The US, Russia and China all took turns losing wars to Afghanistan and Vietnam but nobody lines up to buy weapons from them because strategic victory (denying the enemy their war objectives) due to a lack of political will in the opponent or superior geography isn't the same thing as tactical victory due to better weapons.
Afghanistan and Vietnam didn't beat their adversaries through advanced military technology, but by the shear capacity to absorb unholy amounts of damage and injury. Arguably Iran is in a similar position, though its Shahed drones and ballistic missiles did prove capable of reaching out and touching others within the theatre (1,000 -- 2,000 km range), and that these systems were resilient against attempts by its adversaries to destroy both stocks and launchers.
Ukraine is the odd one out in that it has developed significant technological capabilities, largely with drones and anti-drone defences, and has active buyers for that tech.
Iran did supply Russia with Shaheds long before the current US attack on Iran, so they were at the fore front of drone technology (though if I recall correctly the design had evolved through time over adoption from other countries, perhaps originating in Germany?)
Which makes the US refusal to interact with, learn from, or adopt Ukrainian tech all the more frustrating. There are 13 US fighters that would likely still be alive today, if the current US establishment was t so irrational in their hate of Ukraine, and had adopted anti drove tactics common in Ukraine, including the P1-SUN interceptors that could have taken out the shaheds. Losing an AWACS is an embarrassment beyond words, honestly. Best thing would not have been to start a stupid unwinnable war without any clear objectives.
True, though Iran wasn't facing a hot war of aggression prior to the Twelve Day War (June 2025), which was the premise I was specifically addressing.
Iran's successes in the 2025 and 2026 conflicts would be within that premise.
Prior to 2025, and dating back to the mid-1980s, Iran and Israel have been engaged in a proxy conflict, but that also differs from the premise. In large part that's relied on the ability to inflict some pain on counterparties, but not necessarily by exhibiting technological superiority, and not to decisive effect on the part of either Iran or Israel for that matter. See: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Israel_proxy_conf...>.
Rational thought processes and the current US administration aren't even worth mention, though I'll suggest that the failure of what were once thought to be at least partially resistant institutions such as the military establishment against executive idiocy is especially disheartening.
Only one-way attack drones which are the lowest tech type of drones. ISR drones are much higher on the tech tree, and Iran aren't in the FPV drone game due to a lack of need for them.
That having been said, I couldn't agree more with your frustration around refusing to collaborate with and learn from Ukraine when it comes to Shaheds.
The USA proceeded to ignore any advice that the Ukraine could give them when it came to drones being operated in the field under duress, where in many cases you had to ad lib, reconfigure, iterate on the spot, probably too proud to ask.
The North Vietnamese were famous for ad libbing, adapting on the spot, but in the end biggest weapon is the willingness to fight.
Russia and the United States never learn it isn’t about the best weapon or how much money you can spend…
It’s just Russia using Iranian drones, but that was already happening.
This war with Iran is not really an endorsement of Iranian weapons. The US didn’t stop its offensive because of Iranian weapons. We already knew the effectiveness of one way attack drones just from looking at their employment in Ukraine.
The US counter-UAV industry might start seeing some exponential growth. There’s a lot of lessons learned for the US and we’ll probably start seeing a lot more money thrown around by the US military.
The Ukrainian counter-UAV industry is already seeing huge growth. The Gulf oil states attacked by Iran are buying.[1]
Strong counter-UAV defense requires an entire integrated low-altitude air defense systems. The US systems the Gulf states have purchased are high-altitude oriented,
useful against incoming aircraft and some missiles. They have long range radars, but not enough of them in the right places for finding low-flying drones. They have expensive missiles like the Patriot, which works against drones if there are not many of them. There are many incoming drones. Ukraine alone is up to 7 million drones a year.
Aerial warfare is changing in a big way. It's starting to look as big as the transition from battleships. Big airfields are big, fat targets.
>The US didn’t stop its offensive because of Iranian weapons.
I would say they did. Gulf countries ran out of missile and drone defenses and a lot of infrastructure was getting hit. Long run loss of capacity here would be worse than temporary strait closure and there were a lot of assets left to hit.
There has already been significant infrastructure capacity destruction. Hard to get an inventory on exactly what, but even if there were an actual peace agreement with full strait traversal, it will be years to resume previous production numbers. Qatar lost LNG trains and facilities which are estimated at 3-5 years to replace.
Just restoring shut in oil wells will take months. It is unlikely all wells will ever reach previous output levels.
That's one of the problems with the lack of diplomacy in the US's position for the past 40 years. We have pushed the envelope beyond our own control:
"The U.S. military reverse-engineered Iran’s Shahed-136 loitering munition to create a low-cost, one-way attack drone squadron in the Middle East called LUCAS (Low-Cost Unmanned Combat Attack System)."
Necessity is the mother of invention. We spent billions in exchange for making our "enemies" stronger. We really are a ridiculous nation.