The sinking of the Iris Dena on March 4th was the first military strike outside the Middle East since the war began, and analysts say it raised concerns that the U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran could widen beyond the Persian Gulf if it drags on.

It also became a diplomatic embarrassment for New Delhi, which had hosted the sunken vessel for peacetime multilateral naval drills.

All three Iranian ships — the two vessels that are now in India and Sri Lanka as well as the torpedoed ship — were sailing in the Indian Ocean after participating in the exercises along India’s east coast.

The South Asian countries have called their decision to permit the ships to enter their ports a “humanitarian” gesture.

Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar told parliament Monday the Iranian ship Iris Lavan sailed into the southern port of Kochi last week after it reported a technical problem. Its crew, mostly young cadets, have been housed at Indian naval facilities.

He said that the government believed “it was the right thing to do.”

Sri Lanka, an Indian Ocean island country lying southeast of India, took control of Iran’s Irins Bushehr and offloaded some 288 crew members at Trincomalee port after the ship had sought assistance saying one of its engines malfunctioned.

A day earlier, its navy rescued 32 sailors and recovered 87 bodies from the sunken Dena.

The South Asian country has stressed its neutrality after finding itself caught in the conflict saying it would take no sides.

India, which has friendly ties with all parties in the conflict — the U.S., Israel and Iran — has steered clear of explicitly supporting or condemning any side since the hostilities erupted. Neither has made any official comment on the sinking of the Dena. Foreign Minister Jaishankar has only said that the ships were caught “on the wrong side of events.”

Washington has vowed to destroy Iran’s military capabilities, including its navy.

“An American submarine sank an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters,” U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stated last week, calling it a “quiet death.”

The ship was torpedoed in international waters, but the U.S. attack on the vessel close to Sri Lanka raised questions about the expanding scope of the military campaign against Iran.

“So far we had assumed the conflict was confined to the Persian Gulf. But when the ship was sunk off the coast of Sri Lanka, which is 3000 kilometers away, the implication was that there are chances of the conflict spreading,” said Arun Prakash, a former Indian navy chief.

“Perhaps it was also a message to India and others – after all the ship was no direct threat to the U.S. — that the U.S. has an extensive reach and can strike wherever it wants,” he added.

The naval exercises hosted by India, in which 74 countries and 18 foreign warships participated, intended to showcase its influence in its maritime neighborhood. New Delhi, which has been building its naval prowess, has often stated its ambitions to become the “preferred security partner” in the Indian Ocean, which is also a crucial artery for seaborne oil trade.

But analysts said that Dena’s sinking had cast a shadow over India’s regional aspirations.

“This episode demonstrates that we are not really the sentinels of the Indian Ocean — it shows the gap between India’s rhetorical position and the reality. Even though New Delhi was not obliged to protect the ship which the U.S. struck in international waters, there was an ethical dimension because the ship had been its guest,” according to Manoj Joshi, distinguished fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi.

The targeting of the vessel also showed that the defense partnership which New Delhi and Washington have been cultivating in recent years remains “asymmetrical” and has limits, Joshi said. “When push comes to shove, the U.S. does what it feels like. Even in the Indian Ocean, it operates as it wants.”

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh, who was in New Delhi last week, said that India must ask the United States why it is targeting Iranian ships in the Indian Ocean.

Iran and the U.S. have sparred over whether the Dena was a legitimate wartime target. While Iran says that the ship was unarmed, the United States Indo-Pacific Command has rejected that claim.

This was a contentious point for Canberra, as it is not a party to military actions against Iran.

Two days later, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese confirmed the presence of Royal Australian Navy (RAN) sailors aboard the U.S. submarine when the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena was sunk.

“We wouldn’t normally confirm such an issue, but given our meetings and the public interest, I can confirm that there were three Australian personnel on board that vessel,” Albanese revealed.

He added, “I can confirm also, though, that no Australian personnel have participated in any offensive action against Iran.” He noted, too, frameworks are in place to ensure Australians do not participate in such combat actions.

Albanese elaborated: “These are long-standing, third-country arrangements that have been in place for a long period of time, and what they do is ensure that Australian Defence Force personnel, where they are embedded in third countries’ defense assets, they act in accordance with Australian law, Australian policy.”

Jennifer Parker, principal and founder of Barrier Strategic Advisory, told Defense News it would have been possible for Australian submariners to recuse themselves during the attack off Sri Lanka. “It would be quite straightforward to not be on the consoles or in the control room during the engagements,” she said.

