Karoline Leavitt demands retraction of ABC News story claiming FBI warned Iran could attack California
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt demanded Thursday that ABC News retract a story claiming that the FBI has officially warned Iran may try to attack California with drones.
ABC News posted on Wednesday, “BREAKING: The FBI has warned police departments in California that Iran wants to retaliate for American attacks by launching offensive drones against the West Coast, according to an alert reviewed by @ABC News.”
Leavitt blasted the post, writing, “This post and story should be immediately retracted by ABC News for providing false information to intentionally alarm the American people.”
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She added further, “They wrote this based on one email that was sent to local law enforcement in California about a single, unverified tip. The email even states the tip was based on *unverified* intelligence. Yet ABC News left out this critical fact in their story! WHY?”
“TO BE CLEAR: No such threat from Iran to our homeland exists, and it never did,” she wrote.
She followed up by retweeting a post with side-by-side screenshots of the story ABC wrote and the FBI alert actually sent out. The post from Assistant Director for Public Affairs at the FBI Ben Williamson read, “On the left is the way ABC (or their source) reported the FBI alert. On the right is the actual FBI alert that went to JTFF partners. You will notice the word left out —’Unverified.’”
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ABC News has since updated its story with an editor’s note declaring, “The FBI has posted a fuller version of its alert to California authorities, which includes that the information was unverified. The latest version of this story has been updated with the full statement.”
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Asked about the unverified report in the alert, President Donald Trump said Wednesday, “It’s being investigated. But you have a lot of things happening, and all we can do is take them as they come, and the war itself is being prosecuted as well as anybody has ever seen.”
Trump says Iran’s World Cup participation may not be ‘appropriate,’ while adding men’s team is still ‘welcome’
Iran’s participation in the 2026 FIFA World Cup remained in doubt this week after the country’s sports minister reportedly threatened to pull the men’s soccer team from the tournament largely taking place in the United States this summer.
Iranian Sports Minister Ahmad Donyamali reportedly told state television this week that it’s “not possible” for the country to take part in the highly anticipated tournament after the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed amid the U.S. and Israeli joint military operations against Iran, which began on Feb. 28.
President Donald Trump has spoken about Iran’s status for the World Cup previously, but suggested Thursday that while the men’s squad is “welcome” to compete in the U.S. after qualifying, it might not be “appropriate.”
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“The Iran National Soccer Team is welcome to The World Cup, but I really don’t believe it is appropriate that they be there, for their own life and safety,” Trump wrote in a post to Truth Social post on Thursday.
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Iran is slated to play in Inglewood, California, against New Zealand on June 15. It is also scheduled to face Belgium on June 21 before finishing group play against Egypt in Seattle on June 26. The U.S. is hosting the tournament with Canada and Mexico from June 11 to July 19.
Last week, Trump said “I really don’t care” if Iran takes part in the 48-nation tournament.
On Tuesday, FIFA President Gianni Infantino said Trump “reiterated” to him that Iran’s men’s national soccer team would be “welcome to compete” at this summer’s World Cup.
Infantino shared the details of his conversation with the president in a lengthy post on Instagram on Tuesday. “This evening, I met with the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump to discuss the status of preparations for the upcoming FIFA World Cup, and the growing excitement as we are set to kick off in just 93 days.”
Infantino also acknowledged that Iran has met all requirements to qualify for the tournament.
“We also discussed the current situation in Iran and the team’s qualification for the 2026 FIFA World Cup,” he said. “During those talks, President Trump reiterated that the Iranian team is welcome to compete in the tournament in the United States.”
FIFA did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
The geopolitical crisis has also cast uncertainty over the Iranian women’s national soccer team.
Earlier this week, Australia granted asylum to five members of the women’s team who were visiting the country for a tournament when the Iran war began, a government minister confirmed.
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The team drew speculation and news coverage in Australia when players didn’t sing the Iranian anthem before their match against South Korea on March 2.
