October 9, 2026 Bloomberg reported on Russian missiles for Iran. The source of the agency is a Western official familiar with intelligence assessments. He claims that Moscow is supplying Tehran with missiles, but their names, quantities, and delivery routes are not disclosed. The Russian Ministry of Defense did not respond to journalists’ inquiries. There are no documents or photographs of specific deliveries in the publication.
Author: Lev Varshavsky
But the report on Russian missiles is only part of the story. After months of American and Israeli strikes, Iran, according to Bloomberg’s interlocutors, has preserved part of its missile and drone production facilities. And it is capable of replenishing its arsenals.
Factories under attack, missiles in reserve
Before the start of the current war on February 28, 2026, Israel estimated Iran’s stockpile at approximately 2,500 ballistic missiles. Since then, Tehran has launched at least 2,000 such missiles and more than 4,000 Shahed family devices — as Bloomberg Economics assesses open data on the use of weapons. Shahed are Iranian strike drones well known to Ukrainians from Russian attacks on cities and energy infrastructure.
How many missiles Iran has now is unknown. In June, Western intelligence agencies estimated the remaining ammunition stockpiles at about 75% of the pre-war level. This does not mean that Tehran has exactly three-quarters of its ballistic missiles left today: the estimate was made several months ago and concerns ammunition of different types.
On September 30, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth stated that Iran’s military-industrial base was destroyed. Bloomberg’s interlocutors paint a different picture.
However, this does not mean that the bombings did not achieve results. Former CIA analyst Jim Lamson believes that Iran’s pre-war missile production is likely seriously damaged for a long time. But damage to factories is not equivalent to the disappearance of all stockpiles and the ability to release a new batch of weapons.
Russian missiles: already the second signal
The first such assessments did not appear in October. On June 12, Bloomberg wrote that during the eight-week truce, Iran likely replenished its arsenal with recently produced Russian missiles. Already on June 13, NANews published an article “Bloomberg: Iran could receive Russian missiles — what this means for Israel”.
On March 6, The Washington Post reported, citing three officials, that Russia had provided Iran with data on the location of American military ships and aircraft in the Middle East. Moscow denied this. It has not been publicly proven that such information determined the choice of target for a specific Iranian attack.
On September 2, the Financial Times published an investigation into the C430L program, launched in 2023. According to documents studied by the newspaper, Russian specialists, with the participation of the state arms exporter Rosoboronexport and the missile enterprise NPO Mashinostroyenia, helped Iran improve a ramjet engine. It allows a cruise missile to maintain supersonic speed and is intended for weapons capable of hitting ships or ground targets.
The contract was signed in November 2023, and cooperation continued into 2026. There is no evidence yet of such a missile being put into service.
Since January 2025, Moscow and Tehran have had a twenty-year strategic partnership agreement providing for military-technical cooperation and information exchange. It does not establish an automatic obligation to enter the war for each other.
From Hormuz to Ukrainian cities
For Israel, the danger is not limited to missiles capable of reaching its territory.
Iran also has anti-ship weapons. According to British naval services, at least ten ships in the Strait of Hormuz area — a narrow exit from the Persian Gulf through which a significant portion of the world’s oil shipments pass — were attacked a week before Bloomberg’s publication. The daily rental cost of a tanker, according to the agency, rose from about 50 thousand to 1.2 million dollars. The war affects not only the safety of shipping but also the price of oil.
On how Moscow adopted Iranian experience and how military lessons from the war in Ukraine are now returning to the Middle East, NANews — Israel News | Nikk.Agency has already reported in the article “Iran and Russia: how the war in Ukraine became a testing ground for the future war against Israel and the USA”.
Initially, Tehran transferred Shahed to Russia, later helped deploy their production. Now, according to Western sources, weapons are also moving in the opposite direction.
On October 8, Donald Trump announced that the US would not resume strikes on Iran until the midterm elections to Congress on November 3 — voting for a new composition of the House of Representatives and part of the Senate, not the presidential elections. The promise concerns US actions and does not guarantee the cessation of strikes by other conflict participants.
For Tehran, the delay means additional time to repair facilities and replenish stockpiles.
Which specific Russian missiles have been delivered to Iran is still unknown. Two Bloomberg reports four months apart, the FT investigation, and intelligence assistance information show how different the channels of military cooperation between Moscow and Tehran can be.
For Israel, the question now is not only how many Iranian missiles have been destroyed. Equally important is how many new ones Iran can produce or receive from Russia before the next round of hostilities.