An Israeli IMI Delilah cruise missile under the wing of an Israeli Air Force F-16I Soufa Fighter. Picture taken at Kecskeméti Repülőnap 2010. By Wikimedia user (KGyST).
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) announced on June 20 that the fighter jets of the Israeli Air Force (IAF) struck several Iranian air defense systems in central Iran in recent days.
In a statement, the military said that surface-to-air missile launchers and radars “that were intended to target IDF aircraft and prevent their operations.” were targeted by the IAF in the capital, Tehran, and the province of Isfahan.
IAF fighter jets and drones “continue to operate freely over Iran, striking military targets of the Iranian regime in western and central Iran,” the IDF says, adding that it will “continue working to expand aerial freedom of action in Iranian skies and to achieve air superiority.”
Footage released by the IDF showed several air defense systems being hit, including a Soviet-made Tor-M1E short-range system and MIM-23 Hawk medium-range system, in addition to what appears to be an Iranian copy of the Russian Kasta 2E2 radar. Both air defense systems were inactive when they were struck.
The systems were all targeted with Delilah air-launched cruise missiles. The Delilah, which has a range of 250 kilometers, was especially developed to attack moving targets. It is guided via a GPS-aided inertial navigation system with terminal electro-optical homing.
Separately, the IDF announced that the IAF attacked dozens of Iranian military facilities and a nuclear research site overnight.
More than 60 fighter jets were involved in the strikes, dropping 120 munitions, according to a statement released by the military, which said that the targets included “several industrial missile production sites” in Tehran, which had served as “the industrial core of Iran’s Defense Ministry.”
“Among the targets were military industrial sites producing missile components and facilities for manufacturing raw materials used in casting missile engines,” the IDF said.
The strikes also hit the “headquarters of the SPND [Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research] nuclear project,” according to the military.
“SPND serves as a hub for research and development of advanced technologies and weaponry for the Iranian regime’s military capabilities. It was established in 2011 by Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the founder of Iran’s nuclear weapons program,” the IDF said.
Another site that was struck had been used to manufacture a “component essential to the regime’s nuclear weapons program,” it added.
The IAF destroyed some 35 missile launchers and storage sites in the western cities of Tabriz and Kermanshah in another wave of strikes in the morning, according to the IDF.
The military said in a statement that 25 fighter jets were involved in the strikes, during which “more than 35 infrastructure sites for the storage and launching of missiles” were hit.
Later in the morning, the IDF announced in a separate statement that the IAF struck Iran’s “Internal Security headquarters” and the headquarters of the Islamic Republic’s “special internal security unit” in Tehran.
A day earlier, the IDF released footage showing strikes on engineering vehicles allegedly working to restore ballistic missile launch sites. The military said that “dozens” of Iranian troops were killed in the strikes.
Israel appears to be preparing to escalate even more. On June 20, Defense Minister Israel Katz instructed the IDF to “intensify strikes on regime targets in Tehran” to “destabilize” the “Iranian regime.”
“We must strike all symbols of the regime and its mechanisms of oppression, such as the Basij, as well as the base of the regime’s power, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” Katz said during an assessment this morning with IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir and other top officers.
The minister added that Israel must bring about “a mass evacuation of the population from Tehran, in order to destabilize the regime and increase deterrence in response to missile fire on Israel’s home front, while continuing to target facilities and scientists to thwart Iran’s nuclear program, until all objectives of the operation are fully achieved.”
Iran will likely meet the Israeli escalation with more escalation. The Islamic Republic’s latest retaliatory strikes were especially devastating, and more is to be expected.
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