“As to legality, this was a lawful target in accordance with the law of naval warfare, and the response was also consistent with international law,” Parker said.

She added that such attacks can legally occur anywhere outside 12-nautical-mile territorial waters of neutral states, something true of the U.S. attack near Sri Lanka.

David Shoebridge, a senator from the opposition Greens party, alleged that Australia was complicit in an illegal war.

“We’re being dragged into these wars because of the dystopian logic of AUKUS, that we’re somehow safer by being part of an alliance led by Donald Trump and his lawless regime,” he said, referring to the U.S. president.

AUKUS is a trilateral pact between Australia, the U.K. and the United States aimed at outfitting Australia with nuclear-powered submarines and other technology that would allow Canberra to hold China at bay in Asian waters.

Parker wrote in a piece for The Academic website, “Under the law of naval warfare, warships belonging to a state engaged in an international armed conflict are military objectives by nature. The rules say they may be lawfully targeted.”

As per normal practice, the U.S. did not name the submarine involved, but there are suggestions it was the Virginia-class boat USS Minnesota, which rotated through Australia’s submarine base near Perth last year.

AUKUS progress

As the Australian Navy ramps up preparations to receive second-hand U.S. Virginia-class submarines, dozens of its sailors have been rotating onto American nuclear-powered attack submarines.

Last October, Australian officials revealed “more than 50” sailors were at that time serving on American SSNs. Furthermore, Rear Adm. Stephen Hughes, Australia’s Head of Navy Capability, told Defense News last November that about 160-200 Australian sailors were then in the U.S. and U.K. training pipelines.

“AUKUS remains on track, with a significant amount of achievements to date,” said Parker.

Hughes said it is “a really complicated equation” training sailors on SSNs, even while the Australian Navy keeps six conventionally powered Collins-class submarines in service.

“It’s not hard because we can’t do it and we don’t understand it, but you’ve got to keep Collins at its peak performance while you’re bringing in a new apex predator,” he said. “So the balance here is obviously across the industry spectrum, it’s across navy workforce, getting them trained and still having enough Collins submarines while you’re trying to build a workforce for that.”

The warplanes were sent as part of a phased approach to enhancing security in light of recent developments in the region, the Ministry of Defense wrote in an announcement.

According to footage shared by Turkish Radio and Television Corporation, the aircraft will operate from Ercan International Airport, west of the capital Nicosia.

Based on the armaments visible in the video, the planes appear to be equipped to conduct combat air patrol and air defense missions over the Eastern Mediterranean.

The ministry also stated that, if necessary, additional measures may be taken depending on future developments.

This deployment follows last week’s deployment of four F-16 fighter aircraft and two frigates from Greece to Cyprus, following the Iranian attack on the British RAF Akrotiri air base on the southern part of the island.

Last week France announced that it would dispatch an aircraft carrier strike group to Cyprus to help bolster the country’s aerial defenses, along with additional land-based anti-drone and anti-missile systems.

French President Emmanuel Macron and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis are expected to visit the island today.

The people, who were not authorized to comment publicly on the sensitive matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity, cautioned that the U.S. intelligence has not uncovered that Russia is directing Iran on what to do with the information.

Still, it’s the first indication that Moscow has sought to get involved in the war that the U.S. and Israel launched on Iran a week ago. Russia is in the rare club of countries that maintains friendly relations with Tehran, which has faced years of isolation over its nuclear program and its support of proxy groups that have wreaked havoc in the Middle East, including Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis.

The White House downplayed reports that Russia was sharing intelligence with Iran about U.S. targets in the region. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Friday told reporters that “it clearly is not making any difference with respect to the military operations in Iran because we are completely decimating them.”

Leavitt declined to say if President Donald Trump had spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the reported intelligence sharing or whether he believed Russia should face repercussions, saying she would let the president speak to that himself.

Asked whether Russia would go beyond political support and offer military assistance to Iran, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there has been no such request from Tehran.

“We are in dialogue with the Iranian side, with representatives of the Iranian leadership, and will certainly continue this dialogue,” he said Friday.

Pushed on whether Moscow has provided any military or intelligence assistance to Tehran since the Iran war’s start, he refrained from comment.

Russia has tightened its relationship with Iran as it looked for badly needed missiles and drones to utilize in its four-year war Ukraine.

