Nearly six weeks of war with Iran have overturned many assumptions about the nature of modern warfare. What only yesterday seemed like one of several possible scenarios is now beginning to take shape as a new military reality: the United States and Israel demonstrated not merely a high level of battlefield coordination, but a quality of tactical execution that compels a fresh assessment of the effectiveness of the newest strike, intelligence, and missile defense systems.
From February 28 until the ceasefire took effect, American and Israeli forces methodically dismantled Iran’s military infrastructure, striking again and again at facilities that until recently had been considered protected, dispersed, and difficult to neutralize. Iran responded on a massive scale, harshly and painfully. But this is precisely where the new essence of the war became visible: Tehran’s response did not produce the strategic turning point many had expected, but instead became proof that even large-scale missile and drone attacks no longer guarantee a decisive effect.
Yes, the full picture of what happened has not yet been revealed. The world still does not know all the details - neither the final list of destroyed targets, nor the exact number of intercepted missiles and drones, nor the full composition of the forces involved. Yet even the facts that have already surfaced are enough to draw a conclusion of exceptional importance. The war against Iran was not merely another Middle Eastern campaign. It became a proving ground for a new military era, in which victory belongs not only to the side with more missiles, aircraft, and ships, but above all to the side that sees faster, calculates more accurately, penetrates more deeply, and strikes earlier. And if that conclusion is correct, then what is happening in Iran should not be viewed solely through the prism of the Middle East. In reality, this war already extends far beyond it - toward Beijing, Taiwan, and the entire future architecture of global confrontation.
For Washington’s adversaries, this should be an alarming signal. China, Russia, and North Korea have long relied on mass strikes by long-range drones and ballistic missiles as the principal instrument of the first echelon of war. These are precisely the means intended to destroy bases, suppress command centers, disable airfields, sink ships, wipe out civilian infrastructure, and psychologically break the enemy in the first hours of conflict. The logic of such scenarios is simple: first, a massive missile-and-drone strike; then the disorganization of the United States and its allies; after that, the achievement of core military objectives under cover of chaos. Yet the war with Iran showed that this scheme no longer appears indisputable. Western missile and air defense systems, apparently, are capable of disrupting or sharply devaluing such a design. Missiles and drones remain dangerous weapons, but they may no longer be the universal and decisive instruments of rapid victory that strategists imagined in recent years. They can still function within a logic of attrition, pressure, and gradual destruction. But that is no longer blitzkrieg - it is a protracted war of exhaustion.
This conclusion carries its most serious implications for China. Until now, a significant part of the American expert community proceeded from what was almost an axiomatic assumption: in the event of a war over Taiwan, Beijing would be able, through long-range strikes, to sharply constrain the actions of the U.S. Air Force and Navy. The course of the war in the Middle East forces a reconsideration of precisely this basic premise. The United States may be capable of acting against China far more effectively than had previously been believed. That, in turn, becomes a factor of strategic deterrence. Beijing may conclude that the price of an attack would be substantially higher than earlier calculations assumed.
Reality Turned Out Better Than American Expectations
For many years, Washington assumed that a war with Iran could result in extremely heavy losses. At the beginning of 2026, Iran possessed an arsenal of more than 2,500 ballistic missiles and several thousand strike drones, including the Shahed family, capable of reaching targets in the Gulf states, Israel, and American military facilities in the region. Military forecasts were grim. It was assumed that the density of the strikes would be sufficient to overwhelm air and missile defense systems, that U.S. bases would be partially paralyzed, that the energy infrastructure of the Gulf states would suffer catastrophic damage, and that the Strait of Hormuz would be closed.
Some of these fears were borne out. Iran did indeed manage to close the Strait of Hormuz, which in itself delivered a serious blow to the global economy. But in the main respect, its missile campaign did not justify the expectations of those who regarded such arsenals as nearly absolute weapons. In the first five days of the war, according to the data cited in the article, Iran launched hundreds of ballistic missiles and thousands of drones at the Gulf states and at Israel. Yet the overwhelming majority of these weapons were intercepted. In the first two days alone, February 28 and March 1, American and Arab forces, as the text states, destroyed hundreds of missiles and around a thousand drones. Hundreds of strike assets were launched at the UAE, but only a handful reached their targets. By mid-March, hundreds of missiles and drones had been directed at Israel, yet Iran achieved no serious military result of any kind. Later, isolated strikes did break through the defenses and hit civilian sites, including Jerusalem’s Old City, but even that did not alter the overall picture: the scale of the damage was far lower than had been expected.
Yes, Iran was able to strike American facilities in the Gulf states. Yes, radar systems were damaged, and American naval infrastructure in Bahrain sustained damage. Yes, serious disruptions were recorded at energy facilities, ports, and airports - from Emirati installations to Qatar’s gas complex and Saudi oil hubs. Yes, the global market felt a shock of nervous panic. But even so, this was not the scenario of total regional collapse that so many analysts had described. Iran did not destroy America’s military architecture in the Middle East. It did not break U.S. power projection. It did not force Washington to abandon active operations. On the contrary, right up until the ceasefire, the United States and Israel continued to launch hundreds of strikes per day against Iran - from aircraft carriers as well as from land bases.
And it is precisely here that the most uncomfortable conclusion for America’s adversaries emerges: missiles and drones were likely overestimated as instruments of a rapid and decisive turning point in war.
Decapitating the Enemy Is Ceasing to Be an Exception
Even more revealing were the U.S. and Israeli strikes against Iran’s command architecture and missile potential. According to the text of the article, in the very first minute of the Israeli attack on February 28, dozens of senior military figures were killed, including key representatives of Iran’s military leadership. In the following weeks, other critically important figures within the security apparatus were also eliminated. A strike against an enemy’s command structure is not, in itself, something new in the history of war. What is new is something else: an operation of this depth, speed, and complexity has, until now, been almost without precedent.
