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By Ellie Cook
Senior Defense Reporter
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Ahead of the blazing United States and Israeli attacks on Iran from early Saturday, Iran's air defense network was down, but certainly not out.
The three days since, marked by strikes on Iran and retaliatory attacks on Israel and American allies in the Middle East, have showcased just why effective air defenses are so important. Clips of luxury hotels on fire, debris from military bases flying into the air, and even advanced jets spiraling out of the sky under friendly fire in Kuwait have provided a very visual demonstration of why air defenses must work properly.
But this was intimately familiar to Iran—and Israel—already. Israeli operations leading up to the 12-day Iranian-Israeli war in June last year paved the way for this weekend's opening salvo, weakening Iranian air defenses further pummeled by the brief conflict in 2025.
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Although Iran is thought to have somewhat patched up its defenses against Israeli and American warplanes, Tehran has found it tough to fend off the advanced weaponry homing in on the country in the last few days. Yet Iran has tested the air defenses of U.S. allies across the Middle East since Saturday, putting the aerial shields of many countries in the region under pressure.
How Did the Attack Unfold?
The operation, dubbed Epic Fury by the U.S., was months in the making. While U.S. forces, including the world's largest aircraft carrier, amassed close to Iran, American and Israeli intelligence rounded off months of work tracking Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, scoping out his routine and commonly-visited locations, according to U.S. media reports.
"He was unable to avoid our Intelligence and Highly Sophisticated Tracking Systems," U.S. President Donald Trump said in a social media post confirming the longtime Khamenei's death on Saturday.
"There was not a thing he, or the other leaders that have been killed along with him, could do," Trump added.
A slew of high-profile Iranian officials, from the head of Iran's army to the defense minister, as well as one of Khamenei's top advisers, were killed at meetings in Tehran during the initial strikes. By early on Sunday, Israel proclaimed it had taken out 40 senior Iranian commanders.
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Iranian media reported Khamenei's daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter were also killed.
It was an overwhelming show of U.S. force, swooping in in broad daylight rather than under the cover of darkness. Within the first 24 hours, the U.S. had deployed drones, warships, F-15, F-16 and F-18 fighter jets, as well as F-22 and F-35 advanced stealth aircraft. A-10 attack jets, electronic warfare planes, as well as refueling, patrol, cargo and reconnaissance aircraft took to the skies.
Also in the fray were the U.S.'s distinctive B-2 stealth bombers, kitted out with 2,000 lb bombs. Seven stealth bombers took off from U.S. soil in June last year to drop more than a dozen 30,000 lb bombs on three Iranian nuclear sites.
Weak Air Defenses
There are many types of air defenses, from the largest systems designed to knock out advanced, fast-traveling missiles to man-portable missiles and guns best suited for drone threats. Electronic warfare, such as equipment that can jam the navigation systems of weapons, has become a key part of layered defenses—essentially, multiple ways to fend off different attacks and catch as many projectiles as possible.
Iran is a longtime customer of Russian technology, not least Moscow's ground-based air defenses. In previous years, Tehran bought a host of Russian systems and has developed its own based on these imported designs.
Israel had experience battling most of these systems, but Russia's long-range S-300 surface-to-air missile system posed the biggest threat to Israeli jets, said Yaakov Katz, a senior fellow with the Israel-based Jewish People Policy Institute.
Ahead of Israeli strikes on Iran in June 2025, many of Iran's air defenses were knocked out so Israeli jets could have a clear path to Tehran without fear of being shot down.
Israel targeted part of a Russian-made S-300 air defense system around the central Iranian city of Isfahan in April 2024. Wider attacks in October then destroyed the remaining S-300s at Iran's disposal, Israel said. Iran had launched barrages of missiles and drones at Israel during both these months in 2024.
Before April 2024, the S-300 was Iran's most capable imported air defense system, said Shay Gal, an Israeli strategic analyst formerly with the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries, which manufactures some of Israel's key air defense systems. The S-300 had protected Iran's vital nuclear sites of Isfahan and Natanz, he said.
