The relentless combination of good information and aerial power that Israel has demonstrated with its attack on Iran exposes significant disparity between the two countries for a conflict that will be long if the objective is to eliminate Tehran's nuclear capacity.
The waves of Israeli air attacks against Iran began around 3 in the morning on Friday. According to reports, the first objective were military leaders and espionage services. Then they went to the anti -aircraft batteries, the missile launch bases, and most importantly: Natanz's key facilities where uranium enrichment is possible to make weapons.
The initial objective seems to have been the Iranian army's command chain, with the murder of the Mohammad Bagheri Division General, Chief of the General Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces; and of General Hossein Salami, head of the body of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, along with other high positions of the group.
According to Burcu Ozcelik, a researcher at the Royal United Services Institute Studies Center (Rusi), the magnitude of an attack that has gone against the military dome and against nuclear infrastructure could “remodel the strategic panorama of the Middle East.” “The depth and precision of attacks that have reached the heart of Tehran, eliminating key people such as (Hossein) Salami, highlight the penetration of Israeli espionage services and the degradation of Iran's air defense; for Tehran, it is not only a tactical loss, but a deep strategic humiliation,” he said.
The first question is for the damage in Natanz, where Iran has developed most of its nuclear enrichment. It is said that the place is eight meters underground, protected by hard rock and reinforced concrete. In video recordings it was possible to see black columns of smoke leaving the area, but evaluating the damage is impossible.
Iran's government declared through the Semi -Officer News Agency Mehr that the attack had affected Natanz and that there were no victims. The International Atomic Energy Agency has reported that damage was still being evaluated. Effie Defrin, spokesman for the Israeli army, said the bombing had reached the underground area and related key infrastructure. “We have inflicted significant damage in this place,” he said.
At the same time, Israel Mossad's exterior espionage service communicated that it had deployed a series of command attacks, a statement that complemented with a granulated thermal video, as well as attacks from prepositioned drones against Iranian air defense systems, including the ESFEJABAD air base, in the style of the recent Ukrainian attack against the air bases of Russia.
It is likely that some of Mossad's statements are propaganda, but the military reality is that so far there has been no sign of effective Iranian defenses, or low -informed casualties in the Israeli Air Forces. Israel's aerial superiority seemed almost total, which allowed him to continue bombing Friday with new attacks on Tabriz.
According to Israel, Iran's initial response was to launch more than 100 drones, all demolished in mid -morning. The drones are slow and takes up to seven hours to travel the 700 miles that separate the two countries (about 1,125 kilometers). For some of them to touch land they should have launched many more.
But Tehran has other military options. The most dangerous is its reserve of up to 3,000 high -speed ballistic missiles, of which it spent about 180 in the attack against October 2024. In that last attack, about two dozen of these missiles reached the air bases of Nevatim and Tel NOF in Israel, where it is believed that nuclear weapons are stored, and places near the headquarters of the Mossad. But apparently the damage caused were relatively modest.
The initial reports located among Israel's first objectives to the Kermanshah region, in western Iran, for their facilities to launch ballistic missiles buried in gorges. But destroying or disabled underground site is notoriously difficult. It will not be known what its effect was until they will throw a missile counterattack with which they have remained.
Another possible scenario is that of cyber attacks or terrorists. But none of them looks like an equivalent retaliation from the political point of view, even if they are realizable. Attacks against US objectives would be very risky for Tehran for the possibility of the US to join war with all its fire power.
An option that is not on the table is to resort to the usual regional representatives. The Hezbollah group of Lebanon, foured last fall during the two -month war against Israel, communicated on Friday that “it will not begin its own attack against Israel” to support Iran. Yemen's hutis, attacked on Tuesday by Israel, are more than 1,000 miles away (about 1,600 kilometers) and can only organize occasional attacks with ballistic missiles.
The complication for Israel is that Iran has had plenty of time to prepare and its nuclear facilities are well defended. Israel did not try until Friday afternoon to attack a second enrichment installation in Fordow, buried at a depth of between 80 and 90 meters underground, exceeding the capacity of the most powerful Israeli missiles of which there is record: rocks (of 1.8 tons) and the Air Lora (1.6 tons).
According to an analysis by Rusi, a successful attack by Natanz “would probably require several impacts on the same crater to 'excavate' to installation and get a weapon to successfully exploit inside.” ForDow's destruction is only considered feasible with the American bomb GBU 57/B or bunker buster It weighs almost 14 tons, measures 6 meters long, and can only be thrown from the American bomber B-2.
The strength of these objectives together with Israel's aerial superiority and their extraordinary confidence suggests a prolonged military campaign against Iran that, according to some reports, could reach two weeks. A tense international period full of uncertainty whose end point, as long as Iran does not surrender, does not seem evident.
