TEL AVIV, March 5 (Reuters) – Israel’s war in Iran is entering a second phase, in which its fighters will attack deeply buried ballistic missile sites, two sources familiar with the Israeli military campaign said.
The joint US airstrike on Iran is approaching the end of its first week, after the first shots killed the country’s leaders and triggered a regional war with Iranian strikes in Israel, the Persian Gulf and Iraq, as well as Israeli offensives in Lebanon.
The Israeli military claims to have hit hundreds of above-ground Iranian missile launchers that could hit Israeli cities. The second phase will target bunkers for storing ballistic missiles and equipment, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.
One of them stated that the objective is to neutralize Iran’s ability to launch air strikes against Israel by the end of the war, which was also focused on eliminating the leadership of the Islamic Republic.
A military spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the attack plans. The military has previously stated that, together with the US armed forces, it took control of much of Iranian airspace in the early days of the attacks.
In a statement released this Thursday, the military said that, overnight, the Air Force attacked ‘underground infrastructure used by the Iranian regime to store ballistic missiles and missile depots intended for use against aircraft’.
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The US and Israel have not previously announced attacks on underground missile facilities.
Estimates of Iran’s missile arsenal vary widely, from about 2,500 before the war, according to the Israeli military, to about 6,000, according to other analysts. The extent of what remains could be crucial to how the war unfolds. Tehran continued to carry out missile attacks against Israel and throughout the region.
Douglas Barrie of the United Kingdom-based International Institute for Strategic Studies said Wednesday that Iran still possesses some land-attack cruise missiles, precision-guided weapons that fly low to avoid radar detection.
SYSTEM MUST BE ‘INCREASINGLY DEGRADED’
Israeli Air Force fighter jets have been carrying out almost constant missions since Saturday, intensifying their pace after militants from Hezbollah, a Lebanese group backed by Iran, fired rockets into Israeli territory. This provoked strong Israeli air strikes as far as Beirut, in the north of the country.
In some cases, the same Israeli warplanes attacked both Iran and Lebanon in a single operation: bombing targets in Tehran or western Iran on the way and hitting Hezbollah positions on the way back, according to one of the sources familiar with the plans and an Israeli security source.
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Israeli and U.S. officials say Iran’s ballistic missile and drone launches have declined since Saturday — a reduction they attribute in part to U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iranian launch sites and related military infrastructure.
The Israeli military said the decrease could also reflect an effort by Tehran to preserve its missile stocks as it prepares for a prolonged war of attrition.
Eran Lerman, Israel’s former deputy national security adviser, said the hope after the first week of attacks was that Iran’s ruling system would “start to disintegrate sooner and more quickly.”
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‘But that hasn’t happened yet and, until it happens, the system needs to be increasingly degraded,’ he said.