Pentagon estimates Iran war cost $11.3B in the first six days in closed-door congressional hearing: report
Pentagon officials on Tuesday told legislators during a closed-door briefing that they estimated that the cost of the Iran war was more than $11.3 billion during the initial six days of the conflict, the New York Times reported, citing three unnamed individuals familiar with the briefing.
That estimate did not encompass many expenses tied to the effort, such as buildup of military assets and personnel prior to the first strikes, the outlet added.
Other reports indicate that the briefing involved senators.
A Senate Armed Services Committee staffer, who noted that he could only speak for the minority staff and Ranking Member Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., referred Fox News Digital to a March 10 letter that the senator sent to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, pressing for information about the costs of the war.
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“Since the initial strikes on February 28, 2026, how much has the Department spent on these operations? How much are the daily costs of these operations? What are the costs to readiness? How much funding does the Department need to replenish munitions and aircraft combat losses?” Reed asked in part of the letter.
No comment was provided by the GOP side of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Fox News Digital also reached out to the Department of War and the House Armed Services Committee Republican communications office on Thursday.
The war-related outlays come as the ever-expanding U.S. national debt nears the $39 trillion mark.
And while President Donald Trump has been waging the costly war in conjunction with Israel, a key U.S. ally in the Middle East, Americans have been seeing a significant surge in gas prices at home.
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“The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money. BUT, of far greater interest and importance to me, as President, is stoping [sic] an evil Empire, Iran, from having Nuclear Weapons, and destroying the Middle East and, indeed, the World. I won’t ever let that happen!” Trump said in a Thursday Truth Social post.
US destroys aging Iranian warplanes, video shows
As the American military continues bombarding Iran amid the ongoing war against the Islamic Republic, U.S. Central Command shared video footage of strikes against aircraft sitting on the ground.
“The Iranian regime is losing air capability day by day,” CENTCOM wrote in a late Wednesday post on X.
“U.S. forces aren’t just defending against Iranian threats, we are methodically dismantling them,” the post added.
TRUMP SUDDENLY SEEMS ANXIOUS TO END THE WAR AS AMERICAN CASUALTIES MOUNT AND IRAN FINDS WAYS TO HIT BACK
No American fighter planes have been downed by Iran, according to CENTCOM.
“An IRGC leader has claimed that a U.S. F-15 was shot down today south of Tehran. LIE,” CENTCOM indicated in a Wednesday post on X.
“No U.S. fighter aircraft have been shot down by Iran. U.S. forces continue to exercise air superiority over vast swaths of Iran. TRUTH,” the post added.
DEMOCRATS THREATEN TO GRIND SENATE TO A HALT TO FORCE PUBLIC IRAN HEARINGS
The Wall Street Journal indicated in a report last week that while the U.S. and Israel are operating modern aircraft like the F-35, the age and weakness of Iranian aircraft mark a vulnerability that requires Iran to rely on the ballistic missile program targeted by American and Israeli strikes.
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Earlier this month CENTCOM reported that three U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jets had been downed in “an apparent friendly fire incident.”
“During active combat — that included attacks from Iranian aircraft, ballistic missiles, and drones — the U.S. Air Force fighter jets were mistakenly shot down by Kuwaiti air defenses,” the March 2 press release. “Kuwait has acknowledged this incident, and we are grateful for the efforts of the Kuwaiti defense forces and their support in this ongoing operation.”
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The release noted that the six aircrew members safely ejected and were recovered.
Iran war jeopardizes Trump economic boom before key midterm elections
Will the Iran war turn President Donald Trump’s 1980s boom into a 1970s stagflation? Only if it drags out, which the president says he plans to avoid. But the enemy gets a vote too, as the saying goes, so what if it’s a long conflict?
As soon as Trump started bombing Iran, markets fell – especially growth stocks like AI. Silver plunged. Bonds fell. Even gold is now down nearly 3%, having replaced its initial war pop with an ominous flight to dollars you see in recessions.
