Name: How strong is Iran's drone manufacturing capacity? | DW News
Uploaded: 2026-03-04T06:09:15.000Z
Duration: 12 min 16 s
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What is the question few people seem to be asking about the war in Iran?

Donald Trump says he has the determination and the weapons to keep hitting Iran for another four weeks, maybe longer.

Israel is a big buyer and producer of weapons, so maybe they too have enough supplies to keep working their way through their long list of targets in the Islamic Republic.

But the question I have for my guest, Thomas Juneau is can Israel keep intercepting, keep defending, when Iran has enough drones and missiles to send them by the hundreds every day into Israel, into Oman, into Bahrain, into the United Arab Emirates and Qatar?

Do these countries have enough defensive weapons to keep Iran's drones and missiles at bay?

Will the air defence systems, is the overarching questions you see in action here, determine how long this war actually lasts for and whether the Iranian regime stays in power?

So far, missile interceptors have ensured that the damage and the casualties from Iranian strikes have been limited.

But they are costly and at some point, supplies will run out.

The US and Israel have been targeting drone bases like this one.

Iran has been launching waves of these drones across the region, using them to overwhelm defense shields.

The Shahed, as they are known, are relatively inexpensive to produce, especially compared to many of the systems used to shoot them down.

Viewers on this channel know about the Patriot system sent to Ukraine.

One system costs hundreds of million dollars on its own.

It's really good at bringing down drones and missiles, but it's also really expensive.

They would like many more, but they can't get them.

Part of the reason they can't have more is that the US is using them to defend its bases in the Gulf, the same bases that are now under attack.

Thomas Junot is a professor at the University of Ottawa's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.

Your research, Thomas, is on the Middle east and in particular Iran and Yemen.

With previous experience with Canada's Department of National Defence well qualified for this chat.

Thomas, can we start with the wide view, I guess, trying to work out what happens in Iran.

Are we right to be looking for answers in this area of weapons stockpiles?

There are multiple variables that will determine where things evolve in the coming days and perhaps weeks.

But one of the most important variables that will shape decision making on both sides is this race, this balance between, on the one side, missiles and drones in Iran and the the capability to intercept them on the American, the Israeli side, but

So the American friends in The Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, uae, who will run out first will have a major impact on, on how long this goes.

And that is why, for example, among the main targets that the US And Israel have been focusing on in Israel, in Iran, are the missile launchers and the stockpiles of missiles to make sure that they get an advantage in that race.

My next question, is that does Iran have enough drones and missiles to keep making life uncomfortable for its neighbors for weeks?

Or at least as long as Trump says he can keep up the attacks on Iran?

Well, in practice, the challenge is that it's very difficult for you or me to answer that question because most of the numbers are not known publicly.

Obviously in wartime, adversaries do not want the other side to know how much weapons they have left.

So on the Israeli side, for example, we don't know what is the stockpile of interceptors.

We know that Israel used a lot of these interceptors, for example, in June of 2025 during the 12 Day War.

Israel used some of them at instances or rounds of violence against Iran or against Hezbollah in the past.

We also know that because of that vulnerability, Israel worked very hard to replenish its stockpiles in the past few months, clearly in anticipation for what is going on now.

But exactly how many are left, we don't know.

Similar on the Gulf Arab side, uae, Qatar, Saudi Arabia.

How many do they have left is also not clear.

In that last war of 2025, how close did Israel get to running out of interceptors?

And sometimes people will focus on certain indicators, but that may be misleading.

So for example, right now there are rumors that Iran may be slowing down some of its missile launches.

Is it because it doesn't want to show where its launchers are?

Is it because it wants to wait for another element?

There's a lot of fog of war right now that prevents us from reaching any kind of firm conclusions.

But what is very clear clear is that a, this notion of a race is very important between interceptors and missiles themselves.

And it is causing a lot of anxiety on multiple sides.

The Iranian built shahed drone famously exported to Russia, taking life and making life really uncomfortable in Ukraine through a cold winter.

Is that singular piece of equipment a major player in this Iranian conflict?

You know, the starting point here is really that the Islamic Republic of Iran has long known that in military terms it is much weaker than the US and Israel fighter aircraft, frigates, submarines, tanks, and

And that's why in the past few decades, Iran has really focused on, in particular missiles and drones, because these are what we can call equalizers.

That despite Iran's overall vulnerability, it allows it to threaten to inflict a cost on its adversaries.

The missiles have been hugely important, but so have the drones.

And that's a bit of a more recent development.

We have seen Iran really develop a very strong indigenous capacity to not only build its own drones, to export them.

So we've seen, for example, the Houthis in Yemen develop a very strong drone capacity to a large degree thanks to Iran.

And as you mentioned, we've also seen Iran export that capacity to Russia, not only selling or providing Russia with drones, but

also even going so far as to help Russia building its own drone manufacturing capacity inside Russia for its own war against Ukraine.

What's being used to typically bring down these drones?

And what is the cost of a shahed drone compared to the cost of a Patriot interceptus?

So the cost of a shahed drone, which is not the only, but

the most common drone that Iran uses, is in the several tens of thousands of American dollars.

The precise cost is difficult to say, but we're in that range.

An interceptor, whether Patriot or of other types.

There are multiple types of interceptors.

Cost about a million dollars, varies a lot, but again, we're in that range.

In addition, to shoot down one drone, you will often need more than one interceptor to make sure that you get it, perhaps two or three.

So if you only look at the numbers, there's a very clear imbalance here.

Two to three million dollars perhaps for two or three interceptors against 50ish thousand dollars for the drone itself.

But that's a bit misleading in this or incomplete in the sense that the financial capacities are not the same.

Iran is a country, yes, a large country, but strangulated by economic and financial sanctions.

Whereas on the Gulf side, Qatar, the uae, very rich countries, the US obviously, with a massive defence budget of almost a trillion dollars.

So, yes, these numbers matter in terms of dollar figures, but

they do have to put in to be put into a broader context.

So the big question I referred to earlier, how long can these countries keep defending against Iran's weapons and how long before they might have to put pressure on the US and Israel to stop attacking Iran?

Well, in the case of the Arab Gulf states, we know that they were putting pressure before the war on the US and Israel not to attack, because clearly, and

as we're seeing now, no, they're not friends of Iran at all, but

they're at the front lines, unlike Israel and even less so the us.

As soon as they started being attacked by Iran, they started aligning themselves more closely with the us they are right now.

And this is an important point to make, absolutely furious at Iran.

But they have, according to some media reports, already started putting some pressure on the US to seek an off ramp because again, they are the ones that are at the front line here.

But one thing that I do expect to happen, if the war does go on in terms of weeks, which is one possible scenario, a real possible scenario, I would expect the pace of, of Iranian missiles and drones to somewhat slow down because there's the interceptor issue on the side of those being shot at.

But on the Iranian side, their missile stocks are not endless.

Their intermediate missiles, those able to reach Israel are actually maybe about 2000 at the beginning of this war and that is fast going down.

Some are being used, some are being destroyed.

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How strong is Iran's drone manufacturing capacity? | DW News

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