Missiles fired from Iran are pictured within the night time sky over Jerusalem on June 14, 2025 as Israel and Iran exchanged hearth a day after Israel unleashed an unprecedented aerial bombing marketing campaign that Iran stated hit its nuclear services, killed high commanders and dozens of civilians.
Menahem Kahana/AFP by way of Getty Pictures
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Menahem Kahana/AFP by way of Getty Pictures
Israel says it has crippled Iran’s air defenses and that it could possibly now strike targets throughout the nation at will. Though Israel’s personal defenses stay largely intact regardless of nightly barrages launched by Tehran, some missiles are getting via with lethal outcomes.
Since Friday, Israel has used U.S.-supplied state-of-the-art F-35 fighters and different plane to hold out tons of of airstrikes towards Iran’s air defenses and websites it says are getting used to develop nuclear weapons. Not a single Israeli plane has been shot down within the operation to date, Israel authorities says.
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, showing Sunday on Fox Information, additionally provided particulars of what he described as a profitable Israeli intelligence operation to infiltrate western Iran and disable its remaining air defenses within the space. Because of the Mossad operation, Israel has a “free highway to Tehran,” Netanyahu stated.
Chuck Freilich, a former deputy nationwide safety advisor in Israel who’s now on the Institute for Nationwide Safety Research at Tel Aviv College, says Israel has “succeeded quite nicely in clearing Iranian airspace so that it can conduct operations against other sites.”
Freilich acknowledges that whereas all of Iran’s air defenses have but to be destroyed “the vast majority… those that might pose a significant threat to Israeli aircraft have [been].”
In October, throughout tit-for-tat missile and drone assaults between Israel and Iran, Tehran’s air defenses reportedly sustained severe harm. Israel seemingly believed that Iran could not stand up to a serious air assault in the mean time, a incontrovertible fact that seemingly performed a task within the timing of the present operation.
Israel’s primary targets embody Iran’s two most necessary nuclear websites which might be used for processing, or “enriching” radioactive uranium into the purity wanted to supply atomic weapons. The primary is the Natanz uranium enrichment website, which is essentially underground and the second is the Fordow enrichment website constructed deep inside a mountain. They’re notably difficult to destroy and it is not clear if that may be performed with out extra assist from the U.S., which may present Israel with particular bunker-busting bombs to penetrate the underground services.
President Trump has expressed sturdy help for Israel, however has made clear that the U.S. will not be in the mean time a part of Israel’s operation, which has additionally included strikes that resulted within the deaths of high Iranian commanders and reportedly dozens of civilians.
Israel’s missile defenses are a multipronged and overlapping techniques designed to take out totally different sorts of threats. The perfect identified of those is Iron Dome, which fires interceptor missiles at incoming short-range rockets, akin to people who have regularly been fired by Hamas because the begin of the Gaza conflict. Since October 2023, the system has taken down all however a number of missiles fired by Iran and its regional proxies — not solely Hamas, however Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and the Yemen-based Houthis.
Since Sunday, nevertheless, Iran has unleashed waves of missiles towards Israel, in assaults apparently designed to overwhelm Israel’s defenses. A number of Iranian missiles received via on Monday morning and induced appreciable harm in Israel. Eight Israeli civilians have been killed when missiles hit condominium buildings. One other missile hit a gas refinery within the coastal metropolis of Haifa, touching off an enormous blaze.
As incoming Iranian missiles are hit by Israel’s defenses, they break up into giant fragments which might be nonetheless harmful. So, Iron Dome is now getting used to shoot down these falling fragments, in keeping with Freilich.
In the meantime, Israel says it has eradicated a few third of Iran’s estimated 100 cell launchers for firing ballistic missiles. They’re thought-about difficult targets as a result of they’re able to straightforward disguise and are designed to “shoot and scoot” to keep away from detection. “Iran is a big, mountainous country. It’s not easy to find them,” Freilich says.
The extra cell launchers that Israel can destroy, the much less ready Iran will probably be to strike again. “The primary objective in the campaign against the missiles is to eliminate the launchers rather than the missiles themselves,” he says.