Oil jumped 10% in two days, from $67 to $74 per barrel on the way to $86 as of writing.
Markets always react fast – and they can overreact. The question for the wider economy is how long the war disrupts Middle East oil exports.
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About 20% of global oil exports pass the narrow Strait of Hormuz that is next to Iran. Another 30% are in range of Iranian missiles in the Gulf of Oman and Red Sea.
The U.S. actually imports almost none of this – Middle East oil is just 2% of American oil consumption. But oil markets are global, so Middle East disruption drives prices up worldwide.
On the initial attack, ship traffic in the Strait of Hormuz plunged by 70%, according to MarineTraffic. By March 3, it ground to a “total halt,” according to Lloyd’s List.
THE WAR HITS HOME: WHY FINANCIAL PAIN AND ECONOMIC UNCERTAINTY THREATEN TRUMP’S DRIVE TO TOPPLE IRAN’S REGIME
Trump then ordered the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation to provide political risk insurance and financial guarantees for maritime trade through the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.
This will help by removing risk to shippers. But traffic is unlikely to fully recover until the campaign ends.
Trump is currently suggesting the war might take just four weeks. But the administration is also messaging the war will go “as long as it takes.”
EX-NAVY SEAL WARNS WITHDRAWING FROM IRAN NOW WOULD HAND ‘VICTORY’ TO REGIME
Promising a long war could be tactical, to demoralize the Iranian regime. But opinion polls show the American people have very little appetite for a long war.
A recent CBS poll found a war lasting fewer than eight weeks is +52 in the polls, while a war that lasts longer than that is -8. Polling would likely get worse if American casualties mount.
On the initial attack, ship traffic in the Strait of Hormuz plunged by 70%, according to MarineTraffic. By March 3, it ground to a “total halt,” according to Lloyd’s List.
In terms of the economy, there will only be real fallout if the war drags on. And that falls into three baskets: growth, jobs and inflation.
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Historically, every $10 rise in oil knocks about two-tenths of a percent off economic growth. That’s small in an economy that’s growing over 3%, according to the Fed’s GDPNow. It might lower annual wage growth by about $300, given the $19 oil has already risen.
Still, that goes on top of expensive oil to heat your home or gas your car. AAA says gasoline prices have already jumped nearly 20%, from $2.98 to $3.56. Between gasoline, transport costs and utilities, that might bump inflation another six-tenths of a percent – translating into another $500 in household costs.
Meanwhile, higher oil prices and slower growth both hit job creation – given the move we’ve already seen, they might drop job creation by 15,000 to 20,000 per month.
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So it’s painful. But it’s not a recession.
What would put us in recession is a long war. A recent study by Deutsche Bank looked at historic oil shocks, concluding you need a 50% to 100% sustained jump in oil to set off a recession.
This would imply oil prices between $100 and $150 that remained high.
Even then, according to Deutsche, oil only causes recession when the economy is already limping. For example, the 1970s is the poster child for an oil crash. But the U.S. economy was already stagflationary because of Washington’s so-called guns and butter policy of fighting Vietnam while building a trillion-dollar welfare state. This drove the “Nixon Shock,” which pre-dated the oil embargo by several years.
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In contrast, when the bombs started, the Fed’s GDPNow was at a healthy 3% on GDP growth and the most recent productivity was 4.9% – one of the highest since the Reagan boom.
This means $100 oil could knock us into the 1% area on growth. But it’s unlikely to spark a recession unless the Fed panics on oil inflation and hikes rates. Which could mow down enough jobs to tip us over the edge.
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For now, the biggest war impact is oil prices. But if the war keeps going, oil trickles down to growth, jobs, consumer spending and inflation that could set off a Fed hike doom loop.
