Iran's Desperate, High-Risk Survival Strategy

"Days after Israel and the United States launched a bombing campaign that decimated the upper echelons of Iran's leadership-killing the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and more than forty top officials, according to the Israeli military-the regime in Tehran has shown little sign of breaking. Instead, Iran has been launching waves of drones and missiles across the Middle East, in an escalation that has plunged the whole region into war."

"The Iranian regime had vowed retribution after Khamenei's death. "You have crossed our red line and must pay the price," Iran's speaker of parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, told the U.S. and Israel, in a televised address. "We will deliver such devastating blows that you yourselves will be driven to beg." But it's Iran's neighbors that have been feeling the brunt of the pain so far."

"The missile math may not be in their favor: it costs far less for Iran to launch a cheap drone than it does for the U.S. and its regional partners to shoot it out of the sky. "A war of attrition that exhausts missile defense inventories is the most beneficial outcome"

Following a bombing campaign that killed Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and top officials, Iran launched waves of drones and missiles across the Middle East, escalating the conflict regionally. Iran-linked strikes targeted U.S. positions in Gulf countries and a British air base in Cyprus, prompting NATO intervention. Regional militaries from the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia responded by intercepting hundreds of Iranian drones and missiles. However, concerns exist about depleting defense munitions stockpiles as the conflict continues. The asymmetric cost dynamics favor Iran, as launching cheap drones costs significantly less than intercepting them, potentially exhausting regional air defense inventories.

Read at The New Yorker