Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., attended the two-hour briefing behind closed doors Tuesday. “I obviously can't disclose classified info, but you deserve to know how incoherent and incomplete these war plans are,” he wrote on social media afterward. “Maybe the lead is that the war goals DO NOT involve destroying Iran's nuclear weapons program,” he said, which is in sharp contrast with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s message earlier Tuesday that the U.S. is working to “permanently deny Iran nuclear weapons forever” with the ongoing war.

The Pentagon’s goals for Iran include “destroying lots of missiles and boats and drone factories,” Murphy said, which echoes some input this week from Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and even Hegseth earlier Tuesday. “But the question that stumped them,” Murphy said of the classified briefing, is “what happens when you stop bombing and they restart production? They hinted at more bombing. Which is, of course, endless war.”

And perhaps most vexing for the White House at the moment, “on the Strait of Hormuz, they had NO PLAN,” Murphy said. “I can't go into more detail about how Iran gums up the Strait, but suffice it [to] say, right now, [U.S. officials] don't know how to get it safely back open.”

• Related: The U.S. military warned “civilians in Iran to immediately avoid all port facilities where Iranian naval forces are operating,” in a statement from Central Command officials Wednesday. “The Iranian regime is using civilian ports along the Strait of Hormuz to conduct military operations that threaten international shipping,” and “Civilian ports used for military purposes lose protected status and become legitimate military targets under international law,” CENTCOM said. 

Murphy and more than 40 other senators are demanding detailed answers from the U.S. military about a strike on an elementary school that reportedly killed around 170 people, including children, on Feb. 28 in southern Iran. The lawmakers’ 22 questions were submitted to the Defense Department after numerous media outlets noticed what appeared to be a U.S.-made Tomahawk missile striking the area near the school during the time when the strike occurred. Those reports began emerging late last week and over the weekend, and continued early this week. 

United Nations and human rights experts have requested an independent investigation into the strike, which they said may be a violation of the laws of war prohibiting attacks against civilians and civilian objects. Key detail: The apparent use of a Tomahawk, which only the U.S. military is known to use in this conflict, strongly suggested the Defense Department was responsible for the strike on the school. President Trump initially blamed the strike on Iran, but as more reporting surfaced this week, he said Wednesday he didn’t know about the incident. The 40-plus lawmakers—in an ensemble that does not include any Republicans—are seeking insight into the attack no later than next Wednesday. 

Latest: U.S. military officials now allege “outdated targeting data” may have led to the strike on the school, the New York Times reported Wednesday, citing an ongoing internal investigation. The Washington Post corroborated that account later Wednesday. If true, that would seem to suggest the U.S. military may have been using satellite imagery from at least 2016, according to these BBC satellite comparisons, because Google Maps shows a playground and a wall in place around the school beginning around 2017. 

By the way: Two satellite imaging firms are restricting or delaying access to imagery over the Middle East in order to protect NATO and “allied” partner forces, Planet Labs and Vantor said this week, Reuters reported Tuesday. 

Last week, Planet Labs announced a four-day delay in accessing imagery; but that hold has now been expanded to two weeks. According to a company spokesman, “the change is not the result of a directive or requirement from any government. It is Planet’s decision,” the Washington Post reported Wednesday evening. Vantor released a similar statement, and said it “independently determines when and how these controls are implemented as part of our responsible business practices. These decisions are not mandated by any government, military organization, or third party.”

Update: “At least 11 American military bases or installations have been damaged” by Iranian retaliatory strikes across the region, the Times reported Wednesday after reviewing satellite imagery. That includes Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia; Ali Al Salem Air Base and Camp Buehring Base in Kuwait; and Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. Air-defense sensors at an Air Force base in Jordan was also attacked early in the conflict. 

Replenishing the Pentagon’s advanced munitions “will take years and billions” of dollars, Becca Wasser writes for Bloomberg. And that would seem to suggest “Iran is waging a cost-imposing battle on the US defense industrial base—and its working,” she says. 

• Related reading: The NYT offers “a guide to the primary weapons being used in the current conflict.”

USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) update: The U.S. Navy’s newest aircraft carrier is racing through the region to help with the Iran war. Its crew experienced a slight hiccup on Thursday however, after a fire broke out “in the ship’s main laundry spaces,” injuring two people, officials said in a statement. “The cause of the fire was not combat-related and is contained,” and the aircraft carrier remains fully operational.”

