Iran’s top military brass and nuclear scientists targeted in Israeli strike

Iran’s highest-ranking military commanders and nuclear scientists were targeted in Israeli’s deadly strike – including one weapons mastermind who had narrowly escaped a previous hit.

Iranian strike targets, clockwise from main: Hossein Salami, Mohammad Bagheri, Gholamali Rashid, Fereydoun Abbasi and Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi

Fereydoun Abbasi had survived at least one previous assassination attempt – spotting a motorcycle rider planting a bomb on his car just before it exploded – but on ­Friday the Iranian nuclear scientist’s luck ran out.

The 66-year-old mastermind behind much of Iran’s covert nuclear weapons program was killed in the first wave of Israeli air strikes that began before dawn on Friday, as more than 200 fighter jets targeted not just key installations but also the country’s highest-ranking military commanders and nuclear scientists.

Among those killed in the initial airstrikes were the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Hossein Salami; the commander in chief of Iran’s armed forces, ­Mohammad Bagheri; and the deputy commander of the Iranian armed forces, Gholam Ali Rashid.

A senior adviser to Iran’s ­Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Ali Shamkhani, was also report­edly among the dead.

Iranian state media confirmed strikes on nuclear facilities in Khondab and Khorramabad, with smoke and flames seen rising from the key uranium enrichment facility at ­Natanz.

The head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hossein Salami, was killed in the Israeli strike on Tehran. Picture: AFP

Several civilians including women and children were killed when residential buildings in Tehran were hit by airstrikes, Iran’s official news agency IRNA reported.

Prominent nuclear physicist Mohammad Mehdi Tehranji and nuclear engineering professor Abdulhamid Minouchehr also reportedly died in the airstrikes.

But Abbasi was the threat Israel was most anxious to take out. The former head of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran was a specialist in separating isotopes and calculating the yield of nuclear weapons.

Abbasi was wounded in an assassination attempt on a Tehran street in 2010, when a motorbike rider attached a bomb to his car as he drove to work. The scientist managed to get out of the car, pulling his wife with him, seconds ­before the bomb detonated.

The attempted hit was likely the work of Israel’s spy agency, Mossad – which was again conducting operations inside Iran on Friday, including identifying targets, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Iranian nuclear scientist Fereydoun Abbasi was also killed

On Friday, Abbasi was killed in an air strike, along with his wife and child, according to Iran’s IRINN news channel.

Mossad spent years preparing for the “Rising Lion” operation against Tehran’s nuclear and missile programs, according to The Times of Israel, including building a drone base and smuggling precision weapons systems and commandos into the country.

According to a security official quoted by the newspaper, the drones were activated overnight, striking surface-to-surface missile launchers aimed at Israel, while weapons systems smuggled into Iran took out air defences and gave Israeli warplanes freedom of action in the air over Iran.

Israeli jets struck the jewel in the crown of Iran’s nuclear program – the country’s main enrichment facility in Natanz, in the central province of Isfahan, where Iran produces the majority of its near-bomb grade nuclear fuel.

Social media footage appeared to show flames and black smoke billowing from the facility.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel had been forced to act to stop Iran from producing a nuclear weapon “in a very short time”.

“Our brave pilots are attacking a large number of targets across Iran,” Mr Netanyahu said, adding the targets were “Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, ballistic missile factories and military capabilities”.

Warning that Iran had “significant capabilities to harm us”, he added: “We’re prepared for that.”

The International Atomic Energy Agency said Iranian authorities had informed it there was no increase in radiation levels at the Natanz site.

The vast complex, just outside the Muslim holy city of Qom, houses two massive enrichment plants, one underground and one above ground.

Iranian Armed Forces Chief of Staff Major General Mohammad Bagheri was another high-profile casualty. Picture: AFP

Around 14,000 centrifuges are currently installed there, roughly 11,000 of which are in operation, refining uranium to up to 5 per cent purity.

Iranian state broadcaster Press TV reported that other nuclear sites in the country had also been targeted including at Khondab, where Iran has a heavy-water ­research reactor able to produce plutonium which, like enriched uranium, can be used to make the core of an atomic bomb.

Another major enrichment site at Fordow, operating more than 1000 centrifuges, is dug into the side of a mountain and has long been considered a more difficult target for Israel to strike. It was not hit in the first wave of strikes.

General Gholamali Rashid, deputy commander of the Iranian armed forces, was also killed

Israeli strikes targeted cities across Iran, including Hamedan, Kermanshah, Bandar Abbas and Khoramabad, the site of a ballistic missile base.

Military sites in the city of ­Tabriz in northwestern Iran were targeted, including a military base and a radar centre in Sardroud.

Several senior military and political officials were targeted in their homes, including in the Shahrak-e Mahallati district in eastern Tehran, which houses many senior Iranian military officials and their families.

All flights were suspended at the Imam Khomeini international airport of Tehran and the country’s airspace was closed until ­further notice.