Military analyst and co-founder of the Vatfor project Sergey Poletaev said that at the current stage of the Middle East conflict Iran is using a tactic of mass drone strikes similar to the approach used by the Russian Armed Forces at the beginning of the special military operation in autumn 2022. He shared this assessment in an interview with Lenta.ru.

According to the expert, Tehran is currently employing a more basic and less sophisticated approach compared with the methods Russian forces developed in the following years of the conflict. Poletaev believes that if Iran’s current tactics begin to lose effectiveness, Tehran may start adopting more advanced Russian experience in the use of drones, while its opponents could rely on the Ukrainian experience of countering such attacks.

The analyst noted that Iran’s mass drone strikes against infrastructure in Israel and the Persian Gulf states became one of the factors that disrupted the initial plan of the US-Israeli operation and contributed to prolonging the confrontation. The drones targeted not only American military facilities in the region but also bases belonging to other NATO member states, as well as oil industry infrastructure in the Persian Gulf.

Poletaev believes that the large-scale use of drones currently represents Iran’s strategic advantage in its confrontation with the United States and Israel. At the same time, he said this advantage may gradually decline as Iran’s opponents analyze the experience of countering drone raids and adapt to future waves of attacks. According to him, no country in the region was prepared for such strikes, which gave Iran a significant initial advantage.