If that happens, Trump could be throwing away his hard-won boom just in time for midterm elections that hand Congress to Democrats. They will take us on a two-year journey of paralysis, congressional hearings and repeated impeachments.
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Iranian American couple from California speaks out against anti-war protests: ‘It is a rescue mission’
When an Iranian American husband and wife see protests against the war with Iran in the United States, they shudder, recalling living and being raised under a regime that “controlled” their young lives.
Since its start, Operation Epic Fury has drawn scrutiny from the American public, inspiring anti-war protests across the country.
Behzad Hemmati and Rahil Nazarian both had the opportunity to come to America from Iran as young adults.
Decades later, Hemmati, 50, and Nazarian, 42, told Fox News Digital that they are watching the situation unfold from their new home in Southern California, and to them, this conflict isn’t a war, it’s a “rescue mission.”
Born under the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Hemmati recalls he was too young to experience the “good things” before the Islamic Revolution in 1979 overthrew Pahlavi’s reign.
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“I came here [just because of] my natural personality, I couldn’t bear with the things that [were] happening [in Iran],” Hemmati said.
He recalled his life as a teenager and said, “You want to be yourself, to be free,” but shared that what Western culture considers a “normal” teenage life, wasn’t allowed in Iran.
“You want to dance, you want to hang out with your friends, but we couldn’t … girls and boys [are] always separate,” Hemmati explained. “This is how [the government] control[s] you, this is how [they] break you in pieces and take that beautiful life that you can have [and] take it away from you.”
Nazarian was born during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. Her father was a teacher, and after the Islamic Revolution, she explained that the Islamic Republic took her family’s home, their land and her father was unable to work.
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“After [Ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini came and took over, they fired [my father] because they told him, ‘You work during Shah, you don’t deserve this,” Nazarian said.
Murderous regime
In an emotional moment, she recalled her father being brought back and forth between Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) camps until one day, he did not come back.
“They were executing most of his family members,” Nazarian said.
“One day, he went, and they told him, ‘Oh, we have a plan for you, we’re gonna give you back everything we took to you, we’re going to give it back to you,’” Nazarian recalled. “He left home [that day], he never came back.”
Since the initial strikes in Operation Epic Fury that began in the early-morning hours of Feb. 28, the conflict has struck a chord with the American public, leading to backlash against the Trump administration.
Still, when Hemmati and Nazarian see protests against military action, Hemmati told Fox News Digital that they “don’t understand.”
WHERE AMERICAN SUPPORT FOR TRUMP’S IRAN STRIKE STANDS AS NEW POLLS ROLL IN
“People should understand [here], those that they don’t understand,” he said. “People are going on the street and saying no to war, I can tell you 100%, they have no idea.”
The operation has also garnered support from many in the Iranian American community.
Hemmati said protests in favor of U.S. military action in the country have sprung up around Southern California, and that he attends an event almost every weekend. He says this is a way for people to be the voice for people inside Iran who are in favor of the operation.
“[Iranian’s] inside Iran want to show the world — obviously, they can’t do anything because everything is disconnected from Iran — but that’s why we’re going out to be their voice,” Hemmati said.
Family in Iran
Nazarian and Hemmati said they spoke to relatives still living in Iran and despite constant bombardments near their homes, they’re “glad this is happening.”
“No matter what happens, no matter if we lose our house, no matter if the whole house is destroyed, as long as we’re alive to fight back, we’re still grateful and happy,” Hemmati said.
“They were thanking President [Donald] Trump and said, it’s OK, we have to pay the price for freedom,” Nazarian continued.
Hemmati said by targeting specific IRGC locations the operation is “cutting the regime’s bloodlines.”
“They’re targeting those very special places for their government,” Hemmati said. “Once they’re eliminated, then it’s time for people to go out.”
Once able, Nazarian and Hemmati said they’ll be on the first flight to Iran to see family for a long-overdue visit.
