The killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in US-Israeli strikes on February 28 unleashed a wave of Iranian drone and missile attacks against American military positions across West Asia. US forces were unprepared for the scale and cost of the assault. They didn’t have to be — Ukraine had offered them the tools to prepare, and Washington had said no.
Iran’s Shahed drones have been central to its retaliatory strategy. These weapons are cheap to produce and expensive to stop using conventional air defense systems. Iran has deployed them against American bases, US-allied Gulf states, and Israeli targets in a sustained campaign that began immediately after Khamenei’s death. Seven American service members have been killed in these attacks.
Ukraine’s familiarity with this threat predates the current conflict by years. Russia has been attacking Ukraine with Shahed-derived drones throughout its war, and Kyiv developed a comprehensive and cost-efficient counter-drone system in response. This is precisely the technology that Ukrainian officials tried to share with Washington in August, warning that the same threat was developing in the region.
The failure to adopt Ukraine’s proposal is now acknowledged inside the Trump administration as the most significant tactical error of the pre-conflict period. One official described the rejection of the Ukrainian offer as the central mistake made leading up to the outbreak of hostilities. That admission, made privately, is cold comfort given the lives lost.
Ukraine has since deployed specialists to Jordan at American request. Teams are also operating in Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. The drone defense infrastructure Ukraine proposed eight months ago is being built under live fire — a result that could and should have been achieved before a single American soldier was killed.