The Israel Defense Forces revealed that Israeli strikes against targets in Iran reduced the regime’s ability to fire ballistic missiles at the Jewish state by half.
That’s a marked curtailment of the main capability with which the Iranian military has retaliated against Israel and threatened its civilian population.
Israeli leaders view the destruction of Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal as a top goal alongside that of degrading the regime’s nuclear enrichment capabilities.
“We strike a terror target, and then we eliminate launchers and trucks carrying ballistic missiles. Thus, last night, we have been able to narrow the Iranian regime’s ability to fire ballistic missiles at Israel by 50 percent,” said Masha Michelson, a captain in the IDF and its chief international spokesperson, told reporters today.
Analysts believe that Iran possesses around 2,000 ballistic missiles capable of reaching Israel. Iran has fired approximately 350 ballistic missiles at Israel so far during the current round of the conflict.
Retired IDF major general Giora Eiland cited reports that Israel has destroyed approximately 30 percent of Iran’s ballistic missile launchers.
“If we continue in the same pace, it means that in a week or two we might bring them to a very, very low number of launches, something that of course will ease the pressure on the Israeli home front,” said Eiland, a former head of the Israeli National Security Council and now a senior research associate at the Institute for National Security Studies.
Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and expert on the Iranian ballistic program, said that Israeli success against the Iranian arsenal “is on full display for all.”
“The regime’s loss of major launch infrastructure impedes its ability to respond. Missiles are essentially the regime’s only tool here, given Israel’s defanging of the axis of resistance a year earlier,” he told National Review.
Taleblu continued: “Without these launchers, Iran’s arsenal size need not matter.”
“And just in case, the success of Israel’s left-of-launch operations are destroying what is left of the arsenal, despite it being dispersed across underground basses across the country.”
Israeli air defense systems have worked with 85 to 90 percent accuracy, meaning that several missiles have struck targets across Tel Aviv, Haifa, and other cities, killing over a dozen people in the country.
Michelson said that this was by design.
“I just want to be clear that there are no misfires. Iran knows where it is sending its missiles. They are very advanced. They’re carrying warheads with hundreds of kilograms of explosives. They’re targeting civilian neighborhoods,” she said.
Michelson also said that the IDF is planning for several different contingencies.
“We have to plan for several scenarios, because Iran could be planning to fire barrages of over 100 missiles per day, like we saw two days ago. Or they can be planning three days from now to fire three missiles every night and to stretch it out.”