The Biden administration declassified intelligence findings that showed Iran supplies Moscow with attack drones and has assisted the Kremlin with building a drone-manufacturing factory.

The former U.S. administration also accused Iran of transferring short-range ballistic missiles to Russia for its war in Ukraine.

Details about the U.S. intelligence were first reported by the Washington Post.

Asked whether the revelation had shaken Trump’s faith in Putin’s ability to cut any peace deal in the Russia-Ukraine war, Leavitt said, “I think the president would say that peace is still an achievable objective with respect to the Russia-Ukraine war.”

In a post on the social media platform Truth Social, Trump wrote that “IRAN WILL HAVE A GREAT FUTURE” should the Islamic Republic decide to put down its arms.

“There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” the president wrote. “After that, and the selection of a GREAT & ACCEPTABLE Leader(s), we, and many of our wonderful and very brave allies and partners, will work tirelessly to bring Iran back from the brink of destruction, making it economically bigger, better, and stronger than ever before. … ‘MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN (MIGA!).’”

Trump’s comments came less than 24 hours after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and U.S. Central Command chief Adm. Brad Cooper provided combat updates during a press briefing at CENTCOM headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida.

Discussing the ongoing Operation Epic Fury, Hegseth asserted that U.S. combat power continues to converge upon the region as Iran’s capabilities decline.

“When we say more to come, it’s more fighter squadrons, it’s more capabilities, it’s more defensive capabilities and it’s more bomber pulses more frequently,” Hegseth said.

With the goal of dismantling Iran’s navy, missile capabilities and nuclear program, U.S. forces over the course of the week-long war have struck approximately 2,000 targets, Cooper previously stated.

In the 72 hours prior to Thursday’s briefing, American bombers hit nearly 200 targets and dropped dozens of 2,000-pound penetrative bombs on deeply buried ballistic missile launchers, the CENTCOM commander said.

The U.S. has also eliminated 30 Iranian navy ships, Cooper added, including one off the coast of Sri Lanka — in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command area of responsibility — that was the result of the first U.S. Navy submarine torpedo kill since World War II.

Iran’s “equivalent of space command” has also been hit, Cooper noted.

Now one week into the conflict, actions have resulted in Iran’s military offenses slowing considerably, the admiral said, with the Islamic Republic’s ballistic missile attacks decreasing by 90% since the first day of the war and drone attacks diminishing by 83%.

“We’re not just hitting what they have,” Cooper said. “We’re destroying their ability to rebuild.”

Questions remain, meanwhile, regarding munitions stockpiles and how exactly Washington will accomplish its objectives.

On Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that over 800 Patriot interceptor missiles had been used over the first three days of the Iran war, more than what Ukraine has used in four years since Russia’s 2022 invasion.

The U.S. and other allies have reportedly approached Kyiv with requests for expertise, including from personnel, on more cost-friendly measures to combat Iran’s cheaply-made Shahed drones, which cost an average of $35,000 each.

Contrast that sum with an estimated $4 million price tag of a U.S.-made PAC-3 interceptor, and the cost exchange is 114-1 in favor of Iran.

Ukraine, however, has been increasingly experiencing success knocking Shaheds out of the sky with systems that cost as little as a used car.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, is slated to host a meeting Friday with executives from Lockheed Martin, RTX, L3Harris and other defense firms to discuss surging missile systems production.

Amid this backdrop, Hegseth on Thursday asserted that the U.S. military’s munitions stockpile is not only in no danger of dwindling, but said the amount of U.S. firepower surrounding Iran is about to “surge dramatically.”

“We’ve only just begun to fight, and fight decisively,” he said.

Military Times reporter Riley Ceder contributed to this report.

Officials from two Gulf countries said their governments were disappointed in the way the U.S. has handled the war, particularly the initial attack on Iran on Feb. 28. They said their countries were not given advance notice of the U.S.-Israeli attack and complained the U.S. had ignored their warnings that the war would have devastating consequences for the entire region.

One of the officials said that Gulf countries were frustrated and even angry that the U.S. military has not defended them enough. He said there is belief in the region that the operation has focused on defending Israel and American troops, while leaving Gulf countries to protect themselves, and said that his country’s stock of interceptors was “rapidly depleting.”

Like others in this story, the Gulf officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing a confidential diplomatic matter.

The governments of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates did not respond to requests for comment.