The 2025 U.S. attacks, which brought an end to the 12-day war that month, then made use of the gaping holes in Tehran's air defenses. Israeli and American jets are well-equipped to sniff out Iranian anti-aircraft systems, leverage electronic warfare against them while dodging coming up on Iranian radars and launching missiles from far away.
U.K.-based analysts said the June conflict "exposed serious deficiencies" in Iran's air defenses, its systems ultimately failing to "mount any significant challenge" to Israel's aerial presence.
Iran has an "urgent requirement" for fresh air defenses, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London said last month.
That's not to say Iran has nothing defending its airspace. Some chatter suggests Iran could have moved air defenses from the east of the country westward, fearing fresh Israeli and American attacks from that direction.
There is evidence Iran may have replaced at least part of the S-300 systems around Tehran and Isfahan by March 2026, Gal said.
Other assessments point to a partial rebuilding in little over eight months, but with limited success in such a short window. Russia is preoccupied with its grinding war in Ukraine and unlikely to sacrifice many of the advanced systems it needs, and China denied it sent its HQ-9B long-range air defense system to Iran last year. A fresh report, which Newsweek could not independently verify, claimed on Friday that Iran had received two types of short- to medium-range Chinese air defense systems.
While components of Iran's previous air defense systems might live on, a fully joined-up network with enough radars does not, Gal added.
Israel's military said on Monday it had taken out more than 200 Iranian air defense systems since Saturday, an obvious indication that Tehran still operated an air defense shield.
While Iran still had some air defenses to its name ahead of the weekend, its network has been "fragile and incapable of disrupting Israeli sorties," said Christian Le Miere, a distinguished fellow at the United Kingdom-based Council on Geostrategy think tank and founder of defense-focused strategic advisory firm, Arcipel.
Israel's swift declaration of air superiority this weekend, much like it achieved in June 2025, shows Iran's air defenses are "severely degraded," he said.
Attacks Across the Middle East
Iran has launched its own attacks, forcing multiple countries in the region to engage their own air defense systems. As of Monday, Israel, Qatar, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates reported Iranian drone or missile strikes aimed at their territory. British officials said two drones had been shot down over a U.K. military base in Cyprus hours after another drone caused light damage at the site.
Iran has used up an unknown percentage of its ballistic missile stocks, a capability the U.S. and Israel have vowed to destroy.
An Iranian missile attack on central Israel on Sunday killed nine people, and Gulf states have said they have intercepted barrages of ballistic weapons, often mixed in with drone strikes. Iran is well-known for its one-way attack drones, and while many have been intercepted across the region, falling debris from the disintegrating drones has caused significant damage.
The remains of two drones sparked a fire at a major oil refinery in Saudi Arabia on Monday after drone debris damaged a luxury hotel in Dubai the previous day. Air defenses in the Gulf states have been activated to protect civilian areas, including international airports, as well as military sites dotted across the region.
Israel said in its own statement on Monday that it had intercepted projectiles launched over its northern border from Lebanon by the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah. Lebanese officials said at least 31 people had been killed amid Israeli strikes across the country, evacuation orders for Lebanon's southern villages and traffic jams as residents attempted to escape areas like Beirut.
U.S. forces in the Middle East confirmed on Monday that three American fighter jets had been mistakenly shot down by Kuwaiti air defenses working to repel an Iranian attack, a high-profile example of how friendly-fire air defense incidents can occur. The incident is under investigation, the U.S. Central Command said, after footage showing aircraft spiraling toward the ground in flames went viral on social media.
The U.S. military separately confirmed four U.S. service personnel have been killed in combat since Saturday. The most recent American casualty has not been named but was gravely injured in an earlier Iranian attack.
U.S. President Donald Trump has at once said fatalities are a natural part of war and vowed to avenge American deaths. He suggested on Sunday that U.S. operations could last for a month, although Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Monday that the U.S. would not be dragged into an "endless war."
Iran, Israel and the U.S. do not have infinite missile stocks, and it is not yet clear how the strike campaigns will change in the coming weeks.
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