Iran managed to improve its performance and penetrate Israeli air defenses during Operation Rising Lion by refining its missile launch tactics and identifying vulnerabilities through a process of trial and error, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, citing missile defense analysts who examined missile debris and open-source intelligence data. Experts say Tehran began launching more advanced, longer-range missiles from a broader array of locations deep inside Iran. “As the war went on, Iran fired fewer missiles, but its success rate rose,” the report stated, citing data from think tanks based in Israel and Washington. In the first six days of the war, only about 8% of Iranian missiles penetrated Israeli defenses. By the second half of the war, that number had doubled to 16%, according to the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), a Washington-based defense think tank. JINSA’s analysis identified June 22—just two days before the ceasefire—as the most successful Iranian strike, when 10 of the 27 missiles launched by Iran struck targets inside Israel. “The data suggests Iran successfully adapted ‘how, when, and what’ to fire,” said Ari Cicurel, JINSA’s associate director of foreign policy. While Israel’s air defense systems—such as the U.S.-developed Iron Dome—are among the most advanced in the world, they are not infallible. “Any missile system, even a sophisticated one like Israel’s, will leak eventually,” Raphael Cohen, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, which serves as a Pentagon think tank, told WSJ. “The key for any air-defense system is less that you build a perfect system with any one layer and more the cumulative effect.” The IDF initially reported interception success rates between 90% and 95%, but post-war assessments revealed an overall interception rate of 86%. Israel’s targeted strikes on Iranian missile launchers prevented Iran from using older, less accurate, short-range missiles. However, this strategy pushed Iran to employ more sophisticated, longer-range weapons earlier in the conflict. Debris from missile sites confirms Iran used its hypersonic Fattah-1 missile at least twice. The Fattah-1, which descends sharply from outside the atmosphere at 10 times the speed of sound and carries a warhead that splits in mid-air, poses an extreme challenge for interception. Only Israel’s most advanced systems, such as Arrow 3 and David’s Sling, are capable of adjusting mid-flight to counter such threats. Iran also changed its operational patterns—shifting from large-scale nighttime barrages of 30 or more missiles to smaller, daytime launches from a wide range of launch sites. These adjustments included varying firing intervals and targeting cities farther from the front lines. Ari Cicurel, associate director of foreign policy at the institute, concluded that Iran successfully adapted “how, when, and what” it was firing, demonstrating systematic learning and tactical evolution. As the conflict wore on, and with interceptor supplies strained and operational costs mounting, Israel began prioritizing interceptions of only the most dangerous threats. (YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)