Arsenal

Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal is growing in size and quality. It is a threat to U.S. interests and the security of America’s allies in the greater Middle East. Improvements in ballistic missile precision, range, mobility, warhead design, and survivability (including the creation of underground missile depots) imply an increasingly lethal long-range strike capability in the hands of the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism.

Iran’s diverse ballistic missile program is an outgrowth of Tehran’s experiences during the Iran-Iraq War, which taught the nascent revolutionary regime the imperatives of deterrence and self-reliance. Status and security considerations also spur Iran’s ballistic missile drive, as they do its nuclear program.

Iran’s ballistic missile program benefits from sustained elite backing. The program was established by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the ideological military that exists alongside Iran’s conventional forces. The missile program is now underwritten by a broad swath of government-connected defense contractors, enabling the procurement, production, and proliferation of missile systems and associated technologies or materials.

Ballistic missiles offer Tehran the means to deter, punish, and coerce adversaries. They compensate for Iran’s conventional warfighting deficiencies and keep the door open for nuclear weapons. According to the 2019 U.S. Missile Defense Review, missiles constitute “one of Tehran’s primary tools of coercion and force projection.”¹

Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal also provides Tehran with the confidence and security to pursue its revisionist foreign policy with less fear of military reprisal. This may lead to increased risk-taking, including battlefield use of its arsenal. This was apparent in over half a dozen ballistic missile operations launched from Iranian territory between 2017 and 2022, one of which, in 2020, included strikes on bases in Iraq housing American soldiers. Failure to deter Iran will likely guarantee more missile use. In 2022, for example, Iran launched almost three times as many ballistic missiles as it did in 2021. A missile’s ability to reach its target in minutes amplifies existing challenges in an already troubled region.

Since agreeing to the 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran has launched at least 228 ballistic missiles, including failed and successful flight tests of surface-to-surface systems in drills and military operations as well as space/satellite launch vehicles (SLV) from its own territory. In addition, Iranian proxies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen have received ballistic missiles or associated technology from their patron. This weaponry bolsters Iran’s forward-deployed deterrent and threatens U.S. forces in the Central Command (CENTCOM) area of responsibility as well as partners such as Israel and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf.

The JCPOA does not address ballistic missiles, but the deal is slated to remove EU penalties on Iran’s missile brain trust by October 2023. UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 2231, which accompanied the JCPOA, terminates prohibitions on both Iranian missile testing and transfers by the same date. The deal thereby waters down previous UN penalties on Iran’s missile program and inhibits a more coercive Iran policy by Washington and its European partners.²

Iran is unlikely to curb its missile program absent sustained pressure. Even intense pressure may at best impede rather than end Iran’s missile aspirations. Trading away sanctions leverage for concessions of little value, such as a range cap or a mere promise not to produce intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), makes little sense. The resurrection of the JCPOA, or a weakened version of it, will also be unhelpful in this regard. So, too, would attempts to view the missile program purely as an arms control matter, in isolation from Iran’s regional policies.

Western policymakers must reach consensus on how to counter the Iranian missile threat, the utility of any potential missile agreement, the degree to which any such deal can be verified, and how much of a ballistic missile capability can be tolerated in the hands of the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism. Absent Western unity and resolve, the regime is certain to best the West at the negotiating table.

Washington should adopt policies that disrupt, deter, devalue, and, when necessary, defang the Iranian missile program through diplomatic, informational, military, and economic means. This report offers several options under each rubric, to include increasing sanctions pressure, the enforcement and broadening of export controls, disrupting procurement and proliferation networks through exposure and interdiction, and increasing regional air and missile defense capabilities.

The pursuit of status and security drive Iran’s ballistic missile program just as they do its nuclear program.⁴⁰ Ballistic missiles feature prominently in Iranian national security strategy, offering a political, military, and even psychological tool to deter, punish, and coerce Iran’s adversaries, as well as to support Tehran’s interconnected foreign, security, and defense policies.⁴¹ While the overarching goal of Iran’s national security strategy is the perpetuation of the regime,⁴² other aims include regional primacy and self-reliance.⁴³

Status and Security: Two Sides of the Same Coin

In 2018, the Office of Iran’s Supreme Leader produced a video featuring wreckage from Iraqi missile attacks on Iranian cities during the Iran-Iraq War. “Do you remember?” Khamenei asked. “We had no missiles, we had nothing to defend with, we were forced to put our hands together and watch.”⁴⁴ The video ended with a montage of Iranian ballistic missile launches. The message was clear: Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal and capabilities are among the Islamic Republic’s most identifiable achievements.

The regime deems these weapons to be crucial to its existence, its revolutionary foreign policy, and increasingly, the capabilities of its proxies. According to former IRGC Commander Mohsen Rezaie, “Our missiles were planted like a sapling in the war. We harvested its first fruits during the war. But the main fruits of this tree took place after the war, in a manner that Iran’s missile capabilities in the region are unique.”⁴⁵

Today, Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal contains an array of short- and medium-range systems. Iranian officials are proud of their newfound status as the region’s preeminent missile power and use that status to press for hegemony. Iranian officials and media outlets tout foreign coverage of Iran’s missile developments as a measure of the regime’s prowess.⁴⁶

As much as it shuns the current global order, Tehran covets international recognition of its scientific, technical, and military advances. In fact, Iranian officials boast of the regime’s missile and military progress while under sanctions and believe it is a model for other states to employ.⁴⁷ They also frame opposition to Iran’s missile and military advances as hostility to the regime. IRGC Aerospace Force (IRGC-AF) Commander Amir-Ali Hajizadeh neatly captured this view when he said, “Now they have made the missile issue an excuse… They seek to do something so that we are disarmed and so that we cannot respond in kind.”⁴⁸ Similarly, Gholamhossein Gheibparvar, former commander of the Basij paramilitary force, said, “The issue of Westerners is not over missiles; rather, their issue is about Islam and the Revolution.”⁴⁹

Strategies and Capabilities Enabled by Iran’s Ballistic Missiles

Iranian strategy prioritizes above all else the ability to deter or punish attacks on the homeland and, when possible, on regime interests abroad. Some Iranian officials believe that Western hostility toward Tehran’s ballistic missile program stems from the high deterrent value of Iran’s domestically produced missiles, which — in their view — severely complicate military plans targeting Iran.⁵⁰ As Michael Eisenstadt notes, ballistic missiles have become “central to Iran’s ‘way of war’” and are one leg of “Iran’s deterrence triad,” which also includes asymmetric maritime capabilities and employment of terrorist groups as proxies.⁵¹

During the Iran-Iraq War, Iran sought to deter Iraq by “responding in kind.” Early in the “War of the Cities,”⁵² Iran’s ballistic missiles permitted the regime to punish its Iraqi adversary and to obtain pauses in warfighting.⁵³ Near the end of the conflict, however, as Baghdad’s missile capabilities improved and Tehran fell within range of Iraqi Scuds, Iranian officials saw the devastating impact these projectiles had on Iran’s population. Wartime morale dropped significantly, and citizens fled the capital.⁵⁴ This had an enduring psychological effect on Iranian leaders.⁵⁵

Today, Iranian officials use the example of the eight-year war to illustrate the cost aggressors would pay in a conflict⁵⁶ and believe several wars have already been prevented as a result.⁵⁷ They also believe the war was the source of the regime’s deterrent and defensive capabilities.⁵⁸ As Kenneth Pollack notes, after the war, Iranians armed themselves not against renewed Iraqi aggression, but against a far more powerful adversary: America.⁵⁹ Tehran has focused on how best to contest American military dominance and deter a U.S. attack while advancing its revolutionary foreign policy.⁶⁰ Iranian military officials assert that the regime’s strength and deterrence power has robbed adversaries, including the United States, of the will to fight,⁶¹ enabling Iran to pursue its regional ambitions with greater ease.

Such thinking assumes that as the regime conducts its regional policy — exporting its ideology and creating, co-opting, and supporting local armed groups⁶² — Iran will need tools to offset conventionally superior adversaries who have a vested interest in maintaining the regional order that Iran seeks to overturn.⁶³ To adapt an analogy developed by Karim Sadjadpour,⁶⁴ ballistic missiles provide Tehran with a shield with which to deter attacks, while Iran-backed proxies and militia groups function like a sword that thrusts ahead, operating mostly below the threshold that would prompt Tehran’s adversaries to use military force. Thus, Iran’s ballistic missiles devalue its adversaries’ most powerful tool: conventional military force.

To bolster deterrence, Tehran wields a mix of incendiary rhetoric, parades, and media to trumpet its ballistic missile capabilities. Flight tests, transfers, and battlefield-use of missiles also help reinforce deterrence, based on Tehran’s understanding of its adversaries’ “image of war”⁶⁵ and risk tolerance. By signaling that a potential conflict with Iran will involve ballistic missiles, making it protracted, costly, and bloody, the Islamic Republic seeks to force adversaries into a policy of begrudging accommodation.

Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal continues to improve in terms of both quantity (the size and diversity of the force) and quality (missile precision and ability to carry submunition payloads or maneuvering warheads). These improvements may embolden Tehran to take more risks, as demonstrated by a January 2020 barrage against U.S. positions in Iraq. Scholars believe that the increasing precision of Iran’s missile forces may lead it to adopt a more offensive military doctrine over time.⁶⁶ Combined with Iranian perceptions of U.S. irresolution and risk aversion, an enhanced arsenal may lead to a lower threshold for the use of ballistic missiles.⁶⁷

Ballistic missiles offer the regime both a conventional and an unconventional long-range strike capability that fits into a broader spectrum of unmanned aerial threats. This spectrum includes mortars, conventional artillery, rockets, drones, and both cruise and ballistic missiles. Tehran treats ballistic missiles as its strongest vehicle to deliver punishment and thus a replacement for an effective air force, which the regime lacks because of sanctions that block access to spare parts and (until recently) conventional arms markets.⁶⁸ Compared to advanced fighter aircraft, ballistic missiles require significantly less infrastructure to launch and cost considerably less to develop and maintain. While fighter aircraft may offer more diverse striking options given the array of weapons they can carry (not to mention their reusability), ballistic missiles offer speed and surprise. Moreover, the comparatively high velocity of a ballistic missile makes it harder to intercept than a fighter jet.

The lapse of the UN arms embargo on Iran in October 2020 removed a significant barrier inhibiting Iran’s missile programs. Although UNSCR 2231 continues to ban exports to Iran of Category I and II missiles and other items controlled under the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR)⁶⁹ until October 2023, the arms embargo’s lapse marked the beginning of an unencumbered advance toward modernizing Iranian forces. This will not lead Tehran to replace its ballistic missiles with fighter aircraft, nor will Tehran build formidable conventional forces in the short-to-medium term. But coupled with the revocation of UN missile prohibitions in 2023, the arms embargo’s lapse will enable Tehran to improve its military, rocket, and missile programs gradually. Iran’s missile advances will force its adversaries to continue investing in more expensive air and missile defenses, a fact the IRGC appears to grasp and is intent on exploiting.⁷⁰ Given Iran’s unique experience in the Iran-Iraq War, ballistic missiles are certain to remain central to Iran’s national security strategy.