Even more important was the blow to missile infrastructure. By their own estimates, the United States and Israel managed to destroy or disable from one half to four fifths of Iran’s launchers. For modern warfare, this is an almost ideal result. Any military professional knows a simple truth: destroying a missile on the ground, or destroying its launcher, is incomparably more advantageous than trying to catch it in the sky. But in practice, launchers are mobile, concealed, and extremely difficult to hit. That is precisely why such a result looks not merely like a military success, but like a change in the very understanding of what a modern intelligence-strike system is capable of.
The reasons are obvious. Israel spent years, in fact decades, gathering intelligence on Iran, building agent networks, studying the command structure, military geography, and logistics. The United States, for its part, over twenty years of campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, refined the entire chain from target detection to target destruction to a high degree of effectiveness. Satellites, drones, analytical systems, constant surveillance, the processing of enormous volumes of data, and the likely use of artificial intelligence tools - all of this together created a new type of war in which the depth of destruction is determined not only by the quantity of munitions, but by the quality of information.
And, most importantly, this is not a one-off case. The article emphasizes that the current war has already become the fourth episode in two years in which American and Israeli defenses successfully repelled Iranian strikes. In other words, this is not a matter of accidental luck, but of an emerging pattern.
But the Sea Still Remains a Vulnerability
For all their successes, there is also an area where the United States and Israel were unable to secure a decisive advantage. Iran managed to use anti-ship missiles, drones, and mines to block the Strait of Hormuz. A similar problem persists in the struggle against Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. This is a very important point: even the most technologically advanced armies in the world still face difficulties in locating and destroying mobile anti-ship systems before they are launched. The coastal zone of a hostile state remains a space of heightened risk. In other words, on land and in the air, the United States and Israel demonstrated a new tactical level, but in the question of securing maritime communications, there is still no complete solution.
Why Beijing Must Draw Conclusions
For China, what is happening has not academic but direct strategic significance. Nearly all scenarios of a war over Taiwan in recent years have been built on one initial idea: at the very start of the conflict, Beijing would launch a massive strike with ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missiles against Taiwan, against U.S. bases in Japan and the Philippines, and against naval formations in the western Pacific. The aim would be to blind, deafen, paralyze, and push American forces as far away from the theater of operations as possible. Most Western war games assumed extremely severe losses for the United States and its allies.
The war with Iran does not cancel these risks. China is objectively stronger than Iran. Its missiles are more advanced, its intelligence capabilities are probably deeper, and its military-industrial base is larger. Beijing has hypersonic programs, precision-strike systems, large missile stockpiles, and, presumably, more sophisticated algorithms for target selection and tracking. Moreover, the war in the Middle East itself is already depleting American interceptor stocks, which means Washington will have to replenish its arsenals urgently.
But even with all these caveats, the main intrigue remains. Iran, too, delivered not a symbolic but a very substantial strike. And if even such a torrent of strike assets failed to produce the expected collapse of U.S. defenses and those of its allies, then previous calculations regarding Taiwan can no longer be regarded as indisputable. Even a slight reduction in the effectiveness of China’s first strike could change the entire course of the war. If some American bases remain operational, if at least part of the naval grouping is not taken out of the fight, if U.S. aviation retains the ability to act, then the very tempo and logic of the Chinese operation will immediately come into question.
War games often built into their models interception rates at the level of 75 to 91 percent, until the defending side ran out of interceptors. But the experience of the war with Iran, if one relies on the figures presented in the article, shows that in some cases the actual effectiveness may have been even higher. And if that is so, then the Western Pacific theater no longer looks like a space of automatic Chinese superiority.
Moreover, Beijing cannot fail to consider another side of the issue: how well protected are its own command centers, launchers, communications nodes, and military leadership. If the American intelligence-strike machine is capable of operating as it did against Iran, then China is obliged to consider that scenario as well. Perhaps Chinese air defense and counterintelligence are substantially stronger than Iran’s. Perhaps they really are capable of closing such vulnerabilities. But Beijing cannot have absolute confidence. And in strategic planning, even a small probability of unacceptable damage changes behavior.
The Main Conclusion - Time for Reassessment
Recent years have produced an almost fatalistic vision of the future of war. It was believed that drones, missiles, hypersonic systems, and cheap mass strike assets had finally made large military bases, airfields, headquarters, and naval forces almost unconditionally vulnerable. The war with Iran did not destroy that picture completely, but it corrected it seriously. It showed that offensive capabilities are high, but defensive technologies have also moved far ahead. It showed that intelligence, early warning systems, layered defense, and strikes against launch infrastructure are capable of sharply reducing the effect even of a massive attack. It showed that modern war is no longer simply a competition in the number of missiles, but a competition between systems.
Therefore, the main lesson for China is not that the United States has become invulnerable. That would be a naive and dangerous exaggeration. The main lesson is something else: American military power, especially in combination with Israeli intelligence, allied defense, and new data-processing technologies, turned out to be stronger than many had assumed. And that means Beijing’s strategic calculations must become more cautious. If the Chinese leadership concludes that a war for Taiwan no longer promises a rapid breakthrough, but instead threatens heavy losses, economic catastrophe, and a prolonged conflict with an uncertain outcome, then the very logic of deterrence will begin to function differently.
And then the paradox of this war will become especially visible. A conflict that brought death, destruction, and a new spiral of global instability may at the same time have shown Beijing that a major war in Asia no longer looks easy, fast, or controllable. And that, perhaps, is the one practical result that may still be capable of preserving peace.