Tehran reports a “saturation attack” in which the drones acted as a screen for the rest of the projectiles
The Israeli Army has confirmed that Iran’s direct attack — the one announced by Tehran as Operation ‘True Promise’ — included the launch of 170 drones, 30 cruise missiles and 120 ballistic missiles, “99 percent” of the which have been intercepted by Israeli defensive systems, according to the military.
The Army’s chief spokesman, Vice Admiral Daniel Hagari, has assured that all the unmanned aircraft and the 30 cruise missiles were shot down by “the Israeli Air Force and its allies” and that the “immense majority” of the 120 ballistic missiles They were intercepted by Arrow, the long-range air defense system.
US sources have confirmed that the US Army shot down several Iranian drones without giving an exact number, as did Jordanian fighter planes. Other drones were intercepted near the Syrian-Iraqi border.
Hagari has acknowledged, however, that some of these ballistic missiles managed to break through the protection and finally reached the Nevatim air base, in the south of the country.
The Israeli military spokesman, in this sense, has confirmed “slight damage” to the infrastructure of the air base. However, the attack has not affected the operation of the facility in the slightest, the vice admiral wanted to point out.
The semi-official Iranian agency Tasnim, very close to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, reports an attack in two phases and in which the drones had the mission of saturating the Israeli defense screens to prevent them from concentrating on the danger represented by the rest. of the projectiles.
“By launching hundreds of Shahed 136 kamikaze planes from different areas towards specific targets, the Revolutionary Guard managed to concentrate all the power of Israel’s defense systems on them. This caused the Israeli radar network to end up practically saturated and unable to dedicate itself to other objectives,” he adds.
Tasnim emphasizes that the Revolutionary Guard Aerospace Force has used this tactic “on numerous occasions during previous drills” but “the Israelis never thought that it would be used against them in a real operation.”
The Chief of the General Staff of the Iranian Army, General Mohamad Bagheri, has then proceeded to explain the nature of the operation: an attack against the Israeli air bases that house “the same F-35 fighter jets” that, as it has denounced by Tehran since then, last week they bombed the Iranian Consulate in Damascus (Syria) and caused the death of several Iranian advisors.
The general has assured that Iran has deliberately avoided “economic and population centers” in what he describes as a display of force by a country “prepared to defend its interests and its space.”
In line with Iran’s first official statements after the attack, the general insisted that the operation “has been completed”, before adding that “it has achieved all its objectives and that the success has been total.”
“We see this operation as a complete result, and this operation, in our opinion, has ended and we have no intention of continuing unless the Zionist regime (Israel) takes additional measures,” he said in statements reported by the semi-official agency Mehr.
Likewise, the general has announced that the Iranian Government has sent a message to the United States through the Swiss Embassy, ??a usual mediation mechanism in this type of talks, in which it warns Washington to refrain from activating its troops. in the region to support any type of Israeli retaliation or else Iran will not be able to guarantee “neither the security of its bases nor that of its personnel.”
