Iran is building world’s biggest missile arsenal, warheads ‘can hit London’ | Inside plan for ‘20,000 missiles and nuclear bombs’

This came amid the controversy over the nuclear programme of the Islamic Republic after the 12-day war with Israel, which was later joined by America. After hitting Iran, Donald Trump claimed that the country’s nuke programme was “completely obliterated”. But Oren Marmorstein, spokesman for Israel’s foreign ministry, said that this was not the only objective of the attack on Iran on June 13.

Marmorstein told The Sunday Times that Israel attacked Iran for two existential threats. “One was nuclear, and we acted when we did because Iran was at the 11th hour of being able to build a bomb. But the other was the ballistic threat,” he told the newspaper.

Before the Israel-Iran war, Tehran was estimated to have 3,000 ballistic missiles, as estimated by the US. But the Khamenei government was in the middle of an operation to increase the production of the missiles to 20,000, the Israeli official said. He said on the morning of the ceasefire declaration, a missile killed four people in their safe room in the southern Israeli town of Beersheba. “Imagine if Tehran sent 10,000 of those,” he said. “That threat was as existential to us as a nuclear bomb,” he said.

“They were moving into industrial scale and about to become the No. 1 ballistic missile producer in the world. Some of these are intercontinental, which are not for us,” he added. “They were getting closer and closer, almost to the point of no return,” Marmorstein told the newspaper.

The Israeli officials claimed that Iran stepped up its nuclear program after Israel assassinated the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

“On uranium enrichment, they had stockpiled enough for nine nuclear bombs, and we saw extreme acceleration on weaponisation. This was all part and parcel of a bigger plan for the annihilation of Israel with three elements – nuclear, ballistic and physical invasion,” Marmorstein said.