Three days after the start of the conflict, the war in Iran has already turned into a confrontation of attrition. Waves of drone attacks launched by the Islamic Republic are putting pressure on the defenses of the US and its allies, from Bahrain to the United Arab Emirates, and draining weapons stocks. The outcome may depend on which side runs out of ammunition first.
Shahed-136 suicide drones, small, simple-technology cruise missiles, continued to hit targets across the Middle East this Monday. In recent days, they have targeted American bases, oil infrastructure and civilian buildings, since the US and Israeli bombardment of Iran — a combination of cruise missiles, drones and guided bombs — began on Saturday.
Patriot anti-missile missiles, manufactured in the USA, have managed to intercept most Shaheds and other ballistic missiles, with a success rate above 90%, according to the United Arab Emirates. But using a US$4 million missile to shoot down a US$20,000 drone exposes a problem that has worried Western military strategists since the start of the war in Ukraine: cheap weapons can “eat” stocks designed for much more sophisticated threats.
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In practice, both Iran and the US risk running out of weapons in a matter of days or weeks. Whoever lasts the longest will have an important advantage.
Iran-allied groups in the region had already emerged weakened from the war in Gaza, and the country’s missile capabilities were affected by previous attacks by Israel and the US in a 12-day war in June. Since then, Tehran’s bet has been to increase the tone of threats about the cost of an attack ordered by Trump, knowing that a large part of the president’s base is refractory to long and confusing wars. Supreme leader Ali Khamenei — killed in Saturday’s airstrikes — had warned that an American offensive could set the entire region on fire.
“From Iran’s perspective, a strategy of attrition makes sense operationally,” said Kelly Grieco, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center think tank. “They calculate that the defenders will exhaust their interceptor missiles and that the political will of the Gulf countries will crack, increasing pressure on the US and Israel to stop operations before they run out of missiles and drones.”
According to an internal analysis seen by Bloomberg News, Qatar’s stockpile of Patriot interceptor missiles would last just four days at the current rate of use. Behind the scenes, Doha has been advocating a quick end to the conflict.
After last year’s war with Israel, Iran was estimated to have close to 2,000 ballistic missiles. The number of Shahed drones must be much higher. Russia, another major manufacturer, has been producing “kamikazes” of this type in the order of several hundred per day, according to an analysis by Becca Wasser, responsible for defense at Bloomberg Economics.
Since the start of this year’s war, Tehran has fired more than 1,200 projectiles, many — perhaps most — Shaheds. This indicates that Iran may be saving more destructive ballistic missiles for longer attacks, Wasser says.
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On the Iranian side, the military appears to act without frequent coordination with the civilian leadership, including the local Itamaraty, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, according to Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.
“Our military units today are, in practice, independent and, in a sense, isolated. They are acting based on general instructions that they received in advance,” Araghchi, a veteran of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said in an interview with Al Jazeera on Sunday.
On the American side, Wasser assesses that it is unlikely that planners brought enough ammunition to the region to sustain operations for four weeks, as President Donald Trump has said.
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US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said at a press conference on Monday: “This is not Iraq, this is not an endless war.”
In air defense, Iran today has little to react with. The bombings in the first hours of the war hit its anti-aircraft batteries, including the most modern systems, the Russian S-300. Since then, American and Israeli fighter jets have operated in Iranian airspace without reports of major difficulties.
The US and its allies in the region rely mainly on Lockheed Martin’s Patriot systems, which fire PAC-3 missiles. Despite the Pentagon’s effort to expand production, only around 600 PAC‑3s have been manufactured in 2025, according to Lockheed. Considering the volume of drones and missiles shot down, it is likely that thousands of interceptors have already been launched in the Middle East since Saturday.
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Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates also use THAAD, another Lockheed system, designed to shoot down more sophisticated missiles, at high altitudes, at the edge of the atmosphere. They are even more expensive — around $12 million each — and would be unlikely to be used against less complex targets.
The US has also used fighter jets on patrol equipped with Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System missiles, which cost between US$20,000 and US$30,000 per unit, in addition to the cost of operating the aircraft.
Specific solutions to shoot down drones are still uncommon in the region. Lasers, automatic cannons and even “hunter drones” tend to be cheaper alternatives for protecting cities and facilities, saving expensive systems for larger threats.
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The Iron Beam laser, developed by Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, was created precisely for this purpose, but the Israel Defense Forces said on Monday that it has not yet been used in this conflict.
If the current intensity of Iranian attacks continues, PAC-3 stocks in the region could become dangerously low within days, according to a source with knowledge of the matter. If there is also a lack of offensive ammunition, the scenario could descend into a stalemate.
“Meanwhile, Iran may consume its stockpile of missiles and drones, but the regime itself may be able to maintain itself, even if it is plunged into chaos,” said Ankit Panda, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “For the first 60 hours of the war, this seems like a very likely outcome.”
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