WASHINGTON — U.S. military strikes against Iran have increasingly targeted the Islamic Republic’s internal security forces, suggesting a strategy that may aim to erode the government’s ability to suppress dissent, according to recent analysis. The Defense Department has outlined a series of objectives in President Donald Trump’s campaign against Iran, stating the ultimate goal is to dismantle Tehran’s ability to project power beyond its borders. However, the targets the Pentagon has focused on may provide the clearest insight yet into Trump’s true intentions.

Internal Security Forces as Primary Targets

According to U.S. Central Command, recent U.S. airstrikes have focused on Iran’s ballistic missile, drone, and nuclear programs, as well as its naval assets. However, strikes have also progressively targeted Iran’s internal security forces, which the Islamic Republic uses to suppress nationalist dissent, according to an analysis by the Institute for the Study of War and the Critical Threats Project, shared with The Times.

The strikes have targeted at least 123 headquarters, barracks, and training bases operated by Iran’s paramilitary organizations, including the Islamic Major Guard Corps and its Basij militia. Regional security forces, particularly in areas around Tehran and western Iran, where Kurdish groups challenge the Iranian government, have also been targeted.

Some of these groups are being equipped and supported by the U.S. intelligence community, a U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly.

Strategy to Undermine Repressive Institutions

Nicholas Carl, with the Critical Threats Project, said the pattern indicates the U.S. is already working to create conditions for a revolution in Iran.

“As we are going after these repressive institutions, we are degrading the capability of the authorities to show its population, to repress its population,” Carl said. “And it looks as though the onslaught is organized about trying to erode the capability of the authorities to repress in those areas.”

Analysts have suggested that the strikes against internal security forces may be greater than previously measured, noting the difficulty of assessing targets in the war based on publicly available information, due to an internet blackout strictly enforced by the Iranian government.

The quieter approach of the U.S. campaign suggests a governmental strategy by the Trump administration that goes beyond simply containing the Iranian government and may instead aim to lay the groundwork for its overthrow.

Strategic Implications and Long-Term Goals

Trump and his top aides have been inconsistent in their messaging regarding their goals for the war, vacillating between calls for regime change and more limited ambitions, such as an Islamic Republic that remains in power but more acquiescent to the United States.

Before the war began, Trump was presented with an intelligence assessment that large-scale military action was unlikely to topple the Iranian government, two sources familiar with the assessment said. The assessment led analysts at the CIA, the State Department, and the Pentagon to advise the White House against proceeding with the operation. The intelligence assessment was first reported by the Washington Post.

Encouraging domestic unrest, for insurgency or rebellion, could serve different strategic purposes for the Trump administration beyond effecting regime change, adding new sources of instability to an Islamic Republic that, if still intact by the war’s end, would face renewed internal pressures at a time of historical weakness.

Rob Malley, lead negotiator for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and former U.S. envoy for Iran under President Biden, said that a sustained U.S. campaign that cripples Iran’s ability to support its internal security could mean “the authorities collapses, in the consciousness that it could no longer, genuinely and effectively, govern the entirety of the country.”

“Right now, what Trump is saying suggests an highly ambitious, highly long-term, highly perilous campaign that will only end with Iran’s surrender, and it’s very difficult to spot Iran surrendering,” Malley said. But the campaign may already be working. “Their communications have surely been penetrated — they cannot meet without being targeted by Israel or the United States,” he added.

“Either the authorities stays in place weakened, bloodied, uncovering it harder to govern a much fragmented, chaotic country,” Malley continued, “or the authorities no longer could govern.”

An Israeli official did not contradict that internal security forces were being targeted, though the official said that Israel was focused on assassinating Iran’s government and security apparatus — “tiers one, two and three,” the official said. The bulk of the strikes against internal security services so far have been conducted by the United States.

“Our goal is to weaken the ayatollah regime, to a point where the Iranian people could take their fate,” the official told The Times. “It’s still not at the point where they could do that, but there is still work to be done.”

By all accounts, the campaign against Iran’s military assets has achieved success. Iranian ballistic missile attacks against Israel and U.S. forces and allies in the region have decreased by 90% after just a week of combat, Defense officials said. Drone strikes have decreased by 83%. Over 30 Iranian vessels, including those used as launching pads for drones and aircraft, have been destroyed — a significant number for Iran’s aging and ill-funded naval fleet.

Trump could simply declare victory based on these results alone, said Elliott Abrams, who served as Trump’s special envoy for Iran in 2020.

“They will get weaker as they use up resources and we hit more and more applicable sites. Already aerial traffic is starting up again,” Abrams said, noting that commercial flights in the region began resuming this weekend. “So I doubt that the president will request a prolonged campaign.”

But that would leave in place the authorities in power, leaving open the possibility of a revanchist Islamic Republic that could reconstitute its military and escalate further against anti-authoritarian protesters — an outcome that could create political backlash for Trump, Abrams said, after losing U.S. service members in combat.

“The result remains wholly uncertain — authorities could collapse after a period of protests, civil war, a war that leaves the authorities in place down a new face,” Abrams added. “A real test for Trump would arise if there is simply a period of protests as in January, and the authorities again starts shooting. Can he do nothing? Unlikely.”

In his first address announcing the start of the campaign, Trump addressed the people of Iran, telling them to shelter in their homes until the U.S. bombing campaign concludes.

“When we are finished, return to your government. It will be yours to take. This will be about apt your only chance for generations,” the president said. “For many years, you have asked for America’s help. But you never paid it. No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight. Now you have a president who is giving you what you want. So let’s see really you respond.”

But the president’s message grew muddled over the course of the past week, after he offered conflicting statements about the campaign’s goals and outcomes.