In the run-up to its weeks-long war with Israel and the US, Iran's military was quietly mining the Ukraine war for strategic lessons. The Financial Times reviewed more than 300 articles published over five years in a dozen Iranian defence publications affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and regular Armed Forces staff colleges. The central theme: Tehran must shift towards cheaper, smarter, more dispersed warfare — mass-produced drones, more mobile combat units, artificial intelligence in target selection, and sharper cyberwarfare capabilities.

Several articles carry the names of now-prominent (or recently killed) figures. Hossein Dadvand, a senior combat-college commander north of Tehran, published recommendations citing Ukraine's defence-production resilience and use of 3D printers to mass-produce drones. Kioumars Heydari and Abdolali Pourshasb, two commanders who have both run the Iranian Army, co-authored a 2023 paper in Strategic Defence Studies warning of weak forward planning against "emerging threats". Aziz Nasirzadeh — the former defence minister killed in an air strike on 28 February — had co-authored a piece urging Tehran to rebuild its neglected fighter fleet by buying Russian Su-35s, and another arguing the US Air Force was losing effectiveness through ageing equipment and failed modernisation.

Analysts — Nicole Grajewski at Sciences Po, Afshon Ostovar, Farzin Nadimi at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and Michael Connell at the Center for Naval Analyses — say the journals matter less for their conclusions than for what Iran is paying attention to: drones, cyber, AI, air defences, and internal weaknesses such as discrimination by poverty and ethnic background, suicidal thoughts among soldiers, and military hospitals over-reliant on private-sector suppliers. Source: Financial Times, 18 April 2026, Jacob Judah.