Iran successfully exploits drone and missile swarms primarily through an asymmetric "cost-imposition" strategy. By saturating the skies with mass-produced, inexpensive Shahed loitering munitions, Tehran forces U.S. and allied militaries to expend millions of dollars per shot on limited-supply interceptor missiles to counter cheap threats.
Key Operational Tactics & Strategic Advantages
• Financial Asymmetry: Drones like the Shahed 131/136 cost an estimated $20,000 to $50,000 to produce, whereas the Western interceptor missiles required to shoot them down (such as Patriot or David's Sling) cost upwards of several million dollars each.
• Defense Depletion: Iran's strategy intentionally uses dense waves of these low-cost drones to deplete localized air defense stockpiles. Over time, this forces commanders to make difficult choices regarding which incoming missiles and drones to engage, leaving valuable infrastructure vulnerable.
• Deep Underground Storage: Despite massive U.S. and Israeli air campaigns (such as Operation Epic Fury), Iran preserved the bulk of its hardware, regrouping and launching precision strikes against early-warning radar arrays and military hubs across the Middle East.
Strategic Impact on Modern Warfare
The sustained success of this model has fundamentally reshaped regional dynamics. By effectively nullifying the traditional upper hand of billion-dollar, high-tech air defenses, Iran’s swarm doctrine allows them to inflict severe economic damage and force adversaries to the negotiating table without relying on a conventional, symmetric military.
Why the U.S. Struggles to Replicate Ukraine's Approach with Drone and Missiles
• Sourcing Bottlenecks: Unlike Ukraine, which sources cheaper, off-the-shelf Chinese parts for immediate battlefield adaptation, the U.S. military is barred or strictly seeks to wean its defense contractors off Chinese rare earths due to national security concerns. Buying drone and missile parts for Ukraine from China, European Union is hugely financing the military industrial complex of competing with Americans Chinese.
The core of the point stems from a critical supply chain vulnerability. While Ukraine has transitioned to assembling 99% of its drones domestically, its manufacturers are still heavily reliant on Chinese dual-use commercial components for raw assembly.
• Chokepoints: Key components like lithium-ion batteries, fiber-optic cables, and neodymium magnets for electric motors are dominated by Chinese refining and manufacturing.
• Derogation Requests: Due to these realities, European financial aid to Ukraine has included specific exemptions. For example, certain EU funding mechanisms have allowed for the purchase of critical components produced outside the EU and Ukraine—largely microchips and electronic parts—simply because Western alternatives do not exist at the necessary wartime scale. These exemptions make Chinese enemies of Americans rich and more technologically advanced.
• The Monopoly Problem: Because China controls the vast majority of the world's rare earth refining, the U.S. faces significant domestic production and manufacturing bottlenecks for specialized drone motors and magnets.
• Scaling Up Western Manufacturing: Western nations are actively attempting to reshore their supply chains or turn to other producers (such as Taiwan), but rebuilding these domestic tech and mineral supply chains will take years to fully achieve at scale.
“The U.S. will allow Iran to begin immediately selling oil and fuel under the deal to end the war, offering Tehran an early financial incentive to wind down the conflict, people familiar with the agreement said.
The provision for waivers of sanctions on oil sales takes effect immediately upon signing the agreement this week and covers necessary services including banking, transportation and insurance needed to facilitate the sales, the people said.
United Against Nuclear Iran, a nonprofit, said an Iranian supertanker carrying crude oil had left the port of Chabahar, crossed the U.S. blockade and was sailing out of the Gulf of Oman on Tuesday with its location tracker active -- marking the first such instance since the start of the U.S. blockade in April. Shortly afterward, a second supertanker, Hero II, also crossed the blockade, according to UANI and ship-tracking data from MarineTraffic.
A draft of the memorandum of understanding reviewed by The Wall Street Journal lays out the oil sales along with the promise after further negotiations down the road of extensive sanctions relief, release of frozen assets and billions of dollars in reconstruction funding.
