One service member is concerned the military blew up bridges in Iran that were not military targets. Another thinks Pentagon leaders are not doing enough to prevent civilian deaths during airstrikes inside Iran.

Yet another asked questions about how the military knew it was not killing civilians when launching missiles at boats it believed were trafficking drugs.

MS NOW spoke to five troops who want out of the military because what they saw in recent months challenged their moral beliefs.

Nearly six months into the United States’ war with Iran — and a year into the Pentagon’s decision to launch deadly strikes to kill alleged drug traffickers — the number of service members seeking a formal discharge from the military as conscientious objectors has skyrocketed, according to two groups that help them file their applications. 

To be allowed out of the military as a conscientious objector, the Department of Defense requires service members show a “firm, fixed, sincere and deeply held” moral, religious or ethical belief that opposes participation in war. 

Applicants must submit a written form, can include supporting letters and then sit for several rounds of interviews with their chain of command, a chaplain and a mental health evaluator before the decision is made and ultimately signed off on by the secretary of their service branch. The process can sometimes take up to a year. 

Despite Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s boasting that the military is reaching recruiting highs, an increasing number of service members are using this option to actively seek a way out.

All five of the troops who spoke to MS NOW had started the application process to leave the military.

The reasons they cited for changing their beliefs since they joined included being ordered to violate international law, seeing the civilian death toll as a result of American military interventions surge and their concerns over extended deployments with no clear mission or strategy.

They all joined the military for different reasons from family legacy to financial stability to a desire to serve their country, but all five of them described experiencing a turning point over the past year. 

MS NOW is not reporting details about the service members’ specific assignments, jobs, branch of service, length of time in uniform and gender to protect their identity since they are all currently awaiting final determination on their application. 

Civilian infrastructure in Iran

One service member who was ordered to support Operation Epic Fury against Iran said they believed the U.S. military was targeting civilian infrastructure, violating international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva Conventions. 

“I realized there’s no way that you could interpret the international laws as saying that you’re allowed to strike civilian bridges, but in reality, if the president wants to blow up bridges, the lawyers will find a way to say that it is OK to do it, and nobody anywhere up or down the chain of command ever stops and says no,” the service member said.

The service member brought up their concerns several times to their chain of command, but was told that most of the targets were “dual-use,” meaning they were used for both military and civilian purposes, which, if true, could technically make the strikes legal. 

The explanation was not sufficient and this person said they felt “nothing I’m doing in the military is going to contribute to any sort of overall good in the world.” 

Many of the service members MS NOW spoke with also said they felt disenfranchised and frustrated with the shifting public justifications for military action. 

“The current leadership is so unpredictable,” one of the service members said.

Targeting alleged drug boats

Another service member was concerned about their orders to support Operation Southern Spear, the military campaign launched in September 2025 by President Donald Trump to target drug organizations that the administration had deemed “designated terrorist organizations” to attempt to stop the flow of drugs into the U.S. 

The campaign has included U.S. military strikes on at least 60 small boats allegedly carrying “narco-terrorists,” eventually killing more than 210 people. The offensive involved one of the largest buildups of military assets near South America in decades.

The service member says they did bring up their concerns to their peers but not to their superiors because they were worried about potential retaliation. 

A service member who loaded weaponry onto planes aboard an aircraft carrier in the Caribbean Sea told MS NOW that they would see the planes return without bombs and not know who they were targeting or whether they had harmed civilians. Eventually, they began to distrust the military and came to believe they were causing undue harm in their role.

“You can tell yourself what you want at night and say they were all precision strikes and they were all planned, but there’s at least one innocent person that I feel like I indirectly hurt,” the service member told MS NOW.

More conscientious objectors

Mike Prysner, who runs a hotline to help service members file as conscientious objectors at the Center on Conscience and War, said his group has seen applications increase by six times their normal rate since the start of Operation Epic Fury against Iran in late February, adding that the rate right now is higher than at any point in the past 25 years. In a typical year, Prysner said CCW works with around 50 conscientious objectors, but the organization has already taken on about 140 applicants since the start of the war with Iran. 

He said that unlike other times in American history when conscientious objectors were typically junior enlisted service members, many of his clients today have been in the military for more than a decade, represent all enlisted and officer ranks up to major and many have even attended service academies prior to their commissions. They have cited Operation Epic Fury, the attacks against drug traffickers in Southern Spear and the bombing of the Minab school in Iran in February as reasons for having a profound change in thought toward war. 

“The Iran War was really the breaking point for them when they realized that they had to take action to make sure that they did not participate in something that they were going to regret for the rest of their lives,” Prysner said. 

Prysner himself is an Army veteran of the Iraq War who says he had his own “crisis of conscience” during his yearlong deployment there in 2003. He says while he remembers having conversations with his peers about their service back then, he believes that now, the military is being utilized in a different way that is leading to this spike in cases. 

“This war came as I think a total shock to most people in the country and to people in the military, and the continued prosecution of this war with seemingly no real rationale, no real exit, no real endgame and almost an impossibility of an endgame — that obviously, I think, weighs very heavily on the people that are being made to participate in it,” Prysner said, adding that most people, especially in an all volunteer force, need some kind of credible justification for being asked to kill people. 

He said most of the calls he receives about the Iran war are not from service members fearing for their own lives. “They are scared of the moral and ethical implications of participating in this,” he said. They are scared of killing for something that they don’t believe in and don’t believe is right.”

Another organization, the GI Rights Hotline at the Quaker House, is also experiencing a spike in the number of people seeking help with submitting conscientious objector applications since the start of the conflict with Iran. 

The GI Hotline received 429 inquiries in March and 440 in April, and requests for help have stayed higher than normal since then, according to figures provided by the organization. 

Currently, the GI Hotline is working with around 30 people who are actively going through the application process, compared to around five to 10 at any given time prior to the war, according to GI Rights counselor Lenore Yarger.

“The number of those who actually decide to apply does not reflect the complete number of people who have expressed hesitations about what they are being told they must do,” Yarger told MS NOW in a statement.

The Department of Defense did not reply to MS NOW’s requests for comment before publication.

Many of the conscientious objector applicants MS NOW spoke to said they believed when they joined the military that war should only be utilized as a last resort for national defense to achieve a necessary outcome. Without understanding the wars the United States was waging coupled with the rising death toll and questionable tactics, they ultimately came to decide that military service was something they could no longer be a part of. 

“When you volunteer to sign up for the military, despite what some people might think, you’re not signing up to be a robot,” a service member told MS NOW.

“I want what’s best for this country. … And I want us all to do the right thing,” another service member said. “But, like, when people start interpreting that as, ‘We need to go blow up other countries,’ when we just don’t have to, when we just really don’t have to, that’s when it’s like, OK, well, now I’m kind of mad.”

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