The Israeli Air Force has struck a strategic research and development facility in Tehran used by Iran’s military to develop components for nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, the military said on Saturday night.
Fighter jets targeted the Malek Ashtar University, which the Israel Defense Forces said operates under Iran’s Defense Ministry and is internationally sanctioned for its role in advancing the regime’s nuclear and missile programs.
The strike was part of a recent wave of attacks in the Iranian capital carried out during “Operation Roaring Lion,” aimed at degrading Iran’s ability to pursue nuclear weapons, according to the IDF.
“The IDF will not allow the Iranian terror regime to obtain nuclear weapons,” the military said.
Israeli warplanes participated in dozens of wide-scale strikes across Iran and Lebanon simultaneously over the weekend, hitting more than 200 targets of the Iranian regime and its terrorist proxy Hezbollah, according to the IDF. Compounds linked to Iran’s military were hit, including sites used to store weapons and ballistic missiles intended for use against Israel, and missile launchers, air defense systems and other military facilities were also targeted, according to the statement.
The military said the strikes were part of ongoing operations to degrade Iran’s ability to threaten Israel with long-range weapons.
Also on Saturday, the IDF released footage showing five near-simultaneous airstrikes on a missile storage facility in western Iran, which the military said killed many members of Iran’s ballistic missile array.
The strikes targeted infrastructure at a large-scale missile site used by the Iranian regime to prepare attacks against Israel and other countries in the region, the military said.
Overnight Friday, the IAF struck Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps ballistic missile production facilities in Tehran—including a central IRGC compound used to manufacture and develop missile components, a storage facility, a Defense Ministry compound for producing missile fuel and a ballistic missiles components production site. The military emphasized that it will “continue to expand” its strikes against the regime’s weapons production facilities “to degrade its capabilities to advance its ballistic missile program, which poses a direct threat to the State of Israel.”
In addition, the IDF said that it struck several of the Iranian regime’s defense systems, saying that the completed strikes “are part of the current operational phase aimed at further expanding the damage to the core systems and foundations of the Iranian terror regime.”
