In the third year of the Ukraine war, NATO finds itself confronted by a new imbalance. Russia is producing thousands of Iranian kamikaze drones each month — cheap to build, costly to destroy.
The vulnerability was laid bare 9 September as Russian drones, some made of foam and plywood, slipped past NATO’s multi-million-dollar air defences and into Poland. Days later, Romania became the most recent allied country to report drones in its airspace. And on Friday morning, Russian fighter jets crossed briefly into Estonia, underscoring the range of tactics Moscow is willing to use to keep NATO off balance.
EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas called the violation of Polish airspace a “reckless escalation,” while Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned it was the closest Europe has come to open conflict since WWII.
Iran’s drone technology has become a strategic game-changer: lethal, but ruthlessly cost-effective. At its Alabuga plant, Russia now produces around 5,500 modified Shahed drones every month, each for roughly $35,000. By contrast, NATO spends many times that to shoot one down. Moscow’s factories are outpacing Western production, churning out in three months what the alliance takes a year to match. Production has risen ninefold in the last year, with plans to double again by 2026.
This lopsided equation — cheap, mass-produced drones pitted against advanced but expensive defences — has risen to the top of Western security anxieties.
Iran’s fingerprints on Europe’s security crisis
Israel first acknowledged the strategic value of Iranian drones after the 2019 strike on Saudi oil facilities. Six years on, Shaheds have become central to Russia’s war in Ukraine, sustaining a grinding, WWI-style stalemate. Russia has adopted Iran’s playbook, using drones to overwhelm defences, sap morale, and probe NATO’s resolve, as the recent incursions into Poland and Romania made clear.
One Shahed drone that crossed into Polish airspace through Belarus back in August, exploding near Puławy’s nitrogen plant, highlighted the deepening collaboration: Iranian-designed, Chinese-powered, North Korean-marked, and Russian-assembled. What began in 2022 with Iran supplying Russia with ready-made systems soon developed to a transfer of know-how that allowed Alabuga to ramp up to industrial-scale production. Regionally, this has strengthened Russia’s position and exposed NATO’s security flaws. Globally, it points to an axis of revisionist powers closing ranks against Europe’s eastern flank.
Iranian drones as a weapon of economic attrition
Russia has relied on Shahed-style drones in record numbers. More than 800 were launched in early September in the largest mass attack on Ukraine since the war's outset. For defenders, the economics are punishing. German newspaper Bild reported that during the Polish incursion, NATO used AIM-9 Sidewinders costing about €400,000 each to bring down drones worth a fraction of that. Even Israel’s cheaper Iron Dome interceptors struggle to match the low cost of Iranian drones.
The asymmetry is not just financial. Only one-fifth of Russian one-way kamikaze drones were intercepted in Poland. According to Ukraine's air force, nearly half of Russia's aerial strikes from September 2022 to December 2024 relied on Iranian one-way drones. The Shahed has become Moscow’s most cost-effective weapon, with Iran itself boasting that it stands as “the axis of Putin’s geostrategic ambitions.”
The United States has not ignored the shift. US President Donald Trump in May described Iran’s drones as “good, fast, and deadly,” and the Pentagon has since begun testing Shahed replicas of its own.
The impact of Iran’s drone programme now stretches well beyond Ukraine. A defence pact with Belarus has extended Iranian missile and drone technologies directly onto NATO’s eastern flank. In Latin America, Iranian-operated drone facilities in Venezuela project Tehran’s influence into the US sphere. Washington, wary of escalation, has deployed seven warships, a nuclear submarine, and 4,000 marines off the Venezuelan coast — officially to counter “narco-terrorists.”
A deepening confrontation between NATO and the East
Iran’s confrontation with Europe is likely to deepen as, in the absence of US backing, Tehran views Brussels as increasingly geopolitically irrelevant. With the EU preparing to reimpose UN sanctions at Washington’s urging, Tehran will be formally cast as a “global security threat.” That designation could open the door for Israel, possibly backed by NATO, to launch multilayered, decisive strikes against Iran’s leadership and nuclear-military infrastructure. Such a campaign could push Tehran towards state failure, leaving surrender the sole option for the regime's survival. If the regime endures, Iran is expected to escalate in more calibrated ways, doubling down on its revisionist stance while tightening its alignment with Moscow and Beijing.
While Iran may have ceded some leverage by handing Moscow the starter kit to build its own drones, September's incursions were nonetheless a warning shot: American retrenchment has opened gaps that Tehran and Moscow are quick to exploit. Economically weakened but ideologically determined, Iran is reshaping the balance of power in Europe through asymmetric tactics and drone technology. It’s a geostrategic threat NATO can no longer treat as a passing nuisance.
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