During the Vietnam War, American pilots bombed for days a network of tunnels near Cu Chi convinced that they had completely rendered it useless. When the troops advanced on the ground, they discovered that not only was it still operational, but the combatants they had reappeared from hidden exits a few meters from their positions. The scene left a brutal lesson: destroying from the air does not always mean eliminating what is below.
A start of war that changes everything. The first hours of the conflict in Iran set the tone of everything that would come later: an intensity of fire rarely seen, with hundreds of missiles and almost a thousand drones launched in just two days, forcing the defensive systems to operate at the limit from the first moment.
That volume not only showed the scale of the Iranian arsenal, but also the type of war that was being waged, one in which saturation was almost as important as precision. From that starting point, the expectation was clear for all the actors: if that rhythm was sustained, the key was not going to be who hit the hardest, because that actor had a name from the beginning, but who last longer.
The illusion of total destruction. Because the United States and Israel responded in the first 48 hours of war with a massive campaign of bombings that sought to disable the Iranian military infrastructure, attacking thousands of targets and sealing access to underground bases to leave the launchers trapped.
For weeks, the official message It was forceful.: The missile program had been devastated and the country’s response capacity was practically nullified. However, even at that time doubts arose from within the US apparatus itself, which warned that a significant part of these systems had not been destroyed, but simply blocked or temporarily inaccessible.
Iranian efforts underway at a missile base in Tabriz on April 10
The mountains as a shield and strategy. It we count at the time. The real differentiating element was not in the missiles, but in where they were stored. Iran has spent decades building a network of underground facilities in mountainous environments, many of them excavated in granitic rock capable of resisting extremely powerful attacks.
These “missile cities” not only store weapons, but also integrate complete logistics systemswith tunnels, launch points and escape routes designed to minimize exposure. It is an architecture designed for survive the first blowassume damage and keep the operational core intact, in a logic that prioritizes resilience over invulnerability.
A loader over debris blocking an entrance to a missile base near Khomeyn, April 10
Dig, reactivate and launch again. Satellite images now have confirmed that, as soon as a ceasefire window opened, heavy machinery went into action to remove debris and reopen accesses blocked by bombings.
As? The Telegraph said Through satellite survey that dozens of excavators, trucks and engineering equipment were deployed at key points to clear sealed entrances and regain access to buried launchers. Again, what is relevant here is not just that it is being done, but the speed: in a matter of days (and even in just 48 hours in some cases) those facilities have become operational again, suggesting that much of the military capacity was not destroyed, but simply paused.
Designed to resist. All of this, furthermore, fits with a very specific doctrine: assume that the enemy will have air superiority and design the system to survive it.
Unlike a conventional war, where losing control of the air usually implies the progressive destruction of infrastructure, here the logic is different and focuses on protect assets critical underground, absorb the first attack and recover capacity combat as soon as possible. This approach turns conflict into a race of attrition, where each cycle of attack and reconstruction erodes both the attacker and the defender.
The real problem. If you like, the direct consequence of this dynamic is that the apparent initial success of Washington (and Israel) has lost weight in the face of the recovery capacity Iranian. Because, although the attacks have been massive and technically effective, the speed with which Tehran is restoring its bases raises an uncomfortable scene for their adversaries: every pause, negotiation or ceasefire in the fighting becomes an opportunity to rearm again or, literally, dust off the bunkers
In that context, the question stops being whether an infrastructure can be destroyed and becomes how many times it can function again before the other side is left behind. without resources or without political margin to continue.
Image | Airbus
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