Decentralised Mosaic Defence

The doctrine was switched on as Iran's Central Command came under sustained attack. On 5 March Iran fully activated Decentralised Mosaic Defence, splitting the IRGC into 31 autonomous units able to act without central approval. On 6 March CENTCOM's Admiral Brad Cooper reported Iran's Ballistic missile launches down 90% from the first day of the war.

The launches did not stop. On 7 March the UAE recorded its heaviest day of attacks, 109 drones and nine ballistic missiles, and IRGC forces kept firing within hours of President Masoud Pezeshkian's halt order and televised apology. That gap between an instruction from Tehran and the units in the field is what the doctrine was built to create.

Late May showed the doctrine's split in practice. On 25 May US forces struck the Bandar Abbas naval base, destroying two IRGC mine-laying boats and a surface-to-air missile battery, while ceasefire talks in Doha continued that morning. The boats answer to the IRGC chain of command; the diplomats answer to the Foreign Ministry.

Launches continued around the talks. Iran fired a Ballistic missile at Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait on 28 May, and Kuwait became the first Gulf state in the war to invoke Article 51 of the UN Charter. On 31 May and 1 June CENTCOM hit radar and drone command sites at Goruk and Qeshm Island, targeting fixed control infrastructure near Hormuz after the Guards shot down a US MQ-1 drone.