A country that has spent 47 years preparing for military confrontation does not abandon that preparation after three weeks of airstrikes.
That is the uncomfortable reality the United States appears reluctant to confront as its war against the Iranian regime enters a decisive phase. Recently, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced that Iranian attacks had fallen by 83% since the opening days of the conflict. There is a temptation among analysts to read this reduction as proof that the strategy is working—that Tehran is running out of resources to sustain its offensive and that victory is within reach. The evidence for that conclusion, however, is far from convincing. The particular nature of the Iranian regime suggests something quite different.
Following the fall of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in 1979, Iran was shut out of Western defence markets and cut off from military technology. Since then, its defence industry has relied on reverse engineering and the modernisation of Russian-imported equipment. The aftermath of the Iran-Iraq War accelerated the development of asymmetric capabilities specifically designed to counter U.S. and Israeli regional presence. These include low-cost drone systems such as the Shahed-131, as well as ballistic and cruise missiles launched from distributed, frequently underground sites scattered across the country—making it exceptionally difficult to locate and accurately assess Iran’s real reserves. This decentralisation, despite CENTCOM’s claims of having destroyed over 8,000 military targets (as of 21 March), is not a vulnerability. It is a deliberate feature designed to ensure the regime can sustain a prolonged conflict.
The Shahed-131 drone, costing around $20,000, has been the weapon of choice for attacking U.S. bases in the region and energy infrastructure. That said, the nominal drop in attacks could be down to any number of reasons. For one, Shahed drone strikes, as Russia learned in Ukraine, are most effective when launched in large numbers, since they saturate air defences and achieve a higher penetration rate. During this period, Iran may be recalibrating its strategy—gathering more intelligence on enemy assets, adjusting its tactics, or stockpiling drones to shift the conflict to the Strait of Hormuz or elsewhere.
The conflict has also shown that war is increasingly becoming a function of economics. American interceptors, including SM-6 missiles and Patriot systems—costing millions of dollars each—have been the primary tool of defence against relatively cheap Iranian drones. This is simply not sustainable. The UAE is already placing orders for Ukrainian drone interceptors costing a fraction of the price, in the region of $1,000 per unit. Europe cannot afford to watch from the sidelines. The Gulf has just demonstrated—just as the Russo-Ukrainian war did—what asymmetric warfare looks like at scale, and European counter-UAS capabilities are nowhere near ready for it.
Moreover, with the midterms coming up in November, the Trump administration needs a win—and a decisive one. Iran, by contrast, does not operate on the same political clock that governs American conflicts. The regime’s legitimacy does not hinge on delivering a quick battlefield victory or keeping casualties low. So every week that passes without the Iranian regime collapsing can, by that logic, be read as a win for Tehran.
Europe must resist the pull of a conflict whose tempo is being dictated by forces entirely external to its interests: American electoral imperatives on one side, and Iranian strategic patience on the other. We must not be dragged into this conflict. We must commit to closing the counter-UAS gap, build genuine supply chain resilience in the energy sector, and continue developing a foreign policy that does not simply serve Washington’s interests.
Mario Gianni Garcia,
NNGG delegate and student at
Columbia University and
Sciences Po Paris
