Image source, Getty Images
- Author, Writing
- Author's title, BBC News World
Atomic facilities, military bases, controls of security forces and nuclear scientists: all have been objective at the same time of the greatest attack suffered by Iran in their territory since their war with Iraq in the 80s.
Israel had been preparing this Friday's offensive against Iran for years, for which the Mossad even built a secret basis in Iranian territory from which he launched drones to deactivate his anti -aircraft defenses, according to security sources to the Israeli press.
It is not the first time that Israel bombs nuclear facilities or kills Iranian scientists or military. But, unlike other times, in this operation he has chosen to attack all its goals at the same time, a blow with which he sought to leave Tehran out of combat.
The attack began in the early morning and reached residential areas of Tehran, as well as Natanz's nuclear facilities, about 225 kilometers south of the capital; The city of Tabriz, to the north of the country, where the bombs reached a nuclear research center, and two military bases, as well as the cities of Isfahán and Arak, where there are uranium enrichment plants.
Explosions were also reported in cities such as Kermanshah and Shiraz, where there are military and industrial complexes.
Iran responded by launching a hundred drones about Israel, who were mostly intercepted by their anti -aircraft defenses, and on Friday night he also launched dozens of missiles on cities such as Tel Aviv, which were also blocked, although there were several injured.
Image source, MEGHDAD MADADI/TASNIM NEWS/AFP via Getty Images
Dome
The Israeli attack reached numerous points of the country at the same time, overflowing Iranian defenses to leave them without immediate reaction.
At least 78 people would have died in the attacks and more than 200 would have been injured, according to the Iraní Nour News state medium, which indicated that the figure was not official at the moment.
But not only has this attack been the broadest and most intense of those that Israel has carried out against Iran, but with him it also seems to have adopted a new strategy against the Iranian enemy that already worked against Hezbollah last November, explains the analyst of the Middle East of the BBC, Sebastian Usher.
“It is not just about attacking Iran's missile bases – and therefore his ability to respond with force – but also to launch attacks to eliminate key members of the Iranian dome,” Analyzes Analyzes.
That strategy of discouragement to the dome of the Lebanese Milk-Milicia Hezbollah “had devastating consequences for the group and for his ability to organize a sustainable counteroffensive,” he adds.
The images that arrived from Tehran after the operation in the morning of this Friday showed that the objective in the capital seemed to have been concrete residential buildings, something similar to what happened during the Israeli attacks against the suburbs of the south of Beirut, which culminated in the death of the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah.
Image source, Iraní/Anadoul Via Geetty IMAGES
In Iran, no figure of that magnitude seems to have died. Supreme leader Ali Jamenei has not been the target of the attack.
But killing the commander of the powerful revolutionary guard, Hossein Salami, the Chief of the General Staff, Mohammad Bagheri, and several of the country's main nuclear scientists in the early hours of an operation that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has suggested that it could last days, “is having inflicted unprecedented damage to the Iranian elite,” says Sebastian Usher.
Salami is the leader with the greatest rank achieved by the Israeli attack, and his murder is compared to that of Qasem Soleimani, the powerful chief of the Quds force who died in 2020 in a bombardment of the United States near the Tehran airport.
In addition to the Chief of the General Staff Bagheri, its number 2, Gholamali Rashid, responsible for the operational coordination of the Iranian armed forces, and Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Aerospace Force of the Revolutionary Guard.
Nuclear scientists as a goal
Israel's objective have also been highlighted scientists of the Iranian nuclear program.
Tehran has so far confirmed that at least six of its nuclear scientists died in Israeli attacks during the night.
The most prominent of them is Fereidun Abbasi, former director of Iran's atomic energy organization.
Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi, the second identified, was president of the Azad Islamic University of Tehran.
Image source, EPA/EFE
Abdolhamid Minouchehr, Ahmad Reza Zolfaghari and Amirhossein Feqhi were academics from Shahid Beheshti University of Tehran. The sixth victim has only been identified by his last name, Motallebizadeh, according to the Persian BBC service.
Operation from inside Iran
Israel claims to have initially used 200 combat planes in the joint operation of its army and the Mossad that has baptized Operation Lion Nascent to achieve more than a hundred objectives.
But Israel has also attacked Iran with explosive drones with precision weapons from the interior of the country itself, thanks to a secret base that Mossad, its external intelligence service, had managed to establish in the surroundings of Tehran, according to Israeli security officials to different media in the country.
This covert operation had, apparently, three fronts that attacked the Iranian anti-aircraft defenses, their Earth-Aire missile system and that of Tierra-Tierra.
The Mossad managed to introduce commands and vehicles that transported armament systems.
These weapons were positioned in open areas near the Earth-Aire missile systems, and were activated when the Israeli operation began “to eliminate the air defenses of Iran and gave the Israeli aircraft Air supremacy and freedom of action on Iran,” said a security source to the newspaper The Times of Israel.
This adds to the “explosive drone base” that the Mossad managed to install in the heart of Iran, according to security sources, an operation that was done “well in advance.”
The initiative reminds the web operation, with which Ukraine managed to attack Russian airfields recently after hiding drones within the Eurasian country.
These drones were activated during the night to attack, among other things, the earth-earth missiles with which Iran could hit Israel.
Image source, Getty Images
Nuclear facilities
Among the nuclear facilities achieved by Israeli attacks is Natanz, the main Iranian enrichment center of large -scale uranium, material that could be used for civil or military uses.
According to Israel's defense forces, its facilities have suffered “significant damage” in the attack on Friday morning.
Iran has denied that he is trying to manufacture nuclear weapons, and it is not known that he has produced military use uranium. However, the International Atomic Energy Agency (OIEA) has recently calculated that, in theory, it could manufacture nine nuclear bombs if the enriched uranium it possesses will be refined until the military degree is reached.
The nuclear agreement that was reached in 2015 restricted what Iran had allowed to do in Natanz, but since Donald Trump withdrew to the United States from the pact in 2018, Iran has accelerated its activity in this installation.
It is not the first time that Israel attacks Natanz, highlights the editor for the Middle East of the BBC, Raffi Berg.
A great cyber attack hit the facilities in 2010 and, ten years later, the central suffered damage when some hidden explosives supposedly explored at a table.
The following year, Natanz suffered serious damage in a mysterious attack that Iran blamed Israel.
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