Iran's armed forces chief of staff inspected an underground missile base on February 4 and declared that comprehensive technical upgrades to the country's ballistic missile arsenal have strengthened its deterrent power. Major General Mousavi said Iran is prepared to respond to any action by its enemies and framed the changes as a shift from a defensive posture to an offensive doctrine aimed at delivering destructive blows.
The statement echoed Tehran's account of last year's fighting with Israel, which it frames as a 12-day war: after Israeli airstrikes on Iranian targets in June 2025, Iran launched multiple rounds of missile and drone strikes against sites in Israel and later struck the U.S. Al Udeid air base in Qatar with ballistic weapons in retaliation for U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. Those exchanges accelerated a cycle of military escalation across the region and have clearly influenced Iranian thinking about the survivability and reach of its strike forces.
Publicising improvements to underground missile sites serves several immediate purposes for Tehran: it reassures domestic audiences about regime security, signals resolve to Israel and Gulf states, and seeks to strengthen bargaining leverage ahead of planned nuclear talks with the United States in Muscat on February 6. The claim of “all-round technical upgrades” is deliberately vague; Iran has a history of modestly described advances that can include improvements to guidance, warhead, survivability and launch mobility rather than dramatic leaps in range.
For regional and Western strategists, the central question is not whether Iran possesses missiles but how upgrades change operational risk. Better accuracy, hardened and hidden storage, and faster launch procedures reduce the effectiveness of pre-emptive strikes and complicate defence planning for Israel and U.S. bases in the Gulf. That dynamic increases the cost of escalation and could make inadvertent clashes more likely if either side miscalculates.
The announcement also complicates diplomatic calculations. Washington and its partners must weigh how to pursue non-proliferation and nuclear restraints while confronting an Iranian leadership that is publicly strengthening conventional strike capabilities. Tehran’s simultaneous choice to boast about military readiness and to engage in nuclear diplomacy in Oman suggests a dual strategy of coercive signalling paired with limited negotiation.
Longer-term, Iran's emphasis on underground missile infrastructure highlights the difficulty of rolling back regional strike capabilities through sanctions or talks alone. Even absent precise technical details, the political effect is clear: Iran is positioning itself to deter further foreign attacks and to influence the conduct of adversaries and mediators alike. That posture raises the likelihood of prolonged competition between hard power signalling and diplomatic engagement across the Middle East.