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Observers of military dynamics in the Middle East will have noticed a trend. In October 2024, Israel attacked Iran’s solid-propellant ballistic missile production facilities, leading to claims that Iran would require considerable time to reconstitute production capacity and expand its ballistic missile arsenal. By June 2025, however, Israel claimed that Iran was undertaking what can only be characterized as a massive expansion of ballistic missile production, including solid-propellant designs, and once again attacked Iran’s ballistic missile production facilities. By the start of the ongoing American and Israeli war against Iran, American and Israeli officials claimed that Iran had reconstituted ballistic missile production, and these facilities were targeted once more. Recent reporting indicates that Iran is, once again, reconstituting ballistic missile production, with American and Israeli officials expressing concerns that Iran may reconstitute its ballistic missile arsenal faster than the United States and Israel can reconstitute their severely depleted stocks of ballistic missile defence interceptors.
Evidently, Iran is not only intent on reestablishing ballistic missile production, but appears to do so with greater vigour after each attempt at bringing production to a stop. Observers would do well to consider why this may be the case. One important hypothesis is that Israel and, more recently, the United States, have successfully targeted the above-ground facilities and associated machinery but (A) do did critically harm the human capital associated with ballistic missile production and (B) failed to take give adequate consideration to how Iran—somehow—has access to the requisite machinery and can, with time and effort, reconstitute production by rebuilding such facilities. In October 2024, much was made about how Israel had targeted Iran’s planetary mixers and an industrial site associated with manufacturing planetary mixers. Large industrial-grade planetary mixers are a key piece of machinery associated with casting solid-propellant rocket motors and are, as such, export-controlled items. By targeting such machinery, the thinking went, Iran would struggle to reconstitute production capacity. But many failed to consider several interrelated possibilities: (A) what if Iran would not, in fact, face major challenges in securing new planetary mixers, and (B) what if Iran’s sanctions-evading and export control-overcoming procurement networks did not rest on the laurels such that Iran had, in effect, established a stockpile of unused otherwise difficult-to-acquire machinery like planetary mixers for use if and when its industrial facilities were targeted?
Iran’s repeated feat of quickly reconstituting solid-propellant ballistic missile production indicates that otherwise difficult-to-acquire export-controlled machinery such as planetary mixers may not be a durable bottleneck. All things considered, this should come as little surprise. Iranian officials would have known that necessarily above-ground solid-propellant ballistic missile production facilities are vulnerable to attack. They would have known that certain critically important types of machinery are export-controlled and can be difficult to source. They would have known that keeping additional quantities of such machinery in storage, perhaps underground, would allow Iran to quickly reconstitute production of solid-propellant ballistic missiles. It is possible that the 2011 incident that killed Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam at Bid Kaneh taught Iran the importance of positioning itself to quickly reconstitute production capacity in the event of an industrial accident or following enemy action.
There are many consequential uncertainties in this area. Observers would do well to consider the following. First, will Iran reconstitute, at least in part, solid-propellant ballistic missile production at underground facilities? This will entail assuming considerable risks, given the hazards associated with casting solid-propellant rocket motors. Tehran may, however, feel that the risks are now acceptable, given the series of attacks on the above-ground counterparts to these facilities. Second, will Iran reconstitute solid-propellant ballistic missile production at new facilities? Iran faces strong incentives to establish hardened, if not underground, facilities in the country’s extreme northeast, including around the Binalud Mountains near Mashhad. This will not provide absolute safety against Israeli attacks—the Israeli Air Force can reach Mashhad, albeit with its aircraft operating with a much reduced payload and at lower sortie generation rates, all else being equal—and will provide little meaningful difference when it comes to attacks by the United States, but it will likely improve the resilience of Iran’s ballistic missile industry relative to simply rebuilding the structures and reinstalling machinery at facilities that have already been successfully attacked several times.