The state of play: Updates on nukes, ballistic missiles, and Tehran officials
Israel has taken a substantial bite out of Tehran's nuclear program, but it is far from down for the count.
Israel unleashed a dramatic new war on Iran Friday morning, with attacks continuing throughout the weekend, and expected to extend into next week.
Iran, for its part, unleashed around four massive salvos of ballistic missiles, well over 200 altogether as well as some rounds of drones.
As of Saturday night, a mix of the IDF and the Mossad has substantially harmed multiple facilities at the Natanz nuclear site, the Islamic Republic's most important site.
Also, they have attacked Isfahan, another critical nuclear site, and a variety of other medium-level important sites, as well as at least nine critical nuclear scientists.
Despite some contrary reports of damage or explosions around or near the Fordow nuclear site, which lies underneath a mountain, the IDF has held off from a full-on attack on Fordow so far.
For example, due to the strike on Natanz and on other sites, the Islamic Republic has lost much of its centrifuge fleet for enriching uranium, much of its enriched uranium, and at least the presumed lead site for producing uranium metal and hemispheres ti place on a nuclear warhead at Isfahan.
However, given the centrifuges fleet and enriched uranium at Fordow and some other sites, the leftovers of the program are still quite advanced.
The IDF has repeatedly denied having attacked Fordow and Israel is repeatedly asking the US to join the fray.
The US has a 30,000 MOAB (Mother of All Bombs) which most analysts believe could penetrate the Fordow facility under the mountain.
One question which is unclear is whether there is another site which can take highly enriched uranium and convert it into uranium metal and hemispheres for use on a nuclear warhead and how long it would take Iran to replace that site if there is no other such site currently.
Another question which is unclear is how many nuclear scientists remain and what they can accomplish with the remaining pieces of the nuclear program, given that Israel has been accused of killing many key Iranian nuclear scientists before, and the regime recovered eventually.
Regarding ballistic missiles, the picture is wildly unclear.
How large is Tehran's arsenal?
Some American and Israeli sources have told the Jerusalem Post that before the war, Iran had 3,000 ballistic missiles, but that only around 1,000 could reach Israel, and that they had only 150-250 launchers for these missiles.However, Iran already fired around 300 ballistic missiles at Israel during its April 2024 and October 2024 attacks, and another more than 200 on Friday-Saturday, with Israeli officials still hinting they believe Tehran could fire potentially several hundred more.
Israel has struck a large number of ballistic missiles and their launchers, including a major underground site with dozens of ballistic missiles, but is either keeping a tight lid on Iran's exact potential number of ballistic missiles for attacking the Jewish state going forward, or does not know the real answer.
Another key site that Israel destroyed related to mass producing ballistic missiles in the potential tens of thousands for the future.
Yet, it was unclear how much Israel can prevent Iran from rebuilding these sites and reconstituting the ballistic missiles threat, even aside from the nuclear weapons threat.
Israel also killed a dozen or so top Iranian military and IRGC commanders, with an emphasis on the air force chiefs, and dozens of next-level commanders.
Despite that, Iran managed to fire off over 200 ballistic missiles on Friday-Saturday, and Israeli officials project another mass attack Saturday night and more attacks potentially going into next week.
A new escalation late Saturday was Israel striking top Iranian economic sites.
Also, Israeli officials started to leak that if Iran continues to fire intentionally at civilians, such as in Tel Aviv and Rishon Lezion, they may consider targeting Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and pushing the idea of toppling the regime.
In contrast, the wide Israeli attacks on Friday, in the Israeli narrative, were focused on top military officials involved in past attacks on Israel and the nuclear program.
It is unclear that Iran and Khamenei will "credit" Israel with having made any such distinction, given the degree of national and strategic damage in Iran and the high ranks of those already killed.
