Iran increases ballistic missile attacks after admitting Khamenei death

Iran increased its volume and pace of ballistic missile attacks early Sunday on Israel with several rounds of air siren warnings ringing out across the country one after another, in response to admitting the death of its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Although it turns out Khamenei was killed likely in the war's opening moments by around 30 bombs around 8:00 a.m. Saturday morning, the more intense response only came later. The Islamic Republic only acknowledged his death after 3:00 a.m. Sunday morning and it appeared to take a couple more hours to organize a full coordinated response

While the IDF is still not confirming the volume of missile attacks, anecdotally, the pace of salvos and the volume of booms Sunday morning was unprecedented for this round of fighting and more comparable to the worst large rounds of attacks in June 2025, some of which involved up to 200 ballistic missiles. In contrast, on Saturday, if around 150 missiles might have been fired at Israel over the course of the entire day, salvos appeared to be limited to a dozen, or at most a couple dozen per salvo, spread out in around 10 salvos over 24 hours.

In total, Tehran entered this latest round of conflict with around 2,000 ballistic missiles. However, it has also already fired hundreds of missiles on five other Sunni Arab countries in the region with American bases. Likewise, US and American attacks appear to have destroyed at least 100 ballistic missiles, though that number could be significantly higher. In June 2025, Iran had 2m500 ballistic missiles and 400 missile launchers. Israel destroyed around half of both over 12 days, eventually reducing the Islamic Republic's ba;llistic missile volume from 200 per day to around 10 per day. (Source)