Israel’s response to the Mossad attack: From the Pentagon to the Middle East, Israel is a successful intelligence operation for destroying missile launchers

According to Chuck Freilich, a former deputy national security advisor in Israel who is now at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, Israel has successfully cleared Iranian airspace so that it can conduct operations against other sites.

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, appearing Sunday on Fox News, also offered details of what he described as a successful Israeli intelligence operation to infiltrate western Iran and disable its remaining air defenses in the area. Israel has a “free highway to Tehran” after the Mossad operation, Netanyahu said.

The U.S. had been in the midst of talks with Iran over its nuclear program when Israel launched the surprise attack late last week. Talks between the U.S. and Iran were supposed to resume last weekend, but have since ground to a halt.

The more mobile launchers that Israel can destroy, the less able Iran will be to strike back. “The primary objective in the campaign against the missiles is to eliminate the launchers rather than the missiles themselves,” he says.

President Trump has expressed strong support for Israel, but has made clear that the U.S. is not at the moment part of Israel’s operation, which has also included strikes that resulted in the deaths of top Iranian commanders and reportedly dozens of civilians.

The large fragments that are still dangerous are the result of the incoming Iranian missiles breaking up. So, Iron Dome is now being used to shoot down those falling fragments, according to Freilich.

Meanwhile, Israel says it has eliminated about a third of Iran’s estimated 100 mobile launchers for firing ballistic missiles. They are considered challenges because they are able to hide easily and are designed to not be detected. “Iran is a big, mountainous country. It isn’t easy to find them, says Freilich.

There was panic in Iran’s capital city of Tehran as Israel began to warn hundreds of Thousands of civilians to leave ahead of further potential strikes as the conflict between the two countries spiraled into its fifth day.

Cars filled with people fleeing waited in miles-long lines at gas stations, trying to buy fuel. There were bumper-to-bumpers on the roads out of the city. On Tuesday, the Israeli military said it launched a large scale attack wave in the heart of Iran, with dozens of fighter jets targeting 12 different sites.

Zahra said that she was trying to leave Tehran to go to her hometown in western Iran but all the roads were blocked. She asked that only her first name be used because she feared government reprisal for speaking to the media.

The Israeli War During 2023-2020: What We Don’t Know About Nuclear Attacks in the United States and How We’re Going to Save Our Lives

We don’t know what to do. What decisions can we or should we make? We do not have internet. She said in voice notes that it took her more than eighteen hours to send the signal because she couldn’t hear the news.

She said that each person was only thinking about how they could save their own lives or someone else’s. Everyone is thinking of ways to avoid the missiles.

In a post on Tuesday, he suggested the U.S. knows where Iran’s supreme leader is. We know the location of the so-called “Supreme Leader”. He is an easy target, but is safe there — We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now.”

According to the Iranian government, more than 200 civilians, including at least 20 children, were killed in those strikes. Iran insists that its nuclear program is peaceful.

Dena, a 48-year-old resident of Tehran – who also asked to be identified only by her first name for fear of government reprisal – says the government has given civilians no information on how to protect themselves.

“They don’t give us any practical tips. No information as to which locations we should avoid and which ones are safe to go. She says that they don’t talk about it. The people are applauding and celebrating while shooting missiles at Israel.

Israel and Iran have traded direct fire several times – most recently in October of last year – since the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel in 2023 sparked the current war in Gaza. The new round has been more deadly and destructive for both sides.

“Everything that we’re watching is defying expectations,” Aaron Stein, president of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told NPR’s All Things Considered. He said Israel has taken Iran’s missile capabilities out of the picture quicker than experts thought possible.

Stein said that if Iran does not get certain nuclear facilities, he will think the plan was a failure on the Israeli side.

Source: 4 things to know as the war between Israel and Iran intensifies

Israeli airstrikes threaten to destroy Iran’s nuclear program: a former US ambassador to Israel and what he wants to see in the next war

The facilities – and the centrifuges they contain – can be used to enrich uranium to a purity that could be used either in a nuclear reactor to generate electricity or to build an atomic weapon, experts say.

Speaking to the BBC on Monday, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Director, General Rafael Grossi, said it was likely that all of the 15,000 centrifuges at Natanz, Iran’s largest such facility, had been severely damaged by Israeli airstrikes. There was little to no damage seen at the underground Fordo enrichment plant.

Daniel Shapiro is a non-partisan think thank in Washington, D.C. and a former US ambassador to Israel. “[Only] the United States has the kind of bunker busting capabilities that can actually destroy that facility. But I don’t rule out that Israel has some surprises up its sleeve.”

Benjamin Netanyahu said at the news conference that Israel’s strikes have set back the Iran’s nuclear program by a long time. The main goal of Israel is to dismantle Iran’s nuclear capability, but also that the regime is weak, according to Netanyahu.

“I don’t think regime change is the objective of this Israeli campaign,” says Shapiro, who served as ambassador to Israel during the Obama presidency. “I don’t think it’s possible to do it with this kind of military campaign, and I don’t think that’s even a legitimate objective.”

Instead, Israel is likely relying on a “mowing the grass” strategy, with the expectation of striking again later in an iterative process of setting back Iran’s nuclear program, Miller says.

On Tuesday, Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he was seeking a real end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and that he called it better than a ceasefire.

Source: 4 things to know as the war between Israel and Iran intensifies

Does the U.S. Want to Make Warplanes? Israel May Not Need Far-Infrared Bombs, But It Will

Although Israel operates sophisticated U.S.-made warplanes, such as the F-35 fighter, it does not possess the enormous 30,000 pound bunker-busting bombs and the B-2 stealth bombers needed to deliver them – tools only the U.S. possesses.

Whether or not Washington will do that is still a question. He said he didn’t want to talk about that when he was asked at the G7 summit in Canada what it would take for the US to become military involved.

“Iran might try to retaliate against U.S. forces at bases in the Gulf states… or to blockade energy shipments through the Strait of Hormuz,” he says. Iran may try to make sure that everyone suffers if they suffer.