How Iran is wreaking havoc across the Middle East with cheap drones

How Iran is wreaking havoc across the Middle East with cheap drones (Image: Getty Images)

 When the United States began launching air strikes on Iran on Saturday, Donald Trump said that the country's missile industry and missiles would be "totally obliterated." However, he did not mention Iran's drones. Six days later, Iran has launched more than 2,000 low-cost drones at Middle Eastern targets in an effort to overwhelm defenses and cause chaos. These Shahed "kamikaze" drones are armed with explosives that can explode when they hit something and cause a lot of damage. Six US soldiers were killed when a drone struck a base in Kuwait, the deadliest attack on US forces thus far.

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Some attacks have occurred in cities with a lot of people, which has scared people on the streets and the governments of the Gulf states. This, according to some experts, may be part of an Iranian strategy to "impose terror" on the United States and pressure it into ending the conflict quickly. According to a BBC-verified video, an Iranian drone descends rapidly before striking what appears to be a radar installation at the headquarters of the US Navy's Fifth Fleet in Manama, Bahrain. The impact sends debris into the air and causes the building to collapse. A drone crashes into a hotel on Dubai's Palm Jumeirah, a luxury man-made archipelago, in another video from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The impact sent a huge fireball and a loud boom through the city.

The region's energy sector has been particularly affected by drone attacks. After a fire that was started by debris from an intercepted drone, Saudi Arabia's largest oil refinery, Ras Tanura, on the Gulf coast, ceased production. After being targeted by Iranian drones, the world's largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal in Qatar was also shut down. Due to their straightforward design and low production costs, the drones are causing significant damage throughout the region. It is anticipated that the Shahed 136 long-range drone, which is produced in Iran, will set you back between $20,000 and $50,000.

How Iran is wreaking havoc across the Middle East with cheap drones (Image: Getty Images)

In recent days, smartphone footage from across the region has shown the Shahed's distinctive buzz. In the video below, a drone striking a tower block in Bahrain's capital Manana over the weekend can be clearly heard.

The Shahed, unlike many commercial drones, cannot be controlled remotely while in the air. Instead, before it is launched, it is pre-programmed to use a satellite navigation system to follow a predetermined path to a target. It could fly from Tehran to Athens with a maximum range of 2,500 km. The drone's low profile and ability to fly at a low altitude make it difficult to detect by radar and early warning systems that focus on the threat posed by missiles, despite its lack of speed, especially in comparison to ballistic missiles.

During the conflict in Ukraine, Russia made extensive use of the Shahed, devastatingly targeting densely populated cities and power plants. In recent years, Iran has supplied its ally with Shaheds, and Russia is now producing its own variants based on the Iranian design. According to Mick Mulroy, a former US Marine, paramilitary officer with the CIA, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, the drones have "proven highly effective" in previous conflicts, to the point where the US has developed its own version. The US drone, dubbed Lucas (low-cost uncrewed combat attack system), saw its first combat use in recent days. The head of US forces in the Middle East, Admiral Brad Cooper, stated that they had "made them better, and fired them right back at Iran" using the Iranian design.

The US military recently established a squadron of Lucas drones that is based in the Middle East(Image: Getty Images)

Data on the number of drones Iran is launching is being made public, but the United States has not disclosed how many it has deployed. According to the United Arab Emirates, more than 1,000 Iranian drones have been launched at the nation, but only 71 have penetrated its defenses. However, there is a cost associated with each and every intercept. The Shahed drones can be destroyed in a variety of ways, including with laser weapon systems and specialized GPS jamming devices. However, many of them are currently being destroyed by expensive surface-to-air missile systems or fighter jet-fired missiles. The United Kingdom was said to have used RAF fighter jets to shoot some of Iran's hundreds of drones down with missiles that cost about £200,000 each when Iran attacked Israel in 2024. A similar intercept by an RAF jet this week in Jordanian airspace is shown in the video below.

Nicholas Carl, an expert on Iran at the American Enterprise Institute, claims that Iran's strategic deployment of drones and missiles includes forcing the United States and its allies to use up their interceptor stocks. Carl, on the other hand, stated that the regime is also attempting to "impose terror and psychological pressure" on the United States and its regional partners in order to compel President Donald Trump to sign a ceasefire agreement. How long Iran can keep that pressure up is unclear.  Before the war, it was thought to have produced tens of thousands of Shahed drones in mass quantities; however, it is unknown how much of that stockpile remains after days of US and Israeli strikes on the country. The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-affiliated Fars news agency released footage on Monday showing drone lines in what appears to be an underground bunker; however, the date the footage was taken is unknown.

How Iran is wreaking havoc across the Middle East with cheap drones

On Thursday, Admiral Cooper stated that Iran's use of ballistic missiles had decreased by 90% and the number of drones it launched had decreased by 83% since the first day of fighting. Carl continued, "Iran is struggling to sustain its missile and drone attacks, and that could become even harder in the coming days as military pressure from the US and Israel persists."

Source: BBC