Iran may be exaggerating its missile-making capabilities, but experts say it's still a threat

Despite continued heavy pounding from U.S. and Israeli military forces, Iran has remained defiant, insisting that its missile production remains on track.

On Friday, Gen. Ali Mohammad Naeini, spokesperson for Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, told the state-run IRNA news agency that the country is producing missiles "even during war conditions, which is amazing, and there is no particular problem in stockpiling."

(Naeini was later reported to be killed in an airstrike shortly after the statement was released.)

His comments also came as Iran's top military spokesperson, Gen. Abolfazl Shekarchi, warned on Friday that "parks, recreational areas and tourist destinations" worldwide won't be safe for Tehran's enemies.

But are these comments just "showmanship and exaggeration," as one observer described them, or does Iran still have the capacity to build more missiles and pose a significant threat to tourist targets within the region and abroad?

Since the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran began on Feb. 28, Tehran has struck back by launching missiles both at Israel and at its neighbouring states.

Those include Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, whose U.S. military bases, civilian sites and energy operations have all come under attack.

Iran has also attacked Saudi Arabia’s vast Eastern Province, home to many of its oilfields, as well as Kuwait and Bahrain.

Before the war, Iran was considered to have the largest and most diverse missile arsenal in the Middle East that included thousands of ballistic and cruise missiles, with ranges of up to 2,000 kilometres.

The exact size of its ​missile stockpile before the war was unknown, as many were either used or destroyed last June during Iran's war with Israel. However, estimates ranged from 2,500 by Israel's military to about 6,000, according to ⁠other analysts.

For example, Alex Plitsas, a former Pentagon official and currently a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council, an international affairs think-tank in Washington, D.C., said that before the war, Iran was estimated to have somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 medium-range ballistic missiles and between 6,000 and 8,000 short-range ballistic missiles.

U.S. President Donald Trump said last week that Iran's ballistic missile capacity was functionally destroyed. But U.S. Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Thursday that Iran still retained some missile capabilities.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that Iran's missile and drone capability was "massively degraded" with hundreds of launchers destroyed. Israel was also hitting missile and drone factories.

The United States and Israel have not been clear about how many of these facilities there are, how many they've attacked and their battle damage assessments, said William Alberque, former director of NATO's Arms Control, Disarmament and WMD Non-Proliferation Centre and a senior adjunct fellow with the Pacific Forum, which is based in Honolulu.