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“[Our] kids are so thirsty to see their cousins, their family, because I don’t have any family [in the US],” Nazarian said. “I haven’t seen them for nine years [and Hemmati] hasn’t been there for 19 years.”
“[This] is what I’ve been waiting for [for 47 years],” Hemmati said. “Unfortunately, we’re going to lose some lives in this rescue mission … but again, people are saying inside Iran, they’re saying, ‘How many are we gonna lose? … We’re ready to sacrifice again until we get to [freedom].’”
MORNING GLORY: President Trump and the US are waging a righteous battle — and winning
The United States and Israel are winning this battle with the Islamic Republic of Iran — decisively. Our Gulf allies are standing strong. The cost has already been high, with seven U.S. service members dead and many wounded, some seriously. Soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces have been killed and civilians in Israel and among the Gulf states murdered by the lashing out at every country in the region by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
But of course, some hard-left partisans hate the prospect of either President Donald Trump or the United States winning an important, indeed crucial battle. That includes, shockingly, Catholic cardinals in the U.S. These cardinals are putting politics ahead of faith and demonstrating deep ignorance of national security affairs combined with indifference to the patriotism of their parishioners — many of whom with family on the front lines — who can be expected to at least stop giving to an anti-American church if not leave it.
For anyone who, out of ignorance, real or feigned, does not understand the nature of the regime atop the 91 million innocent people of Iran: These fanatics murdered 35,000 of their own people in two days and nights of terror in January in Tehran and across other cities in the vast country. 35,000!
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The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps numbers between 150,000 and 200,000 and their street thugs, the Basij, between four and five times that. So a million of Iran’s people cruelly repress the other 91.
The left in America refuses to come to grips with how evil the Iranian regime is and for how long it has been so. They seem to have forgotten the original hostage crisis, the murder of our Marines in Beirut in 1983, the destruction of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996 and countless other acts of assassination and mass terrorism since the regime seized power in 1979. They do not know that we know for a certainty that Iran murdered and maimed thousands of our troops in Iraq in the war that began there in 2003. Our political left is defeatist and in the grip of their appeasers and anti-Israel caucus. That left now includes at least three high-profile Catholic cardinals.
The Senate and House GOP should stand proudly behind President Trump and proclaim the Islamic Republic of Iran as the evil and malignant terrorist regime run by theocratic fanatics that it has been for 47 years; that the cause of destroying the regime’s ability to threaten the region and the world is just; and that President Trump, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Caine are conducting the war in remarkable fashion because the American military has no peer.
I hope House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune persuade the caucuses they lead to agree to bring forward a second reconciliation process to quickly resupply the military with the funds to replenish the ordinance expended and, indeed, to go further: To fully fund the next three years of spending necessary to the rapid build-out of the Golden Dome and the Golden Fleet, while also making sure the equal of any of our allies — Israel — has the funding and hardware we can provide to assist them on all of their fronts. The righteous battle with Iran and its proxies needs to be proclaimed and explained and cannot be done too often or too loudly.
MICHAEL OREN: IRAN HAS WAGED WAR ON AMERICA FOR 47 YEARS — TIME TO END IT
And, as a Roman Catholic, I hope some of our braver and certainly better informed cardinals stand up and address the brothers in red who have flown off the rails of national security reality.
Democrats who are defeatist, appeasers, antisemitic or simply deranged by their hatred of President Trump: You keep speaking up too. History will record your positions.
The region and the whole world is far better off already because of the crushing of Iran’s striking capability and will be immeasurably blessed by the collapse of this insidious regime.
What we have witnessed by the “Yosemite Sam” response of Iran to the attacks by the U.S. and Israel should have awakened even the least observant consumer of news to the nature of the regime. The mullahs ordered everything in their arsenal fired at all of their neighbors, none of whom other than the U.S. and Israel were involved in the conflict. In this respect, Iran acted as Hitler’s Germany did after Imperial Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941: Germany unilaterally declared war on the United States four days after the “day that will live in infamy.”
