Without the powerful bombs needed to penetrate Iran’s mountain plants, Israel appears in its first wave of attacks to have gone for the regime’s leading nuclear scientists and military commanders.
A series of precision strikes have hit downtown Tehran taking out specific floors on an apartment block, probably using its Rampage long-range missiles that carry a 570kg warhead or the SkySniper air-to-surface missile with a range of 250km.
Israel, at some considerable risk, also used Mossad agents and commandos to smuggle weapons in ahead of the strikes, establishing a base inside Iranian territory to launch an “explosive drones” attack, military sources said. These targeted Iranian missile launchers that were mounted on trucks as well as the country’s surface-to-air missile systems.
Israel has also gone for Iran’s nuclear sites, probably using its biggest deployable munition, the GBU-28 1,800kg “bunker buster” and the laser-guided GBU-27 Paveway III 900kg weapon.
The ordnance was delivered by 200 fighter-bomber aircraft likely to be the stealthy F-35, then a selection of F-15 and F-16 jets that can all carry a significant payload.
However, the Israeli air force does not have the heavy bombers possessed by the US. Those are the only aircraft capable of carrying the 13,600kg GBU-57 “massive ordnance penetrator” (MOP) designed to pierce 60 metres of reinforced concrete.
Decapitation mission
Without that capability Israel has gone for what appears to be a “decapitation strategy” in which it has aimed for key regime figures.
Open-source intelligence points to several addresses that have been hit in Tehran where senior personnel were probably asleep when their homes were struck, including at Langari Street and Patrice Lumumba Street.
Iranian media confirmed that nuclear scientist Fereydoun Abbasi, the former head of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, and Iranian physicist and president of the Islamic Azad University Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi have both been killed.
Israel also killed Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps chief Maj Gen Hossein Salami and Maj Gen Mohammad Bagheri, chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, in addition to other senior officers.
“The breadth and scale of these strikes – against senior Iranian officials in addition to nuclear sites – suggest this operation is intended to not just dissuade Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons, but also cripple any potential military response and even to destabilise the regime,” said Matthew Savill, director of military science at the Rusi think tank.
He added that the size of the force represents the “overwhelming bulk” of Israel’s longer-range strike aircraft but added that, while they had the ability to conduct multiple rounds of strikes, operating for an extended duration “will stretch even the Israeli Air Force”.
Unconfirmed reports cite explosions at key Iranian sites in Qom, Markazi, Kermanshah and Hamadan provinces, with the Natanz nuclear plant, most of it buried 50 metres below ground, also hit.
The Israelis are also likely to have deployed a number of AGM-88 HARM (High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile) anti-radar missiles to take out Iran’s air defence systems. However, given that there were no reported Israeli losses, it appears that its earlier retaliatory strike in October, which largely struck Iran's surface-to-air system and ballistic missile factories, has had a lasting impact.
It is also likely that many attacks were conducted at long range to keep aircraft away from air defences.
The precise strikes also demonstrate that Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, still has significant assets in Iran providing it with key information.
US deception
An Israeli security source told The National that the operation was a “deliberate targeted destruction of Iran’s C2”, using the military reference for command and control.
“This night has been one of utter military decapitation and has strong regime change connotations,” he added.
It is also understood that the US played a key deception role in the attacks by allowing the Iranians to believe that there would be another round of nuclear agreement negotiations starting on Sunday.
This is likely to have caught senior Iranian commanders off guard, believing that Israel would not strike if this hindered the possibility of a diplomatic outcome.
It can be assumed that Washington was convinced that Iran was dragging out talks without agreeing to concede over its uranium enrichment.
The attack came a day after the International Atomic Energy Agency passed a resolution against Iran for the first time in 20 years, stating the country had consistently failed to provide information on “undeclared nuclear material and activities” at “multiple undeclared locations”.
While the US for now appears to remain out of the conflict, satellite imagery last month showed a force of heavy bombers consisting of six B-2 Spirit stealth bombers and four B-52s that are both capable of carrying GBU-57 bombs.
