A leading objective of the US-Israeli war against Iran that began on 28 February and ended with a tenuous two-week ceasefire on 8 April was the destruction of Iran’s ballistic missile program. Despite thousands of unrelenting targeted strikes, Tehran reportedly still possesses much of its ballistic missile arsenal, and perhaps the means to replenish the stocks that were destroyed and fired at multiple countries throughout that war. Iran may still have access to up to 70% of its pre-war ballistic missile arsenal and 60% of the launchers, according to US intelligence and military officials.
These reports came a few days after US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed the program was “functionally destroyed” while acknowledging that Iran was “digging out” missiles and launchers. Furthermore, he claimed that Tehran has “no defence industry, no ability to replenish your offensive or defensive capabilities”. So, what’s really happening?
Did the extensive US-Israeli air campaign deal a death blow to Iran’s missile program or merely inflict it with a temporary setback? Sustainable setback “The Iranian missile program has been hit very hard, experiencing the biggest setback in its history,” Arash Azizi, a lecturer at Yale University and author of ‘The Shadow Commander: Soleimani, the US, and Iran’s Global Ambitions’, told The New Arab. “But its fundamentals are sound and set to continue.” James Devine, Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Mount Allison University, believes it won’t take Iran as long to rebuild its arsenal as it did to build it in the first place, especially if the US just declares victory and leaves.
“It is hard to say exactly how long that would be,” Devine told TNA. “But after the (June 2025) 12-day war, Tehran gained experience in emergency rebuilding, and given its experience over the past 40 days, it now knows much more about what types of weapons systems are most effective.” Iran could very well emerge from the conflict as a much more powerful force, according to Devine, experienced and emboldened by what it perceives to be success. “The US could complicate the process through a blockade and intermittent airstrikes, but it would have a difficult time stopping it altogether,” he added.
“And it would run the risk of re-escalating the conflict all over again.” Ryan Bohl, a senior Middle East and North Africa analyst at the risk intelligence company RANE, similarly assesses that the campaign most likely failed to inflict a lasting mortal or strategic blow to Iran’s missile program. “I think there were setbacks, but it was not dismantled or destroyed,” he told TNA. “At the same time, Iran’s missiles aren’t ten feet tall; their regional impact was relatively mild, with few mass civilian casualties and only a limited number of confirmed supply destruction incidents, like Qatar’s Ras Laffan incident in March.” The RANE analyst assesses that Iran’s vast underground missile cities “performed comparatively well” throughout the war.
As proof of concept, he anticipates they are something Tehran would want to “utilise again” in future wars. “Doubtless, building on them and finding ways to improve them will be core defence priorities for Iran in the post-war era,” Bohl said. Conversely, Azizi believes there’s “clearly something” to these much-hyped subterranean complexes, but they are still more talk than action.
“We haven’t seen them play a particularly notable role,” he said. Devine rates Iran’s overall strategy as “quite effective.” “That includes the heavy reliance on drones, the emphasis on solid fuel rather than liquid fuel missiles, and yes, the underground missile cities, which have allowed the Iranian military to absorb a great deal of punishment and keep fighting,” he said. “This probably should not have been such a surprise.” Devine recalled that in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the US-led coalition found it significantly difficult to locate and destroy Iraq’s mobile Scud ballistic missile launchers.
“Between this attrition strategy and Tehran’s mosaic command structure, it will be very difficult for the US to completely silence Iran’s military,” he said. “Of course, this comes at an incredibly high cost to the country as a whole and to the civilian population who are caught in the middle.” Numbers game RANE’s Bohl believes intelligence community estimates of the percentage of Iran’s ballistic missiles destroyed in the US-Israeli campaign may ultimately prove overly optimistic. “What matters is that Iran still can conduct regional strikes at a relatively low pace of 10-20 missiles per day for at least a few more months if they need to,” Bohl said.
“But it's not clear if this would be enough to firmly drain the region's remaining air defences; I think we still had further to go before we knew that firmly.” Devine underlined that one must be “very careful” when it comes to assessing Iran’s remaining capabilities. “Neither the claims made by the US, nor the Ir