As the cost of drones goes to zero, the expected damage you take is roughly proportional to how much you have to lose. This means larger / richer economies cannot win these sorts of wars. To see what I mean, check out this desalination plant map:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/23/iran-threat-to...
It doesn't help if your commander in chief is incompetent and your invasion strategy involves treating desalination plants as legitimate military targets.
Of course, blowing up desalination plants in the middle east don't hurt the US all that much, but blowing up industrial supply chains does. We're something like 4 days away from a global chip manufacturing industry shut down (barring some logistic miracle, since we recently sold off our strategic helium reserves).
My first thought looking at it: Why does Saudi Arabia have desal plants in Riyadh? It is 100s of km away from the Persian Gulf! Maybe they want some far away from the Gulf for security reasons? Else, it looks weird. I imagine that they need to pump sea (salty) water from the Gulf to Riyadh, desal it, then pump back the waste water. Quite a journey.
They can afford to try to destroy Iran's offensive capabilities because in-between countries allow their airspace to be used.
Wars are usually between neighbors. If a neighbor has a huge stockpile of drones they can launch a first salvo that'll overwhelm whatever defensive capabilities the other country has before they even get to the point of destroying launchers/manufacturing.
Threats of massive drones strikes are the closest deterrent a country can get to nuclear weapons without developing nuclear weapons. If Iran had 5 million drones instead of 50 thousand this war wouldn't even be happening.
It's somewhat similar to Russia waging a war in Ukraine, although I can see some reasons for Russia to attack Ukraine (mainly territory)
Cheap drones overwhelming defenses until the billion dollar radars and airfields got hit.
Then methodically hit everything according to a plan that forces allied forces to retreat to reliable water sources.
Whatever one thinks of Iran, the way they're waging this war is a masterclass in strategy.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine really reminded everyone that nuclear deterrence is a nice thing to have for you security, and I suspect the Israelo-American attack on Iran is going to be the nail in the coffin of nonproliferation.
I expect countries like Brazil, Japan, South Korea or even Taiwan or Vietnam to have the bomb within ten years at this point.
And given the current war and the dramatic consequences ahead, I now think that the world would have in fact been safer had the Mullah's regime actually got the bomb instead of playing the “under the threshold deterrence” game.
They're not just joking around when they say things like "Death to America" or "Death to Israel". They're not being hyperbolic when they say "We love death more that you love life".
They will absolutely use that bomb as soon as they have it, and it will trigger a response from the west when it happens.
It's the US that dismantled their democratic parliamentary system to maintain their hold on Irani oil. It's the US that shot down their domestic passenger jet with no apologies forthcoming. it's the US that foisted Saddam Hussein against them in a war where 30K Iranians perished to chemical weapons. I can understand why anyone who went through that would not like the US and its enablers much and I am not even Iranian or Muslim.
> There's a big difference between all the countries you named and Iran, the difference is jihad. You can't just let jihadists
Radical Islamism is very diverse, the Iranian regime is indeed an Islamic theocracy, but it's not jihadists, no more than Saudi Arabia or Qatar are.
> They're not being hyperbolic when they say "We love death more that you love life".
Well, the past 2 and a half years prove that it's not just hyperbolic, but complete bluff. They wouldn't have tried to appease Israel and the US after 10/7 if that was the case. They would have attacked Israel the first with all their might, including Hezbollah, like Sinwar wished they do. Instead they cowardly watched their entire proxy network being dismantled by Israel before being struck themselves. That's definitely not the behavior of someone not afraid of death.
> They will absolutely use that bomb as soon as they have it,
They wouldn't have accepted JCPOA if they wanted the bomb to use it. And they would have resumed their nuclear weapon program when Trump unilaterally left it, which they haven't.
Iran, like North Korea, is simply a corrupt authoritarian regime who wants to consolidate their power. Their bellicose rhetoric against the US or Israel is just that: rhetoric.
