Trump’s made so many blunders with this Iran war. But his next mistake could be his biggest

April 6, 2026 — 11:30am

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The skies over Abu Dhabi and Dubai seemed just as dangerous last weekend as they were two or three weeks earlier. The air defences across the United Arab Emirates engaged 23 ballistic missiles from Iran on Saturday alone, and 56 drones on the same day, according to the nation’s defence ministry.

So much for the White House talk of defeating Iran’s missile program or dominating its airspace. The confident claims from Washington in the early days of the war are defied each day by the proven capacity of the Iranian regime to inflict damage. On Saturday, that meant two of the UAE’s armed forces were killed, and 11 others were injured.

Almost all the attacks were intercepted and the UAE’s major airports, used so often by Australian travellers, remain open. The airstrikes are well down on the first week of the war: on Saturday, March 7, for instance, the air defence teams engaged 229 missiles and 1305 drones. Even so, Iran continues to target oil and industrial facilities. On Sunday, the UAE engaged another 10 missiles and 50 drones from Iran.

This is just one measure of the staying power of the Iranian regime. Its leaders have been assassinated and its military has been pulverised by the United States and Israel for more than four weeks, but it has found ways to hide missile launchers and save its supply of drones. It does not need to destroy its neighbours to drag out this war. It just needs to disrupt them to create chaos in the global economy.

It is more than three weeks since the US Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, claimed the US had “functionally defeated” Iranian missile production. Why, then, has it not destroyed Iran’s........

© WA Today