While Iran has been in conflict with Israel and the United States since the Islamic Revolution culminated in the return of Ayatollah Khomeini to Iran on February 1, 1979, Iran was not at war with the Gulf States. That Iran attacked everyone it could hit should tell you why the regime was so dangerous. It is an unhinged and revolutionary power. It does not abide by anything remotely like the rules of civilized nation states. Its “threat” was not merely imminent, but ongoing and never ceasing. Its hideousness appeared unveiled on Oct. 7, 2023 in Israel when its puppet Hamas invaded Israel to kill, kidnap and maim. Iran could never be trusted with nuclear weaponry or the sort of forest of missiles it was aiming to assemble in order to blackmail the world into acquiescence to its nuclear ambitions.
President after president of both parties vowed that Iran would never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. President Trump made good on that vow with the order to conduct Operation Midnight Hammer last June, which obliterated the ongoing enrichment and weaponization programs inside Iran.
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At that point, Iran could have taken the off-ramp, recognized that the U.S. and Israel had reached the point at which no further provocation or prevarication would be tolerated. Indeed, President Trump made repeated efforts to offer terms to the ayatollahs.
They refused. They obfuscated, playing for time, and always refusing to negotiate as their missile arsenal accumulated. President Trump then did what every American president of both parties pledged to do: He stopped them. And he ordered the military to prevent the next attempt to rebuild.
Stunningly ignorant clerics and critics have damned the United States for breaching international law. Some have incredibly turned their backs not only on the growing, ongoing and imminent threats posed by the fanatics, but also on the mountain of corpses the IRGC piled up in the streets of Iran in January. Catholics: Stop giving money to those dioceses that are putting our troops at risk, and make no mistake, some cardinals are doing just that. They are the modern but left-wing versions of Father Coughlin of the 1930s. Their infamy will be as enduring as his.
Cardinal Cupich of Chicago joined Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington, D.C., and Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, in co-authoring an incoherent statement titled “Charting a Moral Vision of American Foreign Policy” that ignores the massive evils perpetrated by the IRGC this year and over the decades. Politicians shouldn’t advise priests on their religious doctrine and priests should not demonstrate their lack of knowledge about basic national security.
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The cardinals are not alone, however, as the upside-down view of this battle has a grip on the Democratic Party. For the first time in my life, the partisanship that marks elections now defines a conflict in which American servicemen and women are on the front lines. We can perhaps excuse clerics for their ignorance of the world. The Catholic bishops of America presumed to lecture Ronald Reagan in the 1980s with lengthy letters on war and peace as well as on economic growth, and conveniently forgot how wrong they were when the policies of Reagan and President George H.W. Bush brought down the Soviet Union and freed much of Eastern Europe and even Russia for a time.
But now the American left, both in elected office and in pulpits high and low, have wholly lost their way. To repeat: The Iranian regime murdered 35,000 of its own people two months ago. Its proxy, Hamas, invaded Israel and slaughtered 1,200 on Oct. 7 while starting a war that devastated Gaza. Two other of Iran’s proxies — Hezbollah and the Houthis — also attacked Israel in the months after Oct. 7, as did Iran. Where were the cardinals then? Hiding, of course.
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The collapse of moral clarity among American elites on the left is complete, and it has even made inroads on the fringes of the right. The Republican Party should boldly proclaim that, even after 250 years, our country still knows right from wrong and will defend the right.
President Trump is leading a winning campaign to rid the world of as malign an actor as there is. The region and the world will be so much better off if the president perseveres. Pray he does, because it is obvious that many who should be doing so lack the wisdom and/or the courage to do so.
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BRETT VELICOVICH: Iran built a drone terror machine — America just hacked it
As coordinated U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran continue, one thing is clear: this is not the kind of war we have spent decades planning for. There are no massed formations or carrier battle groups trading salvos. This conflict is being fought with swarms of relatively inexpensive, one-way drones. Adaptation and rapid innovation now determine how conflicts are fought.
