Iran has cleared most tunnel entrances at its missile facilities, according to CNN

BEIRUT — Iran is now in a position to launch significantly more long-range missiles at Israel and other countries in the Middle East after rapidly clearing access to its underground missile stockpiles — an effort that highlights the limits of the U.S. bombing strategy, according to experts cited by CNN and satellite imagery analyzed by the network’s journalists.

While for several weeks U.S. and Israeli strikes had restricted Iran’s access to underground missile sites by destroying roads and burying tunnel entrances, satellite images show that Iranian forces used simple equipment such as bulldozers and dump trucks, suggesting that Tehran’s missile capabilities cannot be eliminated solely by targeting tunnel entrances.

If hostilities resume, Iran would be able to "continue launching missiles as long as it has launchers and crews, even if production has been interrupted," said Sam Lair, an associate researcher at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, who studies Iran’s ballistic capabilities. "Nothing prevents launchers from being armed with the vast stockpile of missiles Iranians still possess."

At a missile base in Dezful, Iran, four out of five entrances to an underground facility had been reopened as of May 12. The entrance circled in gray remains the only one still blocked. CNN found that Iran has now cleared 50 of the 69 tunnel entrances struck by the United States and Israel across 18 underground missile facilities.

Iran has also repaired other parts of the bases, including roads bombed by U.S. and Israeli aircraft to prevent missile launchers from operating. Satellite images show that nearly all of these craters have been filled in, and at two sites even resurfaced with asphalt.

On Sunday, Iran said any agreement with the United States to end the war launched by Washington and Tel Aviv on Feb. 28 would be conditional on guarantees of its “rights,” stressing that it does not “believe in either the words or promises” of the Americans in ongoing negotiations to end the Middle East war.

While the two countries appeared in recent days to be moving closer to a deal, the New York Times reported on Saturday, without further details, that the U.S. president had revised his proposal and sent a new version of a possible memorandum of understanding to Tehran.