TEL AVIV — Iran has been firing cluster munitions toward Israel on a “nearly daily basis” throughout the ongoing war, Israeli military officials said Tuesday, deploying weapons that scatter dozens of bomblets across wide areas that Israel’s air-defense networks are not built to stop. At least three people have been killed by the submunitions, including two workers at a construction site in central Israel.
Cluster munitions — banned by treaty among more than 120 countries, though not by Israel, the United States, or Iran — leave unexploded submunitions on the ground that can kill or maim civilians long after the initial attack, adding a persistent hazard beyond the immediate danger of each strike.
How the weapons work
After what is called a parent munition is launched, it releases smaller submunitions at an altitude of 7 to 10 kilometers (4 to 6 miles). The bomblets scatter across a large area — from several hundred meters to several kilometers — trading precision for coverage. At night, they can resemble orange fireballs, an effect caused by atmospheric friction on reentry.
An Israeli military official, speaking anonymously under army briefing rules, said roughly half of the projectiles Iran was launching toward Israel had been cluster munitions. Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesperson, said Iran also fired similar projectiles during the 12-day war in June 2025.
“Cluster bombs don’t create real damage to buildings, only people,” said Yehoshua Kalisky, a senior researcher at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies.
The Israeli military said the Iranian warheads contain between 20 and 24 bomblets with explosives weighing up to 5 kilograms (11 pounds) each. Because most Iranian missiles have been aimed at Israel’s densely populated center, the risk to civilians is heightened.
Why Israel’s defenses cannot stop them
Israel’s Arrow missile-defense system has been effective against incoming ballistic missiles, Kalisky said. But if cluster munitions are released before a missile is destroyed, little can be done to stop the bomblets. The Iron Dome system, designed to intercept shorter-range rockets at lower altitudes, is not built to destroy clusters once they have dispersed into dozens of submunitions.
The bomblets — often weighing less than 3 kilograms (7 pounds) — are most dangerous to people, vehicles, and storefronts rather than buildings. They also fail to explode at higher rates than other warhead types; those that do not detonate on impact can act as land mines, detonating later and killing indiscriminately.
What Iran is using
According to the Missile Defense Project at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, Iran said in 2017 that its Khorramshahr medium-range ballistic missile could carry multiple warheads. Iran also has submunition-equipped shorter-range Zolfaghar missiles. The Open Source Munitions Portal, which authenticates publicly sourced images of munitions worldwide, published verified images of unexploded submunitions found in Israel this week.
N.R. Jenzen-Jones, director of Armament Research Services, said open-source information about Iran’s cluster munitions remains limited, but videos showing their use indicate that some Iranian missiles carrying cluster-munition warheads are designed to open at high altitude, scattering bomblets across areas far larger than most military targets. “The design seems to scatter submunitions so widely as to suggest it was designed purely as a weapon of terror, scattering its explosive cargo indiscriminately over a wide area,” Jenzen-Jones said.
In July 2025, following the 12-day war between Iran and Israel, Amnesty International said Iran’s “deliberate use of such inherently indiscriminate weapons is a blatant violation of international humanitarian law.”
Legal status and precedent
Cluster munitions are not prohibited under international law outright, but the Geneva Conventions bar their use in civilian areas. The Convention on Cluster Munitions, signed by more than 120 nations, bans them entirely; Israel, the United States, and Iran are not among the signatories.
The weapons have been used for decades across multiple conflicts. The United States used them in Vietnam, Laos, Iraq, and Afghanistan and provided cluster munitions to Ukraine. Russia was accused of using cluster bombs in its 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Israel used them during its 2006 war against the Iran-allied Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, when the United Nations estimated that 30% to 40% of Israeli cluster bombs failed to explode, leaving hundreds of thousands of unexploded bomblets across southern Lebanon. The U.S. State Department said Israel likely used American-made cluster bombs in civilian areas during that conflict.
An Israeli military official, speaking anonymously under the military’s briefing rules, said Israel is not using cluster munitions in the current war.
Civilian safety warnings
Israel’s Home Front Command has distributed flyers warning residents not to touch unexploded submunitions. Police have issued similar warnings through public service announcements, instructing people to call authorities rather than approach anything they see on the ground.
Israeli authorities, normally restrictive about releasing information on Iranian hits and damage, have in recent days sought to educate the public about cluster munitions and the hazards they pose after attacks end.