Iran has spent years perfecting saturation warfare. The concept is straightforward: flood the sky with enough drones and missiles to exhaust the enemy’s interceptors, force impossible triage decisions and eventually break through. Iran has targeted hotels, tourist centers and locations without hardened counter-drone systems. Iran’s kamikaze drones, called Shaheds, are low, slow and persistent. They aren’t technically sophisticated, but they are difficult to stop in large numbers. This isn’t a failure of U.S. technology. It’s a logistics and economics problem that we need to solve and adapt to. And we’re already doing that.
For the first time, the U.S. has deployed the LUCAS system — a one-way attack drone modeled directly on Iran’s own Shahed design — in combat. The system was developed by reverse-engineering downed Iranian drone systems in Ukraine and rebuilding them with American guidance systems, hardened navigation and real-time targeting integration into our intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) networks. Then we sent them back to Iran to destroy their infrastructure.
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LUCAS was used in the opening strike, hitting Iranian drone manufacturing sites and other weapons infrastructure before advanced fighters followed. These drones aren’t just munitions; they’re nodes in a combat cloud, receiving real-time targeting updates and networked with intelligence assets in ways Iran’s drones cannot match.
While Iran is building volume, the U.S. is building systems. This distinction matters.
This operation has also marked the largest-scale deployment of AI models across the U.S. Department of War in history. From intelligence assessments to target identification to battle scenario simulation, AI has been part of the decision cycle at every level. This precision has been another point of delineation between the two sides. While Tehran responds with indiscriminate barrages hitting civilian areas, U.S. strikes are being driven by layered intelligence, refined targeting and a disciplined operational picture. That gap in approach is not only strategic but ethical.
This conflict with Iran will be decided by the side that adapts fastest, identifying problems and finding solutions on a compressed timeline.
But there are still areas where we’re adapting. The cost dynamics of this new approach remain unresolved. The U.S. has traditionally favored high-tech, expensive weapons systems requiring extensive training and planning. But when the adversary has more drones than you have interceptors, the math turns against you fast.
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Relying on high-cost interceptors to counter cheap, easy-to-produce drones is not a sustainable equation. The answer isn’t to outgun; it’s to intelligently adapt — and to do so quickly. Lower-cost, high-speed, combat-proven intercept platforms designed to counter one-way attack drones, including the Shahed-136, Geran-2 and other Group 3-class unmanned threats, are what this new battlefield demands.
That’s the lesson Ukraine has been teaching for years — and one this conflict is reinforcing in real time: no military in the world is adequately prepared to stop cheap, mass-produced one-way drones at scale. Not yet. The U.S. industrial base has the capacity to change that. The constraint is understanding the new reality and deciding to move on it.
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Iran spent years developing and proliferating the Shahed as a tool of destabilization, deploying it in Yemen, Iraq and Ukraine, and against American forces across the region. Now, a version of that same weapon has been turned against the factories that produce it.
As of today, the Islamic Republic is in unprecedented internal chaos. Leadership is scrambling, and the regime’s command-and-control picture is unclear even to those inside it. That uncertainty creates both opportunity and risk. Precision matters more — not less — in these moments.
This conflict will be decided by the side that adapts fastest, identifying problems and finding solutions on a compressed timeline. Though the U.S. drone industry isn’t where it needs to be, real-world, battle-tested deployment is how capability gaps get closed. What we learn here will shape doctrine, acquisition and industrial strategy for the next decade.
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America just delivered one of the most significant demonstrations of adaptive military capability in modern history. The question isn’t whether we can innovate — it’s whether we’re prepared to build the industrial and defensive infrastructure at the scale and speed this new era demands.
The answer to that question isn’t decided on a battlefield. It’s decided here at home — where we invest and how seriously we take the threat. The conflict with Iran has made that choice unavoidable.
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