Iran has dug out a majority of the entrances to its underground missile bases that were buried by joint US-Israeli strikes during the height of the war, satellite images show.
A recent probe of 18 missile facilities hit during the war shows that at least 50 out of 69 tunnel entrances have been reopened since the cease-fire went into effect in April, CNN reported.
The fast work indicates that Iran would be poised to fire a lot more long-range missiles across the Middle East if the war restarts amid tense peace negotiations.
Satellite images captured the rigorous work Tehran has accomplished in just seven weeks across various missile bases, with digging equipment and large trucks seen excavating the tunnel entrances.
Workers at one base, located outside Isfahan, could be seen filling up more than a dozen craters left behind by the US-Israel joint strikes, with two entrances cleared by early May.
Heavy machines and truckers were also spotted at Iran’s missile basesnear Khomeyn and Tabriz on April 10, just days after the cease-fire went into effect.
Iran’s rush to restore operations to its missile facilities undermines one of the Trump administration’s main goals of the war: to reduce Tehran’s arsenal and ability to attack allies in the Middle East.
President Trump specifically listed “completely degrading Iranian Missile Capability, Launchers, and everything else pertaining to them” as one of his five objectives for the war.
The Pentagon and White House said that US and Israeli forces had struck 13,000 targets in Iran over the five weeks of war, including more than 450 ballistic missile storage facilities.
Despite the strikes, Iran continued to fire attacks across the region, hitting American bases and critical infrastructure of several Gulf nations.
Experts fear that the same type of attacks would resume if war reignites as Washington and Tehran continue to clash over the terms of a peace deal to end the war.
Iran has already started rebuilding its military capabilities, including restarting its drone production and replacing destroyed missile launchers, according to US intelligence.
“The Iranians have exceeded all timelines the (intelligence community) had for reconstitution,” one US official told CNN.
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