Iran goes full Wile E. Coyote, gets Israel to waste $1 million missiles on paintings of helicopters

You might not think it from the near-constant footage of bombs raining onto Tehran, but the United States and Israel do not have an unlimited supply of missiles. Each missile is a complex piece of equipment requiring specialized manufacturing facilities that can’t be scaled up overnight, and each comes with a hefty price tag of around $1 million.

All of which means that every single missile that doesn’t land where it should is a gain for Iran and a loss for Israel and the United States. And so Iran is breaking out the Acme catalogue and pulling a Wile E. Coyote.

Here’s how. Yesterday, the IDF published a video that they claim shows the destruction of an Iranian helicopter.

The IDF published footage showing a recent airstrike on an Iranian Mi-17 helicopter. pic.twitter.com/F0ATkGbfVg

— AMK Mapping (@AMK_Mapping_) March 4, 2026

But, if you look closely, you’ll see the ‘rotors’ do not move at all after the blast. That’s because this isn’t a helicopter after all. It’s a realistic painting of a helicopter on the ground, designed to fool attackers into wasting precious munitions on nothing.

IDF Attacks Iranian Painting and Releases It as Destroyed Target

Iran is using anamorphic paintings on the ground to deceive attacks by the US and Israel. Notice in this video how the supposed helicopter hit is actually just a painting on the asphalt.

Russia used the same… https://t.co/GQz8Accvg1

— Patricia Marins (@pati_marins64) March 4, 2026

But this isn’t the only cunning trick Iran is currently pulling. US Central Command is crowing that they’re destroying Iran’s “killer drones”. Or are they? These ‘drones’ are suspiciously conspicuous and are being left sitting in isolated areas in full view. Or, are they models made of fiberglass intended to waste yet more missiles?

Those aren’t killer drones”, they’re plastic decoys that have been spread out to act as bait. Some of the decoys aren’t even on rails, they’ve just been thrown on the ground. There was only one drone that matches the geometry of a Shahed drone and that was the lone one on rails. https://t.co/7kVF0asqXm pic.twitter.com/OnCIpavLTD

— LogKa (@LogKa11) March 3, 2026

Looney Tunes meets modern warfare

It should be underlined that luring your enemy to attack a fake target is nothing new. During World War II, the British Royal Engineers constructed inflatable “dummy tanks”, deploying them on the front lines to attract harmless mortar and artillery fire. More recently, during the Kosovo War, the Serbs placed inflatable tanks intended to draw fire from NATO troops.

I’m not going to hand it to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for their cunning and smarts. After all, nobody roots for Wile E. Coyote. But, even so, I can’t deny that this is a pretty amusing way to fool your enemy.