03/05/2026
Iran spent decades constructing underground bunkers to shield its vast missile arsenal from destruction. Less than a week into the war with its two most powerful adversaries, the strategy is beginning to look like a blunder. đź”— https://on.wsj.com/4lereBg
U.S. and Israeli war planes and armed drones are circling over the dozens of cavernous bases, striking missile-carrying launchers when they emerge to fire. Meanwhile, waves of heavy bombers have dropped munitions on the sites, apparently entombing the Iranian weapons below ground in some locations.
Satellite imagery taken in recent days shows the smoldering remains of several Iranian missiles and launchers destroyed in U.S. and Israeli airstrikes near entrances to the “missile cities,” as Iranian officials call the subterranean sites.
Analysts said it is likely that much of Tehran’s remaining stockpile of thousands of medium- and short-range missiles remains in underground bases whose locations are mostly known to the U.S. and Israeli militaries.
That underscores a fundamental flaw in the missile-city concept: “What was once mobile and difficult to find is no longer mobile, and easier to hit,” said Sam Lair, a research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, a research organization in Monterey, Calif.
