The USA and Israel entered the war with Iran "by the book" — but ended up with the Ukrainian experience, without which this war cannot be understood

The war with Iran quickly revealed a truth that is almost always understood after the first strikes: war exists not in doctrines, not in staff slides, and not in beautiful briefings, but in practice. You can pre-plan an air campaign, designate priority targets, calculate the pace of strikes, and declare that technological superiority is on the side of the US and Israel. But then the real conflict begins — and it turns out that millions of dollars are spent not only on destroying the military potential of the Islamic Republic but on urgent and expensive combat against Iranian 'Shaheds'.

And this is where the most unpleasant part begins for Washington, Jerusalem, and Iran's neighboring countries. Because Ukrainians 'met' these drones not yesterday or the day before, but in the first months of Russia's large-scale war against Ukraine. While American offices considered Iranian drones as an element of someone else's conflict, Ukraine was already becoming a real testing ground where Iran learned to conduct future wars in the Middle East.

Now this logic has returned like a boomerang. Those who helped the Kremlin strike Ukrainian cities simultaneously tested tactics for future pressure on American bases, Israeli defense, and the entire region. And the US request to Ukraine for help in combating Iranian drones is essentially an acknowledgment of a reality understood too late.

Ukraine has become a testing ground for the war Iran was preparing for.

Tehran supplied drones to Moscow not just for money.

When Iran began transferring its drones to Russia in 2022, many tried to reduce this story to simple military-technical cooperation. Like, one authoritarian regime helps another, receives money and political bonuses for it. But even then, it was clear that it was not just about earnings and not just about demonstrative loyalty to the Kremlin.

Ukraine turned out to be a practical training ground for Tehran. Iranians observed how their drones behaved in a real war against a state with a large territory, dense urban development, a live air defense system, and constantly changing defense tactics. They watched how exactly the defense was overloaded, where weak spots appeared, how much interception cost, how long the enemy could be kept in a state of exhaustion, and how a cheap means of pressure turned into a large strategic tool.

This was the main point. Iran helped its ally in the Kremlin but simultaneously learned itself. Not through simulators, not through archives of past wars, but on a live front where every night new data could be obtained, conclusions drawn, and tactics changed.

When today it is said that the US and Israel's war against Iran revealed an unexpected problem with Shahed, it sounds almost strange. For Ukraine, there is nothing unexpected here. What was unexpected was rather something else: how long Washington and part of the Western establishment pretended that the Ukrainian experience could be left in a separate folder — as if it had no direct relation to the security of American facilities in the Middle East and the defense of Israel.

The US ignored Kyiv's proposal — and now is forced to catch up with the war on the go.

It is especially telling that Ukraine offered its proven solutions against 'Shaheds' to the Americans in advance. Not after the situation escalated, not after the first heavy losses, but earlier — when it was still possible to integrate this experience into the overall defense architecture in a calm mode, prepare personnel, deploy additional defense contours, and reduce the cost of future conflict.

But the White House then refused. This decision, judging by how events are developing, now increasingly looks not like ordinary bureaucratic caution, but as one of the most expensive tactical miscalculations. Because later, when Iranian strikes already began taking American military lives, Washington had to change its position and turn to Zelensky for help not in planning mode, but in emergency response mode.

And this is probably the most accurate image of the current war. Ukraine said: here is the threat, here is how it works, here is what needs to be done. They did not believe her in time. Then the same threat came to another theater of war — and it turned out that Ukrainians understand its logic better than many.

In the middle of this whole story, NANews — Israel News | Nikk.Agency records a key, almost uncomfortable conclusion: the Ukrainian experience has ceased to be the 'experience of a distant European war'. Now it is one of the few truly tested sets of solutions, without which it is increasingly difficult to talk about the security of American bases in the region, the defense of Israel, and generally understanding what modern war against authoritarian regimes looks like.

Israel saw the same trap that Ukraine has been living in for years.

The problem is not only in the strikes but also in the cost of defense.

For Israel, the current war with Iran is not a discussion about international strategy, but a question of the physical resilience of the state. The country has a small territory, high population density, minimal distance between military infrastructure, civilian quarters, transport hubs, and facilities on which everyday life depends. In such geography, even a well-functioning air defense system faces a very harsh reality: repelling an attack also costs money, resources, and time, and sometimes — too much.

