Major General Esmail Ghaani, a senior commander in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, was last week reported to have died in a devastating series of Israeli strikes.
But this week Ghaani appeared alive and well, taking part in a rally in central Tehran to celebrate what Iran called its “victory” in repelling Israeli attacks.
Ghaani’s resurrection is one sign of the still-shifting picture as Iran and Israel assess the damage to themselves and each other from almost two weeks of fierce missile and drone conflict.
It is clear that for Iran, the costs have been immense. Its air defences were left in ruins, many of the top ranks of its military killed, and its nuclear programme at the very least damaged by attacks including US strikes.
But the extent of that damage is already hotly contested, while any military cost to Israel from the war has been unclear, partly thanks to rigorous censorship of military information within the country.
Iran claimed to have struck the headquarters of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency in Glilot, the Israel Defense Forces headquarters in Tel Aviv, and other high-value intelligence and energy targets. Publicly available footage and satellite images, however, point mostly to near-misses and civilian damage.
Missiles that may have been aimed at an IDF technology park in Be’er Sheva on Friday, for example, hit a residential building nearby.
Israel claimed to have intercepted roughly 90 per cent of about 550 incoming missiles fired by Iran. It reported no aircraft losses, having dismantled much of Iran’s air defence system in the war’s opening days.
But Israel’s air defences, while advanced, were “not hermetic”, according to the Israel Defense Forces. Some 28 people were killed in Israel and more than 1,400 injured, most lightly. Thousands of homes and vehicles were damaged or destroyed.
For Iran, said Jim Lamson, a former CIA analyst now at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, “accuracy has been a problem”. Iranian missiles have demonstrated tens-of-metres precision in controlled tests, but their wartime performance fell short.
“For the ones that get through Israeli defences, we’re talking hundreds of metres,” he said, noting similar problems with Iran’s missile attacks the previous year.
On July 17, four Iranian missiles reportedly aimed at the Mossad compound instead struck a building across the highway. It is not known whether the building is linked to intelligence. Israeli authorities said an empty bus depot had been hit.
A missile also struck 300m from the building known as the Kirya, the central command of the Israel Defense Forces in Tel Aviv.
“It’s harder to figure out what they’re targeting and hitting in Israel than what Israel is striking in Iran, due to Israeli censorship and the lack of open-source satellite imagery,” said Lamson.
A map of reported strikes on Israel shows a focus on Haifa, site of the country’s main naval base.
In Iran, Israeli air strikes were far more precise and devastating. Tehran’s governor reported that approximately 120 buildings were completely destroyed in the capital, many of them residential, while about 500 more sustained serious damage.
Several buildings at Mehrabad International Airport and nearby Shahid Rajaee University were damaged or destroyed, according to satellite images.
Some 627 Iranians were killed, according to the health ministry, and 4,870 injured.
The strikes included targeted assassinations of a series of senior figures in Tehran’s armed forces, alongside nuclear scientists.
Air strikes killed high-ranking Iranian military officials including the armed forces chief of staff Major General Mohammad Bagheri, the commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hossein Salami, and Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the aerospace forces of the Revolutionary Guards.
Midway through the conflict, Israel appeared to broaden its targeting strategy, striking not just nuclear and missile infrastructure but symbolic regime assets including the central television station in Tehran. One of the most controversial strikes hit Evin prison, which houses political detainees, during visiting hours.
Whether Israel and the US accomplished their primary goal — destroying Iran’s ability to make nuclear weapons — remains in doubt.
A preliminary report into the attack by the US Defense Intelligence Agency said it had been set back by less than six months. It suggested the bombs did not collapse the underground enrichment halls, though they did close entrances and ventilation openings.
Israel’s atomic energy commission on Wednesday maintained the Iranian programme was set back by “many years” after “the devastating US strike on Fordow destroyed the site’s critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility inoperable”.
Satellite images of the key site, where a nuclear enrichment plant is buried half a kilometre underground, show tunnel entrances apparently sealed with earth and holes that may be the entry points of the US’s 30,000lb precision guided “bunker busters”. Access roads also appear damaged.
Iranian officials denied that nuclear sites such as Fordow and Natanz, struck by the US, were critically damaged, claiming they had long since been evacuated.
The fate of more than 400kg of highly enriched uranium — which could be further enriched to produce several bombs, if Iran chose — remains unknown.
Images from another targeted site, at Isfahan, show several damaged buildings. The site is home to the country’s main nuclear research centre.
Mohammad Eslami, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, vowed on Tuesday to rebuild Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, which Iran insists is peaceful.
Across Iran, air defences and ballistic missile programmes suffered heavy damage. Lamson estimated more than half of the ballistic missile stockpiles in the western and central regions of Iran were damaged. An Israeli military official said at least 50 per cent of Iran’s ballistic missile launchers had been eliminated.
“They will be able to rebuild, but with some big headaches,” said Lamson.
A major missile storage and launch site near Kermanshah — a longtime logistics hub for Iran’s Fateh and Zolfaghar missile systems — was destroyed, according to satellite imagery and local reports.
In Tabriz, air strikes struck a drone manufacturing facility linked to the IRGC Aerospace Force, sparking secondary explosions and fires that burned for hours.
“What is clear is that Iran’s air defence network has been heavily degraded, to the point that the Israeli Air Force can project tactical fighters and even medium-altitude [drones] into Iranian airspace on a daily basis,” said Justin Bronk of the Royal United Services Institute in London.
“This will leave Iranian efforts to rebuild both their air defences and their nuclear programme theoretically vulnerable to regular Israeli attacks for the foreseeable future.”
