HIBAPRESS
Western officials have reported that the rate of ballistic missile launches from Iran has decreased since the start of the American-Israeli war against it on Saturday.
The British newspaper "The Financial Times" quoted the officials as saying that the decrease in Iran's launch of ballistic missiles indicates that the American-Israeli air campaign to destroy launch platforms and weapons stockpiles is making a clear impact on Tehran's military capabilities. The officials stated that the American-Israeli strategy, which involves using military aircraft to track and destroy missile launch platforms and weapons stockpiles on the ground inside Iran, is succeeding. One Western official said: "We have begun to see a decrease in Iranian missile strikes, and this is due to the work being done by the United States and Israel to destroy those launch sites and attack those systems." He added: "We assess that Iran has several more days of the ability to continue its activity." The former intelligence advisor to the British government, Lynette Nosbacher, said that the decrease in Iran's ballistic missile launches may be the result of increasing the difficulty of doing so. She added: "The missile leaders (Iranians) launch, change their positions, install, fuel, and launch as fast as they can. Their problem is that as fast as they can has become slower." She continued: "The Americans and Israelis have destroyed launch platforms, missiles, and missile fuel that runs on liquid fuel, and the diesel used to fuel the launch platforms, all of which has been depleted." But the newspaper pointed to another likely possibility, which is that the decrease in the missile launch rate "may be a deliberate strategy by Iran to preserve ammunition for a longer war." Israeli military officials described the slow and steady Iranian missile launches on Saturday as a "spray" strategy, saying that it appears to be designed to deplete the interceptor missiles that are part of the air defense systems. One analyst said: "The decrease in the missile rate may indicate a policy of preserving them, as we saw at the end of the June war last year" between Israel and Iran. In fact, the decrease in the launch rate may be an "attrition strategy," according to Decker Ifleth, an analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses, a research organization. But Ifleth said that Iran "did not have much choice but to follow this approach," adding: "It should be noted that this is not a strategy of choice, it is the only strategy available under the potential shortage of launch platforms and the failure to secure its airspace." In the same context, researcher at the University of Oslo, Fabian Hoffman, said: "I am inclined to believe that Iran's launch capability has most likely been severely damaged," adding that the decrease in launches, as shown in the statistics, is too sharp to be a mere tactic. With the decrease in Iranian ballistic missile launches, it seems that Tehran has become more reliant on the use of cheap "Shahed" suicide drones. These offensive drones can be easily concealed and launched from almost anywhere, so they are less vulnerable to American and Israeli military strikes. Data collected by the Institute for National Security Studies, based in Tel Aviv, indicates that Iran has already launched 571 missiles and 1391 drones since the start of the conflict, many of which were intercepted by American, Israeli, and Gulf air defense systems.
