Iran swiftly repairs missile sites and other facilities after airstrikes, report says

WASHINGTON: Iran has moved quickly to restore infrastructure damaged during months of airstrikes, including underground missile facilities, roads, bridges, production sites and port installations, based on Israeli and Western officials as well as satellite imagery.

The pace of reconstruction has troubled some Israeli officials, who see it as evidence that Iran has been able to recover despite sustained attacks. Satellite images from western Iran showed that tunnel entrances and access roads at a missile base were damaged in March, but imagery taken a few weeks later indicated that the roads had been repaved and the entrances rebuilt.

An Israeli military official said Iranian teams repaired a bridge struck by Israel within days, adding to concerns among some Israeli officials over how much lasting damage the attacks caused. Satellite imagery from early July also showed partial rebuilding at an IRGC-linked shipyard in Bandar Anzali, a port on the Caspian Sea.

Former Israeli air and missile defence commander Ran Kochav said Iran had managed to restore infrastructure and replenish missile stocks.

"They refilled their stockpiles."

He added:

They have very impressive industrialisation and reconstruction capabilities.

Tal Inbar, a senior analyst at the US-based Missile Defence Advocacy Alliance, also challenged earlier suggestions that Iran's missile inventory had been severely reduced.

It turns out that the rumors about the end or the significant dwindling of the missiles were wrong.

Publicly, US President Donald Trump said on social media last month that Iran’s military was in severe disarray, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the country’s military capability, along with its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, had been pushed back by many years. Netanyahu also said in April:

"We smashed Iran’s missile production machine."

Israeli military officials had privately voiced dissatisfaction with the outcome of the strikes. One official said Israel might have achieved more if it had concentrated less on weakening the regime and more on military targets.

"Iran is rebuilding everything."

the official said, adding:

"I am very worried."

A second Israeli military official said Iran still had the technical know-how to rebuild much of its military infrastructure, including missile production capability. The officials said many of the attacks had only caused cave-ins at the entrances of underground missile bases rather than destroying the facilities themselves, allowing Iran to retrieve stored weapons and reopen tunnels.

Satellite imagery shows work at multiple sites

Satellite imagery showed excavation continuing at the Dezful missile base months after airstrikes buried its entrances. Images also indicated reconstruction at other military locations, including road repairs and reopened tunnel entrances at a missile base near Kermanshah.

Separate imagery showed partial rebuilding at Raja Shimi Industries near Tehran, a site believed to manufacture missile components, including several newly built structures. Jim Lamson, a visiting research fellow at King’s College London and a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst who wrote the report, said facilities producing more advanced missile parts could take months to recover. Even so, he said Iran may have underground stockpiles that could be used in the short term to assemble hundreds of new missiles and drones.