Iran’s ballistic-missile strikes against Israel looked like a practice run for a future nuclear attack, a longtime analyst of the Islamist regime’s ballistic-missile program told National Review, amid the two rounds Tehran fired off yesterday evening.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is believed to have launched approximately 100 ballistic missiles during two separate attacks Friday night, hitting several targets in Tel Aviv.
While the main purpose of Israel’s move against Iran was to destroy its nuclear program, Behnam Ben Taleblu, a veteran analyst of Tehran’s ballistic-missile capabilities, said that the Israel Defense Forces were also eager to take out this ballistic-missile arsenal.
“Despite this entire rationale for Israel’s strike being drive by counterproliferation, this was a counter-regime strike that gutted part of Iran’s command and control and sought to neutralize key parts of the regime’s most powerful conventional weapon: ballistic missiles,” Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told National Review.
Over 200 Israeli civilians were injured in the barrages and three were killed, the Jerusalem Post reported, citing Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency-response corps. Images and videos posted to social media showed mangled apartment buildings hit by Iranian missiles.
The current Israeli assessment of Iran’s arsenal holds that the regime currently has approximately 2,000 ballistic missiles, but that that number would grow to 8,000 within two years, Fox News reported, citing a senior Israeli intelligence official.
On Thursday, Israeli strikes took out several top Iranian military commanders and targeted nuclear facilities that Washington and Jerusalem believe to be at the center of a secret nuclear weapons program. It also targeted the regime’s ballistic-missile capabilities.
In a video message addressed to the people of Iran last night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed that, in addition to the other regime targets, Israeli forces took out “a large portion of its ballistic missile arsenal.”
Taleblu called that stockpile “the largest ballistic-missile arsenal in the Middle East.”
The development of a nuclear weapons capability could be paired with certain classes of ballistic missiles that Iran has already developed, Taleblu wrote in a 2023 paper on the Iranian arsenal.
“Iran’s 2024 ballistic-missile barrages looked like a nuclear dress rehearsal, as did the rounds the regime has expended against population centers in 2025 in response to Israel’s preemptive attack on its nuclear program,” he told NR yesterday.
In addition to using tests of these missiles to signal resolve at home, Taleblu said, “Tehran has been trying to normalize the use of ballistic missile strikes against Israel.”
Iran’s 2024 strikes against Israel were its first direct missile attacks against the Jewish state. Its strike in April of that year included around 120 missiles it launched at the country, alongside drones and cruise missiles; in October, it launched approximately 200 ballistic missiles. Most of these projectiles were intercepted by Israel and foreign partners, including the U.S. and Jordan.
A 2019 Defense Intelligence Agency report labeled Iran’s ballistic missile stocks a “primary component of its strategic deterrent,” because the country lacks a modern air force and international sanctions that have remained in place for decades have limited its ability to develop other capabilities.