Israel Strikes Nuclear and Ballistic Missile Targets in Tehran

On March 21, Israel struck a nuclear research and development site placed inside a university in Teheran. It was also the site used to develop ballistic missiles. The IDF believes that along with the Americans, it has now managed to end Iran’s uranium enrichment effort, but there remains the problem of finding, and seizing or destroying, the 400 kg. of uranium enriched to a near-weapons-grade level of 60% that Iran is known to possess. More on the latest IDF hits on both nuclear and ballistic missile sites can be found here: “IDF strikes Iranian nuclear weapons research, development facility in Tehran,” by Sam Halpern, Jerusalem Post, March 21, 2026:

The Israeli Air Force struck a research and development facility used by the Iranian regime to develop nuclear weapons components in Tehran, the military announced on Saturday.The facility, which was located inside Tehran’s Malek-Ashtar University, was used to develop ballistic missiles in addition to nuclear weapons, the IDF stated.

Earlier on Saturday, the military announced that it had completed “wide-scale” strikes against dozens of Iranian regime targets overnight, including ballistic missile production facilities.

According to the IDF, the strikes “significantly degrade” Iran’s capability to continue producing ballistic missiles.

As part of the air force strikes, which were conducted based on intelligence from the IDF’s intelligence directorate, Israel hit Iranian defense industrial base facilities that produced “critical components for the development of ballistic missiles.”

Among the sites struck were a central Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) ballistic missile production and development compound, a missile component storage facility, an Iranian Defense Ministry missile fuel production site, and a missile component production site.

Further, in the same announcement, the military said it had hit “several defense systems of the Iranian terror regime across Tehran” without specifying further. It noted, however, that the strikes were part of efforts to undermine the systems maintaining the regime’s grip on power.

Later on Saturday, the IDF announced that the air force had conducted five strikes on targets in a “large-scale ballistic missiles array site in western Iran.” The military published footage of the strikes, which it said occured in a span of seconds and resulted in the killing of numerous Iranian ballistic missile array personnel….

After June’s 12-day war, CNN reported, Iran restored damaged parts of its missile production network, a complex linked to uranium enrichment centrifuges, and underground mid-range missile sites, indicating that strikes on such targets may only serve as temporary solutions.

Iran was quick to restore sites damaged in the 12-day war to their previous condition. Those repair efforts included ballistic missile production sites, uranium enrichment centrifuges, and underground mid-range ballistic sites. But the IDF has been just as quick in returning to hit the same sites, once repaired, again. With every new round of IDF attacks, more damage is done at the sites struck, more critical personnel perish who, unlike infrastructure, cannot be replaced, and Iran’s ability to restore those sites to their previous state is increasingly diminished.

The American goals for Operation Epic Fury, as President Donald Trump has stated them, have varied even during its first three weeks. Those goals no longer appear to include regime change, as was originally suggested. The Israelis, too, have now said that they do not expect to bring about regime change directly, but hope to so weaken the regime that the conditions will be created so that the people of Iran will be able to rise up and overthrow the regime themselves. America and Israel continue to have the shared goal of destroying Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal and its missile production plants, and of ending the Islamic Republic’s ability to enrich uranium to just below weapons-grade levels. Both are close to being achieved, though the recent missile attack by Iran on Diego Garcia shows that the Islamic Republic is capable of launching missiles at targets 2,400 miles away, which must give Iran’s enemies pause. Both the U.S. nor Israel have said that their war aims include either “neutralizing,” by diluting the purity, of the 400 kg. of uranium enriched to a level of 60% that Iran is known to possess, or more likely, to ensure that that uranium is buried under rubble so deep that the Iranians cannot retrieve it.

Targeting Iranian sites on the Persian Gulf is intended to make it more difficult for Iran to strike American and other Western vessels that may be engaged in mine-sweeping. On March 22, President Trump increased pressure on Iran, giving it exactly 48 hours to open the Strait of Hormuz or, he warned, he would give orders to destroy all of Iran’s power plants. He has, however, since then stated that negotiations with the Islamic Republic are again underway.

And finally, Iran has just managed to hit two Israeli targets — the city of Arad, and a site only 8 miles from Dimona — wounding nearly 100 Israelis and damaging many buildings, including a thousand residences. A successful strike so close to Dimona is worrying; Dimona is where Israel has a nuclear research center that is believed to lie at the heart of its nuclear weapons program; it is at Dimona’s nuclear reactor that plutonium for nuclear weapons is produced. Israel’s nuclear weapons themselves — about 140 of them — are not stored at Dimona, but at various sites deep underground near Haifa, and at the Sdot Micha airbase west of Jerusalem.

The end of the war with the Islamic Republic is likely not weeks, but months away. Iran has demonstrated that it has fight still left in it, as shown by its recent surprising use of long-range missiles that can now hit Europe. But the IDF and the American military are, strike by deadly strike, bringing that end closer, with all deliberate speed.

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