Iran Missile City: What the IRGC Unveiled Underground

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force has unveiled a new underground missile complex, which Iranian officials call a missile city, putting a range of ballistic and cruise missiles and their launchers on display on November 10 in the presence of the country’s most senior military commanders. The ceremony was attended by Major General Ali Abdollahi, Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, and Brigadier General Majid Mousavi, commander of the IRGC Aerospace Force, who inspected parts of the facility and the readiness of its missile units. Neither the location of the complex nor the number or designations of the missiles stored there was disclosed, as has been usual for such unveilings. The timing is significant, with the facility revealed as mediation to end the war with the United States and Israel has intensified and as Iran’s missile arsenal remains the main instrument Tehran holds against both. Abdollahi said: “Advanced missiles will surprise enemies with their battlefield impact.”

The unveiling followed a press conference in Tehran on November 7 at which IRGC spokesman Brigadier General Hossein Mohebbi stated that the force had rapidly moved its missile and drone production lines from surface plants to underground sites, going beyond the storage tunnels shown in earlier years to build what he called missile production cities deep beneath the ground. Mohebbi argued that domestic expertise, the country’s large territory and a flexible production base would allow manufacturing to continue even under heavy bombardment, and claimed that adversaries had wrongly assumed Iranian stockpiles were shrinking. He also stated: “Today, every weapon used by the IRGC Aerospace Force is manufactured using homegrown knowledge and expertise.” None of these production claims has been independently verified, and the IRGC has released no figures on output.

The shift reflects the lessons of a long campaign against Iran’s missile industry, from the Israeli strikes on missile production sites in late October 2024 to the war that began with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28, 2026, which led Tehran to close the Strait of Hormuz to shipping. Mohebbi further claimed that earlier limits on the range of Iranian missiles had been lifted, following a statement by Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei that there would be no geographical limits to Iran’s response if the United States and Israel attacked again. The announcement came a day after President Donald Trump said the U.S. military had carried out limited strikes on Qeshm Island, with a U.S. naval blockade of Iranian oil exports still in force. Any renewed Israeli strikes on Iran would face a considerably more difficult target set if production has indeed moved into hardened tunnels, rather than the surface factories struck in 2024.

Underground missile bases have been a fixture of Iran‘s military displays for over a decade, with the IRGC presenting its second underground missile city on January 5, 2016, and state television presenting another base in January 2025 holding liquid fuelled Emad, Qadr and Qiam ballistic missiles, which it described as one of hundreds of similar facilities. A further complex was shown on March 25, 2025, the third such reveal in under a month. What distinguishes the November 10 facility is the IRGC’s claim that it produces missiles rather than only storing and launching them, a capability that, if accurate, would allow Iran to replace losses from fixed sites that air strikes cannot easily reach.