Iran has showed off a sprawling underground network of tunnels filled with row after row of drones and rockets, amid fears the US and its allies are burning through expensive weaponry in their war against the regime.
Footage released by the Fars News Agency, which is closely linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, shows long lines of missiles and Shahed drones.
With a ticking clock playing in the background, the video used dramatic drone footage to show off the extent of their cheap arsenal.
One shot appeared to show a wall-to-wall hanging depicting the now-dead Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei looking out over the massive arsenal of drones.
A series of Iranian flags were seen hanging down from the roof of the tunnels.
Another showed a pair of lorries carrying Shahed drone launchers, each one holding four of the cheap drones.
Shahed drones cost just tens of thousands of dollars to produce, and take little time to manufacture.
It comes as:
- Iran claimed to have gained ‘complete control’ of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway for the world’s fuel
- Israel vowed to kill whoever succeeds Ali Khamenei ‘no matter his name or where he hides’
- Iran hit a CIA station in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital
- Saudi Arabia said it intercepted two cruise missiles, while drones struck near the US consulate in Dubai, starting a fire, and against the US military base at Al-Udeid in Qatar.
- Kuwait has also been hit, with the health ministry announcing the death of an 11-year-old girl killed after she was hit by falling shrapnel
As war continues to rage on, there are now fears that the sophisticated weaponry favoured by the US and its allies may be too expensive and too hard to procure for a longer military campaign.
Israel today admitted that Iran still has significant capacity to fire missiles at its enemies.
American-made Patriot missiles can cost between $4-5million (£3-3.75million), with export prices being even higher.
THAAD missile batteries, meanwhile, can cost around $13million (£9.74million) each.
Analysis carried out by Kirsty Grieco, a security expert at the Stimson Centre in Washington DC, found that the UAE had shot down 92 per cent of the missiles and drones Iran’s slung its way.
Grieco estimates Iran spent in the region of $11million to $27million on the 541 drones it launched on the UAE, with interceptors averaging $500,000-$1.5million per drone to shoot down 506 of them.
The UAE’s drone defence costs were between $253million and $759million, suggesting it spent up to 30 times more defending itself against Iran’s drones than its adversary spent on attacking it.
And there are fears that Gulf states may soon run out of anti-air defences.
A source told the Daily Mail: ‘At the current rates the supplies could run out within four days.
Is too much being spent on high-tech weapons?
Comment now ‘The interceptors are being used at an unprecedented speed.’
It comes as explosions sounded in Iran’s capital on Wednesday as the war with the United States and Israel entered its fifth day, with Israel targeting the Iranian leadership and security forces and the Islamic Republic responding with missile barrages and drone attacks on Israel and across the region.
The blasts in Tehran came at dawn, according to Iran state television. Israel’s military said its air defences had been activated to intercept Iranian missiles targeting Israel and explosions were heard around Jerusalem.
With Iran’s stranglehold on tanker movement through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which about a fifth of the world’s oil is shipped, Brent crude prices rose to more than $82 a barrel, up more than 13 per cent since the start of the conflict and at its highest price since July 2024.
Global stock markets have been hammered over worries that the spike in oil prices may grind down the world economy and sap corporate profits.
The American Embassy in Saudi Arabia and the US Consulate in the United Arab Emirates came under drone attacks on Tuesday, while the US State Department said Wednesday it had authorised non-emergency government personnel to evacuate the kingdom.
US Navy Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of US Central Command, said Iran has launched more than 500 ballistic missiles and 2,000 drones so far.
He described the American strikes in the opening hours of the campaign as ‘nearly double the scale’ of the initial attacks during the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.
‘We’ve already struck nearly 2,000 targets, with more than 2,000 munitions. We have severely degraded Iran’s air defences and destroyed hundreds of Iran’s ballistic missiles, launchers and drones,’ Cooper said in a prerecorded message shared online Wednesday.
‘In simple terms, we are focused on shooting all the things that can shoot at us,’ he added.
Five days into a war that US President Donald Trump suggested could last a month or longer, nearly 800 people have been killed in Iran, including some Trump said he had considered as possible future leaders of the country.
Israel on Wednesday said it was conducting a series of strikes across Tehran targeting Iranian security forces, the day after it hit a building associated with the clerical panel that will pick Iran’s next supreme leader in the city of Qom.
The war has sparked a divided response in Europe. On Wednesday, the European Commission said it was ‘ready’ to defend EU interests after Trump threatened to sever trade with Spain for refusing to allow the US use of its bases to attack Iran.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who has refused to allow the US to use its bases to attack Iran, hit back against Trump’s criticism, saying: ‘We will not be complicit in something that is harmful to the world and contrary to our values and interests, simply out of fear of retaliation.’
