When war broke out between the United States and Iran last February, Tehran was not excluded from the target list. The Iranian capital was struck directly, and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was targeted in a joint Israeli-American raid. That round of fighting ended after 40 days of full-scale war with a memorandum of understanding signed electronically by the two countries.
The calm did not last. After both sides accused each other of violating the memorandum following attacks on commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz in mid-July, US President Donald Trump declared that the agreement was “over”. American aircraft soon returned to Iranian airspace, while Iranian missiles once again targeted US bases across the Gulf and in Jordan.
Yet the current escalation presents a striking contradiction. Although US attacks have expanded to hundreds of sites across Iranian territory, Tehran itself has remained outside the scope of direct strikes.
Researchers and academics who spoke to Al Jazeera Net said the explanation begins with Washington’s objectives in each phase of the confrontation. At the outset of the war, the target was Iran as a whole, with the maximum objective of overthrowing the government or forcing it to surrender. In the current round, however, American goals appear fundamentally different. They are focused on weakening Iranian military capabilities that threaten US bases and regional energy infrastructure, while breaking Tehran’s grip over the Strait of Hormuz.
Striking the capital would therefore do little to advance Washington’s present objectives. This raises a central question: what calculations have drawn the dividing line between a war that once reached the capital and another that is carefully avoiding it?
On the other side, another question arises: why is Iran limiting its attacks to US bases in the region rather than targeting the American fleet stationed in international waters?
From Full-Scale War to Managed Escalation
Understanding why Tehran has been excluded from current US target lists requires redefining the confrontation itself, rather than examining military capabilities alone.
Iranian writer and political analyst Reza Ghabishawi argues that as long as Washington avoids attacking the capital, the confrontation is not being treated as a “war” in the full sense of the term, but as a series of intermittent military clashes and strikes.
This classification shields the Trump administration from the major political pressures that would accompany an acknowledged full-scale war. Over time, repeated strikes can become almost routine, reducing the likelihood of sufficient domestic pressure emerging to force an end to them.
Major General Mohammed Abdel Wahid, an expert in political affairs and maritime security, offers a similar military interpretation. He links Tehran’s exclusion from American attacks to the nature of the confrontation, which he says has “not yet reached the level of total war in its traditional military sense”.
The confrontation is therefore governed by explicit rules of engagement and red lines, with Tehran positioned at the centre of those limits.
When American aircraft approach the outskirts of the capital, Abdel Wahid argues, they do not do so with the intention of bringing it down. Instead, such actions amount to “test strikes” designed to measure Iran’s response. Will Tehran retaliate? What form will that retaliation take? Does it still possess the ability to carry it out?
Dr Mahjoob Zweiri, an academic and expert on Middle East politics, adds that gradual escalation is not an exclusively American approach. Both sides are following a near-mathematical formula: “Every military target will be answered with a military target, and every vital target will be answered with a vital target.”
This appeared to be reflected in Tehran’s justification for attacks on desalination and electricity facilities in Kuwait, which it described as a direct response to strikes on desalination facilities near Bandar Abbas.
The Real Battle Is Over the Strait of Hormuz
Ghabishawi identifies three interconnected objectives behind Washington’s present focus on southern Iran:
- Ending Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz.
- Preventing Tehran from launching missile attacks against US bases and energy infrastructure in Arab countries across the region.
- Preventing Iran from targeting commercial and military vessels in the strait and the Gulf of Oman.
He told Al Jazeera Net that achieving these objectives requires military operations to remain concentrated almost entirely in southern Iran, far from the capital.
Zweiri offers a similar assessment. He notes that the American escalation, which has involved around 120 targets across approximately 11 waves of attacks, has focused on naval targets, land-based military positions and transport routes used to supply southern ports.
Tabriz was struck only once, under circumstances that remain unclear, while no significant attacks have been recorded beyond southern Iran.
Abdel Wahid describes the operational structure of the campaign as a series of successive layers.
The first phase targeted what he called the “first coastal layer”, including radar systems, missile platforms, mines factories and storage facilities, as well as commercial docks that generate revenue for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The objective was to deprive Iran of “visibility” and its ability to control the strait.
The attacks then moved to the “second layer” further inland but still adjacent to the coast, with the aim of isolating coastal positions from logistical support. According to close American monitoring, this forced Iran to withdraw equipment and relocate weapons systems deeper inland.
Abdel Wahid argues that Washington’s focus on the strait also carries a geopolitical dimension that extends beyond Iran itself. Around 20 per cent of global oil supplies, approximately 20 million barrels per day, pass through the Strait of Hormuz.
Control over the waterway therefore strengthens US influence against China and Russia while preserving freedom of movement for the US Fifth Fleet, which is based in Bahrain.
According to Abdel Wahid, the attacks later expanded towards the Iran-Iraq border, missile and drone launch routes, and weapons-smuggling corridors used to supply Iran’s allies in Iraq, Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
They also reached oil-rich areas, reflecting an economic objective of depriving Tehran of substantial resources, as well as the sensitive Iran-Pakistan border in Balochistan.
