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On the night of February 28, Israel launched what military observers described as one of the most complex coordinated air operations in modern military history. Working alongside American forces conducting their own simultaneous strikes under the operation name Epic Fury, the Israeli Air Force struck dozens of targets across Iran in the opening hours, focusing heavily on the northern regions of the country. Israeli aircraft targeted missile storage facilities, air defense networks, command and control infrastructure, and senior leadership compounds.
The most consequential strike of the opening wave was the one that killed Ali Khamenei. Israeli forces struck what they described as a central leadership compound in the heart of Tehran. Iranian state media confirmed Khamenei’s death on March 1. He had led Iran since 1989, succeeding Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. His assassination sent shockwaves through Iran, through the region, and through every government that had been following the deteriorating situation with alarm. Iranian officials who survived the opening strikes expressed immediate fear, according to later reporting, that Israel intended to continue eliminating Iranian leaders until the Islamic Republic itself was dismantled.
In the days that followed, Israel continued intensive strike operations across Iran, targeting what it described as the infrastructure of the Iranian military threat. Oil storage depots in and around Tehran were struck, including the Aghdasieh warehouse in the northeast, the Tehran refinery in the south, and the Shahran depot in the west. Fires burned for days across the capital, sending toxic smoke across residential neighborhoods. Iran’s Deputy Health Minister warned that the burning of oil facilities would cause respiratory damage, soil contamination, and acid rain — effects he argued had nothing to do with military infrastructure. Israel stated that the fuel storage sites were being used to power military operations.Health
Israel’s strikes extended well beyond Tehran. Military records and independent conflict monitoring by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project documented nearly 2,300 distinct strike events across at least 29 of Iran’s 31 provinces. The breadth of the campaign was unprecedented. Among the most consequential strikes were those targeting Iran’s South Pars gasfield, one of the country’s most important energy assets, and facilities on Kharg Island, a vital terminal for Iranian oil exports. The strikes on energy infrastructure triggered a sharp escalation in global oil and gas prices and prompted fierce Iranian retaliation against energy facilities in neighboring Gulf states.
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The strikes also extended to Iran’s nuclear program. Israel targeted the Natanz enrichment complex, one of the centerpieces of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Iranian state television framed Iran’s subsequent missile strikes on Dimona in southern Israel — near Israel’s own nuclear research facility — as a direct response to the Natanz attack. It was one of the most alarming moments of the entire conflict: two countries with nuclear-adjacent capabilities exchanging strikes near each other’s most sensitive nuclear sites.
Israel’s air campaign was accompanied by efforts to establish what the Israeli Air Force described as air superiority over Iran, language that signaled an intent not merely to strike specific targets but to degrade Iran’s ability to respond from the air. Israel stated publicly that it was working to “pave the path to Tehran,” a statement that drew widespread international concern and condemnation from governments that urged restraint.
Throughout the campaign, the human toll inside Iran has been devastating. The independent human rights organization HRANA documented more than 3,100 deaths in Iran by March 17, including more than 1,350 confirmed civilian fatalities. Among the most deadly individual incidents attributable to the campaign was a strike on a girls’ elementary school in the city of Minab in southeastern Iran, which killed more than 170 people, the overwhelming majority of them children. The World Health Organization confirmed strikes on at least 18 hospitals and health facilities across Iran. Iran’s health ministry reported more than 12,000 people wounded, with burns and crush injuries among the most common causes.
Israel acknowledged the strikes but disputed Iranian characterizations of civilian targeting. A United States Central Command spokesperson stated early in the conflict that the protection of civilians was of “utmost importance” and that American and Israeli forces had never and would never deliberately target civilians. Iranian officials rejected these assurances, with the deputy health minister insisting that the vast majority of those killed were civilians going about their daily lives.
Iran’s retaliatory strikes against Israel have been substantial, though Israeli air defenses have intercepted the majority of incoming threats. Iran launched nine separate salvoes of missiles at Israel over the course of the conflict. Israeli authorities reported that falling debris and cluster munitions from intercepted and unintercepted Iranian missiles caused widespread damage across central and northern Israel. The deadliest single strike on Israeli territory came on March 1, when nine civilians were killed in a residential neighborhood in Beit Shemesh. Missile fragments fell in the Old City of Jerusalem, causing damage near the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound. Later in the conflict, Iranian ballistic missiles broke through Israeli defenses to directly strike the cities of Dimona and Arad in the south, wounding more than 100 people in those two strikes alone.
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