How well armed is Iran, and can it replenish missiles?

As the US-Israel war with Iran nears its fourth week, Iranian missiles are still striking Israel and the Gulf states despite US and Israeli claims to have decimated missile stocks.

A social media post from the White House on March 14 claimed that "Iran's ballistic missile capacity is functionally destroyed," yet Iran continues to demonstrate that it still has at least some missile capacity 10 days on, with a number of strikes on Tuesday.

"The missile launching capability has been degraded, but not exhausted. And that is significant," Burcu Ozcelik, a Middle East Security Analyst for the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a defense and security think tank, told DW.

Furthermore, wrote Kelly Grieco from the US think tank the Stimson Center on X, the attacks on Iranian military launch sites and stockpiles have had a reduced impact due to what she describes as an "operational pivot" from Iran.

"In the opening days of the war, Iran fired more than 500 ballistic missiles and over 2,000 drones. Hit rate: below 5%. Defenses held. The barrage looked overwhelming. Most of it was stopped," she wrote. "Launch rates fell 90%+ over the following two weeks. Something counterintuitive happened: the hit rate started climbing. Iran was firing less, but hitting more often.

As with many aspects of this war, the real scale of Iran's remaining military power remains difficult to assess precisely. So what exactly do we know?

What missiles does Iran have?

Given that Iran's missile stocks weren't shared even before the latest conflict and, as Ozcelik noted, Iran has "not been very forthright in explaining its capabilities," it's difficult for anyone to answer this accurately. The Israeli military reportedly estimated it at about 2,500 pre-war, while some independent experts put the number at as many as 6,000.

Either way, before the war, Iran had the largest and most diverse arsenal in the Middle East, according to the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank said these included ballistics such as: Sejjil, Ghadr and Khorramshahr with 2,000-kilometer (1,242 miles) ranges, Emad (1,700 km), Shahab-3, (1,300 km) and Hoveyzeh 1,350 km. However, recent attempted strikes on the UK/US military base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, nearly 4,000 km away from Iran, suggest Iran has missiles with a longer range than previously believed.

As well as being devastating weapons in their own right, ballistic missiles can be a delivery mechanism for nuclear weapons, though Tehran denies any intention to build nuclear bombs.

How much impact is the war having on Iran's missile stocks?

Naturally, the firing of many of those missiles in the last few weeks, and during the 2025 conflict with Israel, has reduced the stock, as have US-Israeli attacks on weapon-manufacturing sites. But no one outside of the Iranian inner circle knows just how great that reduction is.

"That is why and how we're seeing the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] continuing to launch attacks and to de facto have closed the Strait of Hormuz, the key point of leverage for the Iranian regime. Not all of Iran's ballistic missile program will likely be eliminated over the course of this phase of the operation by the United States and Israel," RUSI's Ozcelik added.

There has been little concrete information on how many weapons facilities the US and Israel have damaged or destroyed, though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last week that Iran's missile and drone capability was "massively degraded" by such attacks.

What is Iran's drone capacity?

Matthew Powell, a lecturer in Air Power Studies from the University of Portsmouth in England, told DW that "estimates at the start of February put the number at around 80,000 Shahed drones," before adding that the accuracy of that figure is unclear and that it is difficult to ascertain how many have been used in the ongoing war.

"Drones are hugely significant to Iran's military strength," he added. "The relative cost of drones compared to other air assets allows Tehran to project military power and wider political influence across the region at a much-reduced cost. Drones allow Iran to hit vital infrastructure in adversarial nations due to the nature of the weapons system, particularly the Shahed 136, which is harder to destroy than larger ballistic missiles."

The US is spending approximately $1 billion (€0.86 billion) per day on the war in Iran and Powell said it's worth noting that the "cost of the weapons systems required to destroy the drones is significantly larger than that of the drone itself." 

Can Iran replenish its missiles and drones?

Another advantage of drone warfare for Iran is that it is equipped to replace drones rapidly, at least in normal times. "Estimated capacity is around 10,000 Shahed drones per month in peace conditions," said Powell, who stressed that the impacts of the war on this number are currently not known.

While drones are fairly simple to replace, missiles are much more complicated. Nevertheless, Iran appears to be capable of rebuilding. The Islamic Republic has established structures for rearmament, with 2021-25 data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute showing Iran is only responsible for 0.05% of global arms imports.

Last week, Gen. Ali Mohammad Naeini, spokesperson for Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, told the state-run IRNA news agency that the country is producing missiles "even during war conditions, which is amazing, and there is no particular problem in stockpiling." Shortly after that statement, Naeini was reportedly killed in an airstrike.

The question really is whether Iran can build them quickly enough to replace those lost through being fired or enemy destruction. Alex Plitsas, a former Pentagon official, told Canada's CBC that Iran could build about 300 a month at the start of the war, but he estimated that might now be down to 40 a month or "a single day's volley."

While the US and Israel appear confident they have struck pertinent overground targets, it is widely reported that there are at least five underground "missile cities" in various Iranian provinces, including Kermanshah and Semnan, as well ​as near the Gulf region.

According to RUSI's Ozcelik, neutralizing Iran's threat in the longer term is a fundamental aim for the US and Israel.

"To be able to degrade the ability of the regime to recover, reconstitute, and rehabilitate its missile program once the war ends, and going forward. I think that is what the goal is at the moment, and what it has been since the start of this war," he said.

Edited by: Rob Mudge