Military experts question Iran’s missile capabilities after April attack against Israel

The Iranian regime has repeatedly vowed to launch a “revenge” attack against Israel for the assassination of the top Hamas terrorist Ismail Haniyeh in its capital Tehran in late July, for which Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility.

While the U.S. and Israel initially believed a large Iranian missile and drone attack to be imminent, Iran has yet to take such action.

International military experts now question Iran’s missile capabilities after Israel and an American-led international coalition successfully neutralized the majority of the almost 300 missiles and drones that Iran launched in April.

A significant number of the projectiles failed to exit Iranian airspace, and of those that entered Israeli airspace, many did not reach their intended targets.

Sam Lair, a research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in California, assessed that Iran's attack against Israel displayed “some ability to strike Israel.” However, he added, “If I were supreme leader, I would probably be a little disappointed.”

Israel and Western nations have long feared Iran’s vast missile arsenal, however, Lair argued that if Iranian missiles can’t reach their intended targets, “They’re no longer as valuable for conducting conventional military operations. They may be more valuable simply as terror weapons.”

Some pundits have suggested that Tehran’s attack in April was deliberately designed to avoid widespread destruction. Fabian Hinz, a missile expert and research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, dismissed that theory.

As an Iran expert, Hinz stressed that the April attack “was very clearly not something symbolic and not something trying to avoid damage.” He assessed that it was “a major attempt to overcome Israeli defenses.”

Speaking on condition of anonymity, U.S. officials told the Associated Press that a whopping 50% of the Iranian missiles and rockets either malfunctioned at launch or crashed before reaching their intended targets in Israel.

The Iranian regime specifically tried to target Israel's Nevatim Air Force base, which hosts Israel’s advanced F-35 fighter jet fleet. However, the few Iranian missiles that penetrated Israel’s aerial defense system failed to reach the hangars that contained the fighter jets, only creating a few potholes in the ground about a half mile away.

Lair noted that Iran had used its advanced Emad missiles to attack the Israeli Air Force base.

“This means the Emad is much less accurate than previous estimates indicated,” Lair assessed. “This indicates the Iranians are a generation behind where previous assessments thought they were in accuracy.”

During an exclusive interview with the Jerusalem Post in August, the founder of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Mohsen Sazegara, who fled Iran and currently resides in the U.S. stated: “Iran is not in a position to fight Israel.”

Sazegara believes that Iran's military commanders have conveyed to Supreme Leader Khamenei that while Iran can launch missiles toward Israel, the country lacks strategic balance.

"They can send missiles toward Israel, especially hypersonic missiles that can reach Israel in six to eight minutes. 'But when Israel retaliates, then we can’t defend the country, especially air defense,' Sazegara believes Iran’s military commanders explained to Khamenei.

Military experts largely hold the opinion that the Iranian regime's conventional military capabilities are limited and largely outdated. Therefore, Tehran has concentrated on engaging in asymmetric warfare, primarily utilizing its extensive network of terrorist proxies along with its significant stockpile of missiles and drones.