Iran is ramping up its missile production with the explicit goal of being able to fire 2,000 missiles at once in any future confrontation with ‘Israel’, aiming to overwhelm the country’s advanced defense systems, as reported by The New York Times.
This ambition marks a significant escalation from the June 2025 war, during which Iran launched approximately 500 missiles over 12 days.
Iranian officials have conveyed to analysts that missile factories are operating 24/7 to achieve this capability.
The revelation comes amid a dangerous stalemate over Iran’s nuclear program, following the expiration of the 2015 nuclear deal and the reimposition of US sanctions.
Geopolitics works on several layers, getting progressively less public as you go down
If their objective was to strike back hard enough to be a deterrent next time they’re attacked, why would they announce their intentions before they had the missiles ready?
This announcement does a few things. It reassures the Iranian people that they won’t let strikes on their country go unanswered in the future. It is a show of strength towards Israel, because they know that the global political climate will protect them from war with Israel for the near future
And possibly most importantly, it’s a departure from nukes. They’re announcing the intention of pursuing alternative means of defense
The timing of this makes me think they’ve negotiated their way back in from the cold. This might have been planned all the way back at the strikes on their enrichment sites - they were strangely accommodating of that whole event, but it would make them look weak if they immediately said they were giving up their nuclear ambitions
I haven’t seen the NYT article it is referring to but according to this the only sources are unnamed “Iranian officials” and “Regional experts and officials in the Gulf”.
Oh, and a scary picture.
But if it helps ramp up fear, loathing and weapons production …