Joint U.S.-Israeli strikes have severely reduced Iran’s ability to fire missiles and drones, experts say, but Iran retains enough capabilities to inflict significant damage.
“Iran’s ballistic missile capability is functionally destroyed. Its navy deemed it combat ineffective. Complete and total air dominance over Iran,” the White House said Saturday. “Operation Epic Fury is yielding massive results,” he said, referring to the war launched by Israel and the United States on February 28.
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On Sunday, President Donald Trump said U.S. forces had decimated Iran’s drone manufacturing capacity.
Still, on Monday afternoon, Qatar announced that it had intercepted the latest in a series of missiles fired from Iran toward the country. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain also issued alerts. A missile hit a car in Abu Dhabi, killing one person.
Are Iran’s missile capabilities then seriously reduced? And how does it continue to fire projectiles at its neighbors and Israel?
Is Iran firing fewer missiles now?
In fact, the number of retaliatory missiles and drones that Iran has fired at Gulf countries, Israel and other nations in the region has seen a sharp decline since the start of the war.
In the first 24 hours of the conflict, Iran fired 167 missiles (ballistic and cruise) and 541 drones at the United Arab Emirates, for example. By contrast, on the 15th day of the conflict, it had fired four missiles and six drones, according to a tally compiled by Al Jazeera based on statements from the emirate’s Defense Ministry.
The shelling of Israel has also decreased, from nearly 100 projectiles in the first two days to a single-digit number in recent days, according to Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies.
Last week, the Pentagon said missile launches had decreased 90 percent since the first day of fighting and drone strikes had decreased 86 percent.
How big is Iran’s missile arsenal and how far has it been hit?
Iran has the largest inventory of ballistic missiles in the region, as assessed by the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence in 2022. While there are no official accounts of how many missiles it has, Israeli intelligence reports suggest it counted around 3,000 missiles, a figure that was reduced to 2,500 after the 12-day war last June.
The key to the US-Israeli strategy has been hunting down Iran’s launchers. Each missile launch generates a signature, like a large explosion, that can be detected by satellite and radar systems.
According to a senior Israeli military official cited by the Institute for the Study of War, Israel has taken up to 290 launchers out of service, out of an estimated 410 to 440 launchers.
But Iran is a vast country, and without troops on the ground, it will be difficult to completely eliminate its firing capabilities even though the United States and Israel have almost complete control of the country’s airspace, said David Des Roches, an associate professor at the National Defense University in Washington, DC.
“It’s not obvious to identify the pitchers,” Des Roches told Al Jazeera. “What we see are missiles that were placed in hidden locations or locations not associated with the military before the war, when there was less surveillance.”
According to Des Roches, the slowdown in launches is due to the fact that Iranian forces have lost the ability to launch volleys. As a result, Iran has been firing one or two missiles at a time toward civilian and commercial infrastructure, especially in the Gulf countries, rather than aiming volleys at military targets. Iran insists it is targeting only American interests in the region.
“From a military point of view (Iran’s action) is not significant; this is what is called harassing fire to exhaust the warning systems in neighboring countries and scare people away,” Des Roches said.
What is Iran’s strategy?
According to Hamidreza Azizi, an Iran expert and visiting fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWB), Tehran’s central calculation is that the Gulf and Israel may run out of defensive capabilities before Iranian missiles do.
“There might be some interest in making this a war of attrition,” he said, pointing to the smaller but steady number of weapons launched from Iran each day.
“Although the United States and Israel have managed to eliminate some of the main missile launchers and bases, the Iranians have decentralized missile bases and missile command and have increasingly relied on mobile launchers, making it more difficult for the other side to detect and target them,” Azizi said. “This is a race over time.”
And in that race, Iran believes it has a chance, experts say.
“It doesn’t matter how many you launch, as long as you maintain a credible threat,” Muhanad Seloom, assistant professor of critical security studies at the Doha Institute of Graduate Studies, told Al Jazeera. “It takes a successful drone to destroy the sense of security.”
Iran has long experience in producing cheap but effective drones. The Shahed 136 can be manufactured quickly and in large quantities in relatively simple factories, and several of them can be fired at once, overwhelming defenses. It also does not need complex launchers that can be targets for air strikes. With a speed of only 185 km/h (115 mph), Shaheds can be shot down by helicopters. Still, many have managed to penetrate US and Gulf air defense systems.
Just Monday, a fire broke out near Dubai International Airport in the United Arab Emirates in a drone-related incident that temporarily disrupted flights; another drone attack caused a fire in the industrial zone of Fujairah, also in the United Arab Emirates; air sirens sounded in central Israel due to a missile fired from Iran; and in the Strait of Hormuz – a key waterway through which 20 percent of the world’s energy supply is shipped – hundreds of vessels remain paralyzed for fear of attack despite few attacks on ships. Since the start of the war, a maritime tracker has reported 20 ship-related incidents.
This, experts say, is part of Iran’s defensive doctrine of asymmetric warfare against militarily superior powers, such as the United States and Israel. The weaker party, Iran in this case, resorts to unconventional methods of warfare, wearing down the enemy by attacking key infrastructure to inflict economic pain.
Tehran has already raised oil prices to more than $100 a barrel, causing panic in global markets. The second largest exporter of natural gas, Qatar, continues to keep its production closed; Bahrain’s state oil company has declared force majeure on its shipments, and oil production from major oilfields in southern Iraq has plummeted by 70 percent.
If Iran can continue to raise global oil prices, “it will inflict damage on the United States equal to or greater than the American bombs on Iran,” said Vali Nasr, a professor of international affairs and Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University.
