Israeli strikes on Iran: next-gen asymmetric warfare and what comes next

Summary

Josh Steinman, founder of Galvanic and a nearly two-decade national security veteran, frames the Israeli strikes on Iran as a live demonstration of next-generation asymmetric warfare, not a conventional military campaign. The operation reportedly involved drone bases constructed inside Iranian territory, precision munitions targeting senior leadership, and what Steinman describes as possible next-generation cyber or radio-frequency weapons that caused Iranian missiles to fail at launch. Roughly 100 Iranian suicide drones were launched toward Israel; none reportedly reached their target.

Iranian air defense is effectively neutralized, in Steinman's assessment, meaning the conflict continues on Israeli terms. That asymmetry creates a negotiating dynamic: Trump, who issued a roughly 60-day deadline to Iran that expired the day the strikes began, continues to offer what remains of the Iranian leadership a diplomatic off-ramp. Whether the timing was coordinated with Israel or simply adopted by Israel as a coherent framing point is unknown, though Steinman notes Trump is one of the few people who would know.

The historical backdrop matters. Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution flipped the country from a US- and UK-aligned capitalist monarchy into a hardline Shia theocracy. The 444-day American hostage crisis followed, and the failed rescue attempt — Operation Eagle Claw, known as Desert One — directly shaped the creation of US Special Operations Command. In the decades since, Iranian-backed explosively formed penetrators and Quds Force operations under Qasem Soleimani killed hundreds of American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Looking ahead, Steinman identifies the most consequential risk as Iranian retaliation on US soil. He states flatly that Iran has assets and asymmetric capabilities already positioned inside the United States, including potential drone and paramilitary options. He frames monitoring whether those assets activate as the key near-term signal for gauging Iranian intent. On the day of the strikes, a Cloudflare outage affecting Google and other platforms drew speculation about a linked cyber event; Cloudflare attributed it to an internal key-value store failure, and Steinman declined to draw conclusions without more information.

The US government's formal posture, reflected in a statement from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, keeps Washington at arm's length from direct operational involvement, though Steinman suggests implicit American permission is a reasonable assumption. He is explicit that the asymmetric tools deployed against Iran are not proprietary — they exist in the broader threat environment and are available to adversaries as well.