Western leaders spent months celebrating the systematic demolition of Iran’s military industrial base. Pentagon spokespersons went on record stating that up to ninety percent of the country’s industrial infrastructure for drones and missiles had been wiped out. But reality has a funny way of punching holes through official talking points. According to reports from The Wall Street Journal citing senior U.S. and Middle Eastern intelligence officials, Iran has quietly resumed ballistic missile production.
If you thought the missile threat from Tehran was permanently neutralized, you missed how resilient underground military infrastructure actually is.
How Iran Restarted Assembly Underground
The resumption isn't happening in open-air factories or vulnerable assembly plants that can easily be spotted by satellite reconnaissance. Instead, operations have moved deep beneath the earth. Intelligence agencies have detected renewed assembly activity at several fortified subterranean sites, including the massive Khojir missile facility east of Tehran.
Iran isn't building brand-new rockets from scratch right now. That would require raw materials and heavy industrial components that are much harder to source under a tight naval blockade. Instead, technicians are utilizing vast stockpiles of pre-existing components that were safely tucked away underground before hostilities kicked off earlier this year.
A U.S. official estimated that Tehran has enough stockpiled airframes, guidance systems, and completed warheads to assemble at least two hundred missiles at a modest, low-rate pace. Both liquid-propellant rockets—which require fueling right before launch—and solid-propellant missiles, which sit ready for immediate firing, are moving down these hidden assembly lines.
The Limits of Airstrikes Against Deep Tunnels
Military analysts often debate whether bombing campaign objectives are genuinely achievable, and this situation provides a definitive answer. You can smash surface-level factories to rubble, but you cannot easily eradicate a deeply buried tunnel network designed specifically to survive heavy bombardment.
During temporary pauses in the fighting, specialized workers repaired damaged tunnel entrances, restored ventilation shafts, and brought in alternative supply chains. Iran has also started attempting to construct brand-new underground production complexes to distribute its manufacturing capability even further.
This dispersion strategy is precisely why experts like Sciences Po’s Nicole Grajewski point out that Iran's missile program can recover far faster than its nuclear program. Tunnels and modular underground sites are notoriously difficult to track, let alone completely dismantle from the air.
What This Means for Regional Security Moving Forward
The return of low-rate ballistic missile manufacturing completely challenges the narrative that Tehran's offensive punch was permanently broken. It ensures that Iran retains the ability to wage a prolonged war of attrition.
In any future escalation, the core challenge for the United States and its regional allies won't just be stopping incoming strikes. It will be facing an adversary that can quietly replenish its inventory from hidden subterranean complexes while global powers argue over diplomatic frameworks and ceasefires.
Keep a close eye on intelligence updates regarding underground construction activity outside Tehran. The surface damage was only ever half the story.
