What are Iran's military capabilities? | DW Analysis

They don't want a bigger war. Before this, they had been talking about the de-escalation that they had withdrawn. the Houthis backed off a little bit, for example, so you hope that

what

ever the Israelis do, you know, is limited and that the Iranians can withdraw, that's certainly

what

the United States is saying. The United States has been very clear that it will not participate in any attack on Iran or any counterattack, but it will probably provide advice and perhaps some intelligence to the Israelis to help shape this response and I would like to learn more about what It happened overnight by Marina Moran of the war studies department at King's College London.

Welcome back to the program. Israel has said Iran fired 170 drones. Can you tell us what kind of drones we are dealing with here good morning, well here we can only guess at the fact that some drones supposedly came from Iran and would have to fly about 2,000 kilometers, so those could have been more than 10 drones and then other drones came. from Iraq coming from southern Lebanon and coming from Yemen it could have been another type maybe some of them could have been the Shahid 136 drones that the Russians are using in Ukraine but there is no certainty as to whether it was a type of drones or various types of drones and what specific drones Iran has used, is it possible to say if they had hit their targets what kind of damage they would have been able to cause again and here we have to speculate that it depends on the target how well the target? is protected on one side and to talk about Shahid we see that the kind of damage they can cause in Ukraine, but they don't hit the target one at a time, they are usually in pairs and again it depends on the target if is it a civilian building or if it is a

military

installation it will be much better protected to resist such damage and the moer 10 for example has around 300kg of explosive so that is the payload of that drone so it would be much more powerful and, in other words, some of the drones that arrived could have caused enough damage to the

military

facilities, but I don't think, you know, I would speculate again that there would have been serious damage given that Israel was prepared and actually managed to neutralize together with their allies they fired most of the drones and missiles, yes, let's talk more about that so that we understand that they were intercepted by Israel and the United States.

Can you tell us a little bit about the logistics and how you would have intercepted this attack? Israel obviously used its air defense system, Iron Dome, and then ARF, so the UK Royal Air Force was also helping to shoot down RS and missiles from the air. The United States deployed its warship, so one warship was already there and another warship was there. they were diverted and the warships have the egis system um to intercept targets um so they were used to intercept drones so the Israeli IDF worked in coordination with the US and the UK and also supposedly France FR and some other countries like Jordan were also involved and some say that Saudi Arabia was also helping to neutralize some of the drones, so it was a joint effort to defend against the drones and missiles that came.

Marina, you mentioned that after these drones were launched, it took several hours for them to reach their targets, let's take a closer look at this moment. How important do you think it was that we had this time frame to give Israel and its partners enough time to intervene? I think it's a critical point because if you launch an attack that you want to succeed, you certainly don't give any prior warning and you don't give your opponent that period of time, so the surprise effect is completely left out of the equation here. and what I'm thinking is that Israel raised the stakes: in a way it was the attack on Damascus and some American officials actually confirmed that it was an Israeli attack and Iran had no choice but to respond, so there was increasing pressure within Iran itself to respond from its own soil and not use its proxies or maybe use its proxies as well, but to clearly demonstrate that Iran is not happy with Israel attacking it on what is considered its territory, so what I am thinking for Iran: Iran doesn't want a regional war and it's doing it to Israel, so you have to raise the stakes a little bit to basically do something, so show a response, show your willingness to respond, but in such a way that the So now Iran has launched its barrage of drones and missiles along with its proxies, but Israel intercepted them all because they knew in advance that they could prepare and coordinate with the allies, so From both perspectives everything is satisfied.

Israel can claim that they have defended it successfully. against the Iranian attack and that makes it very difficult for Israel now to raise the stakes. What will be the next response to Iran? Will Israel really attack US military sites in Iran? Strategic play here and I think this was more of a show of force, more of a sort of gunship diplomacy rather than an actual attack aimed at destroying something and now we can get an

analysis

from Mike Martin, senior war studies researcher at the Kings College London, welcome back. According to DW, what do you think last night's attack reveals about the evolution of Iran's military

capabilities

?

Claire is actually pretty much what we expected, which is why a lot of the attack was Shahed drones. We have seen many of those in Ukraine, the Iranians gave the Russians a load. and then on the ballistic missile front, the cruise missile front, we have a pretty good idea of ​​the

capabilities

that Iran has from various tests that it has conducted and, in fact, what we saw last night was more or less exactly what we expected in terms of falling within Iran's technological envelope, if you like what they are capable of doing now, given the relatively limited damage, do you think Iran's attack was calculated to cause relatively limited damage while Was it showing strength or could this force Israel to retaliate?