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in response: “Iran’s retaliatory ballistic missile attacks have decreased by 90% because Operation Epic Fury is crushing their ability to shoot these weapons or produce more. President Trump is in close contact with all of our regional partners, and the terrorist Iranian regime’s attacks on its neighbors prove how imperative it was that President Trump eliminate this threat to our country and our allies.”

The Pentagon did not respond.

Official reactions by the Gulf Arab countries have been muted, but public figures with close ties to their governments have been openly critical of the U.S., suggesting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dragged President Donald Trump into a needless war.

“This is Netanyahu’s war,” Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former Saudi intelligence chief, told CNN on Wednesday. “He somehow convinced the president (Trump) to support his views.”

Pentagon officials conceded this week in closed-door briefings with lawmakers they are struggling to stop waves of drones launched by Iran, leaving some U.S. targets in the Gulf region, including troops, vulnerable.

The Gulf countries have emerged as valuable targets for Iran, well within the range of Iran’s short-range missiles and filled with targets, including American troops, high-profile business and tourist locations and energy facilities, disrupting the world’s flow of oil.

Since the start of the war, Iran has fired at least 380 missiles and more than 1,480 drones targeting the five Arab Gulf countries, according to an AP tally based on official statements. At least 13 people have been killed in those countries, according to local officials.

In addition, six U.S. soldiers were killed in Kuwait on Sunday when an Iranian drone strike hit an operations center in a civilian port, more than 10 miles from the main Army base. The husband of one of the slain soldiers, who was part of a supply and logistics unit based in Iowa, said the operations center was a shipping container-style building and had no defenses.

In briefings for members of Congress on Tuesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told lawmakers that the U.S. will not be able to intercept many of the incoming UAVs, especially the Shaheds, according to three people familiar with the briefings.

In one of the briefings, Caine and Hegseth did not offer any details when pressed by lawmakers why the U.S. did not seem prepared for Iran to launch waves of drones at U.S. targets in the region, according to one of the people.

That person, a U.S. official who is familiar with the U.S. security posture in Gulf region, said that the U.S. did not have widespread capabilities throughout the Gulf region to effectively counter waves of the one-way drones coming to places outside conventional targets or bases outside of Iraq and Syria.

Drone attacks this week at the embassy in Saudi Arabia caused a limited fire at the embassy in Riyadh, and another drone attack the United Arab Emirates sparked a small fire outside the U.S. consulate in Dubai.

The U.S. and its allies in the Middle East on Thursday even sought help from Ukraine, which has expertise in countering Iran’s Shahed drones, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. When asked about Zelenskyy’s comments, Trump told Reuters on Thursday, “Certainly, I’ll take, you know, any assistance from any country.”

Bader Mousa Al-Saif, a Kuwait-based analyst with Chatham House, said the U.S. appeared to have underestimated the risk to its Gulf Arab allies, believing American troops and Israel would be the primary targets of Iranian retaliation.

“I don’t think they saw that there would be as much exposure to the Gulf,” he said, saying the lack of a plan to protect the Gulf countries “speaks to U.S. short-sightedness.”

The frustration in some of the Gulf nations is driven in part by the relative success that Israel has had knocking down drones and missiles compared to some of their neighbors, according to a person familiar with the sensitive diplomatic matter who was not authorized to comment publicly.

Their air defense systems are hardly as robust as Israel’s, but according to the person, U.S. officials have been somewhat perplexed that the Gulf countries are still not showing an appetite for delivering a counteroffensive by launching missiles at Iranian targets.

Elliott Abrams, who served as a special representative for Iran and Venezuela at the end of Trump’s first term, said that U.S. national security officials and their Gulf allies were aware that Iran had the capability to carry out significant strikes.

“And the neighbors knew it and were afraid of it. But it was never clear that Iran would actually do it, because they have a lot to lose,” Abrams said. “These attacks will leave long-term enmity, and if they keep up, the Gulf Arabs may start attacking Iran.”

Michael Ratney, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said that while the Gulf countries have an interest in seeing Iran weakened, they also have key concerns about the ongoing war — including the economic damage and instability it is causing and its open-ended nature.

Ratney, who is now a senior adviser in the Middle East program of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said: “What comes next? The countries of the Gulf will have to bear the brunt of whatever that is.”

