The US and Israel have pounded Iran's missile-launching sites, but Tehran's missiles keep flying, with the regime shifting to firing from deeper inside its territory with longer-range missiles.
Iran has fired far fewer missiles now, down to around a dozen a day, but they have turned them against less-defended targets in Israel and Gulf Arab states, causing greater damage in some cases.
Even in small numbers, the weapons have helped Tehran achieve its goals, prolonging the conflict, raising the economic costs on oil-exporting Gulf countries and in the US, and surviving to fight another day.
The resilience of Iran's missile systems to sustained American-Israeli bombing raises the prospect that a key war aim – preventing Tehran from threatening the Middle East with missiles and drones – will remain unfulfilled.
