Iran's Warning Shot
Instead of hitting them where it really hurts -- by empowering the Iranian people to overthrow the regime -- we are fighting the "old" war.
Kenneth R. Timmerman | July 19, 2026
President Trump threatened on Wednesday to unleash the "bridges and power plants" campaign next week, if Iran didn't cease attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and return to negotiations.
In response, an Iranian military spokesman said Iran would "crush" all remaining infrastructure in the region that has remained intact.
On Friday, Iran fired its warning shot, targeting a desalination plant in Kuwait.
Desalination plants range from small to enormous, and the big ones are easy targets for Iranian drones and missiles. Kuwait gets around 90% of its drinking water from desalination using reverse osmosis. Oman gets 86%, and Saudi Arabia gets around 70% of its water from similar plants.
Taking out those plants -- even just a few of them -- would have catastrophic human, economic, and political consequences. And the Iranians know it.
Iran is conducting a master class in asymmetrical warfare. We attack its military targets, it attacks commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, driving up world energy prices. We hit infrastructure targets, it counters by hitting oil and gas fields and refineries in other Persian Gulf countries.
This used to be called "competitive strategies." In the late 1990s, I took part in numerous executive-level presentations commissioned by the U.S. Army War College at the Department of Energy, the National Defense University, and elsewhere, on how the United States could leverage the Iranian regime's weaknesses and use our strengths to undo the regime's grip on power.
The big takeaway from those talks: the Iranian regime has a democracy deficit we can easily exploit. After all, we know quite a lot about the war of ideas.
But instead of hitting them where it really hurts -- by empowering the Iranian people to overthrow the regime -- we are fighting the "old" war.
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https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/07/iran-s-warning-shot/