Figures published by Gulf defense ministries indicate that as of March 3, Iran has launched more than 540 missiles and carried out over 1,450 drone strikes against regional countries, with drones constituting roughly three-quarters of the attacks, Reuters reported.

While the patterns seen since the start of the Iranian attack window resemble the saturation logic observed in Ukraine, where large waves of cheap one-way attack drones combined with ballistic missiles are deployed to overwhelm defensive systems, analysts note some differences in their roles.

“In Ukraine, Shahed-type drones often serve as nightly, persistent harassment and infrastructure attrition tools, whereas in the Gulf they’re being used inside a broader missile campaign intended to stretch the Gulf and U.S.-aligned air defenses across multiple states, bases and urban areas simultaneously,” Kristian Patrick Alexander, senior fellow and lead researcher at the UAE-based Rabdan Academy, said.

Thus far, Gulf countries have reported high interception rates of missile attacks, and to a lesser extent, against low-flying drones. For example, data published March 4 by the United Arab Emirates, which has absorbed a large number of the offensives, claimed military forces detected 941 drones and intercepted 876 of them.

Some of the weaponry used by countries and their allies to shoot down low-cost drones includes the U.S.-made Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) systems as well as Rafale fighters, F-15s and Eurofighters.

Francesco Schiavi, research fellow at the Middle East Institute Switzerland, concurs that one of the main challenges for the region will be endurance, especially as the fighting continues.

“Each interception carries a financial and logistical cost – estimates suggest that for every dollar Iran spends producing drones, Gulf states may spend $20-$28 on defensive fire, with individual interceptors often costing more than $1 million,” Schiavi added.

Both experts advised that countries under attack must urgently look to cheaper and scalable counter-drone layers: electronic warfare, jammers, guns or close-in weapons, directed energy, and enhanced shared air picture coordination.

“The ‘winning’ defense will be the one that can kill lots of targets cheaply without burning premium interceptors – without cheaper layers and better integration, the cost curve favors the attacker,” Alexander said.

Meanwhile, Tehran’s offensive arsenal, already degraded by U.S. and Israeli air strikes, is also running lower, said Federico Borsari, non-resident fellow at the Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis

What to watch

As hostilities drag on, subject experts highlight three important factors to monitor: the type of attacks, the nature of targets, and the performance of strike weapons.

According to Alexander, one tactic to watch is whether Tehran will continue to send attack drones in big waves or if they will be used in sequenced packages to probe radars before firing missiles.

Schiavi adds that it will be important to pay attention to the strike pattern Tehran adopts: Until now, the regime has followed a dispersed approach, targeting several Gulf countries at once with a mix of weapons, but it could shift toward true saturation attacks as observed in Ukraine.

The primary targets of Iranian attacks have so far been military bases and embassies. It remains to be seen if Tehran is able to expand the target set to include more critical infrastructure, such as ports, logistic hubs, or energy facilities, which experts say would signal an escalation.

Sam Bendett, advisor at the Center for Naval Analyses, said he’s keeping close tabs on the flight ranges of Iran’s Shahed drones, and the variety of similar weapons the country has in its arsenal.

It will also be important to see if Washington’s role changes as the conflict continues, considering that Gulf countries’ interception capabilities are closely tied to U.S. technology.

“Gulf air defense systems and their performance remain closely linked to U.S.-enabled radar coverage, early warning, and operational coordination – interceptions over Qatar, for example, rely heavily on radar networks connected to Al Udeid Air base, while missile engagements in Kuwait occur in airspace shared with American aircraft,” Schiavi added.

“With Spain, France and Holland, we will send naval assets to protect Cyprus in the next few days,” Guido Crosetto told Italy’s parliament in a statement.

An Italian navy vessel able to reach Cyprus quickly would be the Spartaco Schergat, a FREMM frigate which is off the coast of Sicily in the Mediterranean and is due to conclude its involvement in the NATO Dynamic Manta exercise on Friday. It will however need to return to base in Sicily for refueling before a mission to Cyprus.

One defense official, who declined to be named, said a better option would however be one of Italy’s larger Horizon-class destroyers, given their longer range radar. The challenge is their location: The Andrea Doria is off the coast of Norway while the Caio Duilio is undergoing regular maintenance at La Spezia in Italy.

Nations sending vessels to Cyprus would not necessarily need to operate under one national command but could cooperate, the official said.

Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni spoke by phone with French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday, to discuss security in the Gulf and Cyprus, her office said.