A subterranean Iranian SRBM assembly line with a poster (left) quoting Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as saying,
“Our enmity with America is eternal.” (Young Journalists Club)

Delivery Vehicle for Potential WMD Capabilities

During the war, the need to deter and punish Iraq’s leadership led the nascent Islamic Republic to develop both ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), specifically chemical weapons. U.S. intelligence has documented how Iran’s perceived need to respond to Iraq’s widespread use of chemical agents during the Iran-Iraq War led Tehran to employ this WMD despite earlier “moral and possibly religious” prohibitions the regime harbored. According to the CIA, “in April 1987, Iran clearly crossed the chemical barrier.”⁷¹ There may come a day when Tehran opts to cross the nuclear barrier, too.

According to other U.S. intelligence reports, “Iran’s ballistic missiles are inherently capable of delivering WMD.” Should the regime ever develop nuclear weapons, “it would choose a ballistic missile as its preferred method of delivering” them.⁷² A nuclear weapons program has three main requirements: fissile material (i.e., weapons-grade uranium or reprocessed plutonium), weaponization (i.e., warhead development),⁷³ and a delivery vehicle. Iran has clearly worked on all three. Several classes of Iran’s ballistic missiles already surpass the MTCR range and payload thresholds for nuclear-capable systems.⁷⁴ Continual refinement of this arsenal through flight-testing, re-entry vehicle (RV) design, and other improvements makes Tehran less likely to face delays related to having a functional delivery vehicle.⁷⁵ According to the late Michael Elleman, Iran is “the only country to have developed” a 2,000-kilometer-range missile without “first having developed nuclear weapons.”⁷⁶

Evidence from Tehran’s atomic archive — a trove of nuclear documents Israel seized in 2018 — that pertains to Iran’s crash program for a bomb known as the AMAD plan⁷⁷ indicates a link between Iran’s missiles and quest for a nuclear weapon.⁷⁸ Several International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports describing components of the AMAD plan specifically mention Iran’s Shahab-3 MRBM. Notably, a May 2008 IAEA report mentions correspondence between an Iranian military contractor specializing in liquid-propellant missiles (the Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group, or SHIG) and Iran’s top military-nuclear scientist at the time, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.⁷⁹ The IAEA report also notes that Iran conducted studies involving “the testing of at least one full scale hemispherical, converging, explosively driven shock system that could be applicable to an implosion-type nuclear device.” ⁸⁰

The AMAD plan, Fakhrizadeh, and a project to redesign the Shahab-3 were also mentioned in the annex of a November 2011 IAEA report, which observed “a link between nuclear material and a new payload development programme.” The report also revealed that Tehran had “conducted computer modelling studies of at least 14 progressive design iterations of the payload chamber and its contents to examine how they would stand up to the various stresses that would be encountered on being launched and travelling on a ballistic trajectory to a target.”⁸¹

While a 2015 IAEA report on the possible military dimensions (PMD) of Iran’s nuclear program noted that Tehran conducted nuclear weapons-related activities “prior to the end of 2003 as a coordinated effort, and that some activities took place after 2003,”⁸² the report failed to address the evolution of Iran’s nuclear weapons efforts. Fakhrizadeh continued to be involved in nuclear-related entities that evolved into the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (SPND).⁸³ SPND retained AMAD plan staff and expertise as a hedging strategy with overt and covert components.⁸⁴ While Fakhrizadeh was assassinated in late 2020, there is no indication that his death ended Tehran’s nuclear aspirations. Iran’s latest nuclear moves have given the regime irreversible nuclear knowledge that helps put it in striking distance of a potential nuclear weapons threshold capability.⁸⁵

Given Iran’s threat perceptions, revolutionary foreign policy, and obsession with deterrence, acquiring nuclear weapons would be a logical step. It is no accident that Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs draw from the same wellspring of experience: the Iran-Iraq War.⁸⁶ Tehran’s desire to keep its nuclear options open also explains why the regime was willing to endure significant sanctions pressure. Iran consented to the JCPOA specifically because it did not permanently block Tehran’s path to the bomb.

Attaining a nuclear weapons capability would likely foster a sense of invincibility in an already revolutionary regime and could, in turn, lead to more regional conflict. Given the speed that ballistic missiles travel, prudence dictates that if Iran developed a nuclear weapons capability, the region would have to go on high alert each time the Islamic Republic flight-tested or employed ballistic missiles in military operations.

Transfers

Transferring ballistic missiles or related components, technologies, or capabilities to proxies and partners is another way Tehran uses missiles to support its broader policy goals. The Islamic Republic has been proliferating missiles for over two decades. In 1999, Tehran reportedly inked an agreement with the Democratic Republic of Congo for transfers of modified Iranian Scud missiles.⁹⁷ Around the same time, Iran also began to share MRBM production technology with Libya,⁹⁸ the country that furnished Tehran with its first Scuds during the Iran-Iraq War.⁹⁹ The 2020 removal of Iran’s UN arms embargo, which covered both exports and imports, may permit the Islamic Republic to ramp up its proliferation of missiles and military technology.

Alarmingly, the regime does not simply export missiles or missile-related technologies. It is now also an exporter of missile production capabilities. Iranian officials have increasingly highlighted these transfers in their commentary. In 2014, Hajizadeh bragged that the Iranians “learned how to employ [missiles] from [Syria], but we taught [the Syrians] how to produce [missiles]. The factories for the production of the Syrian missile industry have been transferred from Iran to [Syria].”¹⁰⁰ In January 2021, Hajizadeh again boasted, “Gaza and Lebanon are on the frontlines of this conflict, and whatever you see in terms of missile capability in Gaza and Lebanon has taken place with the support of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”¹⁰¹ These transfers advance three objectives:

1. Growing the conventional strike capabilities of the “Axis of Resistance.” Enhancing the strike capabilities of the Axis of Resistance, a term used by Iranian officials to describe their network of proxies and partners, offers Iran two benefits. First, more lethal systems increase the effectiveness of Iran’s proxies in local battles against shared adversaries. Second, the greater the quality and quantity of Iranian proxies’ missiles and rockets, the stronger Tehran’s conventional deterrent. A more lethal capability in the hands of these proxies functions as a knife against the neck of U.S. partners in the region aimed at complicating policy planning and eroding both the will and capability to respond to any instance of Iranian aggression.
   As John Hannah observes, Tehran’s investment in the conventional military capabilities of its proxies transforms the Israel-Lebanon border into an Iranian version of the situation along the 38th parallel between North and South Korea. Much as Pyongyang uses its ability to bombard Seoul with overwhelming conventional force to deter preemptive attacks on its homeland and nuclear infrastructure, the Islamic Republic arms Lebanon’s Hezbollah to help deter a potential Israeli strike against Iran¹⁰² and increase the costs of action against Hezbollah itself.
2. Cementing political gains through military means. Iran’s material support to terror groups is not just consistent with the regime’s desire to export its Islamic Revolution. It is also aimed at maintaining its partners’ loyalty in a changing Middle East.
3. Developing and testing an arsenal in exile. The wide geographic dispersal of Iranian ballistic missiles and missile-related technology renders inadequate air and missile defenses trained only on launches from Iranian territory. By proliferating missiles and rockets, Iran can assess their performance under battlefield conditions without the risks of a conflict on Iranian soil. The Islamic Republic’s support for its regional proxies may also be leading to the development of systems absent from Tehran’s own arsenal.¹⁰³ Often described by Iranian officials and their proxies as indigenously developed weapons, these new systems make Tehran’s role less visible and insulate the regime from blowback.¹⁰⁴
   There are four jurisdictions today where Iranian ballistic missile-related transfers have impacted the regional balance. They are Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. (See Table 1.) Unsurprisingly, these are the same jurisdictions that an Iranian parliamentarian boasted about controlling in 2014: “Currently, four Arab capitals are in the hands of Iran and are dependent on the Islamic Republic of Iran.”¹⁰⁵

Table 1: Iranian Ballistic Missile Proliferation in the Middle East

Although Iran has supplied the Palestinian terror groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) with Fajr-3 and Fajr-5 rockets,¹²⁰ those systems are unguided and thus excluded from this analysis. At the time of this writing, Iran is not believed to have supplied those groups with entire ballistic missiles.¹²¹ According to Hajizadeh, “Palestinians have become self-sufficient in many areas… [I]t is true that they have learned from Iran, we will definitely help any group, any country, that wants to stand against the Zionist regime.”¹²² Should Tehran supply Palestinian terror groups with precision-strike capabilities, it would be consistent with the regime’s evolving approach to weapons proliferation and technology diffusion for its proxies.

The Houthis

In Yemen, where it supports the Houthi rebels against a Saudi-led coalition, Iran has seen the greatest return on its investment in missile proliferation and related technology transfers. Having captured Scud and Tochka SRBMs from the ousted Yemeni government,¹²³ the Houthis also developed rocket capabilities. While coalition airpower targeted those capabilities early in the conflict, Iranian military assistance has apparently more than compensated for the loss.

Iranian missile transfers have helped grow Houthi long-range strike capabilities, putting civilian population centers at risk, including the Saudi capital, Riyadh.¹²⁴ This has eroded the prospect of a Saudi victory at little cost to Tehran. More broadly, Iran’s support to the Houthis offers the Islamic Republic an opportunity to establish a foothold on the Arabian Peninsula and Red Sea,¹²⁵ bleed its Saudi rival, and contest U.S. economic pressure.

Starting in 2016, the Houthis unveiled and have employed the Burkan-1 SRBM, a Scud variant.¹²⁶ Though Tehran’s connection to the Burkan-1 remains unproven given the presence of Scuds in Yemen before the war, Iranian support for its redesign would be consistent with its overall strategy. In 2017, the Houthis debuted the Burkan-2H, which featured more telltale signs of Iranian assistance. For example, jet vanes on debris from the system bore markings used by Iranian defense manufacturers.

