Tehran raises missile threats as Trump issues nuclear ultimatum

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian responded the same day, saying: “Direct negotiations have been rejected, but Iran has always been involved in indirect negotiations, and now too.”

In recent days, Iran’s missile forces have threatened retaliation, with state-run Tehran Times reporting on March 31 that “Iranian missiles are loaded onto launchers in all underground missile cities and are ready for launch”.

Rear Admiral (ret) Dr Eyal Pinko, a senior researcher at the Begin Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University, assessed on Wednesday that Iran has “several hundred missiles” remaining in its arsenal, despite having launched some 300 missiles and drones at Israel on April 13 last year and another 200 on October 1. These strikes constituted two of the largest missile attacks in history.

The attacks also involved some of Iran’s most advanced missile systems, but Israel’s Arrow 3 missile defence system intercepted the majority of the threats in both attacks, with assistance from the US and its regional allies, which also downed some of the incoming missiles.

Pinko told JNS on Thursday: “The Iranians produced hundreds, many hundreds of missiles, of different types and ranges… in the Iranian ballistic missile industry, more than ten thousand engineers work in its various factories.”

He explained that Iran’s missile programme is designed with a keen awareness of Israel’s multi-layered defence system, adding: “There’s the Arrow system, David’s Sling, and Iron Dome. They understand the limitations and capabilities in general.”

Pinko noted that Iran has developed missiles with warheads that split apart in flight, making it more difficult for radar systems such as Arrow’s Green Pine to track the threat. He also warned that Iranian warheads “manoeuvre as they enter the atmosphere and start flying a certain path, not just falling like a regular ballistic missile”.

Likewise, he explained that Iran’s missile launch network is “mostly mobile” relying on moveable launchers supported by “silo sites buried in the ground.” The regime has constructed an extensive network of tunnels under heavy concrete throughout the country to store and launch its missiles.

According to Pinko, Iran can “fuel the missiles, prepare them, and do all the pre-launch checks inside the sites” before launching them at a moment’s notice. “They raise the missile on the launcher, three or four minutes, fire, and after a few minutes, once the launcher has cooled, they return underground,” he went on.

He emphasised that neutralising this network would require precise intelligence on “where the tunnels are – entrances, exits, and their paths” and would necessitate the use of “very hard bunker-penetrating bombs,” describing such a campaign as “not trivial at all”.

However, Jonathan Ruhe, director of foreign policy at the Washington-based Jewish Institute for National Security of America, told JNS that Iran’s arsenal of medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) capable of striking Israel had already been significantly reduced by Israeli operations in October 2024. “Presumably the number is worryingly low from Iran’s perspective,” Ruhe said, “even before its two major strikes last year”.

Ruhe noted that Iran’s reliance on a limited number of launchers compounds the difficulty of its missile operations. “Iran only has a finite number of launchers for these MRBMs, and the aboveground launch preparations for attacks can be detected fairly readily by the United States and Israel, as we saw twice last year,” he said.

Looking ahead, Ruhe assessed that Tehran would work on improving the survivability of its missile systems in the face of diminishing stockpiles: “Iran likely will focus on making its ballistic missiles more survivable against Israeli defences, prioritising quality over quantity by necessity.”

And he speculated that it would try to “improve the manoeuvrability of its warheads, and to aim entire barrages at single targets”. 

Ruhe also pointed to the vulnerability of US bases and Arab allies in the Gulf, which do not have the same multi-layered defences as Israel.

“Iran has lots of short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) that can be launched in a ‘bolt from the blue’ from its underground missile cities at US bases and other targets throughout the Gulf and Iraq,” he explained. “Unlike with Israel, many of these targets lack sophisticated, multi-layered defences like Arrow and David’s Sling.”

Asked whether Iranian underground missile cities would be targeted in a future confrontation, Ruhe said: “‘Missile cities’ with ballistic missiles and anti-ship cruise missiles very likely would be targets, since these are Iran’s primary retaliatory capabilities.”

He added that “other nodes of Iran’s missile production chain could be targeted as well, like Israel did last October”.