Macron announced Tuesday that he ordered the Charles de Gaulle carrier strike group, deployed to northern Europe for exercises, to the Mediterranean.

The move comes as the war in Iran risks spilling over to Europe’s southeastern edge. For example, RAF Akrotiri, a British military base in southern Cyprus that has previously served as as a hub for U.S. and U.K. Middle East aerial operations, was targeted by Iranian strike drones this week.

Close Cyprus ally Greece has already sent two frigates to the island.

The French naval strike group is scheduled to arrive in the Mediterranean late this week or early next week, French Minister of the Armed Forces Catherine Vautrin told RTL radio on Thursday.

The Spanish frigate Cristóbal Colón has already joined the Charles the Gaulle formation on its way to Cyprus, Spanish defense officials said Thursday.

“The ‘Cristóbal Colón’ is our most technologically advanced frigate. Its mission in the Mediterranean will be to offer protection and air defense, thus complementing the capabilities of our Patriot battery deployed in Turkey,” reads a Spanish ministry of defense statement. “It will also be on standby to support any evacuation of civilian personnel who may be affected by the conflict.”

Meanwhile, the British Type 45 destroyer Dragon, announced by U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer as the chosen ship to help secure the country’s Cyprus base, was still being readied for the snap deployment on Wednesday, the BBC reported.

Fresh out of maintenance, the ongoing loading of ammunition means the Dragon will likely be stuck in Portsmouth until next week, according to the report.

The Dutch frigate Evertsen is also part of the group of ships heading to the Mediterranean, but defense officials in the Netherlands have yet to decide what the vessel will be tasked to do once there.

German defense officials appear to be in no rush to consider sending ships supporting a naval Cyprus protection mission in response to the Iran war fallout, though chancellor Merz has said Berlin would assist “in preventative measures.”

Regional assistance and NATO defense plans for the region currently add up to a sufficient degree of preparedness, a government spokesman said Wednesday.

Meloni said on Thursday that Italy would be sending air defense systems to protect Gulf states. “Italy, like the U.K., France and Germany, aim to send help to the Gulf states, and we clearly talking about air defense,” she said.

Speculation is mounting in Italy that Rome will send a Samp-T air defense system.

Rudy Ruitenberg in Paris and Linus Höller in Berlin contributed to this report.

The United States has spared “no expense or capability” to enhance air defense systems to protect American forces and allies in the Middle East, Hegseth told reporters at the Pentagon days after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in a war that has widened throughout the region.

“This does not mean we can stop everything, but we ensured that the maximum possible defense and maximum possible force protection was set up before we went on offense,” he said.

The acknowledgment that additional drone or missile strikes in the region could cause damage and harm to troops comes as President Donald Trump and top defense leaders have warned that more American casualties were expected in a conflict that began Saturday and could last months.

On Wednesday, the Trump administration revealed that a U.S. submarine fired a torpedo that sank an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean.

‘The risk is still high’ to American troops

U.S. service members “remain in harm’s way, and we must be clear-eyed that the risk is still high,” Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the news conference with Hegseth.

Six soldiers were killed when an Iranian drone strike hit an operations center Sunday in the heart of a civilian port in Kuwait, more than 10 miles from the main Army base. The husband of one of the slain soldiers, who was part of a supply and logistics unit based in Iowa, says the center was a shipping container-style building and had no defenses.

Caine declined to answer a question about the possibility of deploying ground troops in Iran, which Trump has not ruled out.

“I’m not going to comment on U.S. boots on the ground,” Caine said. “I think that’s a question for policymakers. And I don’t make policy, I execute policy.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that it was “not part of the plan for this operation at this time” but noted that “I’m not going to remove an option for the president that is on the table.”

Hegseth suggests conflict could last up to 2 months

Hegseth also signaled a possible longer time frame for the conflict than has previously been floated by the administration, saying it could last eight weeks but that the U.S. has the munitions and the equipment to beat Iran in a war of attrition. He declined to set a specific time range, saying the specific duration of the war would depend on how it unfolds.

“You can say four weeks, but it could be six, it could be eight, it could be three,” Hegseth said. “Ultimately, we set the pace and the tempo. The enemy is off balance, and we’re going to keep them off balance.”

More forces are arriving in the region, including jet fighters and bombers, Hegseth said, and the U.S. “will take all the time we need to make sure that we succeed.”