In addition, the Burkan-2H shares several identifiers with Iran’s Qiam-1 SRBM, which is a Scud-C variant. Like the Qiam-1, the Burkan-2H is a finless, single-stage, liquid-propelled Scud variant topped with a triconic, or “baby bottle,” warhead. The UN Panel of Experts on Yemen assessed in January 2018 that Burkan-2H is “an advanced derivative of the Qiam-1.” The panel also suggested that “most likely,” Burkan-2H components were trafficked overland from Oman after smaller “ship to shore transfers.”¹²⁷ Photos of the Burkan-2H contain evidence of shoddy welding, vindicating the thesis of local reassembly of larger imported components.¹²⁸

In mid-2018, Washington sanctioned five Iranians for supporting the Houthi missile program. Among them were individuals with ties to the IRGC Quds Force (IRGC-QF), which supports Iranian external operations; the IRGC-AF’s Al-Ghadir Missile Command, which has operational control over Iran’s missile arsenal; and the IRGC’s Research and Self-Sufficiency Jihad Organization (IRGC-RSSJO), which supports Iranian missile research and development.¹²⁹

In 2019, the Houthis launched their first MRBM, the Burkan-3, at targets in eastern Saudi Arabia.¹³⁰ This extended-range Burkan, which would reappear in 2021 as the Zolfaghar,¹³¹ carries a narrower conical warhead than most Iranian MRBMs but has the same tail-section fins at the Qiam family. The Houthis are the only Iranian partner to have received or developed MRBM capabilities. In conjunction with drones and cruise missiles, Houthi Zolfaghar use has broadened beyond Saudi Arabia with attempts to target critical infrastructure¹³² and even a U.S. base in the UAE in early 2022.¹³³

Iran is believed to be behind the move towards precision-guided weapons in Yemen. Starting in 2018, the Houthis unveiled the Badr-1P, the guided version of an older artillery rocket that has since been modified¹³⁴ and used in various missions, including against attacks on civilian targets like Aden International Airport in December 2020.¹³⁵ The Houthis also possess a host of upgraded shorter-range systems, such as the Qasim and larger Qasim-2, which the Houthis unveiled in an arms exhibition in 2021.¹³⁶ Many of these new systems share design similarities with solid-propellant Iranian SRBMs of the Fateh-110 family, like control fins under the warhead and at the aft section of the missile. These similarities lend credence to the theory of local production with Iranian technical assistance. Cementing that theory are three new SSMs — the Hatem, the Karrar, and the Falaq — revealed at a September 2022 military parade in Sana’a commemorating the eighth anniversary of the Houthi takeover of Yemen. These SSMs appear to be carbon copies of Iranian ballistic missiles with precision-strike capabilities.¹³⁷

The Assad Regime and Lebanese Hezbollah

In the Levant, Iran’s missile support for the Assad regime in Syria and for Hezbollah in Lebanon is inextricably linked. In 2014, the IRGC-AF’s deputy commander, Seyyed Majid Mousavi, described Syria as a “good bridge” for Iran’s proxies in the Levant.¹³⁸ Iranian proxies routinely travel across this land bridge, and Tehran uses it to proliferate arms.¹³⁹ Given the proximity of Syria and Lebanon, the Islamic Republic has looked to the Assad regime to facilitate Iranian support for Hezbollah, including technology transfers when needed, as was the case with the Fateh-110 SRBM, which both Syria and Hezbollah now possess. The Assad regime has reportedly used the Fateh against Syrian rebel groups, but Hezbollah has apparently not employed the missile in combat. IRGC-AF Deputy Commander Mousavi confirmed that the missile capabilities of the “Axis of Resistance” include “the Fateh class of missiles,” enabling Tehran’s proxies to strike all of Israel.¹⁴⁰

Hezbollah claims it fired 8,000 rockets at Israel during the 2006 Lebanon War¹⁴¹ out of an estimated arsenal of 13,000.¹⁴² In 2010, Israeli military officials estimated that Hezbollah possessed about 40,000 rockets and mortars.¹⁴³ Recent estimates vary significantly, putting Hezbollah’s arsenal at anywhere from 100,000 to 150,000 rockets and missiles. Meanwhile, Tehran is working to help Hezbollah convert rockets, including Iranian-provided Falaq and Zelzal rockets,¹⁴⁴ into precision-guided munitions (PGMs).¹⁴⁵ As of February 2021, Israeli intelligence reportedly believed that Hezbollah possessed “a few dozen PGMs.”¹⁴⁶ Others believe this number is now in the hundreds.

The Islamic Republic’s evolving missile support for Hezbollah resembles China’s support for Iran’s missile program in the early 1990s, when Beijing reportedly ceased transferring whole systems but continued transferring technology.¹⁴⁷ This speaks to Iranian adaptability in response to external pressure and the local needs of Tehran’s proxies.¹⁴⁸ Iran’s evolving proliferation patterns can also be seen in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) airstrikes against varying targets related to Tehran’s PGM project.¹⁴⁹

The IDF has identified three phases in Iran’s PGM project. During phase one, from 2013 to 2015, Tehran transferred whole systems to Hezbollah. Phase two, from 2016 to 2018, included the trafficking of select components for PGM kits, such as navigation systems.¹⁵⁰ Phase three, which began in 2019 and is ongoing, involves efforts to develop PGMs entirely in Lebanon.¹⁵¹ In 2020, the IDF released pictures of factories in Lebanon engaging in this process.¹⁵² As Mousavi stated, “Instead of us giving them a fishing hook, from the beginning, the idea was that we must teach them fishing and construction capabilities.”¹⁵³

Should Iran’s PGM project continue unimpeded, writes Jonathan Schanzer, the Israeli Iron Dome defense system’s “total dominance may come to an end.”¹⁵⁴ Uzi Rubin notes that in the era of PGMs, Iron Dome and other forms of “active defense” will be “necessary but insufficient.” Rubin believes that through a combination of precision and sheer volume, Hezbollah’s arsenal could spell trouble for Israeli defenses, as the terror group could mix PGMs into a volley of rocket fire, hoping Iron Dome will prioritize the lesser threats from unguided projectiles.¹⁵⁵ Increasingly, Iranian officials are wagering that PGMs will render Israel unable to win a war with Hezbollah.¹⁵⁶ Overall, the more precise such projectiles, the less restraint Iran and its proxies may feel against Israel or in the service of Tehran’s regional vision.

Shiite Militia Groups (SMGs) in Iraq

In August 2018, press reports claimed that Tehran had proliferated Fateh-110 and Zulfiqar solid-propellant SRBMs to proxies in Iraq, along with several launchers.¹⁵⁷ The Islamic Republic uses Iraq for strategic depth, moving select munitions into Iraqi territory to increase their range and mask Iran’s hand in their potential use. In 2021, for example, Iran-backed militias in Iraq launched drones at Saudi Arabia.¹⁵⁸

The SRBM transfers also provide Iraqi militias with an opportunity to train on new systems. Reuters reported that unnamed Iranian officials said the transfers were part of a project to develop missiles for militias.¹⁵⁹ The report further noted the presence of missile factories in at least two different parts of Iraq. In December 2019, The New York Times confirmed the SRBM transfers had taken place,¹⁶⁰ and were intended to augment the unguided rocket and mortar capabilities of Shiite militias in Iraq. Improving the military capabilities of Iran-backed militias such as Kataib Hezbollah could also lead to political gains for these groups.¹⁶¹

Other Areas?

There is concern that a combination of diminishing international restrictions and increasing missile capabilities and risk tolerance will encourage Iranian ballistic missile proliferation to jurisdictions outside the Middle East. In mid-October, The Washington Post reported Iran would send additional drones to Russia for use against Ukraine as well as ballistic missiles to include SRBMs like the Fateh-110 and the Zulfiqar.¹⁶² Reportedly, the Russians sought their improved accuracy.¹⁶³ The transfer would mark the most significant missile transfer by Iran onto European soil and the second instance of Iranian conventional weapons proliferation to Russia. As of December 2022, no such transfer has been reported.¹⁶⁴

Battlefield Use

“I am Iran’s guardian,”¹⁶⁵ read a large billboard in Tehran’s Vali Asr Square after Iranian ballistic missile strikes against ISIS in Syria in 2017.¹⁶⁶ Accompanying the text was the image of a man wearing an IRGC uniform, with missiles being launched from his hand. After a near two-decade lull, the Islamic Republic had openly fired ballistic missiles from its own territory at an adversary.

Aforementioned IRGC missile launch billboard in Tehran (Twitter/هواداران پرسپولیس)

As of December 2022, Iran has conducted at least 13 ballistic missile operations from its territory since the end of the Iran-Iraq War.¹⁶⁷ In the first five (which occurred between 1994 and 2001), Iran fired Scuds at the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian dissident organization in Iraq, in retaliation for alleged MEK attacks.¹⁶⁸ How much publicity the regime wished to shed on those strikes remains unknown. The next eight strikes (which occurred between 2017 and 2022) featured more precise, shorter-range, and domestically produced systems targeting ISIS terrorists in Syria, Kurdish opposition groups in Iraq, U.S. forces in Iraq, and other Kurdish civilian targets in northern Iraq. Iran described most, if not all, of these strikes as retaliatory.

Table 2: Iranian Military Operations Featuring Ballistic Missiles Since the Iran-Iraq War¹⁶⁹

Iranian ballistic missile strike on Al-Asad base in Iraq, January 8, 2020. (Stripes via U.S. Central Command)

Iran’s missile operations are proof that Tehran possesses the ability to punish adversaries using its most prized weapons as well as the commensurate will to overtly launch these weapons from Iranian territory at enemy targets. This willingness contrasts with other covert elements of Tehran’s security policy. Moreover, Tehran may be conducting more missile strikes because it understands American trepidation over Iran’s growing missile force, a point Khamenei underscored while meeting with IRGC commanders after the 2017 Iranian missile strike in Syria.¹⁹⁴ While the strikes from 2017 onward were made possible by Iran’s increasingly precise shorter-range missiles,¹⁹⁵ they were also enabled by the availability of un-defended targets, meaning the regime has yet to employ its most precise ballistic missiles directly against top-tier missile defense assets.¹⁹⁶

Collectively, recent Iranian ballistic missile operations offer at least five lessons:

