gravity and it was presumed that their elimination would create a power vacuum and create a popular apprising against the regime.
Iran’s strategy was not to win a conventional military contest against the US and Israel. It was to make the war harder to contain. Gulf capitals, shipping insurers, energy and fertilizer markets, data centres and US allies all became part of the battlefield.
Tehran responded to the strikes vertically and horizontally. They identified and attacked sensitive targets and widened the geographic scope of the war. Vertically, it meant placing consequential economic and political interests at risk, thereby raising the potential costs of the conflict far beyond the immediate battlefield. Horizontally, this meant expanding pressure across additional geographies and systems, including nations hosting US bases, commercial shipping, energy markets and insurance networks and infrastructure.
By doing so, Tehran shifted the war away from areas where the US held clear military advantages and to economic and commercial systems that had cascading effects. Thus, an adversary that could not otherwise match US military power directly imposed costs geographically, economically, and politically.
The objective was not necessarily battlefield victory. The objectives were survival, cost imposition, and the displacement of pressure beyond the immediate battlefield. Iran shifted the centre of gravity to the Strait of Hormuz which ‘strait jacketed’ the US ambitions in the war and then shifted the focus to create conditions to reopen the crucial waterway.
In a future conflict, the adversary may not need to defeat the attacking force. It may only need to make the surrounding system too costly to sustain. The fact is that while airpower can dominate the battlefield but it can still leave the strategic system contested.
Commercial Confidence and Sea Control
One of the most important lessons pertained to sea control. The US was able to strike military targets, but commercial transit through the Strait of Hormuz remained functionally impossible not only because of the blockade but as insurers, shipowners and energy markets believed passage was unsafe.
The statistics are telling , within twenty-four hours of the US and Israeli attacks on 28 February transits of all vessel types through the Strait of Hormuz were down 81 percent . There were only four Crude tanker movements on 01 March compared to a January daily average of twenty-four. By 12 March, Kpler vessel-tracking data showed tanker transits had collapsed by approximately 92 percent compared with the week before the war began. On 02 March approximately 6 percent of global tanker capacity was stranded in the Persian Gulf.
By early March, it recorded outbound trade in crude oil down 95 percent, LNG down 99 percent, and fertilizer almost completely halted. This highlights the chokepoint’s significance
Iran did not need conventional naval superiority to disrupt movement in the strait. It needed mines, missiles, drones, small vessels, and threats that demonstrated willingness to raise the perceived cost of transit.
The key question is not only whether the US Navy could defeat the opposing fleet. It is whether the US can convince commercial shipping to believe movement is safe enough to resume. Commercial confidence is now part of sea control.
AI Accelerated Both Targeting and Legitimacy
That AI is being used increasingly in war is a given. AI-enabled targeting may help commanders process information and act faster. But speed creates its own strategic risk. Warfare depends on legitimacy, targeting decisions must therefore be lawful
On 28 February the Shajareh Tayyebeh Girls’ Elementary School in Minab was destroyed by missile strikes. The attack killed at least 175 people, including 120 schoolchildren, prompting international outrage and investigations.
It was one of the US military’s deadliest civilian bombings in decades. But nearly four months on, the Pentagon has given no answers about why the military fired a Tomahawk cruise missile into the school.
President Trump when asked about the investigation during a press conference at the G7 meeting in, France said; “It’s such a strange question to be asked at this date, because you’re talking about a long time ago,” and stated; “But nobody did that on purpose.”
It is not only whether AI can accelerate targeting, but whether military and political leaders can adequately explain how targets are generated, reviewed, and approved. As AI-enabled systems become more common, the legitimacy of the decision-making process may become as strategically important.
AI governance requires militaries to build capacity to understand and manage the consequences of technology. It is not only whether the force can target faster. It is whether it can target faster while preserving legitimacy and prevent collateral damage. Legitimacy in war cannot be relegated to a public-relations afterthought. It is part of the contest.
Targeting The Gulf
Iran’s pressure on the other Persian Gulf littoral states was not only about US military bases. It also aimed at shattering an illusion that Gulf states can function as secure, investable, globally connected countries while hosting US bases.
Airfields and ports desalination facilities, energy infrastructure, cloud services, logistics hubs, and public confidence. These are no longer strategic vulnerabilities and sensitivities but also criticalities.
The 2025 Iranian missile attack on Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar illustrates the point. Qatar intercepted the attack but the strategic effect was broader. The strike placed a host nation, its population, its airspace, and its political relationship with Washington inside the war, underscoring the problems of base defence, host-nation security and political signaling.
As the war stalled, with Iranians striking bases around the region they celebraed with Lego-style videos on TikTok with images marking the decline of US power.
Cloud Is Part of Campaign Geography
The Iran War highlighted a major shift:; Data centers, internet cables , commercial AI providers, logistics platforms, and software infrastructure are now part of the battlespace. They help enable military operations, financial flows, communications, targeting, logistics, and regional economic confidence. They are no longer rear-area background systems.
Iran identified US technology firms that maintain offices, data centers, cloud infrastructure, and research facilities. Iranian strikes on AWS-linked facilities in the UAE and in Bahrain, illustrated how commercial digital infrastructure increasingly occupies strategic terrain.
The attacks disrupted services and forced operators to reroute workloads. For the first time, core cloud infrastructure, once seen as abstract and largely as commercial technology, was directly struck in a military conflict.
The cloud was no longer some weightless digital mist. It was is a physical system built from land, concrete, transformers, cooling systems, cables, and electricity. Data Centres are now at the forefront of the targeting list. This means the cloud is vulnerable to the logic of war.
Much of the infrastructure that enables modern operations is privately owned, and globally distributed. The companies involved may not think of themselves as combatants, but adversaries may not grant them that distinction.
Conclusion
Operation Epic Fury has taught us that modern war runs through various systems that were not part of the traditional battlefield milieu.
In ‘Art of War’ Sun Tzu uses water as the central metaphor for a military force when he wrote about ‘expanding torrents’. Unlike static formations, water adapts to the landscape and gains destructive power through accumulation and release.
The central challenge is therefore not only how to strike, defend or deter. It is how to maintain strategic control when adversaries can impose costs through systems that sit outside the traditional battlefield but inside the matrix of war. Modern warfare contests the conditions under which military power remains usable. The side that understands these issues will be in a position to control the strategic outcome.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maj Gen VK Singh, VSM was commissioned into The Scinde Horse in Dec 1983. The officer has commanded an Independent Recce Sqn in the desert sector, and has the distinction of being the first Armoured Corps Officer to command an Assam Rifles Battalion in Counter Insurgency Operations in Manipur and Nagaland, as well as the first General Cadre Officer to command a Strategic Forces Brigade. He then commanded 12 Infantry Division (RAPID) in Western Sector. The General is a fourth generation army officer.
Major General Jagatbir Singh was commissioned into 18 Cavalry in December 1981. During his 38 years of service in the Army he has held various command, staff and instructional appointments and served in varied terrains in the country. He has served in a United Nations Peace Keeping Mission as a Military Observer in Iraq and Kuwait. He has been an instructor to Indian Military Academy and the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington. He is a prolific writer in defence & national security and adept at public speaking.
