Israel’s pre-dawn airstrike on Saturday hit Iran’s missile factories and a former nuclear weapons site, the assessment published by Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) concludes.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) also succeeded in blowing up Iran’s Russian-made air defense cover in a strike, dubbed “Days of Repentance,” that came in three massive waves and lasted nearly three hours.
The IDF fighter jets flew deep inside the hostile territory and destroyed well-guarded targets some 1200 miles from Israel, bearing witness to the courage of the men and women who flew the missions — a fact widely ignored in the mainstream media.
Israeli fighter jets hit Iran’s biggest weapons manufacturing hub linked to its nuclear weapons program outside the capital, Tehran, the DC-based think tank said. “Israel Defense Forces struck the Parchin military complex, east of Tehran, which is one of Iran’s most expansive and sensitive defense industrial sites. Iran has used the site to develop and manufacture explosive materials and advanced munitions, including drones and missiles,” the ISW report said, citing satellite imagery. “The Parchin complex also played a key role in the Iranian nuclear weapons program. The regime historically used the site for high explosive testing for nuclear weapons development.”
The Israeli strike also targeted Iran’s missile and drone factories near Tehran. “The IDF also struck the Khojir military complex, which is tied to the Parchin facility and involved in the production of liquid- and solid-fueled missiles for the IRGC,” the report added. “Iran began constructing new buildings at the Khojir complex in August 2023 to support missile production. Many of the buildings are surrounded by large dirt berms, indicating the nearby presence of highly combustible materials.”
The ISW report noted that the “expansion of the Khojir complex would increase Iran’s capacity to send weapons to Russia, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.”
In recent years, Iran has been spending massively in building up its military production capacities for the country’s armed forces, its terrorist proxies, and friendly rogue regimes. “Iran has the Middle East’s largest missile arsenal and supplied missiles to Russia for use against Ukraine, and to Yemen’s Houthi rebels and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah,” Reuters noted Sunday.
Reuters on Sunday quoted U.S. defense experts confirming that “Israel struck buildings in Parchin, a massive military complex near Tehran.”
“Israel also hit Khojir (…) a sprawling missile production site near Tehran,” the news agency said, adding that that “was undergoing massive expansion.”
The Israeli operation appears to have diminished Iran’s missile production capabilities. The strikes may have “significantly hampered Iran’s ability to mass produce missiles,” Reuters reported, quoting an expert. Iran launched hundreds of drones and missiles, including long-range balletic ones, in mid-April and early October.
The Israeli warplanes took out Iran’s advanced Russian-made air defense systems, making the regime’s nuclear weapons and terrorist assets vulnerable to any future Israeli airstrike. “The attack destroyed Iran’s most advanced air-defense systems, while delivering a setback to the country’s ballistic missile program, U.S. and Israeli officials said Saturday,” The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday. “An Israeli official said that Iran had four batteries of S-300 antimissile batteries, the most advanced in Tehran’s air-defense arsenal, before Israel’s recent strike and that all of them were destroyed.”
Israeli military and government officials also reached a similar conclusion about the success of the strike, The Times of Israel reported Sunday:
[The] strikes targeted strategic military sites — specifically drone and ballistic missile manufacturing and launch sites, as well as air defense batteries. (…)Israel’s airstrikes on Saturday crippled Tehran’s ability to produce long-range ballistic missiles, in a blow that will be hard and time-consuming to recover from, and rendered crucial energy facilities vulnerable to future attacks by destroying air defense batteries protecting them, according to multiple reports citing Israeli, American and Iranian officials, as well as satellite images analyzed by experts. (…)A short while after the strikes on Saturday morning, the Israeli military said the operation had given the IAF “wider freedom of aerial action in Iran,” and that it had a broad bank of targets that it could hit in the future if required.
The independent assessment seems to confirm Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s latest statement about the strike. “Iran attacked Israel with hundreds of ballistic missiles and this attack failed,” the Israeli prime minister said Sunday. “We kept our promise. The air force attacked Iran and hit Iran’s defense capabilities and missile production.”
After decisively hitting Iran, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) kept up the pressure on Hamas and Hezbollah, destroying terrorist targets in precision strikes in Gaza and Lebanon.
“Overnight, the IAF conducted precise intelligence-based strikes on weapons manufacturing and maintenance facilities and a weapons storage facility belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organization in the Dahieh area, a key Hezbollah terrorist stronghold,” the IDF said Sunday. “Over the past day, the IAF eliminated approximately 70 Hezbollah terrorists and struck over 120 Hezbollah terror targets.”
The notable targets of the recent strikes were a Hezbollah commander and his deputy in southern Lebanon, who were directing terrorist attacks into northern Israel, “including launching anti-tank missiles toward Israeli civilians and IDF troops,” the IDF disclosed.
“On Friday, with the direction of IDF intelligence, the IAF struck and eliminated the terrorist Ahmed Jafar Maatouk, the commander of Hezbollah’s Bint Jbeil area,” The military announced Sunday. “A day later, directed by IDF intelligence, the IAF struck and eliminated his successor. Additionally, Hezbollah’s head of artillery in the Bint Jbeil area was eliminated in the strike.”
The IDF continued the sweeping operation to wipe out Hamas in the Jabaliya area of northern Gaza. “Simultaneously in the area of Jabaliya, IDF troops continued operational activity and eliminated over 40 terrorists over the past day,” the military announced Sunday. “During the operational activity, the troops dismantled terrorist infrastructure and located large quantities of military equipment.”
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