Israel looks spellbound to heaven: retaliation for the destroyed embassy is imminent. If Iran fires missiles, there are twelve minutes left. Or just four.
Tehran – “Why do we need expensive missiles with a range of 2,000 kilometers when Tel Aviv is only 150 kilometers from southern Lebanon?” Hasan Moghaddam is said to have said; At least that's how the
Neue Zürcher Zeitung
quotes him
. The former Iranian air force brigadier general developed the Iranian missile project and is therefore considered its “father”. With apparently modest goals, which are now spreading – possibly as far as Europe. The USA assumes that Iran will attack Israel immediately, thereby escalating the war in Israel.
Joe Biden speaks plainly and declares his willingness to intervene in a supposed catastrophe: He said “Don't” in the direction of Tehran, which in German means something like “Don't do that” or “Leave it”. The sitting US president expects Iran to attack multiple targets inside Israel in the coming days and has signaled he will help intercept any weapons fired at his ally, sources tell
CNN.
Apparently Iran has also prepared extensively for this - its missile arsenal appears to be inexhaustible. In addition to Russia, Iran is now said to have hypersonic missiles, i.e. weapons that travel at several times the speed of sound and can correct their targets. With the end of the Iran-Iraq or First Gulf War in August 1988 and the end of Saddam's war machine, Tehran's threat perception changed: away from Saddam's tank columns and towards the highly armed enemies Israel and the USA, which are seen as the greatest threat to Iran's integrity . However, the regime in Tehran saw itself inferior to a massively superior air force - and began to rearm. With rockets. Instead of simply buying missiles as before, it began to produce North Korean missiles itself under license and finally to develop its own systems tailored to Iran's needs.
“Tehran is capable of developing military power well over 1,000 kilometers from its own country.”
Gernot Kramper in Stern
“In the last decade, Iran's missile program has experienced a quantum leap in quality. While the accuracy of Iran's missiles was previously measured in hundreds of meters, the country has now developed precise guided missiles that hit within a few meters. Ballistic missiles were no longer purely political and psychological means of pressure, but also highly effective weapon systems,” notes the
NZZ
. The
Times of Israel
therefore predicts a bleak future scenario based on various media reports: According to this, ballistic missiles fired by Iran would take twelve minutes to reach Israel, cruise missiles would take two hours to reach their target and drones launched from the Islamic Republic would take nine hours.
Short- and medium-range missiles: Iran has almost two dozen types
“Only a very few countries in the world have such opportunities. This will not make Iran a global superpower, but it will outgrow the framework of a limited regional power. Because Tehran is able to develop military power well over 1,000 kilometers away from its own country,” writes Stern
–
either with rockets or cruise missiles, of which Iran has also developed more than a dozen different types.
According to the
Arms Control Association (ACA),
Iran's short- and medium-range ballistic missiles include nearly two dozen types with various capabilities - for example:
Shahab-1 (“Comet-1”)
is the first short-range missile modified by Iran. It is based on the North Korean Hwasong-5 with an estimated range of 300 kilometers; as
Shahab-2
and
Shahab-3
it flies more than 2,000 kilometers;
The
Fateh (“Conqueror”) system
– a rather light, road-mobile system with multi-range types;
Zolfaghar
(named after a famous sword) with a range of 700 kilometers;
Emad-1 (“Pillar-1”)
, a rocket under development that will be able to transport a payload of 750 kilograms to the target at a range of up to 1,700 kilometers with an accuracy of around ten meters;
The
Sejil
("baked clay")
family
- a missile under development, with a range of 1,500 to 2,500 kilometers - according to
Breaking Defense
magazine , Iran claims that this missile, launched from the city of Natanz, Tel Aviv in less than seven minutes could reach.
A high-ranking commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) also announced the development of the first Iranian hypersonic missile of the type
Fattah-1 (“Winner”)
at the end of 2022 , as
Breaking Defense
reported. "The missile has great speed and can maneuver both in and out of the Earth's atmosphere," Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the head of the IRGC's aerospace department, told reporters. Hypersonic weapons can fly at more than five times the speed of sound and travel on complex trajectories that make them difficult to defend against. The Fattah rocket is said to be able to reach up to 14 times the speed of sound.
Hypersonic missiles: Iran could reach an Israeli target in four minutes
This weapon would be a more far-reaching threat than the Sejil intermediate-range ballistic missile, which is seen as Iran's first option for attacking Israel, as
Breaking Defense
reports: "Iran has claimed that the Sejil could reach the city of Tel Aviv in less than seven minutes , if it were launched from the city of Natanz; A hypersonic missile could hit much faster, possibly in the four-minute range,” the magazine quoted an anonymous Israeli military official as saying.
The
Neue Zürcher Zeitung
sees this less as a military shift in power and more as a political one, as its author Fabian Hinz suspects: “Perhaps it helps to understand the Iranian missile program less as a specific weapons program and more as a symptom of global power politics and technological change. For decades, the West's superiority guaranteed control of its airspace and thus the security of its own hinterland. To some extent this also applied to the security of its allies. Apart from asymmetrical threats such as terror, the security of the hinterland became a matter of course that no one questioned.”
Now the hinterland is massively threatened - possibly even Europe. From Tabriz in northern Iran, Istanbul would suddenly also be within range of hypersonic missiles. President Ebrahim Raisi said during the presentation of the draft that the missile would “make the country stronger” and “bring security and stable peace to the countries of the region,” as the
Tagesschau
reported in the middle of last year. In November 2022, Iran announced the production of the missile, which should also be able to carry nuclear warheads.
In any case, Israel has been extremely alarmed since then; Israel had already announced in 2021 that it would modernize its Arrow air defense system - now that NATO is planning to deploy the Arrow-3 generation as a result of the Ukraine war, Israel is already building the Arrow-4 generation. The Iranian Fattah and Sejil missile systems are currently giving the military a headache, as
Breaking Defense
claims to have learned from the Arrow development team: “Many eyes in the sky are paying attention to every little sign that can indicate the extent of the threat posed by these two weapon systems.”