Iran has enough missile capability to continue fighting should Donald Trump choose to resume the war, US and Nato intelligence has assessed – and experts say it has several more cards up its sleeve.
The US president has repeatedly claimed that American forces have comprehensively destroyed Iran’s military, including its missile capabilities and navy, during six weeks of conflict before a ceasefire was agreed.
Intelligence agencies have warned that Iran still has access to most of its missiles and underground facilities, sources told The Independent, casting doubt over President Trump’s dubious claims that Iran has been “decimated” by the war.
Experts say Iran retains numerous options for escalation.
“Tehran’s strength lies in its asymmetric capabilities: ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, drones, naval mines, cyber operations, and proxy groups,” said Frank A Rose, the former assistant secretary of state for arms control under the Obama administration.
Negotiations between Washington and Tehran are flagging.
With no guarantee of a long-term peace deal, and as concerns grow that a full-scale war could resume, The Independent takes a look at the state of Iran’s military and how it could wage an asymmetric war with the US.
Nato intelligence believes that Iranians have maintained at least 60 per cent of their missile capability, The Independent was told.
US intelligence believes 90 per cent of Iran’s storage and launch facilities buried underground are now “partially or fully operational”, with access to 30 out of its 33 missile sites stationed along the Strait of Hormuz, according to the New York Times.
Mr Rose said that Iran “likely retains significant inventories of ballistic and cruise missiles”.
Tehran, as a result, retains enough of its military capabilities to “create serious disruption in the region”, he added.
Two weeks before a ceasefire came into place, geopolitical analyst Dmitri Alperovitch said it was “probably safe to assume that [Iran] can continue it at least for weeks, maybe longer, at this rate of fire”.
The country also retains the capacity to produce large numbers of its low-cost, one-way kamikaze drones, which were critical in its retaliatory strikes on neighbouring countries around the Middle East.
But while Iran can create instability, it has lost its ability to achieve “strategic surprise or coercive dominance”, Mr Rose said, adding that missile defences in the Gulf have proven “increasingly effective at blunting large-scale missile and drone attacks”.
Iran has continued leveraging its control over the Strait of Hormuz, a critical element of its asymmetrical strategy in which it has waged economic warfare to make up for what it lacks in military firepower.
The waterway, through which around one-fifth of the world’s oil flows, remains under Iranian blockade, with the US abandoning efforts to guide commercial ships through the strait.
Trump claimed Iran’s navy is “lying at the bottom of the sea, completely obliterated”, but that “what we have not hit are their small number of, what they call, ‘fast attack ships’, because we did not consider them much of a threat”.
The swarm of Iranian speedboats, known as Iran’s “mosquito fleet” is now a serious concern for vessels seeking transit through the waterway, especially as these vessels are difficult to track and often carry weapons onboard. It has allowed Tehran to maintain its blockade despite damage to some of its larger naval ships.
“Even a degraded Iran can threaten maritime traffic and energy infrastructure in the Gulf,” Mr Rose said. “The key danger is disruption, not outright military victory.
“Iran will continue leaning into asymmetric warfare because that is where it believes it can offset overwhelming US conventional superiority.”
On Friday, Iranian military-linked media called on Tehran to impose fees on use of the undersea cables running through the Strait of Hormuz.
Doing so would secure Iran’s control over the waterway and could generate billions of dollars, while giving Tehran fresh leverage over the West, Tasnim news agency said.
The cables carry around 99 per cent of the world’s internet traffic, according to the ITU, the United Nations specialized agency for digital technologies. They also carry telecommunications and electricity between countries, and are essential for cloud services and online communications.
“Damaged cables mean the internet slowing down or outages, e-commerce disruptions, delayed financial transactions… and economic fallout from all of these disruptions,” said geopolitical and energy analyst Masha Kotkin.
Gulf countries such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia, have been investing billions of dollars in artificial intelligence and digital infrastructure to diversify their economies away from oil.
