Low-confidence assessment informs debate on new strikes
The U.S. intelligence community assesses that Iran still has between 1,500 and 2,500 missiles in its arsenal, U.S. officials said, leaving Tehran with significant capacity to attack U.S. and allied targets if all-out war resumes.
That is a low-confidence assessment, the officials said, due to the complications of tracking the precise number of missiles Iran has ready for launch or in storage. Even so, officials said it was clear Iran retained a formidable stockpile.
The assessment has informed internal Trump administration discussions about whether to relaunch military strikes alongside Israel, U.S. officials said.
Although the U.S. and Israel damaged Iran’s missile-production facilities, Iran has continued to rebuild its arsenal, mostly from stockpiled components and at a slower pace than before the war, officials said. Tehran also has many drones and short-range missiles at its disposal.
Israeli military officials similarly assess that Iran has more than 1,500 ballistic missiles, though estimates vary among officials in the broader region due to the difficulty of pinpointing the exact number.
The reconstitution of Iran’s stockpile cuts against statements from administration officials, including President Trump, that Iran’s military had been decimated. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday used his first press conference in six months to tell reporters that Iran’s defense-industrial base was “gone,” as well as more than 80% of the country’s nuclear-industrial base. “By every measure we achieved a historic military victory,” he said.
A White House official said Operation Epic Fury, the U.S. name for the operation against Iran, had rendered Iranian forces helpless and that the economic-strangulation campaign has made the regime weaker than ever before.
Trump suggested Wednesday during a Veterans Day address that the U.S. hadn’t entirely defeated the Islamic Republic. “We won,” he said. “Now the question is when we want to end. We must have a total victory, not a 93% victory. It’s going to be total.” He later told radio host Hugh Hewitt that it would be a “defeat” for the U.S. if the Iranian regime were still in power at the end of his term.
Simone Ledeen, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East in Trump’s first term, said that even the low-end estimate of 1,500 missiles would mean Iran had replenished more than half of its estimated prewar stockpile. She said that Iran fully rebuilt its arsenal in between the 12-day war in June 2025 and the start of the current conflict in February.
Estimating how many missiles Iran has is difficult due to the secrecy with which the issue is treated by Tehran, the many different missile producers Iran relies on and unknowns such as how many new missiles Iran can produce from finished components stockpiled underground, said Jim Lamson, a visiting research fellow at King’s College London and former CIA analyst who specialized in the Iranian military.
Further complicating the task is the fact that prewar assessments of Iran’s stockpiles were murky, he said. “Having done this work for the government, I know it can be extremely low confidence even with all the classified information,” he said.
Destroying Iran’s ballistic-missile capabilities was a goal of the U.S. and Israel in launching the war in Iran. Both countries declared success after the joint bombing campaign, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claiming Iran’s missile program had been successfully crushed and the remaining missiles were “running dry.” But despite being badly hit, “they are rebuilding, rearming,” and preparing for a serious round of fighting, an Israeli military official said.
Iran has also been able to improve the efficiency of its attacks against targets in the Middle East. It has done so by improving its intelligence and targeting data, including through help from allies such as Russia, and by upgrading tactics, such as mixing missiles and drones.
“It’s not just the size of that arsenal. It’s how Iran uses it, and its commanders have learned a few tricks to be more effective,” said Bilal Saab, senior managing director of Trends US, a geopolitical-risk firm based in Washington.
Iran has used ballistic missiles, drones and improved tactics to continue inflicting damage on U.S. military installations, radars and early-warning systems across the Middle East. As a result, many U.S. military assets have been moved to Israel, which is considered safer, Israeli and U.S. officials said.
Trump has elected to maintain economic pressure on Tehran through a blockade and sanctions for now, rather than ordering large-scale strikes. Vice President JD Vance used the pause in fighting to open a channel to an Iranian official described as a hard-liner in search of a deal, but Trump directed him to end the diplomacy and focus on domestic issues.
U.S. allies in the Gulf have told the Trump administration they don’t want a return to war because Iran could target them with missiles and drones in retaliation. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, who remains the caretaker prime minister for now following inconclusive elections last month, is continuing to push for renewed operations in Iran. Mossad Director Roman Gofman was in Washington on Friday for talks with U.S. officials on Iran.
In April, The Wall Street Journal reported that Iran retained thousands of short- and medium-range ballistic missiles that could be retrieved from underground sites. Israeli and U.S. strikes collapsed the entrances to those facilities, but satellite imagery has since shown that Iran regained access to some by digging them out. Missiles in the underground sites likely survived intact, according to an Israeli official.
In September, the Journal reported that Iran had resumed its production of ballistic missiles from finished stockpiled components.