Hegseth and Caine say US forces have enough munitions

Supplies of weaponry are not an issue, Hegseth and Caine said, with the defense secretary noting that the military used more advanced weapons at the start of the campaign but was switching to gravity bombs now that the U.S. has gained control of the Iranian sky. Stockpiles of the advanced weapons remain “extremely strong,” Hegseth said.

Caine said U.S. attacks on Iranian missile sites and other offensive targets have been successful enough that forces can strike deeper inland, allowing for the shift from sophisticated weapons that can be launched from far away to more traditional, precision bombs dropped by aircraft.

Caine said the U.S. has “sufficient precision munitions for the task at hand, both on the offense and defense.” He noted that the military would not be releasing quantities, citing operational security.

“Our air defenses and that of our allies have plenty of runway,” Hegseth said. “We can sustain this fight easily for as long as we need to.”

Trump said this week the campaign is likely to last four weeks to five weeks but he was prepared “to go far longer than that.”

The number of ballistic missiles fired by Iran is down 86% from the first day of the U.S. military’s campaign, with a 23% drop in the past 24 hours, Caine said Wednesday, and Iran’s use of one-way attack drones is down 73% from the opening days. The decrease could indicate that Iran is holding some weapons in reserve to prolong the conflict.

Americans scramble to depart the Mideast

The administration promoted its efforts to help Americans depart the region. It abruptly advised those in 14 countries to leave immediately even as the threat of missiles and drones closed airspace in the region and caused widespread flight cancellations.

The State Department said it has assisted nearly 6,500 Americans since the start of the war and was working to arrange charter flights or other transportation. Caine said the military has opened up available seats as military transport planes arrive “to try to help folks get out.”

The State Department said more than 17,500 Americans have returned to the United States from the Middle East since Saturday, including more than 8,500 on Tuesday alone, although it acknowledged that the vast majority of those used commercial transportation without any government assistance.

Sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln marked the ordnances they helped prepare for the mission, according to recent photos posted by the U.S. Central Command. Task & Purpose senior editor Matt White was first to notice the trend.

The photos show ordnances — which appear to be GBU-31s, a 2,000-pound class Joint Direct Attack Munition — being staged on Feb. 28 by red-vested aviation ordnancemen prior to being loaded onto strike fighter aircraft in support of Operation Epic Fury, according to CENTCOM photos.

It is unclear if the ordnancemen seen in the photos are those with their names on the bombs.

On the tails, noses and sides of the bombs, names and messages are scribbled in chalk and marker.

While visible names include “Jose,” “Alex,” “Naomi,” “Joey” messages written in smaller script and on the tails are less visible.

But messages of bravado inscribed on bombs, missiles and other munitions are nothing new.

A lead sling bullet, now housed at The British Museum, can be seen with the tongue-in-cheek inscription of DEXAI or “Catch!” in Greek.

Historian John McCaul in “On Inscribed Sling-Bullets,” notes that slings and lead bullets were frequently employed during sieges with town names and deities also inscribed on the projectiles.

The more ironic ones have stood the test of time, with zingers like the one found near the city of Argos, Greece, with the inscription “Bite it in vain” — aka the ancient equivalent to the idiom “This is a hard nut to crack.”

In 1945, the atomic bomb “Fat Man” was dropped by the U.S. at Nagasaki, Japan, and photos of its assembly show that names and messages were etched into the atomic bomb by people involved in its creation. Norman Ramsey, a physicist and member of the Manhattan Project, can be seen signing his name on “Fat Man” prior to its polar cap being placed on.

Photos from the National Museum of the U.S. Navy shows messages on the atomic bomb, like “Here’s to you” and “Lots of love.”

This action can be seen throughout history and is still prevalent today for many countries’ military members.

In 2015, Jordanian pilots used chalk to write messages on missiles headed for Syria vowing to eliminate the Islamic State. The messages included quotes from the Quran and statements meant for its target: “For you, the enemies of Islam,” according to BBC reporting at the time.

More recently, Ukrainian artillerymen have been writing messages on rockets, mortar shells or explosive drones used during the war in Ukraine as a way to symbolically voice their anger. Charity groups and even the military itself have capitalized on this idea by using this as a way to raise funds, per New York Times reporting.

While such expressions may appear infantile bordering on the obscene, the impulse to personalize weapons of war taps into, according to an American pilot who served in Vietnam, “the very primitive magical notion that, once you have named something, you have control over it.”