Analysis

Data-driven analysis pieces from the Iran Missile & Drone Tracker.

The Indefinite Freeze: What an Open-Ended Ceasefire Does to the Depletion Asymmetry

April 22, 2026 Analysis Cease-fire

Trump reversed his "highly unlikely" stance in 18 hours. The shift from time-bounded to open-ended ceasefire changes the war's temporal structure more than any single day of fire data: with no restart clock, the depletion asymmetry quietly compounds. Iran's launchers cannot recover during the freeze. The coalition's Patriot stocks can. An unclaimed strike on Iran's Lavan/Sirri oil infrastructure overnight adds a new pressure vector.

The Symmetry of Exhaustion: Both Sides Are ~75% Depleted — But Only One Can Rebuild

April 21, 2026 Analysis Cease-fire

Iran's ~102 launchers sit at 24% of pre-war levels. The coalition's Patriot stocks sit at roughly 25%. The depletion mirror is nearly perfect — but the recovery asymmetry is absolute. As the ceasefire expires at midnight with Trump saying "extension highly unlikely" and Iran saying "no talks with US for now," the military math reveals who actually needs this deal more.

The Counting Problem: Why Two Authoritative Estimates of Iran's Arsenal Now Diverge by Hundreds of Missiles

April 20, 2026 Analysis Cease-fire

ISW says Iran has fired ~1,500 MRBMs. This tracker's Gulf-official-anchored estimate says 820–1,000. For drones, the gap is even larger. On the eve of Islamabad Round 2, understanding why both estimates exist — and what each implies for the threat that resumes if talks fail — is the most analytically consequential question the numbers can answer.

Theater by Theater: What Iran's Strike Map Reveals About the Next Phase

April 19, 2026 Analysis Cease-fire

UAE absorbed 63% of confirmed Gulf-theater drones. Kuwait took more ballistic missiles per capita than any other Gulf state. Qatar's LNG complex was struck with BM precision. Saudi Arabia faced an almost entirely drone-driven campaign. With ~102 launchers remaining, any resumed conflict forces Iran to concentrate — and the data shows which theaters face the worst exposure.

Three Days to Apr 22: The Depletion Math Behind the Extension Window

April 19, 2026 Analysis Cease-fire

The cease-fire expires in three days. Islamabad Round 2 is Monday. A 45-day extension is on the table. Both sides say they want a deal — but the data reveals that each side's incentive to extend is shaped by a different depletion problem, and those problems are running on different clocks. Neither clock resets in 45 days.

The Cease-Fire's Fault Lines: Kuwait, Deniability, and the Islamabad Gamble

April 11, 2026 Analysis Cease-fire Proxies

Day 4 of the cease-fire and Kuwait's National Guard was struck by drones. The IRGC denied it. That denial is analytically significant — either Iran has lost control of its proxies, or it is testing cease-fire boundaries under plausible deniability. A data-driven look at the three fault lines threatening the 2-week deal: Kuwait, Lebanon, and Hormuz.

Pipeline Delay: What Post-Ceasefire Salvos Reveal About Iran's Drone Machine

April 9, 2026 Analysis Drones

The cease-fire was 24 hours old and drones were still flying. A Bahrain data revision added 158 drones to the record — a 51% uplift in a single update. The post-ceasefire salvos and the Bahrain revision together reveal that Iran's drone campaign was more extensive, more durable, and more underreported than the ballistic missile campaign.

The Cease-Fire Arrived — But the Numbers Were Already Telling the Story

April 8, 2026 Analysis Cease-fire

Iran's ballistic missile rate had collapsed from ~20/day to ~7/day at UAE before any deal was signed. The data shows a military whose offensive capacity was breaking down from the inside — launchers destroyed, commanders killed, production halted. The cease-fire may have saved Iran from a visible collapse.