1. Tehran stresses the primacy of deterrence by punishment. As Khamenei stated in 2018, “The enemy knows that if they hit one, they will receive 10.”¹⁹⁷ The Islamic Republic frames missile strikes as punishment that any potential aggressor would incur. It also helps to refine a message Iranian leaders conveyed for at least two decades: There is no limited war option with Iran. Khamenei has threatened this by saying, “the era of hit and run is over… your leg will become stuck and we will pursue [you].”¹⁹⁸ In January 2020, when officials promised a “hard revenge” for the killing of IRGC-QF chief Qassem Soleimani,¹⁹⁹ their weapon of choice was ballistic missiles.²⁰⁰
2. Iran’s framing of retaliation matters. Iran’s portrayal of missile strikes as purely retaliatory is central to the regime’s revolutionary ethos, which frames the Islamic Republic as innocent, under constant attack, and needing robust defense capabilities to safeguard the Revolution. After the three Iranian missile strikes in 2017-2018, Khamenei is reported to have sought that Iranian retaliation not harm “regular and non-military people.”²⁰¹ This emphasis on self-defense and avoiding civilian casualties colors Iran’s weapon selection, since less precise projectiles might miss their target completely, embarrass the regime, and undermine the rationale for retaliation. Moreover, if Iran portrays itself as responding to an attack, Iranian officials will seek to maintain public support by describing foreign aggression as the root of the conflict while ignoring Iranian provocations that may have actually led to the attack.²⁰²
3. Tehran uses missile strikes to communicate to both domestic and foreign audiences. Iranian officials believe their missiles convey “a very decisive message” to Tehran’s adversaries,²⁰³ who draw important conclusions from Iran’s missile strikes.²⁰⁴ To foreign audiences, the retaliatory missile strikes are designed to deter any would-be aggressors by conveying Tehran’s political resolve, military strength, and, more recently, risk tolerance. Following Iran’s 2018 strike on ISIS in eastern Syria, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council noted the operation also sent a message to America, as the missiles struck within three miles of U.S. forces.²⁰⁵ Domestically, regime officials want both the elite and the general public to believe that the Islamic Republic is strong²⁰⁶ and that Tehran’s adversaries cannot pressure it into changing course. As Hajizadeh declared after a 2017 Iranian missile operation launched in retaliation for ISIS attacks inside Iran, “We responded to the fireworks of takfiri terrorists with missiles.”²⁰⁷ Hajizadeh echoed this message in 2018, claiming Iran responded “with missiles” to ISIS “bullets.”²⁰⁸
4. Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities have improved, but their military effectiveness varies. Iran’s January 2020 precision strikes against the Al-Asad base in Iraq shocked much of the world.²⁰⁹ Although the United States confirmed that no American service members were killed, the regime claimed to have struck America’s “command [and] control center” in Iraq.²¹⁰ Through the attack, regime officials conveyed an advanced capability that even U.S. military officials acknowledged.²¹¹
   However, Iran’s precision-strike revolution should not be confused with consistent performance. Everything from missile crew training to proper target selection to pre-strike intelligence collection can determine the success of an attack, not to mention the individual missile’s functionality. For example, Israeli observers have noted that during Iran’s 2017 strike on Syria, just one of the five Zulfiqar missiles hit its target, while the other four landed in the desert.²¹² Conversely, during its 2018 strike on Kurdish dissidents in northern Iraq, Iran employed a Fateh-110B and fared significantly better. The next strike, against ISIS in eastern Syria in 2018, featured a combined operation employing the modified Qiam with finlets, the Zulfiqar SRBM, and armed drones.²¹³ That operation apparently found more success than Iran’s 2017 strike in eastern Syria,²¹⁴ with Tehran claiming that 40 ISIS terrorists were killed.²¹⁵ And in 2022, Iran attacked northern Iraq several times, once in the spring and three times in the fall. Each time, it struck ostensibly civilian targets. Of note, Iran’s IRGC Ground-Forces (IRGC-GF), rather than the IRGC-AF, conducted the latter three operations, which for the first time featured CRBMs rather than SRBMs. Regardless of the unit or missile class, the military effectiveness of Iran’s ballistic missiles remains a toss-up but will likely improve significantly over the medium-to-long term.
5. Tehran’s own conclusions matter more than Washington’s. Objectively, the Islamic Republic lucked out by not killing any Americans in its January 2020 ballistic missile strikes in Iraq. American deaths likely would have forced the United States to respond militarily.²¹⁶ But this is not the lesson Tehran took away. A three-part IRIB documentary from 2021 called “Deterrent” asserted that Iranian missile power deterred U.S. retaliation. At the end of that documentary, Hajizadeh argued that Iran had bested its militarily superior foe thanks to Tehran’s willingness to use its power, drawing a sharp distinction between will and capability.²¹⁷ This increased willingness to use ballistic missiles likely drove Tehran to employ the weapon again in March 2022. Iran allegedly responded to an Israeli threat against Iran from Iraqi territory but ended up striking the home of a Kurdish oil tycoon near Erbil.²¹⁸
   The January 2020 attack marked the first time Iran had conducted a ballistic missile strike against U.S. forces, signaling an increased comfort with direct rather than proxy warfare against a more powerful adversary. America’s previous failure to respond kinetically to Iranian regional escalation may have inadvertently signaled that Washington lacks the will to retaliate. The absence of a U.S. response to Iran’s January 2020 attack likely entrenched this perception: As Hajizadeh said in the aftermath of the strike, “not one bullet was fired towards our missiles.”²¹⁹ Such a perception appears to be lowering the threshold for overt Iranian aggression using ballistic missiles. Indeed, in late September 2022, the IRGC-GF launched a reported 73 CRBMs from a base in northwestern Iran at Iraqi Kurdistan.²²⁰ The attack killed 13 persons, including one U.S. citizen.²²¹ This is the largest reported Iranian missile operation in at least two decades and marks the first known instance in which a U.S. citizen died in an Iranian ballistic missile attack. To date the U.S. has not responded kinetically.

Ballistic Missile Basics

Ballistic missiles are armed projectiles equipped with guidance systems,²²² whereas unguided armed projectiles are classified as rockets. Ballistic missiles can use liquid or solid fuel for propulsion, and both types can be found in the Iranian arsenal. Ballistic missiles differ from cruise missiles (which fall outside the scope of this study) in terms of flightpath, altitude, and engine or motor. While ballistic missiles follow a parabolic flightpath, cruise missiles fly low and parallel to the earth. Depending on their range and if they were fired on a lofted trajectory, ballistic missiles can follow an endoatmospheric or exoatmospheric flightpath. Cruise missiles stay within the atmosphere and use an air-breathing engine (often a turbojet or turbofan, but for significantly higher speeds, a ramjet) for propulsion.

Iran has an evolving land-attack cruise missile (LACM) capability as well as a significant anti-ship cruise missile (ASCM) capability. Cruise and ballistic missiles carry conventional (high-explosive) or unconventional (nuclear, chemical, or biological) payloads. Iran also has other types of ballistic missiles that are not surface-to-surface missiles (SSMs), such as anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs), which are designed for naval targets but follow a ballistic trajectory.²²³

Some ballistic missiles can carry separating warheads, which detach from the missile’s body during flight. These warheads contrast with non-separating warheads, which make an easier target for missile defenses. Ballistic missile warheads can be equipped with unitary or cluster munitions. (The latter munitions shower the targeted area with bomblets prior to impact.) Iran has ballistic missiles that can be outfitted with all of the above.²²⁴

Range is another important metric. This report employs range definitions used by the U.S. government: CRBMs can travel up to 300 kilometers. SRBMs travel between 300 and 1,000 kilometers. MRBMs travel between 1,000 and 3,000 kilometers. IRBMs travel between 3,000 and 5,500 kilometers. Finally, ICBMs travel beyond 5,500 kilometers.²²⁵

Precision is another measure to track. A missile’s precision is assessed through its circular-error probable (CEP), a calculated radius within which roughly half of all strikes will fall. The smaller the CEP, the more precise the missile and the more useful it is as a battlefield weapon. By way of example, the Scud-B, which Iraq and Iran fired at one another during the Iran-Iraq War,²²⁶ has a CEP of 450 meters.²²⁷ Conversely, the Fateh family of missiles used in more recent Iranian military operations reportedly has a CEP of 10 meters.²²⁸

Organizing Iran’s Ballistic Missiles

There are various ways to group Iran’s ballistic missiles. Some scholars divide them based on class, which prioritizes range. Others have focused on missile family, clustering systems based on their progenitor. Still others divide Iran’s arsenal based on propellant or chronology of development. It is also possible to divide Iran’s missiles by mission or by whether they meet the MTCR understanding of a “nuclear-capable” system. There is no right or wrong way. This report employs a combination of these approaches. Appendix B describes in detail every known ballistic missile in the Iranian arsenal designed for surface-to-surface use, while Table 3 lists those munitions and provides relevant data about each system, drawing on Persian-language reporting. The table and appendix both omit reference to a November 2022 claim by Iranian officials about having built a hypersonic ballistic missile due to the lack of any detail or image.²²⁹

Table 3: Known Iranian Ballistic Missiles²³⁰

Toward Longer-Range Capabilities: Space/Satellite-Launch Vehicles

In 2011, several Iranian military officials said the Islamic Republic would not produce missiles with a range of over 2,000 kilometers.²⁵⁸ Khamenei himself reportedly called for that range limit.²⁵⁹ Such an injunction would theoretically inhibit Iran from developing IRBMs or ICBMs and thus lock in Tehran’s existing MRBM and SRBM arsenal. Many analysts welcomed the news of Tehran’s voluntary range cap even though it was a political rather than a legal or technical prohibition.

However, this cap did not end Iran’s quest for longer-range missiles. The regime’s space program, including its SLV production and testing, offers another pathway, but under a civilian guise. Tehran has long employed a “civilian” or scientific rationale to justify other security pursuits, like its nuclear program, which always had military dimensions.

As noted earlier, the regime’s quest for status and recognition is a key driver of its military capabilities. Along with a strategy of nuclear hedging, this “status discrepancy,” as Shahram Chubin notes, “accounts for Iran’s space ambitions.”²⁶⁰ Tehran genuinely covets the respect afforded to nations that can put satellites into orbit and develop other space-based capabilities. Iran frames scientific accomplishment, particularly while under sanctions, as the fruits of its defiance against perceived Western attempts to impede Iranian power. But this alone does not define the Islamic Republic’s interest in SLVs.

According to the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, progress on SLVs can also “aid Iran’s development of longer-range ballistic missiles because SLVs use inherently similar technologies.”²⁶¹ Likewise, a 2017 report by the U.S. National Air and Space Intelligence Center said, “Tehran’s desire to have a strategic counter to the United States could drive it to field an ICBM. Progress in Iran’s space program could shorten a pathway to an ICBM.”²⁶² The 2020 version of the report reiterated that assessment.²⁶³ SLV production and testing teach countries about thrust, staging, and boosters for carrier rockets that can be reconfigured as ICBMs. SLVs and long-range missiles both require guidance systems (to varying degrees) as well as telemetry equipment to inform ground-based crews about mid-flight changes in the projectile’s speed or temperature.

Yet while SLVs share many similarities with ICBMs, they do have differences,²⁶⁴ such as contrasting trajectories based on the engines or motors employed in each projectile.²⁶⁵ More importantly, ICBMs require ablative coatings and heat shields that enable their RVs to re-enter the atmosphere and deliver their payload to the target. SLVs, on the other hand, do not use RVs. As of this writing, the Islamic Republic does not have an ICBM but has tested several different types of SLVs, five of which deserve attention here.