This is where the Iranian logic of war of attrition works. It is not necessary to completely break through the defense. It is enough to force the enemy to spend expensive missiles on cheap drones, keep the rear in constant tension, exhaust the economy and the nervous system of society. Ukraine has been living within this logic for five years. Israel now sees it on its own, Middle Eastern scale.

This is the financial trap of war for the US, Israel, and the countries over which Iran scatters its missiles and drones, which is usually written about dryly in theoretical documents, but in practice, it becomes a political problem in just a few days. If you use Arrow, Stunner, Patriot, Tamir, (laser Iron Beam seems to exist and seems not to) and other expensive interceptors against a massive flow of drones, the shortage of ammunition becomes not a hypothesis, but a question of the near future. And the more countries simultaneously enter the mode of hunting for anti-missiles, the stronger the pressure on stocks, supplies, and allied obligations.

For Ukraine, this has long been no discovery. For Israel, this is now also not an abstraction. And that is why the Ukrainian experience here is important not as a gesture of solidarity, but as an almost practical instruction: how to build a multi-layered defense, how to combine expensive and cheap interception means, how to distribute the load, how not to allow the enemy to turn your defense system into a means of your own exhaustion.

The Israeli lesson of war coincided with the Ukrainian one almost literally.

There is another important point that is especially sensitive for the Israeli context. Israel is used to being a state that exports military experience, technologies, and security concepts itself. And this is fair. But the current conflict with Iran showed that even a very strong and technologically advanced army can find itself in a position where it needs to learn from those who have been living under systematic drone terror for several years.

Ukraine not only studied modern war — it literally lived it in a mode of constant adaptation. It learned to resist an opponent of a smaller scale in terms of technology level, but aggressive, massive, cheap, and supported by a larger ally. This is almost a perfect description of the asymmetry that Iran builds: it is not necessary to be stronger in everything, it is enough to find pain points and impose an unfavorable way of defense on the enemy.

And here for Israel, the Ukrainian experience is valuable also because Ukrainians know how to read the logic of an opponent who loses in a classical military comparison but compensates for this with tactics of overload, chaos, and constant pressure. This is no longer just about drones. This is about the very philosophy of war used by Iran, its proxies, and its allies.

Russia is not observing from the sidelines — it helps the other side of the front.

Moscow and Kyiv both learn modern war, but for different worlds.

Four years of the Russian-Ukrainian war gave unique experience to both armies. Modern war is indeed being practiced today in both Moscow and Kyiv. But here lies a fundamental line that the West tried to ignore for too long: Russia plays for the other team.

Moscow helps Iran and North Korea, conducts joint exercises with China, is interested in destabilizing Europe, and in the US spending more resources on several fronts at once. Russia will not explain to American military how to defend against Iranian strikes. Russia will, directly or indirectly, help those who strike these targets. Ignoring this is like pretending there is no elephant in the room, even though it has already moved the furniture.

From this follows an unpleasant but very direct conclusion. The civilized world today has only one truly invaluable combat experience of countering the Iranian logic of war — and this is the experience of the Ukrainian army. Not because Ukraine is perfect. And not because it has no vulnerabilities of its own. But because it is the one that for several years in a row learned not in theory, but in practice, how to defend against a regime that supplies drones to the Kremlin, tests its tools for future wars in Ukraine, and simultaneously works against the stability of the entire region.

Yes, the US and Israel's war against Iran carries risks for Ukraine itself. Rising oil prices can bring Russia new petrodollars. The shortage of anti-missiles will be felt more and more if they continue to shoot down drones. More and more countries will begin to compete for the same air defense systems and the same production capacities. For Kyiv, this is bad news.

But there is another side. This war finally kills the dangerous illusion that the security of Ukraine, the security of Israel, and the security of American facilities in the Middle East can be considered separately from each other. No longer. This is already one connected chain of threats, in which authoritarian regimes learn from each other, help each other, and simultaneously pressure the democratic world at different points on the map.

And therefore, the Trump administration, whether it likes it or not, will have to acknowledge a simple conclusion: without the Ukrainian experience, it is impossible to truly protect American military facilities in the Middle East, it is impossible to fully understand Iran's tactics, and it is impossible to build a sustainable defense of Israel in the long run. And from this follows an even more unpleasant thing for deal lovers: Ukraine needs help to fend off Russian aggression, not to continue feeding itself dangerous illusions about the possibility of some coherent understanding with Putin.

Because modern war has already explained everything. It remains only to stop pretending that this lesson can be ignored.

https://nikk.agency/en/the-usa-and-israel-entered/