The Arithmetic of Destruction: Why Eliminating Iran’s Ballistic Missiles May Mean a Long War

Thursday 5 March 2026

In the opening stages of the present conflict between the United States, Israel and Iran, the stated military objective has been straightforward: destroy Iran’s capacity to launch ballistic missiles. Yet what appears simple in political rhetoric is profoundly difficult in military practice. The ballistic missile force of the Islamic Republic is not a single system but an entire network of weapons, factories, launchers, storage depots and concealed infrastructure. Eliminating it completely may therefore require not days or weeks of bombing but a sustained campaign extending over months or even years.

The problem begins with the scale of the arsenal itself. Before recent strikes, Western intelligence assessments suggested that Iran possessed roughly 3,000 ballistic missiles, making it the largest such stockpile in the Middle East but these have been assessed as a significant under-estimate and the true number may be nearer 8,000. These weapons exist in a wide variety of types and ranges, from short-range systems designed to strike regional bases to medium-range missiles capable of reaching Israel and much of the eastern Mediterranean.  Even if air strikes destroy large numbers of them, the sheer quantity involved means that a residual capability is almost certain to survive.

Equally important is the diversity of the Iranian missile programme. Tehran does not rely upon a single model of missile but maintains more than a dozen distinct families of weapons. Each has its own production line, fuel requirements and launch procedures. Destroying one category does not eliminate the others. In practical terms the United States and Israel must dismantle not just individual missiles but an entire industrial base.

Underground Geography

Perhaps the most formidable obstacle to destroying Iran’s missiles is geography. Over the past two decades Iran has constructed extensive underground military complexes often referred to as “missile cities”. These installations are designed precisely to survive the type of air campaign now being conducted against them. They include deep tunnels, hardened bunkers and concealed entrances cut into mountainsides.

Air power can damage entrances and destroy surface infrastructure, but penetrating deeply buried facilities is considerably more difficult. The most powerful bunker-busting bombs may collapse tunnels or destroy sections of underground storage, yet such strikes rarely guarantee the destruction of every weapon inside. In many cases the result is simply to seal weapons inside a mountain rather than to eliminate them completely.

The size of the Iranian landmass compounds this difficulty. Iran is roughly four times larger than Iraq and more than twice the size of France. Within such territory missile units can disperse widely. Even if fixed facilities are destroyed, mobile launchers can relocate across thousands of kilometres of mountainous terrain.

Mobility and Concealment

Ballistic missiles do not need to remain permanently in fixed bases. Many Iranian systems are transported on mobile launch vehicles that resemble ordinary heavy trucks. These launchers can travel along highways or rural roads, stopping briefly to fire before moving again. Once dispersed they become extremely difficult to locate.

This mobility means that an adversary must maintain constant surveillance across a vast geographic area. Satellite imagery, drones and reconnaissance aircraft can identify launch preparations, but they must do so quickly enough for aircraft or missiles to strike before the launcher relocates. In practice this creates a perpetual game of cat and mouse.

Iran has also developed techniques that complicate targeting further. Missile components can be disassembled and transported separately, then reassembled before launch. This allows them to be hidden in ordinary warehouses or transported in civilian vehicles. From the perspective of an attacking air force, the number of potential hiding places becomes almost limitless.

Production Versus Destruction

Another reason the conflict may become prolonged is the industrial dimension of the missile programme. Destroying missiles already produced does not necessarily eliminate the ability to manufacture new ones.

Before recent strikes Western estimates suggested Iran could produce roughly fifty ballistic missiles per month. Even if air strikes damage factories, complete elimination of manufacturing capacity is extremely difficult. Production can be dispersed across multiple facilities, including small workshops producing individual components. Some machinery may even be relocated underground or hidden in civilian industrial complexes.

Thus a war aimed at eliminating missile stocks risks becoming a war against an industrial system. Such campaigns historically take time. The Allied bombing of Germany’s weapons factories during the Second World War, for example, lasted several years before achieving decisive effects.

The Problem of Intelligence

A further constraint is the difficulty of intelligence gathering inside Iran. The United States and Israel possess formidable surveillance capabilities, yet identifying every missile depot or tunnel entrance remains a significant challenge. Intelligence depends on a mixture of satellite imagery, electronic intercepts and human sources. None of these methods provides perfect coverage.

Iran has long anticipated such surveillance. Facilities may be camouflaged, decoys constructed and communications deliberately obscured. In wartime the regime can also impose strict internal security measures, making espionage more difficult.

Consequently military planners must often strike targets based on probabilities rather than certainties. A destroyed warehouse may contain missiles, or it may contain agricultural machinery. The fog of war makes absolute confirmation rare.

Strategic Consequences

The implications of these difficulties are already becoming apparent. Even after sustained air strikes, Iranian missile and drone attacks have continued against regional targets and shipping routes. Although launches may fluctuate depending on operational conditions, the persistence of these attacks illustrates how resilient the system can be.

For the United States and Israel this creates an uncomfortable strategic dilemma. A short war cannot reliably eliminate the missile threat. Yet a long war carries its own risks: economic disruption, escalation across the Middle East and the gradual depletion of expensive missile defence interceptors used to shoot down incoming projectiles.

Recent reports already note concerns that defensive systems such as Patriot and THAAD interceptors are being consumed rapidly during the campaign. Missile defence, like missile production, operates within the logic of inventories. In such conflicts both sides attempt to exhaust the other’s stockpiles.

A War of Inventories

The confrontation is becoming what strategists sometimes call a war of inventories. Iran possesses large numbers of missiles and the industrial capacity to rebuild them. The United States and Israel possess superior air power and intelligence capabilities but must locate and destroy each target individually.

This asymmetry favours persistence. Destroying thousands of missiles dispersed across a vast country is inherently slower than producing or hiding them. Even if a majority of the arsenal is destroyed, a surviving fraction may still retain strategic significance.

For that reason the elimination of Iran’s ballistic missile force is unlikely to be achieved through a single dramatic operation. Instead it would require a sustained campaign of strikes against launchers, depots, factories and command systems.

In other words what began as a rapid demonstration of military power may gradually evolve into a prolonged contest of endurance. The political rhetoric of decisive destruction confronts the stubborn realities of geography, engineering and industrial capacity. Those realities suggest that the path to eliminating Iran’s missile arsenal may be measured not in days but in years.