The first two SLVs, the Safir and Simorgh, rely on liquid-propellant engines, are based on the Shahab-3/Nodong-A MRBM, and have achieved mixed results in putting satellites into low-Earth orbit (LEO). Iran first tested the Safir in 2008. The Safir utilizes the Ghadr-1 (which is a Shahab-3 variant) for its first stage and has a smaller second stage.²⁶⁶ The Safir has been used to deliver almost all of Iran’s satellites that remain in LEO. Between 2006 and 2013, however, Iran relied on another liquid-propellant SLV known as the Kavoshgar sounding rocket to put satellites into LEO. While one class of Kavoshgar rockets is reportedly based on the Shahab-3,²⁶⁷ there are several earlier versions modeled on artillery rockets.²⁶⁸ Some of these Kavoshgar rockets continue to be used to support the Iranian space program. In October 2022, for example, Iran used an older Kavoshgar carrier rocket²⁶⁹ to launch an orbital transfer block named the Saman, presumably to function as a tug between satellites in the future.²⁷⁰

Conversely, the Simorgh, which Iran first unveiled in 2010 but tested in 2016, has failed to put a satellite into orbit.²⁷¹ Despite these failures, Iran will likely continue to test the Simorgh, which is only one of several platforms associated with Iran’s large liquid-propellant SLV program run by the Iranian Space Agency (ISA). These include the prospective²⁷² Sarir SLV at 35 meters long and 2.4 meters in diameter,²⁷³ which Tehran hopes will one day put a one-ton payload into a 1,000-kilometer orbit. Also under development is the Soroush SLV, with a diameter of 4 meters,²⁷⁴ which will allegedly be able to put a 15-ton payload into a 300-kilometer orbit.²⁷⁵

Compared to the Safir, the Simorgh is a larger, two-stage SLV that reportedly relies on four Shahab-3 engines for its first stage. Analysts have noted these engines are similar to the North Korean three-stage Unha carrier rocket.²⁷⁶ The U.S. Treasury Department revealed in 2016 that Iranian defense contractors from the Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group (SHIG)²⁷⁷ — a subsidiary of Iran’s Aerospace Industries Organization (AIO),²⁷⁸ which in turn is a subsidiary of Iran’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL)²⁷⁹ — worked with Pyongyang on an 80-ton rocket booster.²⁸⁰ SHIG officials previously attended the launch of the Unha rocket in North Korea in 2012.²⁸¹ The UN Panel of Experts on North Korea raised these concerns about SLV cooperation in a March 2021 report.²⁸²

In a recent letter to the UN secretary general, Israeli officials raised a similar issue related to “unusual activity” from December 2021 that they assessed was “connected to the development of a new, 80-ton thrust liquid propellant engine that was tested at the location. This type of engine could be used for future satellite launch vehicles and could potentially be implemented in intercontinental ballistic missile projects.”²⁸³ Open-source experts and imagery analysts continue to raise concerns over Iranian liquid-propellent engine testing, noting that Tehran likely engaged in a long-range or potential liquid-propellant engine test between late May and early June of 2022.²⁸⁴ The location of the test, a facility in Khojir, is believed to be overseen by SHIG.

The other three SLVs tested by Iran, the Qased and the Zuljanah, both employ solid-propellant in at least one stage and are therefore more worrisome. As exemplified by India, nations driven by status and security considerations have used solid-propellant SLVs, and space programs more generally, to develop ICBMs.²⁸⁵

Although Iranian officials claim that Tehran is committed to the “peaceful use of space,”²⁸⁶ the IRGC-AF deputy commander admitted otherwise with reference to Iran’s solid-propellant program. Hassan Tehrani-Moghadam, who led the IRGC’s missile force during the Iran-Iraq War, reportedly chose to work on SLVs and solid-propellants once limitations were placed on advancing Iran’s missile range so as “to keep this path moving forward.”²⁸⁷ Lest anyone think this work was unauthorized, Iran’s supreme leader reportedly termed it a “clear path.”²⁸⁸ Tellingly, after his death, Tehrani-Moghadam’s brother alleged that Hassan’s final project was “related to an intercontinental ballistic missile and was in the final stages.”²⁸⁹

In April 2020, the IRGC-AF conducted a surprise launch of a three-stage SLV called the Qased. The SLV’s second stage utilized the recently unveiled Salman solid-propellant motor, which in February 2020 was shown to have thrust-vectoring capabilities, a sign of advancing Iranian rocketry. The motor also indicates a desire to move toward longer-range missile development. The Salman is the first Iranian motor with this capability and is produced by the IRGC-RSSJO,²⁹⁰ which supports Iranian missile research and development.²⁹¹ In February 2022, the IRGC unveiled a new, much larger solid-propellant motor called the Ra’afe,²⁹² also with thrust-vectoring capabilities. The Ra’afe is estimated to be 12.5 tons, 9 meters long, and 1.25 meters in diameter²⁹³ and can reportedly generate 68 tons of thrust.²⁹⁴ An ultra-hardline Iranian daily heralded the Ra’afe with the following headline: “5,000 Kilometer Missiles Are More Within Reach Than Ever.”²⁹⁵ For his part, the IRGC-AF commander used the Ra’afe’ unveiling to claim that Iran could build an all solid-propellant SLV by 2023.²⁹⁶

According to the IRGC-AF chief, the Qased SLV used a liquid first stage simply for cost-saving purposes, and Iran is close to developing a fully solid-propellant SLV.²⁹⁷ The combination of a functioning solid-propellant motor, a surprise launch,²⁹⁸ the use of a transporter-erector launcher (TEL) rather than a launch pad with a gantry tower,²⁹⁹ and the involvement of the IRGC-AF rather than the ISA³⁰⁰ raises worries about the direction of IRGC-AF’s parallel solid-propellant space program.³⁰¹

In February 2021, Iran revealed video footage of a new three-stage solid-propellant SLV called the Zuljanah, which the regime tested without a satellite.³⁰² Two of its three stages employed solid-propellant motors, but they were not reported to be the Salman. Reportedly, the Zuljanah weighs 52 tons and is 25.5 meters long and 1.5 meters in diameter. It can generate 75 tons of thrust.³⁰³

While the ISA, not the IRGC, carried out the Zuljanah test, the SLV’s body bore the AIO logo, also seen on the Safir and Simorgh SLVs. This should be cause for concern, as AIO is Iran’s chief entity responsible for missile production, and its logo appears on numerous solid-propellant platforms, such as variants of the Fateh SRBM and the Sejjil MRBM.

Given that Iran aims to put more satellites into orbit and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has promised to reinvigorate and fully fund Iran’s space program,³⁰⁴ SLVs will remain a growth industry for the regime. Already, the head of the ISA has promised more launches before the end of the Iranian calendar year 1401, which ends in March 2023.³⁰⁵

Table 4: Select SLVs Tested by Iran

While Iran would have to make considerable strides in RV technology, engine or motor development, control, and guidance to develop a fully functioning ICBM, the Simorgh SLV can provide Tehran with a pathway to at least an IRBM capability if reconfigured. A more effective route to ICBMs for Tehran, however, would be through the Qased or Zuljanah SLV, both of which can serve as the bedrock for an all solid-propellant system, as Iran previously hinted. Potentially, Iran could try to mix and match its solid-propellant motors in SLVs at different stages for an altogether new system.

In November 2022, Iran revealed its interest precisely in this option when the IRGC-AF’s space division made good on an earlier promise by the IRGC-AF to launch a new and hitherto unseen SLV named the Qa’em.³¹⁹ On November 5, the IRGC-AF engaged in a suborbital launch of the Qa’em-100, billed as a three-stage solid-propellant SLV. The IRGC-AF Space Force commander claimed that the SLV was tested without its upper second and third stages because it previously tested them on the hybrid Qased SLV.³²⁰ The successful test of the Ra’afe — a large solid-propellant motor first unveiled and static tested in January 2022 — in the Qa’em as its first stage motor, development of smaller solid-propellant motors, as well as promise to develop more Qa’em variants all point towards the IRGC’s success in developing an all solid-propellant SLV.

While the IRGC-AF commander has since stated that the Qa’em-100 would be used to place the Nahid satellite into orbit by the end of the Iranian calendar year (March 2023),³²¹ the Qa’em program is also a qualitative leap forward for Tehran’s long-range strike capabilities. One Iranian outlet has already called the Qa’em “in reality, a tactical intercontinental missile.”³²² As the program expands, these advancements should be seen for what they are: an ICBM effort.

Notably, the Qa’em bears the same name of the projectile Tehrani-Moghadam, the founder of Iran’s missile program, was working on at the time of his death.³²³ The TEL for the Qa’em’s launch at Shahroud also bore a large poster of Tehrani-Moghadam, further linking the projects.³²⁴ Should this be the same system, too, it would serve as the clearest indication to date of Iran using its space program to further its military capabilities and develop long-range strike platforms.

Wherein Lies the Threat?

The more Iran improves its ballistic missile arsenal, the greater the incentive for the regime to use these weapons. When speaking in 2020 about the range of Iran’s missiles and the proximity of American military installations to Iran, Hajizadeh likened the vulnerability of these facilities to being “like meat under teeth.”³²⁵ Elsewhere, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, now Iran’s foreign minister and previously a special advisor to the speaker of the Iranian parliament, has contrasted Iran’s willingness to use its missiles with the risk-averse behavior of its pro-American neighbors, which he mocked as “having turned into storage depots of advanced Western weapons.”³²⁶

More capable missiles will add greater credence to Iranian threats and coercive diplomacy in the region, which in turn, might further tempt Tehran towards overt military force to accomplish its aims. This is especially true for improvements in missile precision, which stands to offer the regime more battlefield-ready weapons.³²⁷

But even if an increase in capability does not directly yield a decrease in the threshold for their use, a more robust missile force — coupled with the regime’s perception that missiles deter enemies — may lead Iran to take more risks when pursuing its regional security strategy. In so doing, Tehran may misread an adversary’s red lines for the use of force, employ or transfer a certain weapon or technology, and beget an unintended war.

Below are seven areas where the Islamic Republic’s ballistic missile program is expected to improve in the medium term.

Precision: Iran’s ballistic missiles have undergone a revolution in precision from their Scud-based origins. According to the commander of Iran’s IRGC-AF, Khamenei sought to improve the precision of Iran’s missile force.³²⁸ “I want precision from you” was how Amir-Ali Hajizadeh recalled his charge from Khamenei in 2009.³²⁹ Since then, the regime has unveiled numerous variants of the Fateh-110 SRBM, Iran’s most precise missile family. Tehran has used these platforms in recent military operations (2017-2022), achieving better results than expected. Meanwhile, Tehran is improving the precision of its proxies’ rocket forces by providing guidance and control technology to turn older rockets into precision weapons. The more precise the missiles, the greater their ability to deter attacks and strike Iran’s adversaries in the region.

