Natalie Kitroeff: From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Kitroeff. This is the Daily. Nearly 3 weeks into the war in Iran, the US and Israel have largely decimated the regime's missile capacity, taken out key leaders, and disrupted its central command. And yet, Iran has not backed down. In fact, the regime has become more hardened and is wreaking more havoc than ever. Today, my colleague Eric Schmitt on how Iran continues to challenge the most powerful military in the world and what President Trump's options are for getting out of this conflict. It's Thursday, March 19th.

Natalie Kitroeff: So Eric, we had you on the show 10 days into the war to lay out where things stood, not in terms of rhetoric or stated goals, things that have been pretty hard to nail down, but in terms of hard facts, what has actually happened on the ground. And here we are almost at the end of week three of this war. And we want to do something similar. So, please orient us. Where do things stand right now?

Eric Schmitt: So, here we are, as you said, nearly 3 weeks into this campaign, and from a military standpoint, the commanders think they're doing pretty well. The United States is decimating the radical Iranian regime's military in a way the world has never seen before. They think they're actually a bit of ahead of schedule. In less than two weeks, we've rendered the Iranian Navy combat ineffective and continue to attack naval vessels.

Eric Schmitt: They've hit over 120 Iranian naval vessels. This includes ships that lay mines in the Gulf. They've struck more than 7,800 targets in Iran. Wow. These are things like missiles, missile launchers, drone storage areas.

Natalie Kitroeff: And this is the US and Israel or just the US?

Eric Schmitt: This is just the US. The Israeli Air Force has carried out its own campaign in parallel with the United States and they in particular have gone after many of the Iranian leaders. Israel claimed to have hit the hideout of Iran security chief. There's another big hole in the top of the leadership. They've killed the top security chief Ali Larajani. Another killed by Israel Gomeza Solommani.

Eric Schmitt: They've killed the head of the besiege, the militia group that ruthlessly suppressed protesters in January. And then on Wednesday, they announced they killed the intelligence chief for Iran. He was responsible for overseeing the country's entire global terror network. These are very prominent strikes that they've carried out against the leadership of the country at this point.

Natalie Kitroeff: So these are obviously massive blows to the structure of the regime. To what extent do those deaths though actually impact the regime itself? Because it seems like they're still there.

Eric Schmitt: That's right. The regime has been quite resilient. Iran has been hitting back with attacks across the region using underwater vehicles to hit tanker ships off the coast of... despite the fact that they've lost these top leaders. They have factored that into their planning.

Eric Schmitt: Well, Israel has also been under attack. Iran launched a new wave of retaliatory strikes overnight. Iran is clearly striking back here after Israel confirmed the killing of two of the Islamic Republic's most powerful officials. They're finding new ways, including through the use of these cluster munitions, to get through Israel's air defenses cause damage and also tonight fatalities. And so they've been able to fight on even as the Israeli and American militaries continue to degrade their ability to fight back.

Eric Schmitt: And that's really important because right now it's what the military calls an asymmetric war. The Iranian regime, weakened as it is, knows it can't go toe-to-toe with the Israeli and American militaries. So, they're fighting almost a guerilla style campaign at this point.

Natalie Kitroeff: Right? And how is the Pentagon assessing then its progress? How does the Pentagon see the war thus far?

Eric Schmitt: Well, again, the Pentagon looked at this as maybe a four to six week campaign from the start, and again, we're coming toward the end of the third week, and they feel by their metrics, they're doing pretty well at degrading and destroying the leadership, some of the military sites, Iran's ability to fight back, Iran's ability to produce new weapons. So, they think they're doing pretty well.

Natalie Kitroeff: And Eric, in terms of loss of life, where does that stand on all sides of this?

Eric Schmitt: Well, right now the Times estimates that there have been at least 2100 deaths on the ground in the war so far. Over 300 of those civilian deaths, mostly in Iran itself. There have been deaths in some of the other countries that have been attacked by Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. So those countries have suffered as well. On the American side, the death toll is now up to 13 that have been killed in action with scores of others being injured in various attacks in as many as seven different countries.

Eric Schmitt: Any death, any US service member combat death is tragic. But I think most commanders would say, as tragic as these numbers are, that it's still on the relatively low side. Things could have gotten much worse. Obviously, about six of these American deaths came when two refueling aircraft collided over western Iraq last week. Secretary Pete Hegsath said that about 90% of the 50,000 American troops in the region had been moved away from their main bases in the region. That reflected the concern they had with potential casualties.

Natalie Kitroeff: Okay, so bottom line, it sounds like the Pentagon is feeling like it's executing its military mission successfully. I do hear a butt though in what you've been saying because you've been careful to emphasize military success.

Eric Schmitt: That's right. Because on the other side of the coin, there are political goals and of course the president has been articulating several over the last several days, some of which seem to conflict with each other. Certainly on the first day of the war, he talked about regime change altogether in Iran. He seems to have moved away from that. He talks about denying Iran's capability to ever develop a nuclear weapon. He talks about devastating Iran's ability to project power in the region. That is its ability to threaten not only the United States but its neighbors in the future. And so it's a shifting array of targets and also a shifting end state as we come to the end of this third week.

Natalie Kitroeff: Right. And as you've said, despite all of the decimating of Iran's military capacity that has happened, the regime is not backing down. So just explain that. What are we seeing?

