Security implications of Iran's drone and missile program Revealing new regional reality

On October 18, the US imposed sanctions on a group of people and firms based in Iran, China, Hong Kong and Venezuela, tied to the development of Iran’s ballistic missile and drone programs. The Biden administration sanctioned 11 people, eight entities, and one vessel for having allegedly supported Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard, Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics in their production and proliferation of missiles and drones.

The recent breakthrough of Iran in the national drone and ballistic missile program forced the US and Western to pay closer attention to Tehran amid the ongoing geopolitical turmoil in the Middle East.

In a separate move, the US State Department imposed sanctions on two Iranian officials “for engaging in activities that have materially contributed to Iran’s missile program,” as well as on “two Iran-based entities and four Russia-based entities.” Russia has been using Iranian drones in its war in Ukraine.

As a result of the international pressure and inflaming regional tensions, Iran embarked on boosting domestic manufacturing of combat drones and long-range missiles in an attempt to intimidate its sworn enemies, namely Israel.

Earlier in June 2023, Iran unveiled its first-ever hypersonic missile, Fattah, which it says can penetrate missile defence systems and will give it a military edge. Hypersonic missiles move at five times the speed of sound or greater and are manoeuvrable, making them difficult for defence systems and radars to target.

As such, in July 2023, Iran's Defense Ministry said it had mass-produced the country's first long-range naval ballistic missile with a host of new combat features designed to "completely destroy" enemy carriers.

The missile is dubbed Abu Mahdi after Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iraqi's Tehran-backed Popular Mobilization Units and could be launched from "entirely secret" locations deep inside Iranian territory to blow up enemy warships, frigates and carriers. Abu Mahdi is the latest in an array of ballistic missiles Iran has developed and publicly unveiled in the past decade, inattentive to pressure from the West and its regional Arab rivals.

Moreover, in August 2023, the Iranian authorities unveiled a new drone – Mohajer 10, which it claims can fly higher and farther than other drones in its arsenal. The Mohajer-10’s range would allow Iran to strike Israel from inside its territory instead of using proxies in Syria and Lebanon, which are vulnerable to Israeli airstrikes.

Iran's long-range ballistic missiles have been the focus of international attention by virtue of having the combination of range and payload required to potentially deliver a nuclear warhead to a target as distant as Israel. Due to the long-term sanctions imposed on Iran, the country has been unable to modernize its regular armed forces as it fell short of modern technologies.

Nevertheless, Iran heavily invested in its drone and missile program to compensate for technical shortages and boost combat capabilities. Being unable to be involved in a full conventional war with economically and technically advanced neighbours in the Gulf, particularly Israel, Tehran switched to hybrid and asymmetric warfare strategies.

Over the past ten years, Iran has massively increased its inventory of drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles to the point where it has effectively achieved overmatch against its neighbours—the ability to launch an attack that overwhelms their defences. This enables the equivalent of combined arms warfare in the air, wherein drones can be launched to take out enemy radar systems before follow-on ballistic missile attacks occur.

At the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war, Hezbollah has already launched strikes from Lebanon against military outposts in Israel’s north, to which Israel has responded in turn. However, Iran maintains an active long-range ballistic missile development program, Iranian efforts over the past decade or so have increasingly focused on bolstering the country's regional strike capabilities through systems with ranges in the order of approximately 250-1,000 kilometres.

Until Iran developed and manufactured the Zelzal and the Fateh-110, the country was an importer of ballistic missile technology. However, with the advent of the Fateh-110, Iran became an exporter of ballistic missiles. Syria, Iran's only state ally in the Middle East, became Iran’s first export customer, operating the unguided Zelzal as the Maysaloon and the guided Fateh-110.

Yet the United States and its allies must acknowledge that the air supremacy they have generally enjoyed since the Second World War is no longer uncontested, in large part because of the proliferation of drones.

Although the US put enormous efforts into confronting Iran's drone program and its suppliers like Russia and China, it yielded no productive results. As a result, Iran, with its drone and missile program, steadily became a real threat to the fragile security of the Middle Eastern region.