Israel denies ‘running out’ of missile interceptors

Missiles fired from Iran in response to Israeli attacks are seen over the skies of Daraa, Syria. Photo / Getty Images

Israel has denied running short of missile interceptors after a report claimed it had informed the United States that its stocks were “critically low”.

The depth of the IDF’s interceptor reserves is a closely guarded secret.

However, some analysts have speculated that the 12-day war against Iran severely depleted Israel’s ammunition stockpile and that it was struggling to replace it because of global production constraints.

Israel has faced less intense barrages of Iranian ballistic missiles in the past 15 days than in the 2025 campaign because Iran is firing at multiple countries and the IDF and US are successfully destroying the missile launchers.

However, the conflict has already lasted longer and shown no imminent sign of concluding, with Israel facing several – albeit relatively small – barrages per day.

The US news website Semafor reported that Israel has privately signalled that its stocks are low. On Sunday, Gideon Sa’ar, Israel’s foreign minister, denied the claim.

Meanwhile, a military official told The Telegraph: “As of now, there is no interceptor shortage. The IDF prepared for prolonged combat. We are continuously monitoring the situation.”

To counter Iran’s ballistic missile threat, Israel primarily relies on its Arrow 3 system, which intercepts incoming missiles outside Earth’s atmosphere, plus David’s Sling, which operates at a lower altitude.

During the war last June, the interception rate was 86%, according to the IDF.

Twenty-eight people were killed by the impact of missiles that got through or by shrapnel.

Some experts suggested that the interception rate as a proportion of the number of missiles fired went down through the campaign, suggesting strains on ammunition supply, but the IDF denied this.

By some estimates, Israel burned through two years of global production capacity of certain types of interceptor missiles.

In the current campaign, 12 civilians have so far died from the results of direct impacts or from shrapnel, with dozens wounded.

Cluster munitions – missiles that split up into numerous sub-warheads miles above the surface – have been a consistent feature of Iran’s attack this time round.

While never discussing stock levels of interceptors, Israeli military officials stress that Operation Roaring Lion has been months in the planning, a process that took into account the need for deep ammunition reserves.

On Sunday, Brigadier General Effie Defrin, the IDF’s spokesman, said Israel had plans for at least three more weeks of operations in Iran, with “thousands of targets ahead”.

Amid ongoing speculation as to when Donald Trump will want to end the war, he said the IDF was “not working according to a stopwatch, or a timetable, but rather to achieve our goals”.

Separately, an Israeli official said there were “signs of cracks” in the Iranian regime, but added that toppling the regime was “up to the Iranian people”.

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