A senior U.S. official said on Tuesday even though Iran would get upfront sanctions relief for oil sales, sustained relief would be tied to Iran's performance on U.S. demands regarding issues like opening the strategic Strait of Hormuz and its nuclear program. Tehran still wouldn't get immediate access to billions of dollars in frozen funds.
The deal, which the Trump administration said the U.S. and Iran signed electronically on Sunday and will complete this week, includes an extended pause in the fighting, including in Lebanon, lifts the U.S. and Iranian blockades in the strait and sets the stage for extended talks on Iran's nuclear program.
Many lawmakers and political officials in the U.S. and Israel are opposed to giving Iran financial relief and easing the pressure of the U.S. blockade before securing major concessions.
Allowing Iran to export its oil concedes a key point of U.S. leverage, but one the White House felt it probably had to give up to open the strait, protecting it from drone and missile swarms, said Farzin Nadimi, an Iran-focused senior fellow with the Washington Institute, a U.S.-based think tank.
"The White House thinks that these kinds of sweeteners are required to make Iran make concessions, and otherwise it would be very difficult to make Iran continue negotiations," Nadimi said.
He said that the U.S. could reimpose its blockade on Iranian exports as long as it keeps its military assets in the region.
The agreement provides for much greater financial relief if Iran goes along with U.S. demands to destroy its stockpile of enriched uranium and dismantle its nuclear program.
Among its provisions is a regional reconstruction and development fund for Iran to repair damage done by the war. In a briefing on Monday, senior Trump administration officials said the U.S. and Iran have discussed a fund of $300 billion for that purpose. They also said they have discussed sanctions relief and restoring Tehran's access to some of its estimated $100 billion in frozen funds.
"We're going to be willing to be extraordinarily generous in opening up their economy and opening up the sanctions relief," one of the officials said. "So I would say everything is on the table and at the same time nothing is on the table if it doesn't come along with real performance."
President Trump said on social media that the U.S. wouldn't contribute to the $300 billion fund.
The question of financial benefits for Iran is among the most sensitive for Trump's effort to conclude the war. Trump has excoriated former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, for flying cash into Iran after the 2015 nuclear deal took effect the following January. Trump, a Republican, withdrew from that deal in his first term.
Allowing oil sales could prove a more palatable means of providing Iran with financial relief.
It lets Washington give Iran a tangible economic incentive that will help lower global energy prices, said Sima Shine, a former top official at Israel's spy agency Mossad and now at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.
The deal already involved the U.S. lifting its blockade of Iranian ports, at which point Iran would likely have resumed its extensive oil-smuggling operations anyway, Shine said. "It's better to legalize it and benefit from that," she said.
Under the memorandum of understanding, the U.S. is also willing to give Iran access to some of its frozen funds for payments determined by Iran's central bank, some of the people said.
The U.S. has some flexibility on the release of assets and could give Iran access before the conclusion of a final agreement on the nuclear and other issues, one of the people said.
Iran has said it wanted some $12 billion up front and $24 billion during the 60-day negotiation that would be opened by an initial agreement.
Iran has an estimated $100 billion in assets rendered inaccessible by U.S. sanctions, mainly revenue from past oil sales and reserves.
While less lucrative than sanctions relief, assets transferred to Iran can't be reclaimed, while sanctions can be reimposed, making the benefit more durable.
The bulk of the frozen money sits abroad, most notably in China, from oil revenue generated over many years that can't be transferred to Tehran's banking system, which is under U.S. sanctions.
There is about $6 billion in Iranian revenue that the Biden administration allowed to be transferred to Qatar in connection with a 2023 prisoner swap, and $1 billion held in Oman.
Both amounts were later informally restricted after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks on Israel.
Iran also has an estimated $15 billion in Iraqi banks from sales of power and natural gas.” [1]
1. Iran Can Start Selling Its Oil Following Deal --- Accord with U.S. to end war offers early financial incentive to wind down conflict. Dov Lieber in Tel Aviv; Summer Said in Dubai; Ward, Alexander. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 17 June 2026: A1.