Toward an end to the fighting: “Iran's president has set conditions for an end to the war, including reparations and guarantees against future aggression,” Germany’s Deutsche Welle, or DW, reported Wednesday. 

But Iran’s leader has vowed to continue fighting, and to keep the Hormuz Strait closed as long as possible, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal reports. Three merchant ships sustained minor damage after being attacked in or near the strait on Wednesday, British maritime authorities reported. 

Two fuel tankers were hit by explosive Iranian boats on Thursday while in Iraqi waters. Iraqi officials said they’ve completely stopped oil exports for now. “We will deliver the most severe blows to the aggressor enemy by maintaining the strategy of keeping the Strait of Hormuz closed,” an Iranian naval commander vowed on social media Thursday. 

Brent crude prices soared above $100 per barrel again on Thursday, and “The International Energy Agency's plan to release 400 million barrels of oil from its reserves, announced on Wednesday in the largest ​such move in its history, failed to soothe investors,” Reuters reports. 

Low oil prices are bad for Russia’s economy, which means Moscow is doing pretty well during this Iran war since “Currently, Russia can balance its budget with a price of $59 a barrel,” the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. 

Additional reading: 

• “US to release 172m barrels of oil from strategic petroleum reserve,” the Guardian reported Wednesday; 
• “Thanks to Trump, petro-imperialism is back,” Brown University’s Jeff Colgan wrote Wednesday in Mother Jones; relatedly, scientists recently discovered sea levels are “higher than assumed in most coastal hazard assessments,” according to a new study published in Nature; someone online joked, “If we could just raise sea levels by 150 meters we get a backup Strait of Hormuz.”
• After Iranian strikes on three Amazon Web Services facilities in the region, review “The Legal and Policy Fallout from Data Center Strikes in the Middle East War,” via a new explainer published Thursday at the Tech Policy Press; 
• “AI Used to Promote Non-Existent Evacuation Flights From the Middle East,” Bellingcat reported Thursday; 
• And ICYMI (we did), “State Department Bypasses Congress to Send Israel More Than 20,000 Bombs,” the Times reported Friday. 

Welcome to this Thursday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter focused on developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so we’d like to take a moment to thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1947, President Harry S Truman laid out what would become known as the Truman Doctrine: “It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.”

Around the Defense Department

Some see effort to evade accountability in Hegseth’s “ruthless” review of JAG, civilian legal offices. “I'm directing the service secretaries, the Army, Navy, and Air Force through their general counsels and JAGs and the [staff judge advocate] to the commandant to execute a ruthless, no-excuses review,” Hegseth said in a video posted on Wednesday. “Scrub it clean, cut duplication and bureaucracy, clarify roles, and reporting. No more moral ambiguity.” But current and former members of the judge advocate general corps told Defense One’s Thomas Novelly that they fear the move is part of attempts to gut legal oversight of the administration’s actions. Read on, here.

 B-21 spotted in aerial-refueling test flights. After planespotters posted photos of the new bomber flying close to a tanker, an Air Force spokesperson confirmed to Defense One’s Thomas Novelly that the Raider was executing tests leading up to aerial refueling. A bit more, here.

The Defense Department is seeking investment bankers to help invest $200 billion in defense deals, Semafor reports. The department is “specifically going after Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, and Bank of America as prime recruiting targets for the 30-person team, the headhunter brief outlines, explaining that ‘this is not a career move, but a two-to-three-year secondment program’” intended to help counter China. Read on, here.

Update: “The U.S. has spent at least $3.4 trillion countering China militarily since 2012,” according to a recent report from Brown University’s Costs of War project. “This figure, an average of $260 billion a year, is more than total U.S. spending on 20 years of war in Afghanistan ($2.3 trillion),” Jennifer Kavanagh of Defense Priorities said. 

Pentagon bans photographers after “unflattering” photos. “The Defense Department has barred press photographers from briefings on the ongoing U.S.-Israeli military conflict with Iran after they published photos of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that his staff deemed ‘unflattering,’”  the Washington Post reported Wednesday, citing “two people familiar with the decision who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.” In a statement, Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson wrote: “In order to use space in the Pentagon Briefing Room effectively, we are allowing one representative per news outlet if uncredentialed, excluding pool.” More, here. 

Etc.

Ukraine is making China-free drones. “A year ago, most Ukrainian defense companies could not produce these [circuit] boards, which are key ingredients in small exploding drones. But this advance, among others, has helped the country reach a milestone: It can now make drones with no components imported from China,” the New York Times reported on Wednesday.