Iran nuclear deal without missile limits is a strategic mistake

Did you know that 10,000 ballistic missiles — each carrying one to two tons of explosives — could cause as much, or even more, devastation than a Hiroshima-style atomic bomb?

Before Israel’s three strikes on Iranian territory — the most consequential in June 2025 — Iran was racing toward mass production of precision-guided ballistic missiles. This wasn’t hypothetical. Tehran was preparing to flood Israel’s airspace with thousands of advanced rockets designed to overwhelm its multi-layered defense systems: Arrow, David’s Sling and Iron Dome.

The editor-in-chief of The Times of Israel wrote that it was the sober, unified judgment of Israel’s intelligence and military chiefs that led to the preemptive strike. The country wasn’t just weeks from a nuclear breakout — it was also on the verge of deploying a missile arsenal with the power to incapacitate Israel’s economy, overwhelm its defenses and inflict mass civilian casualties.

Former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani once infamously called Israel a “one-bomb country.” Today, that warning must be updated: Israel is now a “10,000-missile country.”

According to veteran Israeli journalist Ron Ben-Yishai, Israeli intelligence concluded that Tehran was preparing to produce 10,000 ballistic missiles with the destructive force equivalent to two nuclear bombs. The hope that Israel’s October 2024 strike on Iran’s solid-fuel production sites would slow the program proved overly optimistic. Iran responded by accelerating production.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry later stated that Iran was moving to industrial-scale missile manufacturing. Iran was on track to become the world’s leading missile producer, including intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching Europe, with payloads large enough to level city blocks.

As one senior Israeli official explained, “We acted because of two existential threats. One was nuclear …, the other ballistic... That threat was as existential to us as a nuclear bomb.”

While much of the world has remained narrowly focused on uranium enrichment, Israeli intelligence had already concluded that Iran’s ballistic missile buildup posed an equally urgent and imminent danger. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explicitly cited Iran’s missile expansion as a principal reason for the June 2025 operation.

Yet global media coverage of the 12-day Iran-Israel conflict largely overlooked the larger strategic rationale for Israel’s strikes. Headlines focused on the limited number of Iranian missiles that penetrated Israeli defenses. What was missed was the far more dangerous trajectory Iran was on: building a missile force capable of saturating and bypassing even the most sophisticated defense systems.

That is why recent reports that President Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, may be exploring a nuclear-only agreement with Iran — one that excludes any restrictions on missile development — have deeply alarmed Israel’s defense and intelligence establishment. Trump has denied offering sanctions relief or cash incentives, but the concern remains that the United States may be entertaining a deal that fails to address Iran’s expanding missile threat.

This is not a theoretical oversight. Iran has already adapted its military posture following each major clash — April 2024, October 2024 and June 2025 — improving its ability to evade Israeli and U.S. defenses. Unlike the short-range, low-yield rockets launched by proxy groups like Hezbollah or the Houthis, Iran’s homegrown missiles are longer-range, heavier and more destructive — designed to reach deep into Israel’s urban centers and critical infrastructure, producing the maximum amount of terror on the citizenry.

A nuclear-only deal with sanctions relief that ignores Iran’s missile program would not be prudent diplomacy. It would be strategic self-deception. Such an agreement would embolden the regime in Tehran, undercut Israeli deterrence, and almost certainly invite further escalation across the region. Regional instability would follow.

As Israel National News recently reported, Iran’s missile arsenal is dispersed across hardened bunkers, civilian neighborhoods and remote mountain ranges. These missiles are not going to disappear with a handshake. Rolling back this threat requires sustained diplomatic pressure, rigorous inspections, enforceable limits, and consequences for transgressions, something Iran is loath to agree to.

Let’s hope reports of a flawed nuclear deal leaving out the equally dangerous missile threat are mistaken. However, if they’re accurate, Congress and the American people need to understand what is at stake. An effective agreement must shut down all of Iran’s escalatory pathways, not just the nuclear one. Failing to address Iran’s missile program in negotiations would be a strategic error for the U.S. and an existential risk for our ally, Israel.

Eric R. Mandel is the director of the Middle East Political Information Network and senior security editor for the Jerusalem Post’s Jerusalem Report.