THE ERA OF AMERICAN MILITARY IMPUNITY IS ENDING
America can still project extraordinary military power. What may be ending is its ability to do so without exposing scarce, expensive assets to increasingly capable asymmetric threats.
PART 1 OF 5 — THE END OF IMPUNITY SERIES
America can still project extraordinary military power. What may be ending is its ability to do so without exposing scarce, expensive assets to increasingly capable asymmetric threats.
For decades, the arrival of an American carrier strike group carried a message that went far beyond the ships themselves. The United States had arrived, and with it came the presumption that Washington could establish local military superiority, protect critical sea lanes and punish an adversary from a position of overwhelming advantage.
The war with Iran is putting that presumption under pressure.
Iran has not defeated the U.S. Navy. It has not sunk an American carrier. American forces remain vastly more capable than Iran's conventional military. But those facts can obscure the more important strategic development: Iran increasingly appears able to make the operating environment dangerous enough that the United States must defend, maneuver, disperse and calculate risk in ways that weaker regional adversaries historically could not force upon it.
That is not the end of American power projection. It may be the end of American power projection with impunity.
THE GULF IS BECOMING A DENIAL ZONE
The Strait of Hormuz offers the clearest evidence. Preliminary data from Kpler, a maritime intelligence firm that tracks global shipping movements, showed only seven vessel transits on September 10, Reuters reported—compared with roughly 125 large commercial vessels per day before the war. Other reporting indicates a limited Omani corridor has continued to move some oil, so the strait is not literally closed. But the collapse in traffic is strategically important: the United States can blockade Iranian exports, while Iran and its partners can impose enormous risk on the commercial system around them.
That looks less like uncontested sea control than mutual denial. Neither side needs to own every mile of water. Each needs only enough capability to prevent the other from using the Gulf normally.
Recent Iranian ballistic-missile attacks on U.S. warships sharpen the problem. The Wall Street Journal has reported repeated attacks, including against an aircraft carrier, and described some as close calls. The ships have so far escaped damage. But a missile does not need to sink a carrier to have strategic effect. If it forces a carrier to maneuver defensively, alters where it can safely operate, consumes interceptors or changes the resources required to protect it, the missile is already affecting American freedom of action.
THE LAND BASES ARE NOT SANCTUARIES
The same logic applies ashore. Reuters reported that an Iranian strike on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan damaged roughly eight U.S. F-15s and badly damaged an A-10. The F-15s returned to service, which matters: this was not the destruction of American air power. But it demonstrated something strategically uncomfortable.
Iran does not need to match America’s air power if inexpensive asymmetric systems can make American regional air bases vulnerable.
That sentence captures the larger change. A weaker state does not have to duplicate the stronger state's military. It needs capabilities that threaten, constrain or deny the advantages the stronger military was built to provide.
POWER PROJECTION VERSUS POWER PROJECTION WITHOUT RISK
The distinction is crucial. American submarines, bombers, carriers, satellites, long-range weapons, intelligence networks and logistics remain formidable. The United States can inflict destruction on Iran that Iran cannot reciprocate symmetrically.
But deterrence is not measured only by how much damage America can inflict. It is also measured by what an adversary believes it can survive, retaliate against and make prohibitively expensive.
If a regional adversary can threaten ships at sea, aircraft on the ground, commercial traffic, energy infrastructure and regional allies simultaneously, then the political meaning of sending a carrier begins to change. The carrier still says: America can hurt you. It may no longer say: America can operate here on terms of its own choosing.
That is the potential historical break.
The United States has not lost the ability to project power around the world. But the world around the platforms that project that power is becoming more dangerous, more distributed and cheaper.
The question is no longer whether American military power is real. It plainly is. The question is whether the old presumption of sanctuary around that power was ever sustainable - and whether Iran is helping demonstrate that it no longer is.
WHY IT MATTERS
Other militaries do not need to watch Iran and conclude that the U.S. Navy is weak. They need only conclude that exquisite American systems can be threatened by forces far cheaper than the systems being defended. That lesson will not remain confined to the Persian Gulf.
And that leads directly to the next question: if Iran's demonstrated capabilities have changed during the war, what does Iran have next?
Sources
Reuters — Hormuz shipping traffic falls to single digits, Sept. 11, 2026
Reuters — U.S. military aircraft damaged at Jordan air base, Sept. 10, 2026
Wall Street Journal — Close calls on U.S. warships, Sept. 10, 2026
Read the series
- Part 1: THE END OF IMPUNITY — you are here.
- Part 2: WHAT DOES IRAN HAVE NEXT?
- Part 3: CAN AN EXQUISITE MILITARY SURVIVE THE RETURN OF MASS?
- Part 4: THE ESCALATING STALEMATE
- Part 5: WHO NEEDS THE BOMB?
Continue exploring: See the Institute’s Autonomous Warfare Tracker and AI Timeline for the broader record behind this analysis.