IDF Spokesperson, Brig. Gen. Efi Drorin:
We launched this operation in historic cooperation with the United States Army, with the aim of severely damaging the Iranian terror regime and removing existential threats to the State of Israel over the long term. For 40 days, we systematically and unprecedentedly struck the terror regime. The IDF fully met all the missions and objectives set for it – and even beyond.
The cumulative damage to the Iranian terror regime places it at its weakest point ever. Now, I will explain and detail the IDF’s achievements throughout the operation, and the depth of the damage we inflicted on the regime.
Elimination of Regime Senior Officials
We opened the operation with a cunning and surprising opening strike. During it, we attacked three areas simultaneously: the Leader’s compound, the Defense Council compound, and a gathering of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence leadership.
Within 40 seconds, we eliminated 40 of the leadership’s senior officials, headed by the regime leader Ali Khamenei. Their elimination impaired the regime’s ability to conduct the campaign as planned.
Concurrently, 200 Air Force aircraft launched the ‘Bereshit’ flyover, the largest flyover in IDF history, and attacked over 500 regime targets. Since then, we have operated according to a structured plan to deepen the damage.
In the first phase, we attacked the regime’s strategic defense systems. Subsequently and throughout the operation, we destroyed most of the Iranian defense systems that threatened to strike our aircraft. The air superiority we created in the skies over Iran provided a significant operational advantage.
Damage to the Ballistic Missile Array
We rendered approximately 60% of the ballistic missile launchers inoperable, and attacked launch crews and numerous weapons depots throughout Iran. Some of these were in real-time closures.
The damage to these infrastructures led to a significant reduction in the volume of launches from hundreds per day to only a few launches per day.
Damage to Air and Naval Capabilities
After the opening phase of the operation, we proceeded to deepen the damage to the regime’s foundations and its military capabilities, including its ballistic missile array, its air defense system, and its navy.
Damage to Military Industries
In addition, we unprecedentedly damaged the regime’s suppression and control mechanisms: the Revolutionary Guards, the Basij units, the Ministry of Intelligence, and internal security forces. We eliminated senior commanders who were responsible for suppressing the Iranian people for years.
Intelligence Directorate personnel conducted an unprecedentedly extensive process to map all of Iran’s defense industries responsible for the development and production of a wide range of weapons. This involves hundreds of factories, employing over 3,000 production lines and supporting infrastructure – and it must be remembered, Iran is a huge country, 75 times the size of Israel.
Our operational method was the systematic destruction of entire production lines, in order to broadly and deeply degrade the production capabilities of Iranian industries. This means thousands of missiles that will not be produced.
These are infrastructures that will take the regime a long time and significant resources to rebuild, and at a very high cost. We destroyed national nuclear infrastructure, such as the heavy water plant in Arak and a facility for producing materials required for uranium enrichment in Yazd. Additionally, we also damaged flagship national programs of the defense industries, such as the space program and the artificial intelligence program.
Documentation from Forces’ Operations
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