Iran has cleared 50 of the 69 tunnel entrances that U.S. and Israeli warplanes blocked at 18 underground missile facilities during the recent war, restoring access to a stockpile estimated at roughly 1,000 ballistic missiles, according to a CNN analysis of satellite imagery published Sunday.
The findings, based on commercial satellite images from Airbus Defence and Space, indicate that since the ceasefire took effect on April 8, Iranian crews have used bulldozers and dump trucks to dig out buried tunnel entrances and reopen roads that had been cratered to immobilize mobile launchers. Almost all of those road craters have been filled, and at two sites the surface has been repaved, CNN reported.
The recovery casts doubt on President Donald Trump’s claim that the joint U.S.-Israeli air campaign had nearly destroyed Iran’s missile program. Much of the firepower used during the war targeted access points to deeply buried facilities rather than the missiles themselves, leaving Iran’s underground arsenal largely intact even as its launchers were temporarily trapped below ground.
Sam Lair, a research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, told CNN that Iran can resume long-range strikes as long as its launchers and crews remain operational, even with production halted. “There’s nothing to prevent the launchers from being armed,” Lair said, citing the stockpile that remains accessible.
Satellite images cited in the CNN report documented active debris-clearance work at a major missile base south of Tabriz beginning April 10, and similar excavation at a base in Khomein, where trucks were photographed hauling out rubble at a bombed tunnel mouth.
The findings track with earlier reporting in The New York Times, which cited a U.S. military official saying many Iranian ballistic missiles had been stored in deep caves and tunnels carved into granite mountains, beyond the reach of American strike aircraft. Iran has also used the six-week ceasefire to resume parts of its drone production line, according to prior CNN reporting.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell did not respond to specific questions about the satellite findings, repeating a previous statement that the U.S. military has everything it needs to act at the time and place of the president’s choosing.
The Trump-declared ceasefire in April left the central war aims publicly stated by Washington and Jerusalem unfulfilled. Iran was not stripped of its nuclear weapons capability, its missile program was not destroyed and the political conditions sought by U.S. and Israeli officials for the Iranian public to topple the regime did not materialize.
Lair told CNN that air power delivered tactical wins against the missile force but warned that those gains risked amounting to a strategic failure without coherent war aims and a workable theory of victory.
Iranian officials have not publicly commented on the CNN report. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has continued to release propaganda video from inside underground “missile cities” in recent weeks, signaling that Tehran intends to project an image of restored capability ahead of any renewed confrontation.
(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