The maritime security expert argues that the present American escalation has not entirely ignored areas surrounding the capital. Cities near Tehran have been struck in what he describes as a psychological rather than military message.
The aim is to demonstrate that US forces could, if they chose, reach Revolutionary Guard commanders inside the capital itself. This is intended to spread fear among civilians and damage morale without formally crossing the red line of directly attacking Tehran.
The Political Calculations Behind Avoiding Tehran
Behind Washington’s caution lies a deeper political calculation, according to Ali al-Dhahab, a researcher specialising in military and strategic affairs.
The United States has explicitly stated that it is not seeking to overthrow the Iranian government through direct military force. Instead, it may prefer to preserve the outlines of an alternative political order capable of reaching an understanding with Washington.
This could emerge through an internal political coup or an agreement that weakens the influence of the Revolutionary Guard and the system of clerical rule, creating space for an opposition voice with which the United States could later engage.
Ghabishawi similarly argues that Washington’s objectives no longer include overthrowing the government or forcing it to surrender, as they did during the previous war.
The present goal is limited to weakening Iran’s military capabilities. Under this framework, striking Tehran is unnecessary because it does not serve the new purpose of the escalation.
Geography and the Cost of Every Target
With every new Iranian attack on regional states, Tehran says it is responding to American escalation launched from US bases in the region. It has also warned that it will continue escalating unless Washington stops, signalling an intention to raise the cost of the war for the entire region.
Al-Dhahab, however, raises a key question: if Iran genuinely wants to increase the cost, why does it continue to avoid directly targeting the US fleet despite theoretically possessing the missile capabilities to do so?
He argues that this restraint is not necessarily a sign of weakness, but the result of carefully calculated risk.
Destroying an American aircraft carrier would represent a symbolic victory that could severely damage Washington’s image and international credibility. However, it would also push the confrontation into a different phase.
A bilateral war could rapidly become a broad international coalition aimed at destroying the Iranian government entirely, an outcome Tehran appears determined to avoid.
Geography also shapes Iran’s target selection. Ghabishawi notes that Iran cannot directly reach American territory because of the distance involved, so it retaliates against US military bases across the region instead.
Behind that operational reality lies a deeper strategic objective. Iran wants countries hosting American bases to bear part of the war’s cost and wants other regional states to understand that hosting US forces does not necessarily provide a defensive advantage.
Instead, Ghabishawi argues, it may turn those countries into sources of instability.
Al-Dhahab applies the same military logic to the bases themselves. From Iran’s perspective, they are effectively American territory and are targeted because they represent the direct source of the threat.
As he puts it: “Those who open fire should expect fire in return.”
Abdel Wahid adds that targeting US bases raises the cost for Washington while embarrassing it by exposing the inability of those facilities to defend themselves.
This, in turn, places greater pressure on Gulf states, encouraging them to push Washington towards ending the war.
More importantly, he says, attacks on Gulf states carry a deterrent message that Iran’s command and control centres remain operationally effective. This was demonstrated, he argues, in the targeting of a base housing American soldiers in Jordan.
All of these actions serve one objective: ensuring that Iran enters any future negotiations from a position of strength rather than weakness.
Human Losses and the War’s Cost for Washington
While Iran remains cautious about taking the confrontation to its highest level, Washington is fighting a separate battle on the domestic front.
Zweiri places this internal American struggle at the centre of his assessment of Iran’s strategy.
Since the confrontation began, 16 American soldiers have been killed and several others wounded over roughly five months. This figure carries greater political weight because the United States does not maintain a large ground presence in the war zone, making every casualty more visible to the American public.
Zweiri told Al Jazeera Net that 70 per cent of Americans do not want the war to continue and believe it does not serve US interests.
In his assessment, this helps explain Iran’s effort to raise the political cost specifically for Trump, whose support was built partly on promises not to drag the United States into new wars or repeat the loss of American lives overseas.
This returns the discussion to Tehran itself.
Ghabishawi argues that as long as the capital remains outside the line of fire, and as long as the exchanges are described as “clashes” or “confrontations” rather than a “war”, the ambiguity provides the Trump administration with political room to absorb rising casualties without immediately triggering a major public backlash.
That room, however, appears to be shrinking.
A Fox News poll found that 64 per cent of voters were dissatisfied with Trump’s handling of the Iran file, amid a record decline in his popularity and the gradual fragmentation of the electoral coalition that brought him to the White House.
The broader conclusion drawn by the analysts is that Tehran’s absence from the direct line of fire does not represent an American retreat from resolving the confrontation.
Rather, it reflects a fundamental change in Washington’s objectives compared with the 40-day war.
Iran, meanwhile, has chosen to spread the cost of the conflict across nearby US bases rather than provoke the American fleet directly, seeking to avoid an escalation that could draw in an international coalition and threaten the survival of the government itself.
This delicate balance remains inherently fragile. The memorandum of understanding has already collapsed once and may collapse again if mediation efforts fail to contain the dispute over control of the Strait of Hormuz.