Reliability: Missiles must perform under difficult conditions, including but not limited to inclement weather. Given the size and age of Iran’s arsenal, frequent test launches from a variety of locations can ensure reliability. Starting in mid-2018, Iranian outlets stopped publicizing most individual missile launches.³³⁰ This shift can imply that the rationale behind Iran’s ongoing missile launches has more to do with maintaining the military utility and readiness of Iran’s large missile arsenal than using tests to signal resolve.

Patterns of Force Employment: Recent Iranian military drills (such as Great Prophet 15 and 17) have seen employment of loitering munitions, also known as suicide or kamikaze drones, against targets that were subject to ballistic missile attacks.³³¹ In October 2018, the IRGC-AF engaged in a combined arms operations using SRBMs and Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs) against Islamic State targets in eastern Syria.³³² Iran’s embrace of training for combined arms operations offers insight into how the regime may employ its ballistic missiles, in the future.³³³

Warheads: Different warhead types and shapes can suggest different payloads. They also reflect the regime’s efforts to make its missiles more aerodynamic and stable upon re-entry. Warhead advances can be seen with respect to separating warheads and maneuverable RVs; the latter can be found on the Qiam-2, Khorramshahr-2, and Emad missiles. Iranian warheads can be unitary or configured to carry submunition payloads.³³⁴ The diversity of warheads reflects the diversity of missions assigned to Tehran’s various missiles, as well as Iran’s progress in design and engineering. Triconic warheads have a lower radar cross-section and higher re-entry speeds. While some scholars assert that the triconic shape of the Ghadr and Qiam-1 warheads could be an indicator of their potential nuclear use, as that shape is often associated with miniaturized nuclear payloads,³³⁵ documents from the seized atomic archive indicate that Iran originally planned to put a nuclear device in the Shahab-3’s conical RV.³³⁶

Solid-Propellants: Solid-propellant missiles require less preparation time prior to launch and are more road mobile than liquid-fuel missiles. These advantages make solid-propellant missiles less susceptible to pre-emptive, or “left-of-launch,” strikes.³³⁷ Iran has made significant progress on solid-fuel systems, as seen in variants of its Fateh-family missiles and in its production of solid-propellant motors for the Qased and Zuljanah SLVs. Iranian officials have commented on the role shorter-range solid-propellant systems will play in phasing out their Scud-based SRBMs, though it is unclear if Tehran is phasing out the latter because of inferior precision and age or because of the challenge of producing liquid-fuel motors.

Range: Iran’s SLV program offers Tehran ways to skirt the self-imposed 2,000-kilometer range cap and work towards developing an IRBM and ICBM capability that could one day be used to threaten the European continent or U.S. homeland. Years of reverse-engineering missiles and producing various missile classes have also taught Iran about stretching airframes and building them with lighter composite materials to increase missile range. The same applies to the production of composite solid-propellant motors, such as the Ra’ad-500. A recent Fateh-family derivate, the Kheibar Shekan, is more proof of the regime’s investment in various solid-propellant MRBM platforms and follows the unveiling of the Shahid Haj Qassem MRBM. By lightening the warhead, Iran has reportedly increased the range of the Khorramshahr MRBM to a potentially IRBM threshold weapon.³³⁸

Survivability and Mobility: Most, if not all, of Iran’s SRBMs and MRBMs are mobile, which increases survivability. The regime also continues to develop new underground missile depots complete with transportation and firing systems, such as a new missile train that fires Emad missiles on an automatic clip, as unveiled in November 2020.³³⁹ Iran is also developing subterranean missile production³⁴⁰ and storage centers.³⁴¹ These underground missile complexes are reportedly the largest in the Middle East.³⁴² In June 2020, as part of the Great Prophet 14 military drill, Iran launched its first-ever ballistic missile from underground.³⁴³

Rapid underground ballistic missile launcher with Emad MRBMs (Popular Mechanics via YouTube/IMA Media)

Outlining Acceptable End States for Missile Diplomacy

As Iranian officials have routinely made clear, Tehran refuses to negotiate over its ballistic missile program. But should Iran float certain missile restraints as part of prospective nuclear diplomacy, Washington must be able to assess the restraints’ sufficiency. The goal of any missile diplomacy should be to impose both physical and political constraints on Iranian missiles. Physical constraints might involve the destruction of certain systems. Political constraints might permit Iran to retain a certain capability but require it to curtail particular activities.⁴¹⁷

Before negotiating, Washington should be clear about its objectives. To that end, policymakers must be able to answer the following questions:

1. What limitations are both desirable and achievable vis-à-vis Iran’s missile program through diplomacy?
2. Is a trade-off between sanctions and missile capability consistent with U.S. law and national security?⁴¹⁸
3. What verification mechanisms exist or need to be created to adequately determine compliance?
4. What tools can Washington use to impact Iranian missile capabilities regardless of any missile deal?

Washington should discuss acceptable end states for Iran’s missile program with European and Middle Eastern partners, although dissonance between the European and American positions is likely to persist.

Ahead of discussions, Washington should think through the following eight challenges:

• Framework: The framework for any potential negotiations matters greatly. For example, trying to cover all “nuclear-capable” systems as defined by the MTCR, could cover nearly all of Iran’s arsenal, making diplomacy and verification more challenging. Conversely, a metric too narrow, such as the language found in Annex B of UNSCR 2231, would render diplomacy ineffective. The Washington therefore needs a new framework that accounts for a missile’s age, historical use, range, precision, or other indicators.⁴¹⁹
• Baseline: Significant uncertainties about the size, scope, and location of Iran’s missiles and related infrastructure affect the types of limitations needed and their verifiability. To verify its compliance with any prospective agreement limiting the size of Iran’s arsenal, Tehran should have to declare its entire missile inventory. There are some international treaties that offer a precedent for or means of enforcing this requirement, such as the now-defunct Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. Attempting to restrict Iran’s missile arsenal without better understanding its current size and Tehran’s future ambitions would make verification next to impossible.
• Range Limit: The 2,000 kilometer-range cap floated by Iran does not sufficiently address the current Iranian missile threat given that shorter-range systems can threaten U.S. interests in the region. Absent an agreement that stems Iran’s use of SLV technology to grow its long-range strike capabilities, this upper-tier range cap leaves open a path to nuclear weapons delivery. A shorter-range limit, coupled with permanent restrictions on payload, deployment, and SLV use, could constrain the Iranian missile threat.
• SLV Challenge: SLVs are one way Tehran can continue to circumvent Western efforts to hinder its development of long-range strike capabilities. India benefited from first developing SLVs prior to ICBMs.⁴²⁰ Given that Washington has sanctioned actors involved in Iran’s liquid- and solid-propellant SLV programs, the wisest course of action would be to prohibit SLV launches altogether and, perhaps, even require the destruction of certain systems. If Tehran is permitted to retain an SLV program, it should be required to provide advance notice of SLV launches, which should be held at only one location. Moreover, as Michael Elleman has suggested, Iran could be barred from using main engines, whether employing either solid or storable-liquid propellants, “to launch satellites or space-related experiments, except for legacy systems.”⁴²¹
• Moratorium on Missile Upgrades: Most Iranian ballistic missiles are variants of older platforms. The Fateh serves as the bedrock for all of Tehran’s solid-propellant SRBMs. It is also Iran’s most upgraded and most precise missile.⁴²² Similarly, the Shahab-3 is the foundation for all the Islamic Republic’s liquid-propellant MRBMs, such as the Ghadr and Emad platforms. A moratorium on upgrades might broadly cover research, development, design, and production activity, improving the precision or reliability of existing platforms. Alternatively, the moratorium could be narrowly tailored to ban upgrades to select components, such as RVs. It could also be expanded to proscribe altogether the production of new missile systems. Admittedly, attaining such a moratorium would first require an agreed definition of what constitutes an upgrade. Verification would also be challenging given the myriad locations at which these upgrades could take place.
• Moratorium on Flight Tests and Engine/Motor Tests: Flight testing not only helps Iran project power and establish deterrence, it enables Tehran to build a more ready and reliable missile force. Similarly, static engine tests are used to develop new and improved propulsion systems. Moratoriums can be placed on both activities and can be staggered based on the capabilities of the given missile. For instance, Washington should push for a full moratorium on Iranian ballistic missile flight and engine testing until the IAEA declares Iran’s nuclear program as purely peaceful and gets adequate responses to the agency’s queries. After that, Tehran should be required to adhere to the Hague Code of Conduct Against Ballistic Missile Proliferation (HCOC), which would require advance warning for tests.
• Deployment and Readiness: IRGC Commander Hossein Salami has bragged that Iran has a “‘jungle’ of missiles … kept in tunnels, silos, and special headquarters,”⁴²³ and it has a series of missiles on standby at all times. In the event of a missile deal, the geographic deployment of Iran’s missiles will need to be agreed upon by all parties.
• Export Injunction: Iranian officials claim to have supported the missile capabilities of various proxy groups across the Middle East.⁴²⁴ Iran is the most significant foreign force behind the Houthis’ long-range strike platforms, such as the Burkan-2H SRBM and the Zolfaghar MRBM. Tehran has also proliferated missiles and rockets to Shiite militia groups in Iraq and Syria and is helping Hezbollah upgrade its rockets to PGMs. Even with stricter multilateral prohibitions in place, the Islamic Republic will not respect export prohibitions, making them challenging to attain in any agreement with Iran.

If securing a diplomatic agreement on any of these areas were not already challenging enough, verification and monitoring are where Washington will face the most trouble. Verification of constraints on Tehran’s missile program can draw upon the IAEA’s history with Iran as well as lessons from military inspections in other countries — whether under UN-mandated missions, such as the UN Special Commission in Iraq, or under bilateral treaties, such as the INF Treaty between the United States and Russia.⁴²⁵

Iranian officials remain opposed to inspections of military facilities under the auspices of nuclear verification and would likely oppose inspections related to a ballistic missile agreement. Former IRGC Commander Mohsen Rezaie said as much, positing that America would use inspections of Iranian missile bases to pass military secrets to the Israelis, among others.⁴²⁶ To an extent, public-private partnerships between Western governments and open-source intelligence analysts can facilitate some verification measures, but there remains no substitute for access to Iranian military facilities.⁴²⁷

Policy Recommendations

Unless otherwise specified, these recommendations apply to U.S. policymakers only.

