'Strategic Decapitation': Israel Expands Operations, Targeting Iranian Political Institutions as Netanyahu Taunts 'Weak' Regime in Tehran

Israel pummeled hundreds of targets across Iran on Sunday, hitting Tehran’s military leadership, government buildings, and weapons depots—significantly intensifying operations meant to cripple the Islamic Republic’s nuclear infrastructure and destroy its hardline regime. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, said "it’s possible" the United States could enter the fray.

Israel bombed multiple Iranian energy sites overnight, settling ablaze fuel depots the regime uses to feed its military and lucrative commercial oil industry. The Israeli Air Force (IAF) hit Iran’s foreign ministry compound along with the Islamic Republic’s defense ministry and other operational outposts central to the regime’s planned retaliatory strikes.

Israel has demonstrated through these operations that it is willing to target the Iranian regime’s centralized ruling architecture, not just its contested nuclear sites.

The strikes on Tehran’s leadership outposts are likely aimed at destabilizing an Iranian regime that is already on the defensive following Israel's successful opening salvo. That regime could soon face mass unrest if its fragile governing systems break down, and while the hardline government has for years quelled protests against it, the added pressure of a full-scale Israeli assault brings complications.

"It could certainly be the result because the Iranian regime is very weak," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday after Fox News's Bret Baier asked whether "regime change" was part of Israel's war effort. "They certainly don't have the people. 80 percent of the people would throw these theological thugs out. I mean, they murder them, they oppress them for 46 years, they yearn for freedom."

The Jewish state has already assassinated more than 20 senior Iranian military leaders, constituting "the entire top tier of Iran’s military command," according to Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "This is not just retaliation—it’s strategic decapitation."

Among those killed are Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei’s second-in-command and chief of staff of its armed forces; Maj. Gen. Gholamali Rashid, a deputy chief of staff; Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Hossein Salami; IRGC aerospace force commander Amir Ali Hajizadeh; IRGC Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani; and Ali Shamkhani, a senior Khamenei adviser and onetime secretary of the the Supreme National Security Council, according to Dubowitz.

Reports from inside Iran suggest that around five cars simultaneously exploded in Tehran, killing nuclear scientists and regime hardliners. Israel is believed to have killed around 14 Iranian scientists since hostilities broke out early Friday morning.

IAF planes also struck around 10 targets "related to Iran’s weapons system—the final stage in the nuclear program," according to Israeli media.

From Saturday evening into Sunday, Israel destroyed more than 80 targets across Iran, including the country’s "nuclear command center" in Tehran, according to the Israel Defense Forces. Fighter jets also hit an "Iranian aerial refuelling aircraft" docked at the Mashhad Airport in eastern Iran, located more than 1,400 miles from Israeli territory. The operation marked "the longest-range strike conducted since the beginning of the operation," Israeli military officials said.

Israel also destroyed a library belonging to Iran’s Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS), a state-run think tank that exports Tehran’s radical ideology around the globe. The IPIS reportedly ran a secretive propaganda group known as the Iran Experts Initiative that included a senior Biden administration official and other Americans.

While Trump raised the possibility of American participation in the ongoing campaign, he also urged both sides to reach a peace deal.

"Iran and Israel should make a deal, and will make a deal," Trump wrote on Truth Social Sunday morning. "We will have PEACE, soon, between Israel and Iran! Many calls and meetings now taking place."

 In the meantime, Israel conducted a "wide-scale wave of strikes to degrade the Iranian regime’s weapon production capabilities," the IDF said. Infrastructure sites tied to the IRGC, Quds Force, and Iranian military were razed from the air, as were "numerous weapons production sites."

Satellite photos published by the IDF show it attacked a "planetary mixer designed for the production of surface-to-surface missile engines" and a second factory used for producing fuels for "various types of missiles." A third site targeted by the IDF was used to construct surface-to-surface missiles Iran is currently using to bombard Israel.

Other targets included "research and development sites used for the production of raw materials and laboratories for the development of nuclear weapons," IDF spokesman Effie Defrin confirmed during a Sunday briefing. The strikes set fuel depots near Tehran ablaze, along with significant military infrastructure supporting Iran’s sustained ballistic missile attacks on Israel.

Israel has hit more than 250 targets and 720 military components since it commenced its preemptive strike on Friday, with dozens more targeted throughout Sunday.

"We are deepening the damage to the nuclear program and to military capabilities, in order to disrupt and reduce the threat to the Israeli home front," Defrin said.

At least 10 Israelis were killed overnight and dozens injured when Iran launched approximately 60 surface-to-surface missiles and attack drones from their own territory and sites in Yemen, where Tehran’s Houthi rebels still operate. Tehran scored "direct hits" in several Israel towns located in the country’s northern and central regions, most of them in the heart of civilian neighborhoods, the IDF said.

"This is the nature of the Iranian terror regime," the IDF added. "We target military infrastructure, and they, as usual, strike innocent civilians."

Chief of Israel’s general staff Eyal Zamir informed the Jewish state’s population on Sunday afternoon that military forces successfully "completed an aerial route to Tehran and conducted an aerial breaching battle."

"Alongside that, we are locating and destroying missile launchers that are firing toward our territory," Zamir said. "Our actions speak louder than words: ‘Like a lion, the people rise.’"

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