Shahed drone and mosaic doctrine: How Iran is able to counter-attack at time, place of its choosing

On March 18, Israel struck a gas field in Iran. Tehran responded in a matter of hours, striking refineries in several Gulf countries. What explains this sharp, quick counter-attack capability of a country whose military infrastructure has supposedly been severely degraded? The answer lies in a cheap drone and a dispersed military.

Week 3 of the ongoing war in the Gulf has seen the conflict enter a dangerous phase with rare attacks on energy infrastructure that threaten to hold the global economy to ransom. On March 18, Israel launched attacks on Iran's South Pars gas field, the world's largest natural gas repository with enough usable supply to meet global needs for 13 years.

In response, Iran vowed retaliation, promising to hit refineries in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. A few hours later, it did just that. Iran launched drones that managed to hit most of the targets Tehran had identified in its warning and then some.

The Iranian response prompted the US to distance itself from the attack and issue an interesting statement that, if read between the lines, could be interpreted as blaming Israel for the escalation, justifying Iran's counter-attack, and asking everyone to keep calm.

That aside, what stands out from the past few days is that Iran was able to swiftly respond to an escalation, once again. All this after having its military infrastructure severely degraded, according to the US.

How is Iran able to do that? Short answer: A rudimentary flying bomb powered by a motorcycle-like engine and a dispersed command and control structure that seems to have war-gamed this conflict in detail.

The 'flying bomb' in question is the Shahed-136 drone, a one-way attack unmanned aerial vehicle. It's popularly known as a Kamikaze drone, a name inspired by a special set of Japanese pilots who flew suicide missions during World War II by deliberately crashing explosive-laden aircraft into Allied Forces' naval units.