Diplomatic: ⁴²⁸

• Enforce all UNSCRs related to Iranian weapons proliferation. Although multilateral enforcement of UNSCR 2231 prohibitions on Iranian arms transfers and missile tests has been lacking, there are still country-specific UNSCRs whose strict enforcement would hinder Iranian proliferation. UNSCR 2216 (2015) contains an arms embargo on the Houthi rebels.⁴²⁹ UNSCR 1701 (2006) contains an arms embargo on transfers to non-state actors in Lebanon and prohibits arms transfers without the permission of the Lebanese government.⁴³⁰

• Work with partners to resurrect the UN arms ban on Iran. Washington should work to restore and extend the UN arms ban on Iran, which lapsed in October 2020.⁴³¹ The United States should press the UN Security Council to extend the ban in perpetuity, tying it to Iran’s status as a state sponsor of terrorism. If Russia and China veto the ban, Washington should work with European allies to create a code of conduct to make their territories no-go zones for Iranian procurement.⁴³² The United States and its European allies should also threaten sanctions — such as those found in the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) — should any weapons transfers occur.⁴³³

• Press for unilateral adherence to international control regimes. Participation by Iran in international control regimes, even non-binding ones, can provide transparency. The Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) synchronizes policies related to the export of WMD delivery vehicles such as missiles.⁴³⁴ Washington should work with MTCR partners to impede Iranian efforts to procure capabilities or technology covered by Category I and Category II of the MTCR Annex. Similarly, Washington should stress the importance of having Iran adhere to the MTCR as a non-member, as Israel has,⁴³⁵ rather than join it. The Hague Code of Conduct against Ballistic Missile Proliferation (HCOC), which builds on MTCR guidelines, calls for annual declarations about missile doctrine, launches, and more.⁴³⁶ Notably, Iran has twice voted against HCOC-related resolutions at the United Nations.⁴³⁷ 

• Press for adherence to other UN missile endeavors. Two other multilateral efforts at the United Nations can help impede Iran’s missile proliferation. UNSCR 1540 (2004) prohibits states from helping non-state actors develop WMD or associated delivery vehicles.⁴³⁸ The UN Register of Conventional Arms calls on states to submit “relevant data on imports and exports of conventional arms.”⁴³⁹

• Support the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI). Created in 2003, the PSI is a global counter-proliferation effort to inhibit illicit WMD and delivery-vehicle trade around the world.⁴⁴⁰ Washington should use the PSI statement on “interdiction principles” to develop multinational interdiction forces to thwart Iran’s procurement and proliferation of MTCR Category I and II materials. Washington should simultaneously seek both to expand the PSI’s membership and to hold members accountable for reported lapses.

• Issue a missile-specific executive order. To address the Iranian missile threat, Washington thus far has relied extensively on Executive Order 13382,⁴⁴¹ which is geared toward WMD and associated delivery vehicles.⁴⁴² Given Iran’s increasing conventional missile capabilities, the administration should develop an executive order dedicated to Tehran’s missile program (or to long-range strike capabilities more broadly, including LACMs and drones). This executive order should authorize the imposition of secondary sanctions against individuals or entities that support the Islamic Republic’s development, procurement, proliferation, testing, storing, transferring, or use of missiles.

• “Snapback” UN sanctions on Iran.⁴⁴³ The Biden administration rescinded its predecessor’s unilateral attempt to restore multilateral UN sanctions on Iran’s nuclear and missile programs and military imposed by UNSCRs from 2006 to 2010.⁴⁴⁴ Rather than seeking to restore the JCPOA, collapsing the political architecture supporting the JCPOA and sunsetting military- and missile-related penalties through snapback would provide for a tougher multilateral position against Iran that the Biden administration could marshal to negotiate a better deal. A snapback of UN sanctions would also restore the permanent prohibition on Iranian ballistic missile activity, including launches.

• Press for a UN Panel of Experts for UNSCR 2231. Should the administration opt against snapback, there are other options available to increase scrutiny of Iranian ballistic missile related activity, such as through a UN Panel of Experts. Absent such a panel, Washington lacks an impartial UN body to assess claims related to violations of UNSCR 2231. UN Panels of Experts, like those focused on Yemen, North Korea, Sudan, and Mali, could offer sanctions guidance and impartial conclusions about noncompliance, thereby facilitating enforcement.

• Continue to prosecute persons who export U.S.-origin goods to Iran.⁴⁴⁵ The Department of Justice should continue to hold accountable persons who violate U.S. export control policies. Stringent penalties can help deter future violations. The administration should also make sure the Department of Commerce’s Export Enforcement Office, which supports the Department of Justice’s efforts, is fully funded, staffed, and empowered to carry out its mission.
• Make regional air and missile defense a diplomatic priority. The end of the crisis between Qatar and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states offers an opportunity to unify the GCC and integrate its members’ existing air and missile defense systems. The deployment and sharing of radars and other sensors could increase the likelihood of intercepting Iranian missiles using existing ballistic missile defense (BMD) capabilities.⁴⁴⁶
• Build multiple coalitions to address Iran’s missile threat. Europeans, for instance, prioritize stemming Iran’s longer-range missile and nuclear capabilities, whereas Middle Eastern nations harbor concerns about Iran’s more precise conventional SRBMs and drones. Other states object to Iranian procurement networks operating on their soil. Washington should leverage all of these to pressure Iran.
• Press the United Kingdom to restore its “Iran List.” With the advent of the JCPOA, the United Kingdom (then part of the European Union) dispensed with its “Iran List,”⁴⁴⁷ a directory of Iran-based entities of proliferation concern.⁴⁴⁸ Washington should press for a resurrection of the Iran List and share more names of banks, businesses, and individuals of proliferation concern for addition to the list.
• Signal a willingness to address missiles through diplomacy. While putting more pressure on Iran’s missile capabilities, Washington should clearly offer a diplomatic off-ramp if Tehran changes its behavior.
• Beware of regional arms control efforts. Just as the regime in Iran was able to win at the global negotiating table between 2013 and 2015, Tehran could use regional security talks to demand that its pro-American regional adversaries disarm before Iran reciprocates. Moreover, regional arms control conferences offer revisionist states such as Iran — whom the military balance is arrayed against — an opportunity to even the scales without guaranteeing a change of intent.
• Do not trade a 2,000 kilometer-range cap for sanctions relief. Regime officials say their missiles are subject to a voluntary range restriction of 2,000 kilometers, per a decree by the supreme leader.⁴⁴⁹ Yet those officials also stress the limitation is subject to change.⁴⁵⁰ While range caps should be part of any missile negotiations, a 2,000-kilometer prohibition, which would theoretically keep Iranian missiles away from Europe and the U.S. homeland, in exchange for sanctions relief would do nothing to address the regime’s SRBMs and MRBMs, which can target U.S. bases and allied nations in the Middle East.

Informational and Intelligence:

• Use the bully pulpit. Public diplomacy and messaging campaigns can help erode domestic and potentially elite support for the regime’s missile program and expose it as a costly liability. Washington should emphasize the following themes:
  • The quality of Iranian missiles exceeds the conventional capabilities of Iran’s neighbors.
  • Tehran’s missiles now drive insecurity and instability both in Iran and abroad. Unlike during the Iran-Iraq War, Iran’s ballistic arsenal today makes it the aggressor.
  • Failed missile and SLV tests indicate a waste of the Iranian population’s money and other resources.
  • Iran’s ongoing illicit procurement activity means that after four decades and immense costs, the Islamic Republic’s missile program is still not self-sufficient.
• Use satellite surveillance and related capabilities to publicize Iranian missile launches. Starting in late 2018, Iranian press outlets began to slow their coverage of Iranian missile tests, making it harder to develop a precise assessment of Tehran’s missile program. Every missile test is an opportunity for Washington to put the spotlight on the Iranian missile program and impose additional sanctions.
• Encourage defections from Iran’s missile program. Washington should explore the prospect of targeted campaigns against persons involved in the procurement, production, or proliferation of ballistic missiles or missile technology to promote defection.

• Task the intelligence community with reporting on Iran-North Korea missile cooperation.⁴⁵¹ While there is open-source material on this cooperation,⁴⁵² it is primarily historical in nature, and the directions of future technology flows are debated by experts.⁴⁵³ Washington should expose the ongoing cooperation between these two rogue regimes to increase the efficacy of existing international sanctions programs against both countries.

• Disrupt Iranian missile technology procurement networks. In 2019, The New York Times revealed that the Trump administration had “accelerated a secret American program” begun during the George W. Bush administration “to sabotage Iran’s missiles and rockets.”⁴⁵⁴ Such efforts should continue, especially given the major role that actors linked to the IRGC and Iran’s defense industry play in illicit procurement networks.

• Back foreign efforts to sabotage Tehran’s missile program. The summer of 2020 witnessed several large-scale acts of sabotage across facilities relevant to Iran’s nuclear program,⁴⁵⁵ including cyber-enabled sabotage against a gas storage facility tied to Iran’s missile program.⁴⁵⁶ Washington should consider the prospects of supporting such efforts with suitable partners.

Military:

• Discourage GCC states from purchasing air and missile defenses from America’s near-peer competitors. Russia has tried to persuade Saudi Arabia, Qatar,⁴⁵⁷ and Bahrain to acquire the S-400 SAM system.⁴⁵⁸ That would undermine attempts to create an integrated regional air and missile defense architecture focused on the threat from Iran. The best way to avoid purchases of Russian systems is to make American systems available for purchase.

• Develop a regional air and missile defense architecture benefitting the United States and its partners. Connecting sensors and shooters and upgrading missile detection capabilities across the GCC would be a pivotal step toward deterring and defeating Iranian missile and drone attacks. Once partners field modernized systems, the Pentagon can connect them to existing American air and missile defense assets, with the aim of conducting joint missile defense exercises simulating Iranian attacks. Doing so would reduce the burden on American missile defense assets.

• Continue arms sales to regional partners. Depriving partners of much needed capabilities would embolden Iran and its proxies and endanger common interests. The United States should also back its foreign military sales programs with robust training and maintenance packages.

• Increase U.S.-GCC and U.S.-Israel military exercises. Exercises improve the readiness and interoperability of the participating militaries and send a deterrent message to Iran. For example, Abu Dhabi should invite Israel to participate in the next UAE-U.S. Iron Union exercise, which would help all three nations defend against missile and drone threats.⁴⁵⁹

• Help GCC states and Israel cooperate on missile defense. Israel has one of the best multilayered air and missile defense networks in the world. America’s Arab partners in the Persian Gulf may be interested in export versions of Israeli systems to counter Tehran’s missiles. While Israel may be sensitive about sharing this technology, even exploratory talks may deepen the goodwill created by the Abraham Accords. This goodwill could enable the United States, Israel, and select GCC countries to synchronize their early warning assets now that Israel has shifted to U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility.⁴⁶⁰

• Continue to interdict Iranian weapons traveling by land, sea, and air. The United States and its partners should more effectively use multinational constructs to coordinate interdictions of missiles and missile-technology to regional conflict zones such as Yemen.⁴⁶¹

• Support base hardening.⁴⁶² Hardening U.S. and partner military bases may help persuade Tehran it cannot accomplish its objectives using missiles. Additional hardening is imperative given the number of military facilities in the Middle East within range of Tehran’s missiles and drones.⁴⁶³

• Upgrade missile defenses at U.S. bases in the region. In January 2020, Tehran fired more than a dozen ballistic missiles at Iraqi bases housing American troops, which were not protected by missile defenses.⁴⁶⁴ While the U.S. military’s insufficient missile defense capacity precludes protection of every installation, major American bases in the Middle East should always have the best missile, rocket, and mortar protection available.

