Chief of the General Staff, LTG Herzi Halevi, visits squadrons at Ramon Airbase on October 29, 2024. Photo: IDF.
Amid ongoing threats from the Iranian regime to retaliate after Israel targeted multiple military sites in Iran following a previous missile attack, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi warned that the IDF is prepared to launch even more powerful strikes if necessary.
Visiting the Israeli Air Force (IAF) Ramon base, Halevi told the aircrews that took part in the operation: “If Iran makes the mistake and launches another barrage of missiles at Israel, we will once again know how to reach Iran, reach even with capabilities that we did not use this time, and hit very, very hard both the capabilities and places that we spared this time.”
“We did this for a very simple reason – because we may be required to do it again. We didn’t finish this event, we are right in the middle of it,” Halevi added, stressing that the military continued its high alert levels on all fronts.
Since the Israeli operation that struck dozens of targets across approximately 20 sites across Iran, Iranian officials have threatened to hit Israel again , while claiming that the Israeli strikes were ineffective.
According to a Fox News report citing a senior Israeli official, Israel’s Operation “Days of Repentance” destroyed “the majority of Iran’s air defense.”
“The majority of Iran’s air defense was taken out,” a senior Israeli official told Fox News.
“Iran is essentially naked,” with no aerial defenses left, Amos Hochstein, the White House envoy leading Hezbollah-Israeli ceasefire talks, reportedly said on an internal call.
After the first direct Iranian assault back in April, Israel limited its response to a pinpoint strike that took out the radar of one of Iran’s four advanced, Russian-made S-300 long-range air defense systems, rendering it unusable.
Now, the IAF has completed the mission by destroying the remaining four S-300 systems.
The report also noted that several other radar systems, which had guided Iran’s ballistic missiles in the April and October attacks on Israel, were destroyed, effectively preventing a repeat assault.
New satellite images published by the Associated Press also revealed that an IRGC site in Shahroud, hundreds of kilometers east of Tehran, was also struck in the Israeli attack.
The Iranian regime has not acknowledged strikes in this area, only confirming attacks in the western provinces and near the capital. The targeted IRGC base was reportedly involved in producing ballistic missiles and was linked to its space program.