Israel crippled Iran’s primary missile defense system in strikes, leaving key sites vulnerable – report

Several major energy sites, a missile base, a port and Tehran’s international airport are now defenseless, leaving Tehran on edge.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The IDF destroyed Iran’s most advanced anti-missile systems among the air defenses it hit in its overnight air attack Saturday, leaving several major energy sites, a missile base, a port and Tehran’s airport defenseless, The New York Times reported Sunday.

Citing unnamed Israeli officials, the paper said that three S-300 systems supplied by Russia and other radar systems were “severely damaged and rendered inoperative.”

A fourth one had been demolished in the single strike Israel had delivered in April after Iran fired some 300 cruise and ballistic missiles and drones at the Jewish state in an attack that failed to do more than cause some minor damage and injured a Bedouin girl.

The S-300 is Russia’s second-most powerful air defense system; it did not sell any of its top-of-the-line S-400s to the Islamic Republic.

The protective systems nailed by the three waves of Israeli jets included those near the Bandar Imam Khomeini port and Iran’s largest petrochemical complex of the same name, which is adjacent to it, Iranian officials told the paper.

The airstrike also took out the air defense around Iran’s largest oil refinery, which produces 360,000 barrels a day.

A gas refinery, the Malad missile base near the capital, and Tehran’s international airport have also been denuded of their most advanced shields.

In all, some 140 IAF jets and UAVs struck throughout several provinces, some deep in the country. Three important missile manufacturing facilities run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, launch sites, and vital components of Iran’s ballistic missile program were all targeted in a careful mission that stuck to military sites.

The United States had warned Israel against hitting the mullahcracy’s economic lifeline – its gas and oil fields – or its nuclear facilities, believing Tehran’s many warnings that such attacks could cause a regional war.

Upon concluding its successful mission, the IDF in turn warned Tehran Saturday that if it decides to escalate matters, it has shown its capabilities and stands ready to attack again.

The Iranians may have gotten the point.

“Israel is sending a clear message to us,” said Hamid Hosseini, an expert on Iran’s oil and gas industry and a member of the Iran-Iraq Chamber of Commerce. “This can have very serious economic consequences for Iran, and now that we understand the stakes we need to act wise and not continue the tensions.”

The strike Saturday was Israel’s response to Iran’s ballistic missile attack on the Jewish state earlier this month which caused hundreds of millions of shekels in damages to homes, businesses, and managed to hit certain military bases, although not critically.

IAF airstrikesIranretaliation strikeS-300