A new report released Thursday by Iran International says Iran’s missile program was built over 40 years around one central goal, erasing Israel. The piece says the message on the tomb of Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, known as the “father of Iran’s missile industry,” makes that explicit, and notes that the program began from scratch in 1986 under the Revolutionary Guards.
The report says the early system drew on missile models obtained from Ukraine, North Korea and China during President Mohammad Khatami’s tenure, when the Shahab-3, with range reaching Israel, was also revealed. It describes a sprawling network of roughly 30 missile bases, not just launchers but command centers, communications, guidance and intelligence facilities, plus concrete bunkers, mountain communications systems and fueling equipment designed to penetrate air defenses with split warheads and midcourse maneuvers.
The central research and production belt runs through Shahroud, Garmsar, Khojir and Parchin. Khojir, covering about 40 square kilometers, includes the Hakimieh industrial complex and the Turkman site, which researchers identified as a solid rocket motor hub. Shahroud’s motor and industrial fuel production facilities were also hit hard, while Parchin and the huge assembly center in Isfahan suffered major damage, with the report saying more than 50 percent of the infrastructure there had already been destroyed before the second war.
The report also maps bases around Tehran, Isfahan, Tabriz, Kermanshah, Shiraz, Qom, Kashan, Khomein and Khorramabad. It says some sites were damaged by Israeli operations and that at Imam Ali base in Khorramabad dozens of Revolutionary Guards members, including senior commanders, were killed in Operation With the Lion, and the site was struck again in Operation Roaring Lion. In the south, bases built to threaten the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz were heavily damaged, and although repair work has begun, Iran’s ability to threaten the Gulf remains limited for now.
