On the menu today: The ongoing war in the Middle East now involves 15 countries either firing upon each other or being fired upon by others. It is another demonstration of how drones are now the weapon of choice, and if the Iranian regime falls, it will be good news for the Ukrainians and bad news for the Russians. And if the Middle Eastern countries under fire want to know more about how to fight waves of incoming drones and missiles, they might want to put in a call to Kyiv. Read on.
The New Weapon of Choice
The primary combatants in the ongoing conflict in the Middle East are the United States (1) and Israel (2) on one side, with Iran (3) and Hezbollah on the other. But Iran has fired missiles at and/or triggered air defense systems and operations in Saudi Arabia (4), the United Arab Emirates (5), Qatar (6), Kuwait (7), Bahrain (8), Jordan (9), Iraq (10), and Oman (11). Syria (12) may not have been a deliberate target of Iran, but the aim of the Iranians is so bad, Syrian civilians are getting killed by Iranian missiles, too.
Lebanon (13) has been the site of the fighting with Hezbollah.
A “kamikaze drone,” fired by either Iran or Hezbollah, hit the runway at the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force base at Akrotiri, Cyprus. The Republic of Cyprus (14) (the Greek side) announced that their air defenses intercepted a pair of additional drones.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer addressed the House of Commons on Iran yesterday:
It is important for me to be clear: our bases in Cyprus have not been used by U.S. forces for offensive strikes. A strike on RAF Akrotiri was not in response to any decision the UK has taken. Our assessment is that the drone was launched before our announcement. Iran’s hostility toward Britain and our interests is long‑standing, which is why our forces are always held at a high level of readiness. . . .
I have spoken to our partners, many of whom feel utterly outraged by Iran’s attacks, particularly as they played no part in any strike against Iran. They have asked us to do more to help defend them.
And, Mr. Speaker, my highest duty is to protect British lives. For several days now, British jets, Typhoons and F‑35s, have been deployed as part of coalition defensive operations. They have already successfully intercepted multiple threats, including drones heading toward a coalition base in Iraq housing UK personnel. I want to pay tribute to the bravery of our servicemen and women, who put themselves in harm’s way to keep others safe. The whole House will join me in expressing our gratitude.
But it is simply not possible to shoot down every Iranian missile and drone once they are launched. The only way to prevent these attacks is to destroy the missiles at source, in their storage depots or at their launchers.
The United States requested permission to use British bases for that specific, limited defensive purpose. They have the capabilities required to prevent Iranian missiles from killing civilians, British nationals, or our allies in countries that played no part in the initial strike.
To be clear: the use of British bases is strictly limited to agreed defensive purposes. The UK has not joined US offensive operations. Our action is rooted in the principle of collective self-defense of longstanding friends and in the protection of British lives. We have published a summary of our legal position, which sets this out clearly. We will keep this decision under review.
France and Germany are also prepared to support the US in preventing Iran’s ability to launch further missile and drone attacks. I have been in close contact with President Macron and Chancellor Merz, as well as leaders across the region. . . .
We have learned from the mistakes of the past. We were not involved in the initial strikes, and we will not join offensive US strikes. But in the face of Iran’s dangerous escalation, we will defend British nationals and support the collective self-defense of our allies. That is our duty to the British people.
I’ll let you decide whether that means the United Kingdom is a combatant in this war; I suspect that when you and your bases are under fire, you sure as heck feel like you’re involved.
If you throw in the U.K., that adds up to 15 countries plus Hezbollah that are either firing at other countries or being fired upon by other countries in this conflict. For several decades, we’ve heard warnings that if the U.S. took a particular action, it could trigger a broader war across the Middle East. That broader war is now here.
(Look at a map of the Middle East, and notice which country isn’t getting any missiles fired in its direction: Turkey. That may be because, as Sinan Ciddi argues in the New York Sun, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is functionally pro-Iran in his policies. It probably also has something to do with Turkey having a million-man army with reserves, a fully functional NATO-level arsenal including top-level drones, and a 332-mile shared border with Iran.)
Iran’s primary weapons used in these long-range strikes have been short-range and medium-range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and Shahed drones. (There is stunning footage from Bahrain of a Shahed drone striking an apartment building, filmed from inside the building.) According to The Guardian over in the U.K., Iran has fired more than 1,000 Shahed drones in the first three days of the conflict.
The good news is Western air defense systems are proving, once again, to be quite effective at intercepting what Iran is launching. The bad news is that it currently costs the good guys a lot more to intercept an incoming missile or drone than it costs the bad guys to fire one:
U.S.-made Patriot air-defense missiles have been largely successful in stopping the Iranian Shaheds and other ballistic missiles, with interception rates over 90 percent, according to the UAE. But using $4 million missiles to destroy $20,000 drones illustrates a problem that has haunted Western military planners since early in the Ukraine war: The cheap weapons can chew up resources meant for much more complex threats.
The result is that both Iran and the U.S. may run low on weapons in a matter of days or weeks. Whoever can last longer will gain a serious advantage.
Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, ran the numbers and concluded, “The UAE spent 5–10x more defending than Iran spent attacking. . . . [F]or every $1 Iran spent on drones, the UAE spent roughly $20–28 shooting them down.”
The United States has also produced and deployed its own version of the Shahed, called the “LUCAS” — Low-Cost Unmanned Combat Attack System:
“Costing approximately $35,000 per platform, LUCAS is a low-cost, scalable system that provides cutting-edge capabilities at a fraction of the cost of traditional long-range U.S. systems that can deliver similar effects,” Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins, a CENTCOM spokesperson, told TWZ back in December. “The drone system has an extensive range and the ability to operate beyond line of sight, providing significant capability across CENTCOM’s vast operating area.”