Eric Schmitt: Well, the main thing that we're seeing is with the dwindling amount of resources that the Iranian military has, they're being very selective in their targeting. They're still trying to hit American bases, American embassies in the region, but their most important thing is they're basically now entering a new phase where economic warfare is probably their biggest tool. So now what they're doing is they're going after the economic vulnerabilities of the United States and the international community.

Natalie Kitroeff: You're talking about the Straight of Hormuz.

Eric Schmitt: Exactly. This narrow strategic waterway through which so much international commerce flows in and out of the Persian Gulf. And what they've been able to do is with a handful of minds, the New York Times has reported, but just the threat of attacks, they've basically brought international commerce to a trickle. And that's the main concern right now of the administration because it's sending global shock waves in terms of the economic impact this is already having.

Eric Schmitt: That's right. I think nearly 20 different tankers, whether they're oil tankers or cargo tankers, have been struck. Wow. And that has a real deterrent on other shipping companies and their insurers. There are three main kinds. One is there are mines (somewhere between five and 6,000 mines). Another way is just from missiles that can be launched from the shoreline. Another means is Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has scores if not hundreds of speedboats.

Natalie Kitroeff: Yeah. I mean, just to be crystal clear here, we are seeing the most powerful and sophisticated military in the world being stymied essentially by this totally decentralized strategy carried out by a seriously weakened country that has had 90% of its missile capacity destroyed.

Eric Schmitt: And that's the challenge. What Iran did is they had a very decentralized system of attack. They have what's called a mosaic defense. They have some 30 different districts basically that they've assigned defenses to. So that if you knock out the central command and control in Thran or any one of these important leaders, these independent districts, their commanders already have a set of general instructions and they can continue carrying out attacks with the weapons that they have. But the Iranians know this is their real ace in the hole. This is their leverage.

Natalie Kitroeff: Okay. I want to ask about the president and the extent to which he understood and calculated that these issues with the strait were going to happen and were going to happen to the extent that they have. In the beginning, he act as though the United States definitely didn't need help. It suggests to me as though he might not have foreseen this problem.

Eric Schmitt: Well, what we do know is that both intelligence leaders and military commanders briefed to the president and his senior advisers well in advance of the war itself. And they pointed out this was very much predictable. What was perhaps took some in the White House I think off guard was the extent that Iran would attack its neighboring countries with the ferocity that it did. Many believe that the Iranians wouldn't reach for this card right away. The US did not have the naval assets in place to deal with this kind of a threat right away. Their mind sweeping capabilities antiquated.

Natalie Kitroeff: Okay. So, now that we know the Iranians are seeing this appropriately as an existential threat and are essentially saying that they are willing to fight indefinitely, what are the ways out of this?

Eric Schmitt: So the options are not good. They basically range from bad to really bad to worse for the president right now. And those are the kind of decisions that he and his top advisers are now weighing.

Eric Schmitt: So, the first option is basically conduct tanker escorts where you have navy ships that would escort commercial vessels out of the Persian Gulf and then take other ships back in. It would be a very complex operation where you'd have to have dedicated as many of 12 or so of these specialized destroyers leading some number of commercial vessels through this straight which is 21 miles at its narrowest point. The possibility of American sailors being wounded or killed, that's also very much a distinct possibility.

Eric Schmitt: So the second main option is basically taking over a place called Karge Island. This is a small island which is Iran's main oil hub. About 90% of its oil production go through this place. One option is to have them do some kind of amphibious landing or some other kind of military operation to seize control of this strategic island and pressure the regime to concede on other fronts. But they'd have to go through the straight of Hormuz. Once they seize it, they would have to defend it.

Eric Schmitt: Well, yes. And obviously one of the things that President Trump has talked about is denying Iran's capability to develop a nuclear weapon. They have highlyenriched uranium stored right now at a facility called Isvahan in underground bunkers. Another option the president has talked about is sending ground forces. Basically be commandos that are specially trained to go into very dangerous situations like this, go down into these tunnels and somehow extract these canisters. This option seems incredibly risky and dangerous and kind of insane.

Eric Schmitt: Well, it certainly is because the president's actually floated this idea. He's talked about how the war is essentially over from a military standpoint, of how they've already achieved these extraordinary goals. The leaders that the United States has condemned for all these years, many of them are dead. And even if a weakened regime was in place, it could be contained.

Natalie Kitroeff: Eric, I want to return to one of the biggest justifications for this war, which is achieving regime change in Iran. Does anyone actually think that this military campaign could still produce regime change?

Eric Schmitt: I think most American intelligence analysts would say no. It's very unlikely at this point that you're going to have regime change of the kind that the president talked about on the first night of the war. And so what you're left with is kind of a rump IRGCled type government with still the instruments of repression. You've seen no serious defections from the regime that would show serious cracks.

Natalie Kitroeff: returning to the options that face Trump and the possible paths to an end to this conflict, it feels as though that is very much tied to the story of the war in general, which is what are your goals and how do you determine when you've actually achieved them? And it seems like that is still very uncertain.

Eric Schmitt: I think that's right, Natalie. And I think what you've seen is the president is really weighing two conflicting impulses. On the one hand, he may want to double down, send in ground forces, or does he look for an off-ramp? Does he declare victory. Which decision he'll make? We still don't know.