SerpApi.Org
Streaking across the night before its earth-shaking impact, the Iranian missile hit the American military base despite batteries of sophisticated air defences.
Captured on video last week, the strike was one of several to hit Muwaffaq Salti air base in Jordan and plainly illustrated the continuing dangers of Iran’s ballistic missiles. One strike on the base killed three US personnel.
The threat endures despite Donald Trump’s insistence that Iran’s military has been “totally destroyed”, and a declaration by Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, that its missile programme is “functionally destroyed”.
After five months of stop-start American and Israeli bombing, Tehran clearly has missile stocks it can use and that still pose a considerable threat to US forces and their Gulf allies.
Moreover, not only does Iran still have missiles, but US officials have also said Tehran has been adapting to American defences.
Officials told the Wall Street Journal that Tehran had been firing high-speed missiles that could manoeuvre as they closed in on targets, making them more difficult to intercept.
Iranian officials, meanwhile, told The Telegraph they were learning lessons under fire from the American onslaught, striking faster and more accurately with their own missiles.
One official in Tehran said: “The Americans themselves are the main reason behind the improvement of our missiles in recent days, and it is very easy. It’s all about taking lessons from the launch in the morning and the next one.”
Early in the war, if a missile launcher was struck by US forces, it would take Iran 15 hours to make it operational again. Now, they are able to fire missiles at US bases in less than 30 minutes.
Iran also claimed that, despite American military and intelligence might, Washington had been unable to find all its manufacturing sites.
Brig Gen Abolfazl Shekarchi, a senior armed forces spokesman, said production had continued. “In the heart of the war, drones and missiles were being produced,” he said, and were going “from production straight to use”.
Meanwhile, the accuracy of Tehran’s strikes on US targets has raised suspicions they are receiving technical and intelligence help from China and Russia.
Gulf nations, too, believe the Iranians are adapting. Lt Gen Qasid Mahmoud, Jordan’s former deputy chief of staff for the armed forces, told CBS News: “The Iranians have advanced missile technology.
“They’re developing techniques and capacities to extend their reach, combining with drones to overwhelm radar defences. The Iranians use simple missiles to distract the radar. They then fire better quality missiles, which change their final target in the last 30 or 40km.”
Iranian leaders have expressed interest in using technology called “manoeuvrable reentry vehicles” on their missiles for at least the past two years, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a think tank.
The technology allows the flight path of warheads to be adjusted in their final moments, either to make them more accurate, or potentially to wrong-foot and slip past missile defences trying to intercept them.
Iran claimed in May 2025 that it had developed a system and fitted it to an upgraded version of the Haj Qassem missile. State media last year also said the Kheibar Shekan mid-range ballistic missile had similar technology.
Such developments were only one element of how Iran was managing to evolve, officials claimed to The Telegraph.
They said Iran was pushing back, not with a larger arsenal, but with a faster one, hardened underground, using tactics refined by the strikes meant to destroy it.
For example, at the start of the war in February, a US strike on an Iranian missile site could take it out of action for the better part of a day. Now, Iranian officials claim the same site can be firing again within half an hour.
An official said: “After each strike on our missile sites and launchers, that site would go unfunctional for up to 15 hours. Now that time is less than half an hour. The main thing in missile war is speed, and we are getting good at it.”
Missile centres, he added, have adapted under fire: “The operational state of centres under pressure has also been improved, and they work faster and better under attacks.
“The Americans strike now and we respond a few minutes later, and we can see the missiles all the way to their targets. It is clear that some of those missiles will be intercepted, and that tells us what to do next to avoid interception.”
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Underpinning the missile threat are Iran’s “missile cities”, deep in the country’s mountains. They are carved into rock to protect missiles, launch equipment and fuel from surveillance and air strikes.
Such measures cannot make a facility invulnerable, one Iranian source admitted, but they dramatically increase the number and power of weapons needed to knock it out.
The official said: “They are deep in the mountains, they are so secret that even some of the commanders do not know their locations. They are a backup for the missiles on the ground and are being added to them by the hour.”
The US and Israel pounded underground missile sites in March and April, but analysts believe Iran has been able to excavate openings and begin using them again.
Iran also fields transporter-erector-launchers that can carry, position and fire ballistic missiles from scattered sites, shuttling between underground shelters, prepared launch areas and hidden positions – dispersing the force so no single strike removes much of it.
As well as increasing the manoeuvrability of missiles, Iran has pushed towards solid-fuel designs, which can be launched far faster than liquid-fuelled rockets that must be fuelled in place, shrinking the window in which a launcher is exposed.
Iranian officials said their military build-up had accelerated since last month’s peace deal, given the “bad history of Americans committing to deals”.
“The preparation for war has intensified,” a second official told The Telegraph this month, describing a push to build “more missiles and drones and defensive programmes” and to rebuild the battered air-defence network.
The official added: “The general idea is that we don’t have shortages, but you never know what else the Americans would do.”
Many analysts believe Iran could not have made such progress with its targeting and missile programme without outside help. Beijing has been accused of helping Tehran by providing up-to-date satellite images that can be used to target US bases.
The Kremlin has also been accused of providing recent missile expertise to the country. Russian missile experts made repeated trips to the country in 2024, Reuters has reported, visiting factories and underground sites.
