Iran remains a stubborn foe after absorbing massive US-Israeli attacks

Its missiles continue to penetrate Israeli airspace and kill civilians. Its cheap drones slip through its neighbors’ air defenses, shattering Gulf Arab nations’ carefully curated images of invincibility and wounding U.S. troops. Its threats to attack oil and gas tankers strangle the Strait of Hormuz, sending energy prices soaring.

U.S. President Donald Trump has sought negotiations and threatened extreme destruction in hopes of securing Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium and compelling it to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. To maintain its leverage, Iran just needs to withstand the conflict long enough to pressure Washington to seek an off-ramp, experts say.

“Their strategy is to try to cause sustained pain and to drive up the costs of the war for the U.S.,” said Kelly Grieco, an expert in U.S. military strategy and operations who is a senior fellow at the Washington-based Stimson Center think tank.

Iran is firing fewer ballistic missiles than at start of the war

Since the first day of the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign, officials from both countries have repeatedly pointed to a steep drop-off in Iran’s firing of ballistic missiles as proof that their efforts to destroy launchers and weapons stockpiles were working.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine told reporters on March 4 that Iran’s “ballistic missile shots fired are down 86% from the first day of fighting and their one-way attack drone shots are down 73%." At a press briefing two weeks later, Hegseth said the volume of Iran’s ballistic missile attacks had dropped "90% since the start of the conflict.”

On Tuesday, Hegseth told reporters at the Pentagon that in the past 24 hours Iran had fired its “lowest number” of missiles and drones, though neither he nor Caine gave any updated percentages. Trump said Tuesday on Truth Social that “Iran has been, essentially, decimated.”

Claims of a slowdown in Iranian strikes are backed up by independent data from Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED), a U.S.-based group that tracks conflicts around the world.

On March 1, the second day of the war, Iran fired off almost 100 strikes. The next day, its strike count dropped to 53 and it hovered at that rate for the next few days. In the three and a half weeks since March 6, ACLED data shows Iran hasn’t fired more than 50 strikes on any given day. A “strike,” in ACLED’s methodology, can include multiple individual strikes in the same location on the same day.

Iran has maintained an average of 30 strikes each day for the last three weeks, and at various points it has picked up its tempo of attacks.

“That makes me question whether it’s a capacity issue or a strategy issue,” Grieco said of the initial decline in Iran's strike rate. In other words, Iran may not be running out of firepower as much as deliberately rationing its missiles and drones.

Iran fires more drones that are harder to intercept

The ACLED data shows that some 40% of Iran's salvos across the region are breaking through air defenses, signaling strain on American and Israeli supplies of interceptors. Iran has been deploying fewer missiles but more low-flying drones that are harder to intercept.

“We are vaporizing billions of dollars in long-range anti-missile defenses, which are scarce national resources,” said Tom Karako, the director of the Missile Defense Project at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The danger, Karako said, is that the U.S. and Israel could run out of interceptors before they are able to take out the rest of Iran's missile stockpiles and mobile launchers — an objective that has proven “maddeningly difficult.”

Over a month into the war, Trump administration officials continue to refer to the first 72 hours as their point of comparison for claims about Iran’s crippled capacity.

“A good percentage of Iranian missiles, at least half of the arsenal, is stored in very hardened facilities that are not easily reachable with air power,” said Farzin Nadimi, an expert on the Iranian missile program at The Washington Institute. “It looks like the Americans and the Israelis have been underestimating some level of complexity.”

Experts say Iran focuses its attacks to cause economic harm

Contrary to Hegseth’s characterization of the Iranians as “flailing recklessly" by striking civilian and energy infrastructure across the Arabian Peninsula, analysts say Tehran appears to have fine-tuned its timing and targets to maximize damage.

“They have been able to strike targets more efficiently and therefore use fewer missiles to achieve the same result,” Nadimi said.

Iran has increasingly concentrated its firepower on sensitive sites like oil pipelines and water desalination plants across the Persian Gulf in a bid to impose a settlement on the U.S., hitting nearby states like the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait hardest. Last week, Iran fired ballistic missiles and drones at a Saudi air base, wounded more than two dozen U.S. troops and damaging aircraft.

“In this asymmetrical war, the most important thing for Iran is attack the world economy in hopes of coercing the U.S. to stop,” said Assaf Orion, a retired Israeli brigadier general and senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies. That has become more important to Iran than attacking Israel, which views this war as existential and won’t be dissuaded, he added.

How long Iran can sustain its current level of retaliation remains unclear, as U.S. and Israeli intelligence on Iran's missile and drone inventory is limited.

Military experts from both countries offer varying estimates on the remaining arsenal, but agree that Iran most likely still has thousands of cheap, locally manufactured drones that it can deploy to menace U.S. allies even if much of its midrange ballistic missile capacity has been destroyed.

“Iran built itself to be able to ride a war like this out,” said Karako. “It has been preparing for this."

Toropin reported from Washington.