Around one year earlier, on February 28, 2025, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was publicly berated by U.S. President Donald Trump in the White House.
Zelenskyy, said Trump, wanted to keep a “gravy train” of U.S. funding and missiles going.
A few months later, Trump joked about Zelenskyy’s demands for purchasing 10 Patriot batteries.
Zelenskyy is” always looking to purchase missiles,” Trump said.
Fast forward to March 2026, and the tables have turned.
A war in the Middle East, with Iran launching hundreds of Shahed drones on a daily basis, and the fast-depleting stocks of the US and its allies’ missile interceptor stockpile, coupled with rising discontent in oil-rich Gulf monarchies over the US failure to protect their infrastructure, has suddenly put Zelenskyy in a position of strength.
Perhaps, for the first time since the Ukraine War began in February 2024, Zelenskyy is in a position to offer help and Ukrainian expertise, rather than “always looking to purchase missiles,” as Trump has suggested.
While the Gulf countries have intercepted the overwhelming majority of Iranian drones and missiles, even fighter aircraft, a few drones have sneaked through, causing casualties, spreading panic, damaging infrastructure, and hurting the long-term image of these countries as investment havens.
The depleting interceptor stockpiles and the economic cost of intercepting mass-produced, cheap drones, costing USD 20,000 to USD 50,000, while missiles cost millions of dollars, have forced the US and Gulf countries to seek Ukrainian expertise, which has been dealing with Iranian Shahed drones and their clones, such as Geran-2, for years.
“We received a request from the United States for specific support in protection against ‘shaheds’ in the Middle East region,” Zelenskyy wrote on X.
“I gave instructions to provide the necessary means and ensure the presence of Ukrainian specialists who can guarantee the required security. Ukraine helps partners who help ensure our security and protect the lives of our people.”
However, while the Iran War provides Zelenskyy a rare opportunity to show the West that Kyiv can also provide military assistance in some way, it reflects poorly on the United States’s war preparation.
It also raises uncomfortable questions on whether the US learned any lessons from the Ukraine War, where Shahed drones have dominated the battlefield, and even repeated NATO airspace violations in Eastern Europe by these drones.
Furthermore, it was common knowledge that Iran was stockpiling these drones in the thousands, and any military conflict with Tehran would involve the large-scale use of these one-way suicide drones.
“I don’t think drones or counter-drones will be a priority until a full generation has had to deal with fighting them,” a US Army officer told the Washington Post.
Dara Massicot, a defense and security analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, underlined the US failure to prepare for the Iranian drone threat.
“If you are planning a war against the original purveyor of Shahed drones and you are surprised that Shaheds are numerous and difficult to intercept, you have not been paying attention,” Massicot said.
“There is a multiyear disconnect between the Ukrainian combat experience and institutionalizing its lessons in the US military.”
As a result, the US and its allies are now reaching out to Ukraine amid a crisis, Massicot added.
To be fair, the Gulf states have intercepted the vast majority of these drones.
According to a study by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), by the morning of 6 March 2026, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states had confirmed over 2,150 interceptions of Iranian unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), missiles, and even fighter jets.
“About a quarter of those are Iranian ballistic missiles, and almost all the rest were UAVs. Less than 20 cruise missiles were detected and intercepted.”
However, Iran only needs a few strikes for its asymmetric warfare strategy to succeed.
An Iranian drone strike in Kuwait led to the death of six US military personnel.
Iranian drones have also hit the US embassy in Saudi Arabia, communications equipment for the US Navy’s fifth fleet in Bahrain, a luxury hotel in Dubai’s most expensive real estate, Palm Jumeirah, a British military base in Cyprus, one of Saudi Arabia’s largest refineries, and a major natural gas terminal in Qatar.
There are also unconfirmed strikes on the THAAD air defense system in the UAE.
Though the US has amassed its most advanced air defense systems in the region, these Iranian drones operate at a lower altitude than most radars and AD systems are designed to detect.
Their low speed and low-altitude flight make them difficult to detect by radar.
The US and its Gulf allies need a new strategy to deal with this threat.
This is where the Ukrainian experience comes in handy.
Dealing with Shahed drones and their clones for years, Kyiv has devised new, cheaper ways to take down these cheap drones, rather than burning through the stockpiles of missile interceptors that cost millions of dollars.
Ukraine has, in fact, become a laboratory for counter-drone innovation.
Across the thousands of miles-long frontline, Ukraine has deployed networks of sensors and microphones that recognize the acoustic signature of the Shahed’s lawn-mower-like sound and alert interceptor teams in real time.
Ukraine has also leveraged the Shahed drone’s low-speed, low-altitude flight and comparatively large wingspan to take them down with cheap options, like truck-mounted machine guns.
Another hugely successful Ukrainian strategy has been its cheap, mass-produced interceptor drones, such as the Sting system, produced by the Ukrainian group Wild Hornets.
These interceptor drones are piloted with first-person-view goggles by operators who crash them into Shahed drones before they reach their targets.
Due to this expertise, Ukraine has received inquiries from the US, the UAE, Qatar, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia in the last week.
In return for its help, Kyiv might get investment in its burgeoning defense ecosystem from the rich Gulf monarchies.
The US failure to prepare for the Iranian drone threat is even more perplexing, given that the Pentagon clearly understood the striking capabilities of the Shahed drones.
While China is known for reverse-engineering US defense products, Washington itself reverse-engineered the Shahed drones.
The Pentagon has even lauded its performance in the Iran War.
“LUCAS is indispensable… This was an original Iranian drone design. We captured it, pulled the guts out, sent it back to America, put a little ‘Made in America’ on it, brought it back here, and we’re shooting it at the Iranians,” the US CENTCOM (Central Command) commander, Admiral Brad Cooper, recently said at a press conference.
The admission comes days after CENTCOM acknowledged the use of the drones, saying, “CENTCOM’s Task Force Scorpion Strike – for the first time in history – is using one-way attack drones in combat during Operation Epic Fury. These low-cost drones, modelled after Iran’s Shahed drones, are now delivering American-made retribution.”
It is surprising that while the Pentagon developed its own clone of Shahed drones, it failed to prepare in advance for the danger posed by these drones, and to anticipate that any war with Iran would involve the use of these drones in the thousands.
- Sumit Ahlawat has over a decade of experience in news media. He has worked with Press Trust of India, Times Now, Zee News, Economic Times, and Microsoft News. He holds a Master’s Degree in International Media and Modern History from the University of Sheffield, UK.
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