Iran’s missiles have punched through Israel’s air defence – but Tehran is tiring ...Middle East

The conflict between Israel and Iran has entered its fifth day as the two sides continue to rain down fire on each other’s cities.

Iran launched two more waves of missiles at Israel overnight, with no reported casualties, after Iranian media reported further explosions in Tehran.

Israeli missiles and bombings have left nearly 200 dead in Iran since Israel launched its initial strikes on nuclear and military facilities and assassinated several top Iranian military leaders on Friday. Nearly two dozen people have been killed in missile attacks across Israel.

Before the war, Western intelligence estimated that Iran had between 2,000 and 3,000 missiles that could reach Israel, although Israeli officials suggested it had “thousands” more.

Israeli strikes on Iran last year are believed to have caused significant damage to Iranian air defences, although the extent of the damage is not publicly known.

On Friday Israeli strikes and sabotage operations are likely to have destroyed many of Iran’s missiles, although the numbers have not been disclosed.

Yesterday, Israel’s military said it had destroyed “one third” of Iran’s surface-to-surface missile launchers and had “achieved aerial superiority over Iran”.

But still, a significant number of Iranian missiles managed to breach Israel’s robust defence systems, and Israeli officials have warned that hostilities could continue for “weeks, not days”.

Israel estimates that since Friday Iran has launched about 300 missiles. On Friday and Saturday Iran launched between 100 and 200 missiles in six waves of attacks, but in subsequent attacks used between 35 and 40 missiles, and on Monday between 10 and 12, according to the Institute for the Study of War.

Israeli military officials and experts estimate that Iran still possesses hundreds — possibly up to 2,000 — of missiles capable of reaching Israel.

An Iranian Ghadr-H missle, centre, and a solid-fuel surface-to-surface Sejjil missile, on display at Baharestan Square in Tehran, with a portrait of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the background, in 2017 (Photo: Vahid Salemi/AP)

Iran is believed to have used medium-range ballistic missiles, including the Shahab-3, a derivative of a North Korean missile, and the Emad, a Shahab variant which is of Iranian design, according to Sidharth Kaushal, Senior Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) in London.

But some newer missiles may have also been used, like the Hajj Qasem and Fattah-1. Both of them “have manoeuvrable re-entry vehicles” and are harder to detect, he said.

Iranian state media claimed on Monday that Israel was hit by the “Haj Qassem guided ballistic missile,” which Iran unveiled in May and which has an estimated range of nearly 1,000 miles.

However, Tal Inbar, an Israeli space and missile expert, told The i Paper he had seen no evidence this missile had been used.

How Israel’s air defences work

Israel’s multi-layered defences include its famous Iron Dome, which intercepts  short-range surface-to-surface rockets, artillery and mortars, and David’s Sling, which intercepts short- to medium-range missiles and short-range ballistic missiles.

Iron Beam, a laser weapon that can destroy short-range fast-moving projectiles, was designed to work alongside the Iron Dome system.

The upper tiers of the air defence system consists of the Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 advanced missile systems, designed to intercept ballistic threats at different altitudes. Developed jointly by Israel and the United States, Arrow 2 targets short- to medium-range ballistic missiles in the upper atmosphere, while Arrow 3 is designed to destroy long-range ballistic missiles in space, outside the Earth’s atmosphere.

Arrow 3 offers an added layer of protection by allowing earlier interception, farther from Israeli airspace, and is particularly effective against high-altitude threats like those potentially launched from Iran.

This week Iran’s Revolutionary Guards claimed that it employed a new method that caused Israel’s layered defence systems to target each other, allowing Tehran to hit many targets. However, it gave no further details and there were no reports in Israel of interceptor missiles hitting each other. Mr Inbar called Iran’s claim “totally untrue” and “pure imagination”.

Yet Iran managed to breach Israeli defences by overwhelming its systems with a high volume of missiles, allowing several to get through.

Despite the Iranian missile barrage, Israel’s air defences still achieved “a high success rate” of around 90 per cent, Kaushal said.

Iran’s level of success is not significant enough to suggest it resulted from any particular tactical or technological advancement, but rather it appears to have overwhelmed Israel’s defences through sheer volume of missile fire.

“One must remember that no system provides preclusive defence and if a system is saturated with enough missiles some will get through,” said Kaushal.

“Interceptor numbers for these systems are unknown but the fact that the US has deployed a destroyer to abet the defence and is apparently considering further deployments would suggest that there is a meaningful risk of Israeli interceptor stockpiles running low,” Kaushal said.

The Israel Defense Forces’ air superiority over Iran “exacerbates this challenge for Iran since many missiles and launchers are being pre-emptively struck,” said Kaushal. “Iranian MRBMs [medium-range ballistic missiles] are also a finite resource.”

Iranian missiles target a site in the city of Haifa, Israel on 16 June (Photo: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP)

“As such, the outcome of the test of endurance between the two sides is not yet certain,” he said.

According to some estimates, if Iran continues launching missiles at its current rate of around 200-300 missiles, it could most likely sustain the pace of fire for a few more days.

However, as Mr Inbar points out, this depends entirely on how many missiles the Iranians use during its attacks. “It could be an attrition war, with one, two or three missiles at any time,” he said.

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Israel, on the other hand, faces its own challenges as it relies heavily on US support in its aim to permanently remove Iran’s “existential” nuclear and ballistic missile threats.

President Donald Trump has remained reluctant to engage the US in another conflict in the Middle East and has consistently sought to distance himself from the escalating violence. Trump also reportedly rejected an Israeli plan to kill Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The US president is insisting he is determined to broker an end to the violence.

“Iran and Israel should make a deal, and will make a deal, just like I got India and Pakistan to make,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform on Sunday, referencing his recent involvement in easing tensions between the two nuclear-armed South Asian nations over Kashmir.

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