In addition, the LUCAS design includes features that allow for “autonomous coordination, making them suitable for swarm tactics and network-centric strikes,” a U.S. official told us. As we have explained in detail in the past, the swarming capabilities combined with some of the drones being equipped with Starlink terminals, means extremely advanced cooperative tactics and dynamic targeting are possible, all while keeping humans in the loop.
Thankfully, I have not run into a Shahed drone, up close and personal; if I had, I might not be writing this. (Then again, the Russians hit the home of Ilya Ponomarev, political head of the Freedom of Russia Legion, with a Geran-2 kamikaze drone, and he escaped with minor injuries from shrapnel.) But I have been in Kyiv when they’ve been under drone attack, for several nights. I’ve reported from rooftop anti-drone stations within that city. And I’ve visited several production facilities in Ukraine for both aerial and ground drones. The one time I’ve awoken to an explosion, it was a U.S.-produced Patriot missile intercepting either a Russian Iskander-M ballistic/aeroballistic missile or Kh-101/Kh-555 cruise missile.
The Western military world saw the drone warfare coming. A bit more than a year ago, I reported:
“Really cheap stuff is killing really expensive stuff,” Deborah Fairlamb tells me. Fairlamb is co-founder of Green Flag Ventures, a venture capital firm based here and in Los Angeles. It invests in early-stage Ukrainian companies pioneering artificial intelligence and cyber products that are dual-use, meaning with both military and civilian applications.
We’re chatting in the lobby of the Intercontinental Kyiv hotel, which is hosting the Defense Tech Innovations Forum, a conference on defense industry technologies. It looks like a Silicon Valley tech-bro gathering, except it’s full of middle-aged Ukrainians in Steve Jobs-style black turtlenecks and men in military fatigues, with a handful of women in attendance, too. The lobby has become an upscale version of Rick’s Café in “Casablanca” — sit there long enough, and you’ll see former CIA director and retired Army Gen. David Petraeus being hailed like a returning hero, or a group of German soldiers headed to a meeting in the restaurant.
A quiet ramification of the Trump administration’s decision to attempt to end the mullahs’ regime in Iran is that this could be terrific news for the Ukrainians. Iran has become one of Russia’s biggest and most important arms dealers:
Contracts with Moscow starting from October 2021 — before the war began — for ballistic and surface-to-air missiles amount to roughly $2.7 billion, said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The purchases have included hundreds of Fath-360 short-range ballistic missiles, nearly 500 other short-range ballistic missiles and approximately 200 surface-to-air missiles associated with anti-aircraft defense systems.
Iran has delivered millions of rounds of ammunition and shells, according to the assessment, which doesn’t represent the entirety of what Moscow has purchased from Tehran as more equipment is expected to be supplied. . . .
In total, Russia has spent more than the equivalent of $4 billion on Iranian military equipment since late 2021, according to the assessment.
If the Iranian regime is deposed, it will not completely eliminate Russia’s ability to produce Shahed-style drones, but it will hinder it:
Since probably about early 2022, Tehran has been providing drones and drone technology to Russia for use in Ukraine. Later that year, Russia and Iran signed the agreement to set up a production plant in Russia for Iranian-designed attack drones.
With Iranian blueprints and technology, a production plant in Tatarstan in western Russia now produces large numbers of drones originally designed by Iran. At this factory, Russia manufactures the Geran-2, Moscow’s name for the Iranian Shahed-136 strike drone.
Easily identifiable by its delta-wing shape, the drone has optimized certain design features, such as range, endurance and weight capacity. It can carry an estimated 90 to 110 pounds of explosives hundreds of miles.
The Ukrainians have been ahead of the curve on drone warfare, in large part because they have had to be. Dara Massicot, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes:
Russia has been launching its domestic variant of the Shahed drone at Ukraine for four years. Since 2022, the Ukrainian military has developed proven, layered solutions to shoot down dozens, or at times hundreds, of Shahed drones across Ukraine. They’re using fighter aircraft, helicopters, and jamming or spoofing, as well as point defenses of anti-aircraft guns, interceptor drones, and other low-cost capabilities.
Iran is using similar targeting tactics as Russia, launching hundreds of its Shahed drones against U.S. bases and facilities, as well as bases and critical infrastructure of coalition nations in the Gulf. This is likely the result of shared learning between Russia and its partners, including Iran, China, and North Korea.
Ukraine wants to share its expertise in Shahed defense tactics with its partners. While this learning should have started long ago, now is the time to start — and catch up quickly.
Many Americans know that the U.S. spends more on defense than any other country. What they probably don’t know is that “[m]easured as a share of the economy, defense spending was 2.9 percent of gross domestic product in 2024, matching its lowest level since 1962.” (President Trump wanted NATO members to spend 5 percent of their GDP on their national defense and settled for 3.5 percent. Meanwhile, we slipped below 3 percent.)
To a lot of lawmakers, defense spending, including air defense systems, always seems like a waste of resources. Until you find yourself and your country under missile and drone attack, and then you wish you had spent a whole lot more, a whole lot earlier.
ADDENDUM: Over in that other Washington publication, a column I’m quite pleased with, laying out how Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump (twice), and Joe Biden all set out to variously be humble in their foreign policy, end “forever wars,” and be remembered as peacemakers — to be anything but a hawk or a warmonger. And all of them ended up using military force a lot more than they expected, and more than they sounded like they would back on the campaign trail. At some point, this isn’t just a matter of all five men being hypocrites or feckless. It represents a fundamental hard truth about the job, when the lives and safety of Americans are your responsibility, and every morning the presidential daily briefing brings new details about factions and regimes that aim to harm Americans.