Iran’s Growing Ballistic Missile Threat

By Majid Rafizadeh, GATESTONE       13 January 2024

• Because of the apparent lack of oversight from world leaders, especially the United States, the rising provision of ballistic missiles by Iran to non-state actors –including terrorist and militia groups, as well as rogue states — now presents a significant source of concern for global security.
• The regime continues to hide behind its proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. Those are Iran’s human shields. That is why they have proxies in the first place: then it is the proxies doing the dirty work and being attacked, not Iran.

•  Unfortunately, unless Iran’s leaders themselves feel seriously disrupted, why would they ever stop? The Obama and Biden administrations tried giving Iran billions of dollars in “carrots.” Clearly that was a flop. The answer, all the same, is not: “Maybe there weren’t enough carrots. So next time, we will give more of them!”

• To stabilize the Middle East, it is essential to apply ongoing pressure on the Iranian leaders themselves, to disrupt their accelerating programs to produce nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them, and to convince them, the old-fashioned way, that their hegemonic dreams of taking over the Middle East simply will not work.

The period of the Biden administration’s leadership has witnessed notable strides in Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities. These encompass advances in range, accuracy and payload capacity. Because of the apparent lack of oversight from world leaders, especially the United States, the rising provision of ballistic missiles by Iran to non-state actors –including terrorist and militia groups, as well as rogue states — now presents a significant source of concern for global security.

One of the key but lesser-known reasons behind the immense expansion of Iran’s ballistic missile program in the last few years can be attributed to the U.S. Treasury Department declaring in October 2021 the removal of sanctions on Iran’s Mammut Industrial Group and its subsidiary, Mammut Diesel. These companies had previously faced sanctions imposed by the Trump administration in September 2020 due to their identified roles as “key producers and suppliers of military-grade, dual-use goods for Iran’s missile programs.”

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