The commander of Iran’s feared Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, boasted Thursday that his country was ready to handle any Israeli attack. “We are fully prepared for any scenario, under any circumstances,” he said.
By dawn Friday, he was dead, killed in what is shaping up to be a broad Israeli air campaign aimed not only at destroying Iran’s capacity to build nuclear weapons but to ensure that the country is hobbled politically and militarily.
It is an approach similar to the one Israel has employed to devastating effect against Hamas and Hezbollah, where covert actions swiftly transition to high-power strikes with sophisticated weaponry.
In the attack’s first hours, Israel said it killed top military leaders—including senior members of the Revolutionary Guard and its air force—in an effort to disrupt Iran’s chain of command, isolate Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and make it harder for Iran to defend itself from further attacks.
Israel’s military also said it did significant damage to the Natanz nuclear facility, a key site for producing the fissile material needed to build a bomb, as well as air-defense installations and parts of Iran’s vast missile arsenal. Strikes hit across the country, including in the tony neighborhoods of north Tehran, home to many of the Iranian elite. Israel also targeted Iranian nuclear scientists. State media named at least five who were killed.
In all, Israel carried out five waves of strikes with hundreds of warplanes early Friday then resumed the attack in the afternoon. A senior Israeli official said another two weeks of strikes had been planned in a campaign aimed at pushing the regime into negotiations or until it is incapacitated by the growing damage.
Iran said Israel “should expect severe punishment” but failed to muster any effective response. It said it launched 100 drones at Israel, which were downed on the way with help from Jordan.
“This is not a symbolic strike,” said Mark Dubowitz, who heads the think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “It’s a decapitation campaign targeting Iran’s nuclear brain trust and command infrastructure.”
The complex mix of targets went well beyond Iran’s uranium-enrichment facilities and other sites to include decisionmakers who might direct retaliatory attacks on Israel and who help prop up the country’s theocratic rulers. Israel’s spy agency Mossad was conducting operations inside Iran, including hunting for leadership targets in Tehran, a person familiar with the operations said Friday.
Mossad also smuggled explosive drones and other guided weapons into Iran ahead of the campaign, the person said. As the strikes got under way, Mossad assets on the ground used the weapons to attack Iranian air defenses and ballistic-missile launchers, helping clear a path for the warplanes and blunting Iran’s ability to respond.
In addition to killing Salami, Israel took out top military officers Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri and Maj. Gen. Gholam Ali Rashid, the Revolutionary Guard said. Israel’s military said it killed most of the leadership of the Guard’s air force—including its commander and the head of its drone operations—as they gathered to meet in an underground command center.
“It’s important to emphasize: we are only at the beginning of what is likely to be a very different event from previous direct clashes between Israel and Iran,” said Danny Citrinowicz, a senior Iran researcher at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies. “This time, it seems to be an ‘all-in’ campaign, the consequences of which will be far-reaching and significant for Iran’s future and the stability of the region.”
The attacks caught Iran’s leadership by surprise and echoed the approach Israel took last fall against Lebanese militia and Iranian ally Hezbollah. Over a two-month campaign, Israel struck Hezbollah’s rank and file, wiped out much of its arsenal and killed most of its top leaders in attacks on meetings and bunkers.
Israel has exacted a similar toll in its war with Gaza-based militant group Hamas, leaving it with just a handful of prewar senior leaders alive.
“If you cripple the decision making process, you can achieve a lot. We saw that with Hezbollah,” said Yaakov Amidror, a former Israeli national security adviser and fellow at the Washington-based Jewish Institute for National Security of America.
Israel’s attack likely won’t prevent Iran from rebuilding its nuclear program, but it could help delay it to a point where the threat no longer becomes relevant. Amidror said that when Israel destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981, critics of the move said Iraq would rebuild, but it never was able to.
The leadership attacks could also have a profound effect. Israel’s pounding silenced more than a year of Hezbollah rocket attacks and forced the group to go along with a cease-fire deal that is dismantling its positions in southern Lebanon near Israel’s border.
Iran, however, has greater size and depth of talent. While Hezbollah was quickly crippled, Iran can backfill its losses, and Israel has a ways to go before it can feel confident it has truly set back the nuclear program.
Iran’s supreme leader acknowledged the damage Friday morning, though the country has already named replacements for the top military leaders who were killed.
“Several commanders and scientists were martyred in the enemy attacks,” Khamenei said. “Their successors and colleagues will immediately resume their duties, God willing.”