Iran spent two decades building the Middle East's largest missile arsenal - thousands of short- and medium-range ballistic missiles designed to threaten Israel, U.S. bases and Gulf infrastructure. The Aerospace Force banked on mass salvos capable of overwhelming enemy air defenses. But when Tehran finally put its missiles to use, the results undermined the very deterrent they were supposed to sustain.
In Foreign Affairs, Carnegie scholars Nicole Grajewski and Ankit Panda have laid out the case that Iran's deterrence strategy collapsed through a series of compounding errors, "Hvylya" reports.
Iran launched missiles at Israel for the first time in April 2024, responding to an Israeli strike on its embassy in Syria. A second barrage followed in October. During both exchanges, Israel intercepted nearly all incoming projectiles - and U.S. and Israeli defense planners extracted more intelligence about Iranian capabilities and tactics than satellite surveillance or signals intercepts had ever provided. Grajewski and Panda describe the launches as, in effect, "live-fire training exercises" conducted for the benefit of Iran's enemies.
Israel applied those lessons directly during the 12-Day War in June 2025, aimed at destroying Iran's nuclear program. The United States joined the campaign with massive bunker-busting ordnance. Iran fired roughly 500 missiles at Israel during the conflict; Israeli forces reported that only 31 struck populated areas. Meanwhile, the Israeli air force destroyed hundreds of Iranian missiles on the ground, eliminated about half of Iran's estimated 400 mobile launchers and killed around three dozen IRGC commanders.
After the June 2025 ceasefire, Iran scrambled to rebuild. By early 2026, U.S. intelligence assessed it had restored somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500 missiles, with dozens more rolling off underground production lines monthly. But restocking without changing strategy was, as the authors put it, "doubling down on what had already failed." Israel tracked the reconstitution effort and reportedly convinced Washington by late 2025 that the rebuilding warranted another round of strikes - the very campaign now unfolding.
The late IRGC Aerospace Force commander Amir Ali Hajizadeh once compared deterrence to riding a bicycle: stop pedaling and you fall. By the time the February 2026 strikes began, Iran had burned through much of its missile stock, lost half its mobile launchers and revealed its tactical playbook - all without inflicting meaningful damage on Israel.
Earlier, "Hvylya" reported on how Israel nearly lost its Arrow 3 missile shield during the 2025 war with Iran.