Peloni: This is an important article. One thing of note is whether it is reasonable to believe that the US military would allow its stores of critical missile interceptors to run low and then to allow this information to enter the public view?
American missile defense is winning every engagement and losing the war. The remedy is an offensive campaign against Iran’s launchers
Gregg Roman | MEF | July 28, 2026
The Middle East Forum released a report, “The Magazine War: Regional Missile Defense Against Iran.” The essay below presents its central argument. The full report is available online.
American and allied air defenses have performed impressively in the war with Iran. Batteries in Israel and across the Gulf have intercepted most of the ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones that Tehran has launched at them. Yet this tactical success conceals a strategic dead end. Last week, after 13 consecutive nights of American strikes, Washington suspended its escalation. It did so not because Iran relented or diplomacy advanced, but because the interceptors are running short. The defender, not the attacker, approached exhaustion first.
he cause is a deliberate Iranian strategy, and it deserves to be understood on its own terms. Iran fires inexpensive weapons and compels the United States to answer with expensive ones. A Kheibar Shekan, the solid-fuel workhorse of the Iranian arsenal, travels 1,450 kilometers behind a maneuvering warhead and now flies in formation with jet-powered drones that divide a defender’s radar. It costs a small fraction of the interceptor sent to destroy it. A single Patriot interceptor costs approximately $4 million; a THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) round, approximately $15 million. Iran spends in the thousands and imposes costs in the millions, night after night. No defender, however capable, can sustain that exchange indefinitely.
The evidence of strain is substantial. American forces reportedly have expended more than 1,500 Patriot interceptors in this war and retain fewer than a thousand. The THAAD position is more precarious still. The United States has taken delivery of no new interceptors since August 2023, expects none before the spring of 2027, fields only eight batteries, and operates a mere 13 of the radars on which those batteries depend. Iran, recognizing the value of the sensors, has attacked them deliberately, since a radar requires far longer to replace than a missile requires to fly.
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