How Iran has been studying lessons from the war in Ukraine
Source · Geopolitics desk
— Summary
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.
The story in one line. An FT review of more than 300 Iranian defence-journal articles shows that, in the lead-up to the war with Israel and the US, Tehran’s military was systematically drawing tactical and procurement lessons from the Ukraine conflict — especially on drones, AI-enabled targeting, and cyberwarfare.
Key numbers
Article corpus reviewed: more than 300 papers over five years in ~12 Iranian defence journals.
Senior names with signed contributions: Hossein Dadvand (combat-college commander), Kioumars Heydari and Abdolali Pourshasb (former Army heads), and Aziz Nasirzadeh — defence minister, killed in an air strike on 28 February.
Nasirzadeh’s procurement push:Russian Su-35 fighter jets, confirmed shortly after his appointment as defence minister; aircraft not yet delivered.
Abdolrahim Mousavi: late chief of staff of the armed forces.
Core technology priorities in the papers: drones, AI in target selection, cyberwarfare, lasers, space-based platforms, air defences.
Internal weaknesses flagged: discrimination by poverty and ethnic background at academies, suicidal thoughts among soldiers, hospital over-reliance on private-sector suppliers.
Why it matters
Iranian defence journals are a rare open window onto how Tehran thinks, learns, and prioritises. They are used for internal learning and to float ideas for adoption — in Grajewski’s words, the articles let the system test whether a recommendation gets taken up. The pattern is consistent with what was observed in the recent war: drones, dispersed operations, and cheaper mass-produced hardware. Ostovar’s point that the most revealing clues come from what commanders choose to write about (“what they are paying attention to”) explains why Tehran’s pivot to Russian Su-35s and to AI-aided target selection was visible in print before it became policy.
Two caveats. Nadimi says foreign-policy pieces in these journals are often methodologically so weak he calls them “garbage”, and officers and engineers have been directed to publish less about sensitive projects. Some authors write under pseudonyms, which complicates attribution.
Takeaway
The corpus is more a map of priorities than a playbook. For investors and strategists watching post-ceasefire Iran, the direction of travel is clear: heavier drone inventories, tighter integration of AI into air-defence and cyber operations, and a slow, contested rebuild of the conventional fighter fleet through Russian imports. The internal fragilities — academy discrimination, mental-health strain, hospital governance — are a separate signal of stress within the military system itself.
Source: Financial Times, 18 April 2026, Jacob Judah.