Iran has resumed its production of ballistic missiles using stockpiled components and working in underground facilities, officials from the U.S. and Middle East familiar with the matter said, eroding what the U.S. and Israel have touted as a major achievement of the war.
Despite heavy attacks on its missile sites and industrial facilities during the initial phase of the war, Iran has been busy assembling liquid-propellant missiles, which have to be fueled just before launch, as well as solid-propellant missiles, which can be stored ready to fire, some of the officials said.
Intelligence points to activity at several underground sites, including the Khojir missile facility in southeastern Iran, those officials said. Iran is also attempting to build new underground assembly points to avoid getting struck again, they said.
So far, Iran is mainly assembling the new missiles from existing components in more limited quantities than before the war, the U.S. and regional officials said. The U.S. and Israel damaged a number of industrial facilities needed to produce missile components and missiles themselves, and the naval blockade has complicated imports of parts and ingredients for solid fuel.
The renewed production underscores the difficulty of fully dismantling Tehran’s missile program, a goal of the war the U.S. and Israel launched on Feb. 28. It also extends Iran’s ability to hold on in the war of attrition that pits its supplies of the weapons against shrinking U.S. and Gulf stockpiles of missile interceptors.
“When there are no bombings of the facilities, you can replace damaged infrastructure, and you can buy new components from other countries and store them in the facilities,” said Tal Inbar, a senior analyst at the U.S.-based Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance. “You have to be extremely naive to think that Iran is not rebuilding its missile-production capabilities.
The office of Israel’s prime minister didn’t reply to a request for comment.
A White House official didn’t directly address the question of whether Tehran had resumed production of ballistic missiles but said that Iran’s nuclear facilities had been obliterated and its military forces severely degraded. “Iran is weaker now than ever before, and President Trump will never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon,” the official said.
Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, said the U.S. had “destroyed up to 90% of Iran’s drone, ballistic missile, and naval industrial base” and “significantly degraded” Iran’s ability to launch missiles and drones.
The U.S. and Israel severely diminished Iran’s missile program early in the war with thousands of strikes aimed at production sites, storage facilities, missiles and launchers. But Iran has used the period of calm this summer to rebuild its military capabilities with the belief that the ceasefire is unlikely to hold.
A U.S. official said Iran probably resumed low-rate production after signing a preliminary deal with Trump in mid-June to open the Strait of Hormuz and begin talks to wind down the war. Tehran was believed to have the ability to assemble at least a couple of hundred missiles from components it had on hand, the official said.
Before the war, Iran stockpiled components including finished warheads, airframes, and guidance and control systems, said Jim Lamson, a visiting research fellow at King’s College London and former CIA analyst who specialized in the Iranian military.
He pointed to older photos and videos released by Iran that show many such components lined up against the walls of underground facilities. The number of new missiles that Iran can produce depends on the depth of those stockpiles and how many underground facilities are operative.
“We could be talking about hundreds of missiles or possibly thousands of missiles,” Lamson said.
Iran ran down its stockpiles of finished missiles during the war, leading it to reduce the volume of its attacks, but it still has a lot of capacity. Inbar assessed that Iran still has thousands of ballistic missiles in its arsenal.
Iran continues to fire missiles at U.S. bases across the Middle East, showcasing the diversity of its arsenal. Some missiles used, like the Kheibar Shekan missile, are considered mobile, accurate and relatively cheap to produce.
On Wednesday, it launched a heavy salvo at an air base in Jordan that houses U.S. troops. Videos showed that the projectiles had cluster warheads, a type of missile that had been frequently fired at Israel earlier in the war to challenge air-defense systems.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in April that Iran’s missile program had been “functionally destroyed” and that it lacked the means to make new missiles.
“You are digging out your remaining launchers and missiles with no ability to replace them,” Hegseth said. “You have no defense industry, no ability to replenish your offensive or defense capabilities.”
Arab and Israeli officials are bracing for continued fighting and the possibility Iran will escalate as the U.S. economic chokehold tightens. In recent days, Iran has launched a series of attacks on U.S. warships that resulted in close calls, though none was hit.
Satellite imagery shows Iran is rebuilding everything from bridges and roads to production sites at a pace that is worrying Israeli officials, The Wall Street Journal has reported. Iran has restored access to tunnel entrances for missile bases that had been collapsed by U.S. and Israeli airstrikes. Weapons stored inside those underground sites are likely to be well-preserved, according to Israeli military assessments.
Challenges to returning to full-scale missile manufacturing include damage to chemical facilities needed to make liquid propellants and industrial mixers for producing solid fuel, Arab officials said.
Lacking a modern air force, Iran established its missile program in the 1980s during the war with Iraq and has increasingly relied on the weapons to deter its foes.
Tehran demonstrated its ability to rebuild its missile program after the 12-day war with Israel in June 2025. Though Israel targeted the missile program with its attacks, Iran was able to rebuild its stockpiles faster than expected, leading Israel to warn before the end of the year that more strikes on Iran might be needed.
“You can try to destroy facilities, you can try to destroy the missiles themselves, but it actually has quicker regenerative capacity than the nuclear program, and it’s pretty dispersed,” said Nicole Grajewski, an expert on Iranian strategy at Sciences Po in Paris. “The reason Iran created such elaborate missile infrastructure was because they were worried about this.”