It truly is hard to overstate how impressive the opening round of attacks by Israel into Iran have been from a military and strategic perspective. Using a lethal mix of intel, deception, surprise, technology, diplomacy, not to mention the bravery, courage, and unity of purpose that the threat of annihilation provides, the surgical strikes on personnel and essential infrastructure has been stunning to watch unfold.
Since the operation began Thursday night, here’s a list of the top Iranian generals that will never be a threat to Israelis, Sunni Arab states, or the rest of the world again.
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Major General Hossein Salami – Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
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Major General Mohammad Bagheri – Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces.
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Major General Gholam Ali Rashid – Commander of the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters.
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Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh – Commander of the IRGC Aerospace Force.
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General Gholamreza Mehrabi – Deputy Intelligence Chief of the Iranian Armed Forces.
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General Mehdi Rabbani – Deputy Commander of Operations for the Iranian Armed Forces.
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General Davood Sheikhian – Commander of Air Defense.
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General Khosro Hassani – Deputy Intelligence Chief of the IRGC Aerospace Unit.
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General Mohammad Kazemi – Head of the Intelligence Organization of the IRGC.
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General Hassan Mohaqiq – Deputy to General Kazemi, IRGC Intelligence.
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Brigadier General Hamid Vahedi – Commander-in-Chief of the Iranian Air Force (IRIAF).
That’s 11 kills widely reported in open sources across multiple platforms, and there are many other reports out there that up to 20 additional senior level commanders have been taken off the board. Ali Khamenei remains on the move, and according to one report, had the place he stayed last night destroyed right after he left. Parts of Tehran where members of the Ayatollah’s family reside, such as the Pasteur district, have been targeted and destroyed.
The reason for the strike at this moment in time, of course, is because Iran got to the point where enrichment of Uranium had yielded enough material to make close to a dozen nuclear weapons, and that they had people actively beginning the final assembly process. According to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, they were probably not more than a week away from possessing a warhead that could have changed the Middle East forever, and they simply could wait no longer. Among the military leadership that have been permanently disassembled, Iran’s corps of nuclear scientists have also not had a stellar week.
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Fereydoon Abbasi – Former head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization.
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Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi – Theoretical physicist and president of the Islamic Azad University, accused by Israel of involvement in Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
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Abdulhamid Minouchehr – Head of nuclear engineering at Shahid Beheshti University.
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Ahmad Reza Zolfaghari – Nuclear engineering professor at Shahid Beheshti University.
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Amirhossein Feqhi (or Seyed Amir Hossein Feqhi) – Nuclear professor at Shahid Beheshti University and deputy head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.
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Motallebzadeh (or Akbar Motalei Zadeh) – Chemical engineer, named in some reports as a nuclear scientist.
That, of course, is not all of their weapons program brainiacs, but it’s about half of them gone within the first 36 hours. Then, on Sunday in Tehran, car bombs began to detonate all over the city. It would seem that the strategy employed by the remaining IDF persons of interest was to stay mobile, not congregate, not hole up somewhere, Staying on the move was their best bet to stay alive. This was the reporting from Sunday’s Times of Israel.
Iran’s IRNA news agency reported that five car bombs were detonated in Tehran. The report blamed Israel for the attacks.
Two sources in the Gulf told Reuters that at least 14 Iranian nuclear scientists had been killed in Israeli attacks since Friday, including by car bombs.
The names of nine of the scientists were published by the IDF on Sunday, and it said many of them were successors to Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the “father of the Iranian nuclear project,” who was allegedly assassinated by Israel in 2020.
The infiltration of Iran by Israel, whether it be IDF, Mossad, or both, is to such an extent that it would appear Israel knows more about what’s going on moment by moment in Iran than Khamenei does.
The four nuclear sites of interest – Natanz, Fordow, Isfahan, and Khondab (or Arak), have all received some Israeli attention over the first few days of Operation Rising Lion.
Natanz: Bomb damage assessments and satellite telemetry vary, but at a minimum, the surface of Natanz is destroyed, and whatever was in the halls underneath is unknown.
Best case scenario? This out of the Times of Israel late Sunday.
Iran’s underground Natanz uranium enrichment facility may have imploded due to Israeli strikes, an Israeli official tells The Wall Street Journal.
The official adds that further assessments were required.
