TEHRAN — Iranian officials and state-aligned media are increasingly portraying unexploded US and Israeli munitions, recovered after recent fighting, as both a technical windfall and a strategic opportunity, framing battlefield debris as the raw material for future deterrence.

The narrative, amplified across Iranian state media and hard-line circles, reflects a broader effort to present the post-conflict phase not as deescalation but as military consolidation under a fragile ceasefire.

On Friday, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said it had defused over a dozen heavy American missiles in the southern Hormozgan province, with the weapons reportedly transferred to technical and research units for "reverse engineering." Among the munitions cited were a GBU-57 bunker-buster bomb and thousands of bomblets that were recovered in other provinces.

The claims come in the aftermath of the 40-day conflict between Iran, the United States and Israel, which ended in a tenuous ceasefire on April 8 following weeks of escalation across multiple regional theaters.