The White House has tasked US intelligence and military officials with finding new means of deterring Iran's aggression in the Persian Gulf while avoiding an escalation that could lead to an all-out war, The New York Times reported, Sunday.
According to current and former US officials with knowledge of the effort, the goal is to replicate the type of clandestine attacks that Iran is believed to have recently carried out on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf but which Tehran denies.
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One such example of this effort is the cyberattacks the US carried out against Iran's Revolutionary Guards computer and weapons systems on Thursday in response to Iran's downing of a US drone.
According to a senior US military official, the White House has a number of options at its disposal that could undermine the ayatollah regime and convince Iran to cease it provocative activity in the Middle East, but which would not be clearly attributed to the US.
As National Defense University professor Sean McFate told The Times, "If we want to fight back, do it in the shadows."
One of the options McFate suggested for countering Iran would be to assist the ongoing protests against the Iranian government and incentivize mercenary forces to counter Iranian proxies in the Middle East.
While hacking into Iran's missile systems would be a difficult and lengthy process according to security experts, such a move could reap real results on the ground, as was the case when the US penetrated North Korea's missile system, prompting Pyongyang to begin work on a completely different system.
Noting the deployment of a US aircraft carrier and missile batteries to the Persian Gulf had not deterred Iran, McFate said, "Iran is playing by the new rules while we are using the obsolete one, and wonder why Iran's behavior is not changing."
