Iran dropped a bombshell Sunday after a senior Revolutionary Guard commander said the regime would now only fire missiles with payloads of 1,000kg or more – a sharp escalation in the war with US-Israel since it more than doubles blast radius, range, and destructive power per missile.
Lebanese broadcaster Al Mayadeen also quoted Brigadier General Majid Mousavi as saying attacks that have targeted American and Israeli military bases so far, as well as regional infrastructure, including airports and oil depots and refineries – will now increase in intensity and scale.
Military observers said this likely signals a new tactical phase for Iran – shifting from trying to overwhelm enemy air defences, with wave after wave of the cheap-but-deadly Shahed drones, to focus on potential high-impact strikes that are harder to detect and cause more damage.
Geopolitical analyst Shanaka Anselm Perera argued on X this new phase is Iran ‘changing the economics of (the) war‘, i.e., switching to heavier payload missiles to rewrite intercept math.
Iran possesses the largest and most diverse missile arsenal in the Middle East, according to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. This arsenal includes the Soumar, a ground-launched cruise missile – nuclear-capable – with a presumed maximum range of 3,000km, and the Sejjil, a medium-range ballistic missile with a 2,000km-range.
A third option is the Khorramshahr MRBM, likely derived from North Korea’s Hwasong-10 and which is believed to have range of 2,000-3,000km. It can carry payloads up to 1,800kg.
A fourth is the Kheibar Shekan, though its payload is below that now vowed by Mousavi.
Iran’s ‘force them to run out of missiles’ test
Iran’s much-discussed earlier strategy was to draw US, Israeli air defences into a ‘war of attrition’, i.e., saturate them, and those of Gulf nations dragged into this war, by firing barrages of low-cost missiles and Shahed-131 and Shahed-136 drones.
In essence, the idea was to make interception a costly proposition; conventional military doctrine recommends firing two-three interceptors to block an incoming missile/drone threat. And it was; the US-made PATRIOT air defence system, for example, has been largely successful in neutralising Iranian attacks; UAE-operated battalions reported a 96 per cent interception rate.
US-made PATRIOT air defence systems (File).
But a PATRIOT missile costs US$4 million and a THAAD interceptor around US$12 million, and an Israeli Arrow-3 missile approximately US$3 million. A Shahed drone caps out at US$50,000.
RECAP | Iran’s Missile Math: $20,000 Drones Take On $4 Million US Patriots
Multuple analysts have pointed out the math just isn’t in the US’ favour, particularly since that does not mean Washington could stand down firing of interceptors; the real cost of missile interception is not monetary as much as it is potential loss, i.e., how much damage will be done if an enemy missile hits a target as opposed to how much money is spent on intercepting it.
That question almost always has only one answer – intercept every enemy missile possible.
Iran’s ‘heavy’ missile shift
Iran has fired nearly three dozen rounds of projectiles, including the Shahed-136 ‘kamikaze’ drones, since the war began February 28. The 33rd attack – spread over Sunday and Monday –included solid-fuelled Kheibar Shekan missiles with a 1,450km range and 550kg payloads. But Iran also fired the much heavier Khorramshahr missile.
Apart from being larger, both also have manoeuvrable re-entry vehicles, i.e., they are capable of changing trajectory, at speeds up to Mach 8, Iran claims, which make them harder to intercept.
The Khorramshahr, for example, has a manoeuvrable re-entry vehicle, or MaRV, that the IRGC claims can outpace/outfox Israeli Arrow-3 exo-atmospheric interceptors.
This (read with Mousavi’s warning about firing 1,000kg+ payloads only) indicates a key shift in the way the Tehran’s decentralised battlefield command is managing this conflict.
Using larger warheads now doesn’t affect the interception math; US, Israeli, and Gulf nations’ forces must still try and stop every Iranian missile or drone they can.
But “when the warhead weighs one ton, the cost of failure doubles because the destructive radius on impact doubles… every miss becomes twice as catastrophic”, Perera explained.
“The defender must now commit more interceptors per incoming missile to achieve the same probability of neutralisation. The interceptor-to-threat ratio – already strained at 190 to 1 on the drone front (thanks to the Shahed) – now deteriorates on the ballistic missile front as well.”
“The IRGC is no longer choosing between volume and weight. It is deploying both…” he warned, outlining also how the inclusion of heavier missiles changes the intercept math.
Previously reported interception rates, he argued, were based on Iran missiles carrying warheads between 450 and 600kg. The question now, he said, is “whether the same architecture holds when every incoming warhead is twice the mass (and) destructive radius”.