Iran retains a dangerous missile capability despite heavy losses, and its efforts to adapt its attacks could pose a continuing challenge to Israeli and American air defenses, warns former senior Israeli official Oren Solomon.
By Hezy Laing
Iran has suffered serious damage to its military infrastructure, but that does not necessarily mean it has lost the ability to strike back. Its large territory, surviving weapons, dispersed facilities and domestic industrial capabilities give Tehran ways to preserve at least part of its missile program.
Brig. Gen. (res.) Oren Solomon, a former official involved in policy planning and the nuclear issue at the Prime Minister’s Office, warns against underestimating the Iranian threat.
“This is a people that learns very quickly how to penetrate our defense systems,” Solomon says.
His warning highlights a problem that extends beyond the number of missiles Iran has left. Israel must also contend with an adversary that can study defensive responses, change its tactics and attempt to restore damaged capabilities.
Learning from the battlefield
Missile warfare is a contest of adaptation. Attackers can examine which weapons reach their targets, how defenders respond and where future attacks might have a better chance of success.
Reporting by The Wall Street Journal has described changes in Iranian missile operations during the conflict, including continued launches despite damage to military facilities.
Such changes do not prove that Iran has found a reliable way to defeat Israeli defenses. They do, however, reinforce the need to assess not only the damage inflicted on Iran, but also its remaining capabilities and its ability to adjust.
Why cluster missiles pose a different challenge
Israel’s multilayered air defenses include the Arrow system, which intercepts ballistic missile threats, and David’s Sling, which provides another layer of protection against certain incoming missiles and rockets.
Large, coordinated barrages can place demands on detection, tracking and interception as defenders must assess multiple threats under time pressure. Launch locations, timing, trajectories and target selection can all affect how difficult an attack is to counter.
Iran’s use of cluster warheads presents a particular danger. Instead of carrying a single explosive payload, these warheads release numerous smaller explosives that spread across a wider area.
In March 2026, the IDF assessed that approximately half of the Iranian ballistic missiles fired at Israel during that phase of the conflict carried cluster warheads.
The critical distinction is when interception occurs. Destroying a missile before its warhead disperses can prevent the submunitions from spreading, but once they separate, stopping every smaller explosive becomes much more difficult.
This creates additional risks for civilians and emergency responders, even when the original missile is detected and engaged.
The cost of defending against repeated attacks
Interceptor stocks are another part of the strategic equation. Advanced defensive missiles are costly, take time to manufacture and must be available for future attacks, not just the barrage currently approaching.
Repeated launches can therefore create pressure on inventories and replenishment capacity, even when defenses successfully intercept most incoming threats. The challenge is to maintain protection while ensuring that enough weapons remain available for subsequent attacks.
The expenditure of American interceptors during the conflict illustrates why production capacity and replenishment matter. However, American stockpile figures should not be treated as evidence of how many interceptors Israel has remaining, and the use of defensive weapons alone does not prove that Iran has exhausted its opponents’ supplies.
It is also important to distinguish between a possible Iranian strategy and a proven one. Tehran may benefit when defenders must expend costly interceptors, but establishing that exhausting those stocks is a deliberate central objective requires evidence of Iranian intent.
Rebuilding under pressure
Iran’s ability to restore military production provides another measure of its resilience. On September 10, 2026, The Wall Street Journal, citing American and Middle Eastern officials, reported that Iran had resumed assembling ballistic missiles from stockpiled components at underground facilities, including the Khojir complex.
The report described production as limited compared with prewar levels. That qualification matters: evidence of renewed assembly does not mean Iran has replaced all the weapons, equipment and facilities lost in the fighting.
Still, the use of stored components and protected facilities demonstrates why attacks on factories and missile sites may reduce a weapons program without eliminating it. The extent of Iran’s recovery will depend on surviving equipment, access to components, production capacity and the damage inflicted on its supply chains.
Understanding Tehran’s calculations
Solomon also warns against assuming that Iran’s leaders will respond to military and economic costs as a Western government might. His assessment is that the regime’s ideological hostility toward Israel can lead it to accept losses that other governments might find intolerable.
That perspective is relevant, but ideology alone cannot predict Tehran’s next move. Military setbacks, domestic pressures, political calculations and the changing regional balance also influence the regime’s decisions.
The challenge for Israel is therefore twofold: continue degrading Iran’s ability to launch attacks while adapting defenses to an adversary that may change its tactics and attempt to rebuild.
The measure of success will not be the number of Iranian facilities destroyed alone. It will also depend on how much offensive capability Iran retains, how quickly it can restore damaged systems and whether Israel can maintain effective protection against the threats that remain.
