Iran has reportedly managed to rebuild a significant amount of its military infrastructure damaged in its recent war with the US and Israel, the Wall Street Journal reported based on satellite imagery which revealed either the total or otherwise significant restoration of damaged sites ranging from bridges, weapons depots and missile bases.
The pace of Tehran’s reconstruction could help explain how Tehran has continued its heavy military operations against the US after the collapse of the ceasefire.
According to the report, satellite images showed that an access road leading to an Iranian missile base near Kangavar in western Iran was heavily damaged by joint air strikes in early March.
Nonetheless, within weeks, a newly paved road could be seen which had managed to restore access to the facility despite efforts to block its entrance.
Additional satellite imagery indicated that reconstruction work was also underway at the IRGC-linked port of Bandar Anzali. Israel had previously said that it conducted strikes back in March and inflicted massive damage on the port, an IRGC command centre and an adjoining shipyard.
Similarly, the outlet also reported reconstruction activity at a missile production facility near Tehran, with satellite imagery showing repair work continuing in recent weeks.
According to WSJ, Israeli military officials cited the images as evidence that the aerial campaign launched on February 28 had not achieved all of its strategic objectives.
One Israeli official told the newspaper that concentrating exclusively on military infrastructure, rather than expanding strikes to include broader regime institutions, may have caused greater long-term damage.
Another official reportedly said that despite the scale of the damage, Iran was more than capable of rebuilding nearly all of the facilities that had been struck.
Satellite imagery obtained from Planet Labs and Airbus also showed continued recovery work at a missile base in Dezful. The facility was struck in June 2025 and again in March 2026, with attacks collapsing tunnel entrances.
But images taken just several months later showed excavation work underway to restore access to the barred underground complex.
Following US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities last year, President Donald Trump said American forces had “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s key nuclear sites, though this claim was disputed earlier by intelligence officials and is now only further contrasted by the recently unveiled images.
After a ceasefire was reached in April, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine alleged that Washington had struck more than 1,500 air-defence targets, over 450 ballistic missile storage facilities and around 800 one-way attack drone storage sites during the first five weeks of fighting.
“All of these systems are gone,” Caine said at the time.
He also said the campaign had destroyed Iran’s defence industrial base, claiming approximately 90 per cent of the country’s weapons factories and nearly 80 pc of its nuclear industrial infrastructure had been damaged.
Likewise, the IDF also claimed to have carried out more than 1,000 waves of air strikes, dropping over 18,000 bombs on more than 4,000 targets, including nuclear facilities, missile launchers, weapons production sites, military headquarters and senior commanders.
According to the IDF, around 60 pc of Iran’s estimated 470 ballistic missile launchers were destroyed or rendered inoperable during the campaign. It added that about 200 launchers were destroyed outright, while another 80 were disabled after strikes sealed tunnel entrances to underground storage sites.
Though Israel has largely been more of a high-on-alert spectator rather than active party to the Iran war ever since the ceasefire collapse, with the Islamic Republic also not targeting any Israeli areas, it has repeatedly targeted US military facilities across the Gulf and continued its attacks on commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