• Develop and field left-of-launch (LoL) missile defeat capabilities. Cyber or electronic warfare tools may enable the United States to defeat Iranian missile attacks before they are launched. Effective missile defenses should include both LoL and intercept capabilities. Congress should fully fund DoD LoL science and technology as well as research, development, testing, and evaluation.⁴⁶⁵

• Support U.S. space-based early warning capabilities. U.S. satellites helped save lives through detection and early warning before and during the January 2020 Iranian missile attack in Iraq, giving U.S. troops time to take cover. ⁴⁶⁶ These capabilities are vital components of missile defense.

• Continue developing GPS jamming capabilities.⁴⁶⁷ GPS jammers can impede the guidance systems of Iran and its proxies’ missiles to the extent they rely on GPS updates. This could be key to neutralizing the growing PGM threat.

• Support the U.S. Army’s efforts to field a next-generation Indirect Fire Protection Capability (IFPC).⁴⁶⁸ The U.S. Army is developing an urgently needed IFPC to counter threats ranging from subsonic cruise missiles to drones, rockets, and mortars.⁴⁶⁹ Congress should fully support the Army’s IFPC effort.

• Fund the Missile Defense Agency and the Navy’s joint Aegis BMD program.⁴⁷⁰ Full funding can ensure this program reaches its goal of 65 ships supporting global BMD demands by 2025. Aegis can also help deter longer-range Iranian missile ambitions through its land-based variant, Aegis Ashore. Aegis Ashore is part of the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA) initiative and has two locations in Europe: Romania and Poland. Reportedly, the operation of the site in Poland was delayed and will not come online until 2023. In the Middle East, U.S. deterrence is bolstered by Aegis-equipped destroyers, which can track and eliminate a range of ballistic missile threats.⁴⁷¹

• Adapt homeland missile defense to a potential Iranian ICBM threat. U.S. homeland missile defenses are currently geared toward defending against North Korean ICBMs. To prepare for a prospective Iranian ICBM, Washington could deploy another long-range discrimination radar abroad to track the Iranian missile threat, increase U.S. space-based missile detection capabilities, improve boost-phase intercept capabilities, and consider adding another ground-based midcourse defense site on U.S. soil. The administration should also consider employing the SM-3 IIA interceptor, which successfully shot down an ICBM from an Aegis-enabled destroyer as part of a test.⁴⁷²
• Pursue deterrence by punishment, not just denial, of Iranian objectives.⁴⁷³ Signaling U.S. capability and willingness to retaliate against a wide array of Iranian interests in the aftermath of Iranian or Iran-backed escalation can help deter future provocations. To signal this capability and will, Washington should expedite the testing and deployment of select Army ground-based precision-fire systems, slated for delivery by 2023, particularly the Precision Strike Missile.⁴⁷⁴ Ground-based long-range precision-strike systems can reduce the burden on U.S. Navy and Air Force assets in the region. Washington should also lower the threshold for using force against Iran-backed militias in places such as Iraq and Syria and respond more consistently to Iran-backed attacks from where they originate.

Economic and Financial:

• Defend global missile sanctions against Iran. After October 2023, the United States and its Western allies will have divergent missile sanctions policies toward Iran regardless of U.S. policy on the JCPOA. Washington should encourage the European Union not to delist Iranian missile-related entities named in Annex II of the JCPOA.
• Do not ease sanctions enforcement to facilitate nuclear negotiations. Internal Iranian documents concede that oil revenues were low during the peak of the Trump administration’s maximum pressure policy.⁴⁷⁵ Diminished earnings from Iran’s most significant sources of revenue — oil as well as other petroleum products — may constrain the regime’s missile production and proliferation.
• Retain and expand sectoral sanctions against Iran. Several sectors of the Iranian economy produce materials or engage in activities that can be used to support Tehran’s missile efforts.⁴⁷⁶ The IRGC benefits from inputs to the missile program from universities, research centers, military contractors, and heavy industry.
• Expand sanctions on metals used in Iran’s missile program.⁴⁷⁷ Targeted sanctions against entities that procure or produce metals and other essential materials can create choke points in Iran’s domestic ballistic missile supply chain.
• Continue to sanction and expose Iran’s procurement and proliferation networks. The U.S. government has exposed major procurement and proliferation networks led by Karl Lee,⁴⁷⁸ Abdollah Asgharzadeh, and Kambiz Rostamian,⁴⁷⁹ which supported Iran’s ballistic missile program through illicit financial practices, sanctions evasion, and commerce in dual-use items. More exposures should follow.
• Encourage partners to sanction Iran’s missile program. A multilateral consensus would signal to Iran that restraint and diplomacy are the only viable options.
• Codify existing executive orders into law. Codifying orders that punish Iranian weapons transfers would both prevent future administrations from repealing these authorities and signal to Iran that there is a bipartisan consensus behind these authorities. Relevant orders include:
  • O. 13428: Blocking Property of Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq.⁴⁸⁰
  • O. 13611: Blocking Property of Persons Threatening the Peace, Security, or Stability of Yemen.⁴⁸¹
  • O. 13949: Blocking Property of Persons with Respect to the Conventional Arms Activities of Iran.⁴⁸²
• Consider sanctions against Iranian missile commanders. The United States has yet to employ counterproliferation designations against Hajizadeh,⁴⁸³ who leads the IRGC-AF and has overseen Iran’s precision project since 2009. Hajizadeh’s deputy, Majid Mousavi, is also not designated.
• Expand sanctions against Iran’s space program. At present, it remains unclear if Washington’s sanctions against the IRGC-AF apply to its space division. The United States should formally designate the IRGC-AF’s space division as well as its commander, Second Brigadier General Ali Jafarabadi.⁴⁸⁴
• Investigate the applicability of counterproliferation sanctions to entities like the Iran Alumina Company⁴⁸⁶ is helping the IRGC and Iran’s solid-propellant missile program by providing aluminum powder from bauxite mining operations.⁴⁸⁷ The Iran Alumina Company’s parent entity, Iranian Mines and Mining Industries Development and Renovation Organization, is already subject to secondary sanctions.
• Consider expanding sanctions against the Artesh. While IRGC- and MODAFL-affiliated contractors support Iran’s ballistic missile program, they are not alone. The Artesh is a new and evolving actor in this space, having recently developed its own missile unit to support its Ground Forces,⁴⁸⁸ as well as using its Self-Sufficiency Organization to aid Tehran’s conversion of rockets into missiles.⁴⁸⁹ Iran exports conversion kits to its regional proxies.

Sourcing and Methodology: The table below covers ballistic missile launches from Iranian territory, including flight tests, military drills, and military operations, that receive a single mention in either English- or Persian-language reporting.⁴⁹⁰ The time span ranges from July 14, 2015, the date Iran agreed to the JCPOA, to December 12, 2022, a little more than seven years from that event. This list includes SSMs with a ballistic trajectory and SLVs, but excludes ASBMs,⁴⁹¹ cruise missiles, and long-range artillery rockets. For simplicity, the table also excludes select projectiles that Iran has upgraded with guidance and control equipment⁴⁹² to become guided rockets.⁴⁹³

“Let your enemies be afraid of your power.”
— Former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (April 17, 1980)

“The fact that our enemies are upset by our missiles means that missiles are our most effective weapon today. Through the words of our enemies, we have come to know the value of our missiles more than ever before.”
— Former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani (September 22, 2018)

“Possessing missiles doesn’t solve every problem, but it destroys the greedy fantasy of our enemies.”
— Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (November 3, 2020)

“That our enemies are focused on our missile program and consistently express concerns about this and speak of limiting it is due to the power which exists and grows stronger day by day.”
— Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force Commander Brigadier General Amir-Ali Hajizadeh (January 16, 2021

“Praise be to God, the missile power of the Islamic Republic of Iran grows more so day by day against the aggressors, oppressors, global arrogance, and murderous Zionists. … If there is peace and security in our country, it is because of the fear that the enemies have in their hearts of the result of an invasion and assault against our heroic Islamic system.”
— Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Mohammad-Hossein Bagheri (February 9, 2022)

AIO – Aerospace Industries Organization

ARI – Aerospace Research Institute

ASBM – Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile

ASCM – Anti-Ship Cruise Missile

BMD – Ballistic Missile Defense

CAATSA – Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act

CEP – Circular Error Probable

CRBM – Close-Range Ballistic Missile

DIO – Defense Industries Organization

EPAA – European Phased Adaptive Approach

GCC – Gulf Cooperation Council

HCOC – Hague Code of Conduct

IAEA – International Atomic Energy Agency

ICBM – Intercontinental Ballistic Missile

IDF – Israel Defense Forces

IFPC – Indirect Fire Protection Capability

INF – Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces

INKSNA – Iran, North Korea, and Syria Nonproliferation Act

IRIB – Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting

IRBM – Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile

IRGC – Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

IRGC-AF – Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force

IRGC-RSSJO – Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Research and Self-Sufficiency Jihad Organization

IRGC-AF-SSJO – Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force Self-Sufficiency Jihad Organization

IRGC-GF – Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Ground Force

IRGC-QF – Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force

ISA – Iranian Space Agency

ISRC – Iran Space Research Center

JCPOA – Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action

LACM – Land-Attack Cruise Missile

LEO – Low Earth Orbit

LoL – Left of Launch

MaRV – Maneuverable Re-entry Vehicle

MRBM – Medium-Range Ballistic Missile

MODAFL – Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics

MTCR – Missile Technology Control Regime

PGM – Precision-Guided Munition

PMD – Possible Military Dimensions

PSI – Proliferation Security Initiative

RV – Re-entry Vehicle

SBIG – Shahid Bagheri Industrial Group

SHIG – Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group

SLV – Space/Satellite Launch Vehicle

SMG – Shiite Militia Group

SRBM – Short-Range Ballistic Missile

SSM – Surface-to-Surface Missile

UCAV – Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle

UNSCR – United Nations Security Council Resolution

WMD – Weapon of Mass Destruction