‘Extensive’ Israeli airstrikes target Iranian military industries

The Israel Defense Forces on Wednesday conducted a wave of “extensive strikes” targeting regime infrastructure across Iran, including in Tehran, Isfahan and other industrial hubs.

In a wave of attacks in the area of the capital, the military hit regime sites for the production of “aerial and naval combat equipment,” according to a statement.

The sites were also said to have produced arms for Tehran’s regional proxies, including Palestinian Hamas, Lebanese Hezbollah and other terrorist groups.

At the same time, the regime’s aerial-defense array, including an anti-aircraft system, were attacked, the IDF said.

“The IDF will continue to intensify damage to the regime’s military industries in order to deny production capabilities built up over years,” it vowed.

The military on Wednesday night shared footage showing the damage caused to regime sites during the almost four weeks of fighting, including in recent Israeli Air Force strikes on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ headquarters, a large base of its Basij paramilitary volunteer force, a ballistic missile plant and Iran’s aerial-defense industrial complex.

Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Wednesday that the U.S. military’s “Operation Epic Fury” against Iran was ahead of the four-to-six-week timeline Washington had set for the war.

“Twenty-five days in, the greatest military the world has ever known is ahead of schedule and performing exceptionally,” she said. “We are very close to meeting the core objectives of ‘Operation Epic Fury,’ and this military mission continues unabated.”

U.S. President Donald Trump told a National Republican Congressional Committee fundraising event on Wednesday that “we’re winning so big—nobody’s ever seen anything like we’re doing in the Middle East with Iran.

“They want to make a deal so badly, but they’re afraid to say it, because they figure they’ll be killed by their own people. They’re also afraid they’ll be killed by us,” Trump told attendees.

“There’s never been a head of a country that wanted that job less than being the head of Iran,” he said.

Washington and Jerusalem launched “Operation Epic Fury/Roaring Lion” against the Islamic Republic on Feb. 28 with the goal of neutralizing the threats posed by Tehran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, as well as toppling the regime that calls for the destruction of America and Israel.

Trump on Tuesday described the targeted killing of so many of Iran’s leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as de facto “regime change” that could enable more productive negotiations.

“Now we have a new group,” he said. “Let’s see how they turn out.”

Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, who is reportedly leading ongoing diplomatic talks with the U.S., has praised Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of some 1,200 people as a “victory” and recently threatened to make the Persian Gulf “run with the blood of invaders” if Washington targeted regime assets on islands there.