Why American analysts acknowledged deterrent power of Iran’s missile capability?

AhlulBayt News Agency: American analysts believe that Iran’s missile capability is highly advanced and deterrent.

Several prominent U.S. political and military experts, including Jeffrey Sachs, Douglas MacGregor, and Scott Ritter, have warned that any U.S. attack on Iran would be a major mistake, as Iran’s missile capability is highly advanced and deterrent. According to them, Israel and U.S. forces in the region could suffer significant damage in the event of a conflict, and American military casualties would trigger a strong domestic backlash.

American analysts such as Jeffrey Sachs, Douglas MacGregor, and Scott Ritter, who come from diverse academic, military, and intelligence backgrounds, have acknowledged Iran’s missile deterrent power based on empirical evidence and strategic analysis.

This acknowledgment stems from a realistic assessment of several key factors:

• The size, diversity, and scope of Iran’s missile arsenal are highly significant. Iran possesses one of the largest ballistic missile arsenals in West Asia, including short-, medium-, and, notably, long-range precision missiles. These long-range missiles are capable of striking strategic targets across the region, including U.S. military bases and those of its allies.
• Iranian missiles are highly accurate and effective. Analytical reports and documents indicate that in recent years, Iran has made significant progress in improving the targeting accuracy of its missiles through advanced navigation and guidance systems, as well as terminal maneuvering warhead technology. This means that these missiles are not only tools for striking large enemy targets but can also accurately hit specific, high-value targets, even if they are small in size.
• Iran’s strategy of expanding influence and building a network of regional allies (the “Axis of Resistance”) has enabled it to disperse and extend its missile capabilities across multiple locations. This has made any operational plan to counter Iran’s missile power extremely complex and costly, as U.S. and Zionist adversaries would be facing not a single fixed site or location, but a multi-layered network of threats on several fronts.
• Iran’s missile capability disrupts the enemy’s cost–benefit calculations. These analysts argue that any aggressive military action against Iran could be met with a wide‑scale, rapid, and devastating missile response by Iran and its regional allies across the region. Such a response could inflict heavy human and material losses on U.S. forces and key allies—particularly the Zionist regime—and jeopardize regional stability as well as oil flows. From this perspective, the cost of a full‑scale confrontation for U.S. interests in the region is assessed as potentially far greater than any possible gains.

In this regard, Major General Seyed Abdolrahim Mousavi, Chief of the General Staff of Iran’s Armed Forces, stated: “While we are fully prepared, we truly have no desire to initiate a regional war. Although the targets of the flames of a regional war would be the aggressors, such a war would nonetheless set back the region’s progress and development by years, and its consequences would fall on the warmongers—that is, the United States and the Zionist regime.”

At the same time, Iran’s missile capability signifies the existence of a complete chain of capacities, including the ability to design and mass-produce missiles; the possession of fixed and mobile launch infrastructures (such as transporter-erector-launcher trucks that are difficult to detect and destroy); a variety of ballistic and cruise missiles for different missions; and the capability to launch them in large numbers within a short period of time (missile salvos).

This integrated and diverse arsenal poses a significant challenge to enemy missile defense systems such as Patriot or THAAD, making it difficult to counter multiple targets and greatly increasing the likelihood that Iranian missiles can hit their intended objectives. Consequently, Iran’s missiles do not serve as tools for initiating a war, but rather as a powerful deterrent.

This capability transforms the military options available to the United States and its allies from a “low-cost, rapid strike” into a “high-risk, costly, and unpredictable” scenario. This is precisely the concept of effective deterrence that American analysts, based on military and strategic calculations, have acknowledged. They effectively confirm that the balance of power in the region has shifted due to this key and decisive Iranian capability, granting Iran a credible deterrence threshold against military threats.

Another point is that Iran, fully aware of the importance of its missile capability, will under no circumstances negotiate on this issue. On February 6, Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi stated regarding Iran’s missile capabilities: “Neither now nor in the future can there be negotiations about missiles, because this is purely a defensive matter and is not negotiable. Regional issues belong to the region itself and are not related to countries outside the region. Moreover, the issue of missiles is a domestic matter, concerning the Iranian people, and no foreign party can interfere in our internal affairs. We have stated this repeatedly.”

The Iranian foreign minister also emphasized on February 8: “Missile and regional issues are off the negotiation agenda—they have never been, are not, and will not be part of it. The subject of negotiations is purely nuclear, and it will continue as such.”

/129