A growing number of U.S. service members are seeking formal discharge as conscientious objectors, with two organizations that help troops through the process reporting the sharpest increase they have seen in decades.

Mike Prysner, who runs a hotline for conscientious objectors at the Center on Conscience and War (CCW), told MS NOW that applications have risen sixfold since the start of Operation Epic Fury against Iran in late February, a pace he said is higher than at any point in the past 25 years.

In a typical year, CCW works with about 50 conscientious objectors, but it has already taken on roughly 140 applicants since the Iran war began. Prysner said many of the current applicants differ from the historical pattern, in which objectors were typically junior enlisted troops.

Instead, many of the people now seeking help have served for more than a decade, span enlisted and officer ranks up to major, and in some cases attended military service academies before commissioning.

A second organization, the GI Rights Hotline at Quaker House, reported 429 inquiries in March and 440 in April, with elevated demand continuing since then. The group is currently working with around 30 people actively pursuing conscientious objector applications, compared with five to 10 at any given time before the war, according to counselor Lenore Yarger.

Yarger said the number of formal applicants likely understates broader unease within the ranks, noting that it "does not reflect the complete number of people who have expressed hesitations about what they are being told they must do."

Many objectors say they have been ordered to take actions they believe violate international humanitarian law, including strikes on civilian infrastructure that they say conflict with 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," one service member said, "if the president wants to blow up bridges, the lawyers will find a way to say that it is okay to do it, and nobody anywhere up or down the chain of command ever stops and says no."

The service member said they were told the targets were "dual-use," meaning they served both military and civilian purposes, but they found that explanation insufficient and said it caused them to question their purpose in the military.

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

Other service members described similar unease about Operation Southern Spear, the campaign against alleged drug traffickers that has included strikes on more than 60 boats and killed over 210 people. One service member said it was difficult to confirm whether strikes were hitting intended targets or harming civilians.

"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," one of the service members said.

To qualify as a conscientious objector, the Department of Defense requires troops to demonstrate a "firm, fixed, sincere and deeply held" moral, religious or ethical opposition to war. The process includes a written application, interviews with commanders, a chaplain and a mental health evaluator, and final sign-off from the service secretary. It can take up to a year.

For troops weighing whether to begin that process, the timing matters because it can stretch across months of uncertainty while their units remain active in the conflict. That makes the decision less about a quick escape from service than about whether they can continue in good conscience while the war continues.

"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," said Prysner, an Army veteran who served in the Iraq war.

He said most of the calls came from service members who were more concerned about the morality of the war than about fears for their own lives.

"They are scared of the moral and ethical implications of participating in this," Prysner said. "They are scared of killing for something that they don't believe in and don't believe is right."

The Department of Defense did not respond to a request for comment.