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The October 2024 Israeli strikes against Iran’s solid-propellant ballistic missile production facilities, which were also targeted during the June 2025 Iran-Israel War, are likely to have offered Iran’s liquid-fuelled ballistic missile industry a renewed lease of life and, for Tehran, a newfound purpose. Iran’s fragmented ballistic missile industry has long been split along the lines of liquid-fuelled versus solid-propellant designs, and the latter appeared to have become dominant over longstanding liquid-fuelled designs derived from the Soviet R-17 Elbrus (“Scud”) from circa 2020 onward, with the caveat that the very different liquid-fuelled Khorramshahr design, which is ultimately of a different Soviet origin by way of North Korea, was largely unaffected by the rise of solid-propellant ballsitic missiles in Iran’s arsenal.
While increasingly capable solid-propellant ballistic missiles became available, Iran retained a large arsenal of liquid-fuelled ballistic missiles of Shahab-2/Qiam and Shahab-3/Ghadr ancestry, which required periodic servicing and had considerable scope for upgrades, on account of how such liquid-fuelled ballistic missiles are stored in an unfuelled state and can, as such, remain in an arsenal more or less indefinitely. The parts of Iran’s ballistic industry with vested interests in sustaining liquid-fuelled ballistic missile production also had incentives to sustain research and development activity. In this context, Iran introduced two new variants of the Qiam design, the Rezvan and Jahad, and also continued to develop the Ghadr, resulting in the Etemad.
By June 2025, if not October 2024, Iran’s ongoing production of otherwise outdated technology became a highly valuable hedge against ongoing disruptions to solid-propellant ballistic missile production on account of enemy action. Solid-propellant ballistic missiles cannot practically be produced in underground facilities, unlike liquid-fuelled designs. The ongoing American and Israeli war against Iran, which encompassed the widespread targeting of Iran’s above-ground military-industrial facilities, has only further cemented this dynamic. Going forward, Iran is likely to lean on liquid-fuelled ballistic missiles of Shahab-2/Qiam and Shahab-3/Ghadr design ancestry for longer than it may have otherwise. Iran may come to develop more sophisticated separating reentry vehicles for the Ghadr family, perhaps something in the vein of the reentry vehicles developed for the Fattah-1 and Fattah-2, two members of the solid-propellant Kheibar Shekan design family that may have otherwise come to displace production of the longstanding liquid-fuelled Ghadr design. Militaries are often creatures of contingency. Military industries are no different. Whatever plans Tehran had in these areas have likely been upended by the upheavals of October 2024, June 2025, and the ongoing war, which have unexpectedly benefitted Iran’s liquid-fuelled ballistic missile industry and have likely given it a new lease of life and newfound purpose.