July 3, 2025, 4:22 p.m.
President Trump’s decision to join Israel’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities has left the United States vulnerable to retribution.
The U.S. attacks on Iran’s three nuclear sites likely delayed Iran’s enrichment of nuclear material by at least several months. Israeli strikes on the country also left Tehran, already weakened after nearly two years of Israel’s war against its proxy groups across the Middle East, reeling from the deaths of some of its top military and nuclear officials. The country is now depleted and vulnerable.
Nevertheless, experts argue that Iran will likely seek to retaliate against the United States and Israel in the long term, either through hybrid warfare or proxy groups.
Iran’s government will want to demonstrate to the U.S., Israel, and the Iranian people that it can still hit its adversaries where it hurts. But it will want to do that while avoiding an all-out war that it cannot win. The country must strike a delicate balance between appearing strong and avoiding escalation. Analysts say that means hybrid warfare with some level of plausible deniability is the most likely avenue it will pursue.
“I like to use the word 'asymmetrical,'” said Eric O’Neill, a cybersecurity expert and former FBI counterintelligence operative. “I don’t know that they want to poke the bear too much, and it’s long been known that cyberattacks against the West are not given the same gravity as kinetic attacks.”
The attempt to show strength while avoiding a devastating war was on full display in the days following the Trump administration’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Ebrahim Zolfaqari, the spokesperson for Iran's Khatam al-Anbiya central military headquarters, called Trump a “gambler” and promised that Tehran would have the last word.
"You may start this war, but we will be the ones to end it," he said in a video statement recorded in English.
Iran then struck a U.S. airbase in Qatar with 14 missiles. Still, U.S. officials believe that the Iranian strikes did not aim to inflict significant damage. Iran warned the U.S. before carrying out the strikes, which caused no casualties and inflicted limited harm to U.S. facilities. Trump later seemed appreciative of Iran's “weak” response.
"I want to thank Iran for giving us early notice, which made it possible for no lives to be lost, and nobody to be injured," Trump wrote on his Truth Social media site after the attacks.
The events echoed those of 2020, when Trump ordered the assassination of Iran's Quds Force leader, Qassem Suleimani. Iran responded by targeting U.S. military personnel in Iraq. While those attacks were more serious than the recent ones in Qatar, and some U.S. servicemembers may have suffered from traumatic brain injuries, they also caused no deaths. Nevertheless, Iran spent the following years plotting to assassinate Trump and administration officials from his first term as revenge for Suleimani’s death.
Trump is now pushing Iran to reenter negotiations over its nuclear program. And while the weakened officials in Tehran may feel incentivized to enter those talks now, many suspect they will continue to seek ways to sabotage the U.S. and Israel in the future, both commercially and militarily.
Experts say Iran is now considering inserting malicious malware into U.S. computer networks and businesses. U.S. consular offices and other diplomatic facilities might also become targets. On Monday, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a warning that American commercial defense companies operating in Israel are at risk of cyberattacks from Iran. They directed those companies to review a fact sheet spelling out necessary security measures.
“At this time, we have not seen indications of a coordinated campaign of malicious cyber activity in the U.S. that can be attributed to Iran,” the agency said in a statement. “However, CISA urges owners and operators of critical infrastructure organizations and other potentially targeted entities to review this fact sheet to learn more about the Iranian state-backed cyber threat and actionable mitigations to harden cyber defenses.”
Others say Iran could target critical infrastructure within the U.S., causing chaos and potentially loss of life.
“I suspect that they will launch, and they have launched cyberattacks against us for decades,” O’Neill said. “Iran has spent a great deal of time and effort embedding themselves in U.S. critical infrastructure, primarily lights and power, and transmission of water.”
Meanwhile, there are other, more conventional methods of warfare Iran could pursue. One of the easiest ways Tehran could retaliate would be by closing the vital Strait of Hormuz. More than 20 percent of the world's oil supplies pass through the strait each day, and Iran could easily sow chaos by unleashing sea mines to increase threats to commercial shipping. Iran has also trained for years to launch attacks on U.S. Navy ships in those waters using drones and torpedo boats.
U.S. forces stationed in nearby Bahrain are committed to maintaining freedom of navigation in the strait and could likely overcome Iranian efforts to paralyze freedom of movement in those waters. Still, even a brief military conflict could cause enough uncertainty to drive up oil prices.
Additional strikes against U.S. bases are also not out of the question.
Iran has a list of at least 20 U.S. military bases across the Middle East that it could target for retaliatory strikes. For example, Iran could direct its proxies in Iraq to strike U.S. bases in Ain Al-Asad or Erbil. Tehran would likely wait and launch a surprise attack when these bases are no longer on high alert.
For anti-war activists across the U.S. and the Middle East, this cycle of escalation is a choice they wish world leaders would stop pursuing. Sara Haghdoosti, the director of the Washington, D.C.-based organization Win Without War, argues that it’s essential for people to remember the human costs of these conflicts.
“I have family and friends in Tehran. When you watch the president call for evacuation, I know that a lot of my family are too old and frail to be able to do it,” Haghdoosti said. “And I will say I also have friends in Israel who are constantly going into bomb shelters, terrified. I have two kids. Trying to imagine doing that with them is horrendous.
“And none of that was inevitable,” she added. “This was all a choice that Donald Trump made, because Donald Trump has yet again chosen violence over diplomacy.”
