Iran’s Revolutionary Guards say missile and drone production has moved underground

What did the Guards announce in Tehran on Saturday?

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said on Saturday 7 November that it has moved its missile and drone production lines from the surface to underground facilities, and that it will unveil a new underground “missile city” this week. The announcement came from the force’s spokesman, Brigadier General Hossein Mohebbi, at a press conference in Tehran held to mark the IRGC Aerospace Force Week. Mohebbi said the force had gone beyond the underground storage complexes it has shown off for years, the “missile cities” built to hide finished weapons, and had now built “missile production cities” deep beneath the ground, where manufacturing can continue even under heavy bombardment. He also said restrictions on the range of Iranian missiles had been lifted, that the range was being constantly extended, and that the force holds “game-changing” defensive capabilities it will unveil if a new round of fighting begins.

Which parts of the announcement are confirmed, and which rest on the Guards’ word alone?

The press conference itself is confirmed by several independent outlets: Al Jazeera, Iran’s semi-official Mehr News Agency and the state broadcaster Press TV all reported Mohebbi’s remarks on Saturday, and China’s Xinhua news agency carried the same account. Mohebbi presented the underground move as one of fourteen achievements of the IRGC Aerospace Force, alongside indigenous aerospace technology, mass production and exports, and what he called complete military self-sufficiency. He named the Shahed-136 drone as an example of Iranian-made equipment, said several countries had copied it, and cited exports of Arman missiles, 358 drones and the 3rd Khordad air defence system. He also claimed the force had intercepted and destroyed more than 260 enemy aircraft and aerial vehicles during the earlier rounds of fighting with the United States and Israel, including F-35, F-16, F-5 and F-18 fighter jets; a figure no independent source has verified. On stealth, he said reduced radar cross-sections had let Iranian missiles and drones pierce air defences and strike their targets accurately.

The wider context is independently documented. The United States carried out new strikes against Iran this week: President Donald Trump said on Friday that American forces had launched “minor” strikes on Iranian air defence systems, and the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported that two missiles hit Qeshm Island early on Saturday, the second American strike on the island this week after one reported on Monday. A BBC investigation published on 6 November, based on satellite imagery analysed by the British intelligence company MAIAR, found construction under way at the Garmdareh and Shahroud missile sites and repair work at twelve other military bases, with digging near tunnel entrances at the Fordow enrichment complex. The Pentagon has estimated that American and Israeli strikes destroyed up to 90 percent of Iran’s drone, ballistic missile and naval industrial base.

What can nobody outside Iran verify about the underground sites?

Almost everything that would turn the announcement from a claim into a fact. Mohebbi gave no locations, no depths and no production figures for the new underground facilities, and no independent observer has seen inside them. The satellite evidence confirms digging and construction at missile sites, but it cannot confirm what the new underground space is for: researchers tracking the Shahroud site note that a tunnel project there dates back to autumn 2024, before the latest war, and that the purpose of the newest excavation still awaits confirmation. The claim of more than 260 enemy aircraft destroyed cannot be checked against any public accounting, and neither can the assertion that Iranian missiles now defeat systems such as THAAD. The “game-changing” capabilities Mohebbi promised for a possible third round of war are, by his own account, deliberately undisclosed. What is known is the direction of travel, deeper underground, and the scale of the damage the programme has already absorbed.

Why does moving production underground change the calculation?

If the production lines really have moved beneath the ground, the arithmetic of the air war changes. Strikes that destroyed up to 90 percent of Iran’s surface industrial base, on the Pentagon’s estimate, no longer settle the question of how many missiles Tehran can still build, and Mohebbi said precisely that: production continued while his adversaries assumed Iranian stockpiles were dwindling. That uncertainty is the point. An enemy that cannot count what remains cannot plan a campaign around exhausting it, and the announcement itself, made while American missiles were falling on Qeshm Island, is a signal that the next round, if it comes, will meet a target that has already adapted. The stakes extend beyond Iran: the same week, Iraq’s foreign minister warned that outside parties are using Iraqi soil to attack its neighbours, and the Gulf states that host American bases are watching a war that has already struck their infrastructure more than 135 times, according to a Reuters count carried by Al Jazeera. The Strait of Hormuz, through which the region’s oil flows, sits at the centre of that exposure.

What is Tehran signalling with this announcement?

The timing is the message. Mohebbi spoke on the same day American missiles hit Qeshm Island, in a week when the United States has struck Iran twice, and the announcement answers a specific American assumption: that the destruction of Iran’s surface factories would wind the missile programme down. By claiming that production has already moved underground, Tehran tells Washington that the next round of strikes would hit empty buildings, and tells its own public that the programme survived. The promise of an unveiling this week keeps the pressure on: a filmed tour of a “missile production city” would be hard to dismiss, while a postponement would invite the opposite reading. The range announcement sharpens the signal further, because a missile that can reach further changes the risk for every American base and every Gulf capital in the region. None of this proves the claims, but deterrence does not require proof; it requires the other side to doubt its own arithmetic, and that doubt is now priced into every decision about a third round.

What follows if the underground shift is real?

Three consequences follow, and each is already visible. First, the intelligence picture degrades: as the former Irish military chief put it, underground production makes it harder for outside observers to assess what Iran can still build, and every estimate of remaining stockpiles becomes a guess. Second, the target set for any future air campaign shrinks toward what cannot be seen, which raises the cost and lowers the expected return of another round of strikes; and makes the diplomacy around the war, including the mediation efforts under way this week, harder to calibrate. Third, the region’s exposure grows: Gulf states that host American forces have already absorbed more than 135 strikes on their infrastructure, and a programme that can keep producing under bombardment keeps that exposure open indefinitely. The counterweight is that none of these consequences depends on the claims being fully true. Even a partial underground move, combined with the satellite evidence of rebuilding at Shahroud and Garmdareh, is enough to force every capital in the region to plan as if the missiles will keep coming.

What should readers watch for this week?

The unveiling Mohebbi promised: the IRGC Aerospace Force is due to show a new underground missile city and several other achievements in the coming days, and the footage, or its absence, will be the first real test of Saturday’s claims. Watch the satellite record too, as analysts keep tracking the digging at Shahroud and Garmdareh and the tunnel work near Fordow. Watch Washington’s answer, after a week of “minor” strikes on Qeshm Island and air defences, and watch the mediation track, where Qatar has said the United States and Iran should not wait to reach a peace deal. The war’s next phase will be decided as much by what is shown this week as by what is said. Tehran has insisted before that its forces emerged stronger from the fighting, and this week will show whether that claim now has an address underground.