By late March, after a month of round-the-clock strikes, five people familiar with US intelligence told Reuters that Washington could confirm destroying only about a third of Iran’s missiles.
Another third was buried and unknowable.
The rest sat untouched.
Residents in Kermanshah told the Irish Times that missiles flew from the same mountains within hours of a strike, because a collapsed tunnel mouth gets dug out in a day and the weapons behind it were never hit. By June, US estimates had Iran keeping around 70% of its launchers and stockpile.
Now Israel is warning that Pickaxe Mountain, the enrichment site Iran carved deeper than any bunker buster reaches, is coming online too.
That’s the whole war in one engineering fact: American bombs can shut a door, they can’t reach what’s behind it. Seven months bought time.
The arsenal is waiting for a ceasefire to come out.
Source: Reuters, Irish Times, Axios / Writer: Daniel
