Iran is already poised to continue firing missiles at Israel and other countries in the Middle East, after having dug out the tunnel entrances that US and Israeli bombings had collapsed, CNN reported on Sunday.

According to CNN, Iran used simple equipment such as bulldozers and dump trucks to clear roads and tunnel entrances, which had been destroyed by the bombing, leading experts to tell CNN that their missile capabilities would be very difficult to destroy.

“They were preparing for this kind of war for 20 years,” Timur Kadyshev, a senior researcher at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg, who studies Iran’s missiles, told CNN. 

“You have to use very sophisticated, very expensive weapons to do this kind of damage, and the recovery is very low tech – it’s just bulldozers.”

Other experts said that Iran still has around 1,000 missiles stored underground, and that these stockpiles were unlikely to have been damaged from strikes at ground level.

An anonymous US official also said that Iran had “exceeded all timelines” for its reconstitution after the damage dealt to it by Israel and the US.

Majority of Iran missile sites at least partially operational

Earlier this month, the New York Times reported that the United States believes Iran has regained access to a majority of its missile sites.

According to the report, Iran can still use the missile stockpiles in non-operational sites by launching them with mobile launchers, with the country maintaining roughly 70% of its mobile launcher inventory.

The report additionally cited US military agencies, which claimed that 90% of Iranian underground missile facilities are at least partially operational.

Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.