Isfahan: This report is from Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Thus far, there are no confirmed reports that the heavy water reactor at Arak has been damaged or destroyed. There are lots of claims that it’s been targeted and struck, but no hard confirmation as of yet. This may be a priorities issue. The other three are more pressing, but Arak’s time in the spotlight will come.
The main event, and what will end this war, as well as the murderous theocratic regime in Tehran faster than anything else, is the destruction of Fordow.
Fordow is the nuclear weapons development site buried under 90 meters of Iranian mountain, at least up to now only believed to be penetrable by repeated strikes by American bunker busters. Those munitions, specifically the GBU-57’s, come in at 30,000 pounds each, and only the Americans have the air frames that can carry that kind of payload.
So far, President Donald Trump has been solid on helping Israel defend against wave after wave of drone and ballistic missile barrages from Iran. But taking the next step, offensively striking Fordow’s nuclear facilities, housing countless centrifuges and the necessary ingredients to finalize assembly of a nuclear warhead, he’s been more vague.
Benjamin Netanyahu on Fox News with Bret Baier made the appeal public, by announcing that Iran had tried to assassinate Trump not once, but twice. Netanyahu’s message was clear. The time will never be more opportune than right now to end this menace once and for all.
For Trump’s part, he’s signaled two red lines vis-a-vis Iran. First, Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon, and the corollary to that, Iran may not enrich Uranium. Second, if Iran kills an American in the process of all of this, as far as Trump is concerned, it’s weapons free on Iran. Until then, he’s holding out for an Ayatollah offramp.
Or is he?
We know there are already B-2’s in the area, having been staged in April on Diego Garcia, far enough south of to be out of range of anything Iran has, but close enough to essentially be a milk run for our bombers. With this amount of refueling tankers on the way east to parts unknown, could it be part of a NATO exercise? Sure. Could that just be a cover story for wherever they’re really going? Absolutely.
Donald Trump’s head fake last week caught every one of the now-dead Iranian generals and scientists by surprise. The mullahcracy in Tehran believed the President when he said he was sending Special Envoy Steve Witkoff for one last negotiation session, and Iran took that to mean they still had time to stall. Is Trump head faking again, sounding uncommitted to joining the Israelis offensively, but moving assets in place to do just that? I sure hope so.
Israel has achieved total air supremacy over the skies of Iran. The upside to sending in American bombers to jackhammer Fordow until the mountain collapses into a giant flaming sinkhole means an end to the regime, an end to the nuclear nightmare, and an end to the source of terrorism across the greater Middle East. Simply put, without the Iranian regime fomenting terror, the proxies of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and many more would dry up without money and material. Cutting the head off the terror snake now would give Trump’s Abraham Accords a chance to totally remake the Middle East.
The downside? Iran could declare war on the United States, something it has already been trying to wage since 1979. They could drag Russia into it. Except Vladimir Putin threw cold water on that idea.
If there’s one thing about second term Donald Trump, it’s that he has a sense for recognizing an important moment in time and not missing out on it. He sees big opportunities and makes big plays in ways he didn’t during his first term. Taking Fordow out of play, and essentially putting the final nail into the coffin of the reign of terror in the Middle East is a move the President has to make.
Much was made out of this late last night. That fireball? That’s basically in the valley where Fordow is, near Qom. Something went boom big enough that it registered on the Richter Scale as a 2.5 jolt. Did the Israelis surprise the world again with their capabilities? Do they have something big enough in their arsenal after all that could begin destroying Fordow all by themselves? Or have the Americans arrived at the party sooner than expected? Or if you want to channel your inner Mission Impossible urges, could the Israelis, who have basically been running a modern-day adaptation of Hogan’s Heroes inside of Iran for the last year or so, have resources in play inside Fordow to cause it to implode from within?
Or was there a munitions/missile battery on the north side of Fordow that the Israelis noisily removed from the lineup so they couldn’t be used against them in a future barrage? No one is saying anything official, yet, but by later today, we’ll learn what took place, and whether or not the U.S. will take its destined place in history as striking the death blow at the nuclear ambition of murderous, antisemitic, religious zealots.
The strike on Fordow can’t come soon enough. It’s time for this evil regime to end once and for all. Fordow isn’t just a key, it’s the key.
Carpe diem, President Trump. Seize the day.
