Iran has salvaged entrances to dozens of missile facilities struck by the US and Israel in the recent war, a Sunday report said, as the Islamic Republic continues to rebuild its military infrastructure amid ceasefire talks with the US. According to CNN, citing satellite images, Iran has been able to dig out 50 of 69 tunnel entrances at 18 separate underground missile facilities across the country. It has also repaired other damaged areas of those bases, including key access roads that the US and Israel bombed during the war, the report said.
The regime is “poised to fire far more long-range missiles at Israel and other Middle Eastern nations after rapidly digging out its buried arsenals,” the report said, quoting experts as saying that Iran still possesses some 1,000 ballistic missiles, most of which are stored in those 18 sites. This stockpile of missiles is stored deep below the surface, and largely went untouched by the US and Israeli strikes, which targeted tunnel entrances and surrounding infrastructure, the report said. According to experts cited by CNN, the recent satellite images have revealed the limits of the bombing campaign, with Iran using bulldozers and dump trucks to reopen the missile sites.
Iran can now “continue launching missiles so long as they have launchers and crews, even if production has halted,” Sam Lair, a research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, told CNN. “There’s nothing to prevent the launchers from being armed with the ample stockpile of missiles that the Iranians still have.” According to a recent report by Channel 12, Iran has also resumed production of ballistic missiles, at a rate far faster than initially expected. Israeli defense officials also assess Iran could rebuild its drone capabilities within months and significantly ramp up ballistic missile production within about a year, or possibly sooner, the report said. (Read More)
