Iran’s military options limited as it tries to hit back at US-Israeli attack

Original article by Dan Sabbagh Defence and security editor

In the grim calculus of war, Iran now has to hope it gets lucky. The first hours of the joint US-Israeli assault were catastrophic for the regime: the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, killed alongside, it is believed, the minister of defence, the head of the armed forces and the head of the powerful Revolutionary Guards.

Iran knew its security apparatus had been compromised during the 12-day war of June 2025 when Israel killed a string of senior military commanders. During January’s street protests, Khamenei was moved away to a secure location for his own safety, yet on Saturday he felt safe enough to hold a security meeting in his compound in Tehran.

The CIA had picked up on the meeting in advance and passed its intelligence to Israel. A handful of Israeli fighter jets flew for about two hours and struck the compound with around 30 long-range missiles.

Though Khamenei had planned for his own death, naming a list of potential successors, and that of many of the country’s military and political leaders, requiring them to nominate people who could take over as many as four levels down, the reality can only be that Iran’s military response will be less coherent and coordinated after such a destabilising and demoralising loss of command and control.

Waves of US and Israeli attacks are coming at a high pace. Initial reporting suggested the US carried out 900 strikes in the first 12 hours of the operation, while Israel claimed to have bombed 1,200 times in the first 24 hours.

“The US and Israel are prioritising breaking Iran’s offensive capabilities and leadership,” said Matthew Savill of the Royal United Services Institute thinktank. “The question is whether the Iranian regime can survive that and inflict enough pain regionally that brings that campaign to a halt.”

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Iran’s military options are limited. Its strategy has been to rely on Shahed drones and high-speed ballistic missiles to defend itself through retaliation, targeting Israel, US bases and the Middle Eastern countries where they are located. On Sunday, Oman, which had mediated in the failed nuclear talks with the US, became the sixth Arab country to be attacked when two drones targeted the Duqm naval base.

The volume of retaliatory strikes has so far been substantial but in most cases they have been not very effective and they are likely to become less so. Three people were reported killed in the United Arab Emirates after Iran launched 165 missiles and 541 drones at the country, according to the UAE’s defence ministry. Of the drones, 35 got through defences and caused material damage, while the missiles did not.

Tehran’s calculus appears to be that at some point a missile or drone will get through and cause enough damage to prompt a US or Israeli rethink, or that it has enough missiles and drones to exhaust US, Israeli and other air defences in the region. It is an attempt to learn from Ukraine, where complex salvoes of decoys, drones and missiles lead to a small number getting through.

Nine people were killed and about 50 wounded when a missile hit a bomb shelter in the Israeli town of Beit Shemesh, a serious incident but not enough to prompt any kind of rethink in a country used to deaths in conflict. In reality, the psychological impact of the strike on the Fairmont hotel in Dubai on Saturday may be more significant because of its effect on tourism in a country not used to being in the frontline.

Jonathan Hackett, the author of a book on Iran’s covert warfare strategy, said Tehran had “between 1,500 to 3,000 ballistic missiles with various ranges and levels of readiness” but that they were being depleted rapidly. Israel counted that Iran fired 170 in the first day of the war.

Before the latest fighting broke out, Iran was making a few dozen a month in sites located deep underground, but Israel and the US are targeting launch sites and manufacturing locations in the current bombing campaign. It is hard to see how it ballistic missile supply can last more than several days at volume, forcing Iran to switch to smaller and less effective Shahed and other drones.

An obvious prize for Iran would be to hit a US warship, again emulating Ukraine’s extraordinary success against the Russian navy in the Black Sea, but it is likely to prove difficult to achieve. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Sunday afternoon that they had targeted the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier with four ballistic missiles, prompting a rapid social media rebuttal from the US military. “The missiles launched didn’t even come close,” Central Command said.

Iran could once have counted on regional proxies, most notably Hezbollah in Lebanon, to strike at Israel, but most have been decimated in previous fighting, picked off by Israel one by one after Hamas’s attack in October 2023. The most capable left are Yemen’s Houthis, who have promised to resume attacks in the Red Sea, part of a wider effort to disrupt merchant shipping in the region.

Iran’s best near-term hope is that it can prevent oil tankers from entering and leaving the Gulf through the strait of Hormuz, through a mixture of threats by radio and drone attacks. At least three tankers have already been damaged, including the MKD Vyom, on which one crew member was killed after it was struck by a suspected projectile off the coast of Oman. The goal is to try to impose economic costs on the US. A key moment will be how the oil price responds on Monday.