Iran is employing widespread, inaccurate rocket attacks with cluster munitions against Israel, aiming for psychological pressure rather than military gains.
A New Approach to Terror and Israel’s Shield
This type of weaponry is so inaccurate that it cannot place all of its small warheads within a large city. Instead, they are simply scattered over a given area of the country. While Iranians have used these rockets since the beginning of the conflict, the effects of their actions are only now becoming clear.
A single rocket terrorizes a significant area.
Scale of the Attacks
There are no detailed official figures on the number of Iranian rockets fired at Israel and how many have what type of warheads. According to the latest general data from the Israeli military, it was already over 350 missiles, with up to half reportedly having cluster munitions. Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani stated that the use of the latter has increased “drastically” compared to previous clashes with Iran.
Waves of Attacks and Limited Mass Assaults
The Israeli military and media typically use the term “waves” of attacks, which trigger civilian alerts and activate missile defense reactions. After the initial phase of Iranian retaliation, lasting two days, the number of waves stabilized at around 10 per day from the third day of the war. Each wave contains one to several rockets.
Iranians are clearly unable to organize massive attacks like those in the first days of the war or previous clashes with Israel. They have instead focused on long-term harassment using their limited forces, severely depleted by US-Israeli airstrikes.
Interception Rates and the Cluster Munition Problem
Most Iranian rockets flying to Israel appear to be shot down, as reports of hits are isolated. This would be consistent with the previous effectiveness of Israel’s missile shield at around 90 percent. However, the aforementioned rockets with cluster munitions are a growing problem. These are more difficult to intercept and cause damage over a much larger area.
Judging by regularly appearing footage and reports, Iran fires at least several of them every day, which are often not intercepted in time by anti-missiles. They do not cause significant destruction because they are unable to. However, the Iranians are likely satisfied anyway.
Weaponry Used: Chorramshahr-4 and Ghadr-110
Iranian ballistic missiles of medium range, Chorramshahr-4 and Ghadr-110, are most often indicated as the tools for these types of attacks. The former is said to have the ability to carry about 1.5 tons of payload, and the latter 1 ton. In the case of using cluster munitions, this means dozens of small bombs (submunitions) – around 80. Each of them weighs up to about 20 kilograms, most of which is explosive material. The scattering of small bombs occurs at an altitude of about 7-10 kilometers in the final phase of the rocket’s flight.
Details vary, as Iranians are said to use several models of rockets, warheads, and submunitions.
Intentional Inaccuracy and Terror Tactics
The weapon used in this way has virtually zero accuracy. It was originally intended to attack so-called surface targets – air or naval bases, troop concentrations, and anti-aircraft defense positions. These are usually relatively vulnerable and lightly armored, while occupying a significant area. Firing several rockets with cluster munitions at such a target gives a high probability of inflicting high losses, assuming the submunitions are scattered at a relatively low altitude (so that they fall on a limited area, such as a circle with a diameter of several hundred meters).
However, the Iranians deliberately set the warheads to scatter at significant altitudes, not targeting anything specific. The rockets scatter dozens of bombs over large areas. The “Haaretz” daily described the case of a rocket identified as a Chorramshahar-4, launched on the night of Wednesday to Thursday of last week, which was not intercepted and scattered 80 bombs over central Israel. The extreme points of their fall were 27 kilometers apart, from the small village of Peduel in the West Bank to the city of Holon adjacent to Tel Aviv and located near the Mediterranean coast.
Limited Damage, Persistent Threat
Due to their limited size, individual small bombs do not cause significant damage. They cannot penetrate thick walls or roofs or collapse buildings. Most often, attacks leave craters about half a meter deep in roads, holes in sheet metal roofs, and damaged lightweight structures. They pose the greatest threat to people in open spaces, as bomb fragments can be lethal within a radius of up to 30 meters. Therefore, Israeli services and the media emphasize the need to take shelter during rocket alerts, but they do not actually guarantee safety from a cluster attack.
A significant problem for Israelis is the sheer number of small bombs falling on their country. Among them, there are many unexploded ordnance that must be found and carefully removed, as they can pose a deadly threat to civilians if left alone. This puts a heavy burden on rescue services.
Evolving Iranian Strategy
Iranian attacks with rockets with cluster munitions are therefore not a threat to Israel’s military potential. They do not even cause significant damage. They are simply a tool of terror and psychological pressure. They also likely have a greater chance of achieving their goal despite the Israeli shield. In principle, missile defense systems such as Arrow-2 and -3, as well as American THAAD, try to intercept their targets either in space or in the upper layers of the atmosphere, long before Iranian rockets scatter submunitions.
The problem is that even successful interception by an anti-missile does not guarantee the destruction of the warhead itself. It is easier when the warhead is one and large. When it is inherently supposed to break apart into dozens of smaller ones, there is a greater chance that some of the small bombs will still fall to the ground.
Additionally, systems of last chance defense, such as David’s Sling, are useless against such rockets. These are used by Israelis to successfully intercept Iranian rockets in the last seconds of flight, at altitudes of several kilometers. However, they are not able to combat already scattered submunitions.
The use of this type of weapon by the Iranians – and to a much greater extent than in previous clashes with Israel – clearly shows the evolution of their approach. Seeing the poor effectiveness of their rocket arsenal during attempts at targeted and massive attacks on military bases or cities, they switched to terrorist and long-term actions. Similar to their attacks on other countries in the Persian Gulf region, they are clearly trying to raise the cost of war for the opponent and, with their persistence under bombardment, exhaust them enough to be willing to end the war without overthrowing the Iranian regime. This achieves their primary goal – survival.