A Toothless Iran? Missile and Drone Strikes Show It Can Still Inflict Pain.
- Update Time : Sunday, March 29, 2026
- 26 Time
An Iranian strike on an American military base in Saudi Arabia, injuring two dozen troops. Two drones targeting a port in Oman, and a strike on the Kuwait International Airport. Workers at an aluminum facility in Abu Dhabi wounded by a missile and drone attack.
President Trump has said that the United States has all but obliterated Iranian military abilities, portraying Iran as a defanged adversary. The U.S. military says that the number of attacks Iran has launched has declined by roughly 90 percent from the opening days of the war, and the Israeli military says it has rendered roughly 70 percent of Iran’s hundreds of missile launchers inoperable.
But a series of attacks against Israel and Gulf countries in the past several days is only the latest evidence that Iran retains enough missiles and drones to destabilize the region and inflict a punishing cost on its foes, while signaling that, contrary to Mr. Trump’s declarations, it is still very much in the fight.
Millions of Israelis are still rushing into bomb shelters day and night to take cover from Iranian missile fire. The daily routine of sirens and booms sows fear and paralysis. Seven people were injured in central Israel on Thursday after missile barrages, according to the country’s emergency service. Surveillance video captured footage of two people rushing out of harm’s way before a silver car they were standing near exploded then pinwheeled through the air. On Friday, a Tel Aviv man was killed by a bomblet from a missile with a cluster-munition warhead.
Even when Iranian weapons are intercepted, they can still inflict damage. Two people were killed in Abu Dhabi on Thursday when they were struck by shrapnel falling from an intercepted missile.
The U.S.-Israeli campaign has been very effective in attacking Iran’s leadership, killing many of them and destroying many military installations, and it has almost completely destroyed its air force and navy, said Farzin Nadimi, a security analyst at the Washington Institute who specializes in Iran and the Persian Gulf.
“In terms of optics, a sunken navy, totally obliterated air force is very important as a metric for victory,” he said. “But we all understand that the main metrics of success for Iran is to be able to continue to fire ballistic missiles and drones at Israel, at U.S. bases and Gulf countries. And we know that they have still been able to do that.”
Iran still most likely possesses thousands of Shahed drones and could still have hundreds of ballistic missiles despite American and Israeli strikes over the past four weeks, one U.S. official said. But the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military capabilities, cautioned that it was impossible to know for sure, as U.S. intelligence on Iranian ability is limited.
Kelly A. Grieco, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, a foreign affairs research institute in Washington, says the number of strikes may not matter as much as how effectively Iran is using its arsenal.
Ms. Grieco has analyzed open-source data on Iran’s salvos and, while cautioning that the numbers are inexact, found that Iran’s hit rate has increased as the war has progressed, more than doubling since March 10.
“Adversaries adapt,” Ms. Grieco said. “There are signs here that we don’t have a defeated adversary and that we may have one that’s adapting and learning and doing enough damage to implement its strategy.”
The U.S. military may have mistaken reduced activity for reduced capacity. Iran could have been firing fewer missiles and drones because it was repositioning them, she said, not because they were destroyed. The Iranians may have been slowing their pace of attack as they integrated new intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance information into their targeting decisions.
“This administration is very fixated on bombs dropped and on how much the strike volume is down for Iran. They love to say the 90 percent number,” Ms. Grieco said. “Is that number obscuring that there has been a shift in Iran’s approach?”
The wave of Iranian strikes showed no signs of letting up this weekend, with missiles and drones causing damage across the Gulf region, disabling a radar at the Kuwait airport and injuring a worker and damaging a crane at the Omani port. And the willingness of the Houthis to strike at Israel on Saturday suggests more firepower will be brought to bear against Iran’s enemies.
While Israel’s military says its air defenses have managed to intercept the vast majority of the ballistic missiles, Iran struck a symbolic blow last weekend when one crashed into the southern desert city of Dimona, barely 10 miles from Israel’s nuclear research facility and reactor, one of its most protected sites, injuring dozens.
