Israel took out primary Iranian air defenses, left it ‘essentially naked’ – report
Sources tell Fox News airstrikes destroyed remaining three S-300 batteries; Israeli official says ‘majority of Iran’s air defense was taken out’
The four Russian-made S-300 air defense systems that Israel has reportedly destroyed in strikes on Iran this year — one in April, and three this past weekend — had been the only such systems possessed by the Islamic Republic as of the beginning of this year, according to a Tuesday report.
Fox News quoted an unnamed senior Israeli official as saying that “the majority of Iran’s air defense was taken out.”
A senior US official confirmed that, among other key military targets, the Saturday airstrikes took out three S-300 systems. The strikes came after Iran fired a barrage of ballistic missiles at Israel at the beginning of the month.
Iran only had four S-300 systems at the beginning of the year and Israel already destroyed one of them in April following Iran’s previous rocket attack on the country, the report said.
The tally matched that of a Wall Street Journal report on Sunday that said all of Iran’s S-300s are now out of action.
Fox quoted the senior Israeli official as saying that “the majority of Iran’s air defense was taken out.”
US President Joe Biden’s senior Mideast adviser Amos Hochstein was also cited as saying on an internal call that “Iran is essentially naked” and vulnerable to potential future aerial attacks.
Israel has previously been reported to have also taken out other air defenses surrounding key energy facilities, as well as hitting drone-production sites and key long-range missile-production facilities containing solid fuel mixers that will take at least a year to replace, hampering Iran’s ability to repeat its two missile attacks on Israel this year.
However, Iran has attempted to downplay the damage caused by the airstrikes, and on Wednesday local media cited Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh as saying missile production has not been disrupted.
“The enemy has sought to hurt both our defensive and offensive systems but was not very successful because we had made arrangements and were in the know,” he said.
“The [production] knowledge is indigenous, so there is no disruption in the manufacturing process of missiles,” Nasirzadeh said, also seeming to confirm that a defense system may have been damaged in the attack as he said it was “replaced the day after.”
His remarks came a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Israeli strikes had destroyed “industrial factories of death.”
“We severely damaged Iran’s defense systems and its ability to export missiles,” Netanyahu said in a speech to the Knesset plenum. “These were not [basic tools] we were attacking.”
Iranian state media also reported on Tuesday that Iran’s defense minister Nasirzadeh said the country was still able “to carry out a dozen more missile barrages” against Israel like those seen on October 1 and April 13.
Two American researchers told Reuters last week that Israeli airstrikes hit buildings that Iran used for mixing solid fuel for ballistic missiles and that this “may have significantly hampered Iran’s ability to mass produce missiles.”
The attacks on the air defenses caused “deep alarm” in Iran, The New York Times has reported, citing three unnamed Iranian officials — one from the country’s oil ministry — since it rendered defenseless Khuzestan Province’s Abadan oil refinery, Bandar Imam Khomeini petrochemical complex and an adjacent major port, as well as the Tange Bijar gas field in the Ilam Province.
The S-300 has a range of up to 200 kilometers (125 miles) and the capability to track down and strike multiple targets simultaneously. It is considered one of the most potent air defense weapons in the world and can be used to shoot down missiles as well as aircraft.
Israel’s retaliatory strikes on Iranian military facilities came weeks after an October 1 attack in which Iran launched 200 ballistic missiles at Israel, sending most of the population rushing to bomb shelters and safe rooms. It caused relatively minor damage to military bases and some residential areas, and killed a Palestinian man in the West Bank.
The Iranian attack came days after an Israeli airstrike in Beirut killed Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime Hezbollah leader. Iran said the missiles were also a response to the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in an explosion in Tehran in July widely attributed to Israel.
On Sunday, the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that it “should neither be exaggerated nor minimized.” Other Iranian officials have made more combative statements in recent days, vowing revenge.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi on Tuesday warned Iran not to pursue further attacks against Israel.
Should the Islamic Republic again attack, Halevi warned, Israel would “reach Iran, with capabilities that we did not even use this time, and hit extremely hard both the capabilities and the places that we spared this time.”
Agencies contributed to this report.
The Times of Israel Community.