You hit the nail on the head, as you said in your package, this was in response to the Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate and Iran had to respond to that and the question was how it responded and actually Iran could have done a lot more. damage to Israel, perhaps using some of its proxies closer to Israel, but since it was launching fairly slow-moving drones that could be shot down in Jordanian airspace and also signaling the attack up to a week in advance, this was for the to the domestic Iranian audience and its allies in the region to demonstrate that Iran was not going to be pressured, but equally both Iran and the United States have indicated that they want to consider the matter closed now that they do not want this to escalate further.

This also has to do with the successful shooting down of what an Israeli military spokesperson says was 99% of the drones and missiles fired. Does this also have to do with Israel's capabilities here? Why else would he have been so successful that it wasn't alone? The Israelis are right, the Israelis shot down many of the missiles once they entered Israeli airspace and we have seen the photos in their package at that time, but in reality many of the drones that were moving more slowly and in numerical terms, drones took up most of it. of the attack were shot down predominantly by the US Air Force and also by other allies, Jordan and potentially also the United Kingdom, now the Americans have the largest and most technologically advanced Air Force in the world and the Israelis have the Air Force more advanced. air defense system in the world, so I actually don't think it's that surprising that, with an attack that they had a week's notice of, they were able to plan, prepare prepositioned air structures, prepare the defenses and then deal with the attack in a fairly comprehensive way.

I think, to be honest, both sides, Iran, the United States and Israel as well, really what happened last night was to be expected. I think all sides expected what happened to happen and then it happened and now I think we're going to get back to something a little more stable between the two sides because nobody wants an escalation beyond what really was a demonstration last night, so Mike briefly before I let you go, what do you think Israel might then be considering in terms of a possible response, what would the options be? well, for them it's the wild card because Netanyahu is more reckless than the United States and Iran, but if Iran is being sensible, sorry, if Israel is sensible, what it will do is keep its response within the way that the United States sees the region, so perhaps strike Iran's nuclear facilities and that will allow Israel to keep its response within the way Americans view the region.

Thank you very much, as always, I'm Mike Martin, senior fellow in war studies at Kings College London, thank you, so let's get into some details of what Iran has. used in this attack Arthur Holland Michelle is a drone expert at the Carnegie Council on Ethics in International Affairs. We just heard there that drones were a big part of this attack. Could you tell us what type of drones Iran has in its arsenal? And if it is clear what was used in this particular incident. Good morning, it's great to be here. Iran actually has a very diverse drone program.

I think they have about a dozen different types of drones that can be used as armed missiles. Suicide style attacks, unfortunately, I've been traveling and haven't been able to, you know, look at any of the

analysis

of the actual attack and the evidence that we have, which is presumably very thin as of last night, but given the scope of these attacks They were probably some of the largest suicide drones, so these are faster moving, aircraft-powered, in some cases, propeller-driven systems that have a warhead of between 50 and maybe 200 um pounds. , tell us. a little more if you can about Iran's drone program.

Has the threat it represents increased in recent years? There is certainly something important to know about Iran's drone program. It is actually one of the oldest drone programs in the world. Iran has been manufacturing drones. since the 1980s and in that sense they gained a huge advantage over many other countries, including some of their advertising adversaries. The threat has definitely been increasing in recent years as a result of recent technological advances in things like sensor miniaturization. Power Systems, they are capable of producing more sophisticated and precise drones and producing them in larger quantities, but an important caveat is that every time Iran carries out an attack, especially an attack against, say, US forces or, in this case, on Israel giving The Defenders information on how to best counter this threat.

I think if we had seen an attack of this scale 5 years ago we would not have seen the same amount of takedowns that we saw last night. numbers of a 99% interception rate, which is kind of a counterweight to this idea that Iran, the drone threat, is going to grow exponentially in the coming years, it will always be a game of cat and mouse , so the attacks themselves reveal their I guess my next question would then be, how was it possible for Iran to become a global drone power despite Western sanctions? Well, again, it's an initial bet that they made to get into the, you know, get into the technology field, really, before people took it very, very seriously, also considering that the Drones, compared to missiles, do not necessarily require incredibly sophisticated components.

You know you don't necessarily need NE like a very expensive rocket. system, the type of system that could be subject to sanctions or trade restrictions, it is possible that it has a propeller, something that is as simple as what you can buy for a hobby airplane and, in that sense, they made this bet very present that going low going small, you know, going simple could actually be a reward because a lot of the defense systems that were developed were, you know, aircraft with systems powered by Big Rock ET and so on, so being able to fly under the radar was a hole.

On that, Arthur, thank you very much for joining us today. I'm Arthur Holland. Michelle, senior fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs.