Israeli Air Force fighter pilots prepare to strike Iran, February 28, 2026 (photo credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON
Israel was disappointed that after it brought Tehran down from as many as 3,000 missiles in June to around 1,300, in only eight months, Iran was able to rebuild and return to the 2,500 missile level.
On the second day of Operation Roaring Lion, the IDF said on Sunday night that it had dropped 2,000 bombs on Iran since the opening attacks on Saturday morning.
The Israel Air Force (IAF) said the pace of these 2,000 bombs over two days was so fast that it matched the rate of bombing during the six‑day Operation Rising Lion in June 2025, helping achieve air superiority over Tehran much more quickly.
Part of the urgency also reflects the recognition that US President Donald Trump could pull the plug on the operation sooner than he did in June 2025.
Israeli Air Force fighter pilots prepare to strike Iran, February 28, 2026 (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON’S UNIT)
IAF goals include bombing Iran’s ability to develop missiles, not just construction factories
CENTCOM said on Sunday that three of its soldiers were killed by Iranian missile and drone attacks and that another five were wounded.
Israeli officials were still hoping for a week or several weeks of attacks in order to mop up as much as possible of Iran’s ballistic missile apparatus and to give Iranian protesters the best chance against a weakened regime.
A major goal of this operation is to carry out a comprehensive “root canal” of every aspect of the Islamic Republic’s ballistic missile apparatus.
Israel was disappointed that after it brought Tehran down from as many as 3,000 missiles in June 2025 to around 1,300, in only eight months, Iran was able to rebuild and return to the 2,500 missile level.
Further, it was disappointing to see how quickly the Islamic Republic replaced the around 200 missile launchers that it destroyed in June 2025.
The air force said that the goal this time is not only to bomb the central factories that build the missiles but also to target all the various raw elements needed to develop them, so as to set Iran back much further and for a longer period in its ability to rebuild a ballistic missile threat.
For example, one of the targets struck, the IDF said, was a missile launch site containing hundreds of kilograms of explosives. The site was in the Qom area of central Iran, and its destruction “thwarted dozens of launches toward the territory of the State of Israel.”
IAF sources acknowledged that they had lost some drones to Iranian air defenses but said that the volume of drones lost was relatively small and was having no impact on the intense and rapid pace of bombing they were carrying out.
In addition, the IDF on Sunday afternoon announced that it had hit dozens of Iranian regime headquarters used to oppress protesters in a potentially game-changing move designed to try to help demonstrators overcome the regime.
Two major headquarters that were struck were the Interior Ministry headquarters, which coordinated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Basij militia efforts against protesters across the country, and the Tharallah headquarters in Tehran, which coordinated those efforts within the all-important capital district.
Dozens of other headquarters were also struck to make it harder for the IRGC and the Basij to organize, to intimidate them from appearing in public against protesters, and to remove some of their heavier weaponry.
By late Sunday morning, and having already dropped 1,200 bombs on Iran, the IDF, along with the US Air Force, was already close to achieving air supremacy in Iranian airspace.
This shift marked the increased capability of Israel and the US in helping anti-regime protesters by targeting specific regime forces that have been used to oppress and mass-murder them for the last two months or during prior rounds of protests in recent decades.
In June 2025, it took several days for the air force to achieve that level of air supremacy. This signifies that Iran’s anti-aircraft defenses have been so battered that Israeli aircraft and drones can now hover over target areas for extended periods without worrying as much about whether air defenses might target them.
Once this was achieved, the air force’s ability to target a wider range of targets constantly increased exponentially.
Still, at press time, there was no clear benchmark for Israel or the US to measure when their attacks would be sufficient to help Iranian protesters to overcome the regime.
Analysts have said that, with millions of supporters, the regime could hold on to power for months, if not longer.
Separately, the IDF on Sunday afternoon bombed two Iranian fighter jets – one an F4 and one an F5 – which were already out on the runway and preparing to take off.
Iran’s air force, including the F-4 and F-5 fighters, is antiquated and no real match for Israel’s F-15s, F-16s, and F-35s.
But the fighter jets could be problematic for Israeli and American drones and generally complicate the battle space.
Notably, neither the IDF nor the US commented much on strikes on nuclear attacks, with some vague references to attacking certain aspects of the Isfahan nuclear facilities, a major contrast from the June 2025 operation, where the emphasis was on striking dozens of nuclear targets.
More specifically, no one has mentioned targeting the more than 400 kg. of enriched uranium that Iran possesses but that is believed to be buried in rubble since June 2025 or attacking the potentially dangerous developing nuclear facility under Pickaxe Mountain near Natanz.
American attacks have destroyed portions of Iran’s air defenses, ballistic missiles, regime power centers, and naval vessels.
The attacks on Iranian naval vessels appear to have prevented the Islamic Republic from blocking the Strait of Hormuz for global maritime trade.
Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Yemeni Houthis appeared ready to stay out of the war even on Sunday after learning that Khamenei had been killed, which they had said was a redline last week.
