Israel shocked by Iran’s lightning-fast military recovery

Israeli defense officials have been surprised by the speed with which Iran has rebuilt key military capabilities following the 2026 war, with the Islamic Republic’s ballistic missile program emerging as a particular concern, The Jerusalem Post reports.

The assessment involves officials from both the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Mossad, although the military has been primarily responsible for evaluating the effectiveness of strikes against Iran’s defense sector.

For months, IDF experts maintained that Israel’s attacks had set back Iran’s military-industrial complex by years, despite foreign reports challenging some elements of Israel’s claims. Four months after the main phase of the war ended in April, however, the IDF is reportedly seeing a much faster recovery than anticipated across several areas, including ballistic missile production.

The development has echoes of previous Israeli assessments. After striking 20 critical missile and military-industrial targets in October 2024, the IDF said Iran’s future missile production had been delayed by at least a year. By early 2025, Iran had largely restored its production capacity, prompting Israel to bring forward a planned attack.

Following around 100 strikes on missile and industrial targets in June 2025, Israel again said it had found a way to disrupt Iranian production for several years. Yet Iran’s estimated missile inventory rose from about 1,300 in June 2025 to 2,500 by February 2026.

During the approximately 40-day 2026 war, the US and Israel jointly attacked more than 2,600 missile and military-industrial targets in some 30,000 strikes. Israeli officials described the damage as extensive, but Iran has since reportedly found ways to prioritize rebuilding critical capabilities.

The Post also cited senior Iranian officials as saying new weapons are being produced at a much faster pace than Israel expected. If Iran can eventually manufacture 100–300 ballistic missiles per month, its arsenal could return to previous levels by early or mid-2027, potentially creating a major threat by 2028.

The IDF said, "throughout the war, the IDF substantially harmed a diverse range of central components relating to Iran's military capabilities, thereby harming both the capabilities of the regime to utilize portions of its capabilities and the ability to rehabilitate them at the same scope and pace which existed prior to the war."

"Since then, the IDF has closely and continuously followed the Iranian efforts to rehabilitate and to newly rebuild their capabilities. The IDF's evaluation and situation assessments are constantly updated and brought in line with actual developments," it added.

The military concluded, "From the nature of the issues at hand, it is not in our ability to specify concrete evaluations regarding the pace of the rehabilitation, because giving such specifics could expose IDF sources and methods. The IDF will continue to analyze developments and to be prepared accordingly."

By Vafa Guliyeva