Iran is revealing new military capabilities as its war with Israel and the US enters its fourth week, and the regime still has more cards to play, from as-yet-unseen missiles to allied militias and sleeper cells abroad.
The launch of missiles at the US-UK Diego Garcia base has demonstrated a range of around 2,400 miles, far beyond previous estimates of Iran’s capabilities.
Tehran’s military also deployed the Haj Qasem, a newly developed medium-range ballistic missile with a half-tonne warhead, for the first time this week. Iran’s most powerful weapon, the Khorramshahr-4, has been used in greater numbers in recent attacks.
Regime officials remain bullish despite heavy personnel and materiel losses inflicted by US-Israeli air strikes, and are threatening escalation.
Brigadier General Mohammad Akraminia said in an interview this week that: “We are using weapons in this war that we have not used in the past, and we will use them more in the coming days.”
After a sharp decline in Iran’s rate of fire of missiles and drones after the first days of the conflict, open-source conflict trackers say both launches and hits have increased, amid reports of declining interceptor stockpiles in the region.
Deep Dive Defence, a pro-Iran military analysis blog, said that Iran has been practicing a strategy of “low intensity preserving warfare” in the hope of exhausting the US, Israel and Gulf allies, leaving high-value targets exposed to more damaging strikes.
This week, Iran claimed a series of confirmed impacts in Israel, including on the Haifa refinery and strikes on critical energy infrastructure across the Gulf region.
Iran is firing MORE and they are hitting MORE per shot than during the first days of the conflict.Not good.. pic.twitter.com/IWj7Szy0jL
— Andreas Steno Larsen (@AndreasSteno) March 18, 2026Anti-ship cruise missiles and advanced drones
Iran continues to introduce surface-to-surface missiles to the war, and scored a notable success this week with a surface-to-air strike that brought a first hit on a US F-35 fighter jet. The US military said the aircraft was damaged but made an emergency landing, with the pilot in a stable condition.
Iran has also tested – but not used in combat – space launch vehicles, such as the Simorgh and Zuljanah, which US analysts believe could be repurposed as long-range ballistic missiles, with a potential range in excess of 2,500 miles.
Iran could also have achieved this range – sufficient to hit Diego Garcia – by reducing the size of the warhead on missiles such as the Khorramshahr-4, experts believe.
The regime is also known to have amassed a large stockpile of cruise missiles, including anti-ship variants that could prove effective in close-quarters fighting if naval vessels attempt to break its blockade of the strategic Strait of Hormuz.
Farzan Sabet, an Iranian security and politics specialist at the Geneva Graduate Institute in Switzerland, said Iranian cruise missiles have not been effective in previous rounds of fighting against Israel but “could do more damage against less-prepared and nearer Gulf countries countries that have less time to track and intercept” them.
He added that its anti-ship missiles “could be very effective against civilian and even military vessels” in the narrow confines of the Hormuz Strait, although this has yet to be tested in practice.
The US military has signalled its concern with a series of bunker-buster strikes along the coastline of the Strait that it said were targeting anti-ship cruise missile placements.
Donald Trump has pledged to seize control of the vital shipping route, and suggested the US Navy could provide escorts for oil tankers, but military planners are wary of exposing vessels to the dangers they would face, which could include marine drones and mines as well as missiles.
Iran also appears to have made little to no use of some types of advanced drone it is believed to possess, said Sabet.
Beyond the workhorse Shahed-136, which has proved effective enough to spawn imitations across numerous foreign militaries, Iran has developed the jet-powered successor Shahed-238, which is said to be faster and harder to intercept.
Sabet said that three other models that were revealed in a 2024 hack could also potentially be deployed.
Iran has developed more powerful successors to the Shahed-136 drone (Photo: Reuters/Wana News Agency)Allied militias could be activated
Middle East analysts have been puzzled by the non-intervention of Yemeni militants, the Houthis, a close ally of Iran that have already fought lengthy battles against US-led and Saudi-led coalitions.
But that could change at any time. The group’s leader, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, has warned “our fingers are on the trigger” and researchers at the International Crisis Group have reported signs of military preparations.
Houthi defence minister Abed al-Thawr said last week that a first stage of intervention could involve “a naval blockade against the US and Zionist regime”, reprising a tactic that paralysed Red Sea shipping between 2023 and 2025.
Andreas Krieg, a Gulf security expert at the war studies department of King’s College London, said that a Houthi blockade of the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, one of the major alternatives to Hormuz, would be an “armageddon scenario” for global energy markets.
Houthi militants in Yemen. Middle East analysts have been puzzled by the non-intervention of Yemeni militants (Photo: Mohammed Hamoud/Anadolu/Getty)However, he added that the Houthis could prioritise restoring ties with neighbouring countries after damaging wars. “The Houthis are primarily a local Yemeni actor that will decide on action based on how it serves their internal interests and objectives. They would not want to be cannon fodder for an Iranian strategy.”
Iran could also look to escalate through allied militias in Iraq, but the most powerful of these, Kataib Hezbollah, has already been weakened by US assassinations.
Sleeper cells and agents abroad
Iran is believed to have a global network of agents that could be activated for covert operations against designated targets. British police have reported thwarting dozens of plots traced back to Tehran in recent years.
The Netherlands announced on Friday that it was stepping up security for Iranian dissidents after a member of the expat community was shot and injured. On Thursday, the United Arab Emirates said it had broken up an Iranian and Hezbollah cell operating on its territory.
Colin Clarke, a counterterror specialist at the Soufan Group, told The i Paper that Tehran could seek to “operationalise” its networks abroad as it “climbs the escalation ladder”.
Iran’s agents abroad are “opportunistic in terms of seeking out vulnerabilities,” he said. “I would be highly concerned about bombings, especially vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices, attacks against embassies, cultural institutions or any symbolic soft target that would be American, Israeli, and/or Jewish.”
Krieg added that Iranian assets could also “be activated to execute terrorist activities against US and Israeli targets in the UK”.
“Jewish community centres are quite vulnerable. But they might choose to target offices of Israeli companies in the UK or even US companies,” he said. “I still think the threat is low at this point but it is not zero.”
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