Israel's February 28 Strikes Explained

Nine twenty-seven in the morning, Tehran time. Fars News reports a series of explosions in the capital. Al Jazeera's correspondent in the west of the city hears two. And then verified video from Jomhuri Avenue, a shopping street, shows smoke rising from a strike right next to Leadership House. The compound of the Supreme Leader.

Morning? Not the middle of the night?

Broad daylight. That was deliberate. JINSA's reporting says the US and Israel went in daylight specifically to add surprise, and the Israeli Defense Forces claimed they'd achieved tactical surprise for the second time, after June twenty twenty-five.

Okay, so hold on. Surprise... by being obvious?

By being obvious. Everyone expected the three a.m. raid. And they'd waited months for a moment when senior Iranian leaders would be gathered in one place. Which tells you what this strike was actually hunting... and it wasn't only centrifuges.

Because the nuclear thing was already done, right? June twenty twenty-five?

Largely. CSIS put it plainly on February twenty-eighth: Operation Midnight Hammer in June twenty twenty-five had decimated enrichment at Fordow and Natanz and destroyed the metallurgy facilities at Isfahan, and Iran hadn't significantly rehabilitated any of it. So there were few high-value nuclear targets left.

Then what were they bombing?

Everything else. The Americans called it Operation Epic Fury, the Israelis called it Operation Roaring Lion. Israeli military officials said roughly five hundred targets, two hundred fighter aircraft, hundreds of munitions. They described it as the largest operation in the history of the Israeli Air Force. CENTCOM said the US alone hit over a thousand targets in the first twenty-four hours.

A thousand. In one day.

Air and Space Forces Magazine reported it was the largest concentration of American airpower in the region since the two thousand three invasion of Iraq. And one US official said flatly: we have effectively suppressed their air defenses.

What does the target list actually look like, though? Give me the texture.

Iranian media reported strikes on the Ministry of Intelligence, the Ministry of Defence, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, and the Parchin military complex. JINSA lists the homes of senior military officials, a presidential office, naval facilities, an industrial area in Arak. Israel said it hit an advanced SA-sixty-five air defense system near Kermanshah. Explosions reported in Isfahan, Qom, Tabriz, Shiraz, Bushehr, Karaj, Urmia, Zanjan, Ilam.

That's not a strike. That's a map.

And the weapons were new. Reuters and the Pentagon confirmed the US fired Tomahawk cruise missiles from Navy destroyers, flew F-thirty-fives and F-eighteens, and — for the first time in combat, ever — used one-way attack drones. LUCAS drones. Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System.

Suicide drones. Ours.

Modeled on Iran's own Shaheds. CENTCOM's words: these low-cost drones, modeled after Iran's Shahed drones, are now delivering American-made retribution. About thirty-five thousand dollars each, against Tomahawks at one point three million.

They copied the Shahed and fired it back at Iran. That's... I don't know what that is.

And then there's the cost on the ground. In the southern city of Minab, a strike hit an elementary girls' school. Iranian state media initially said at least fifty-one killed; Iranian officials later put it at more than a hundred. Iran's ambassador to the UN called it a war crime. Iranian officials say there is a Revolutionary Guard base in that city. The ABC reported both of those things side by side, and I'd treat the casualty figure as Iranian-stated, not independently confirmed.

And Khamenei? You opened with his compound.

An Israeli official said the Supreme Leader and President Pezeshkian were both targets, results unclear. Netanyahu said there were "many signs that this dictator is gone." Israeli sources said "growing indications." For hours it was a claim, not a fact.

And then?

Trump posted that Khamenei had been killed. Iranian state media later confirmed it.

The Supreme Leader. Killed.

Iran's answer came within hours. Roughly twenty-six separate waves. Missiles at Israel, and then at American bases across Arab countries — Al Udeid in Qatar, Ali al-Salem in Kuwait, Al Dhafra in the UAE, the Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain. A woman killed in Tel Aviv. A Pakistani national killed by falling debris in Abu Dhabi.

So the Gulf states get hit for hosting the Americans.

Which shaped the reaction. AP found that many governments condemned Iran's retaliation while staying silent on the US and Israeli strikes. Australia and Canada backed Washington openly. Russia and China criticized it directly. Oman, the mediator, begged the US "not to get sucked in." Guterres called for an immediate cessation.

And the markets?

Brent was around seventy-three dollars on the Friday. Traders and majors suspended shipments through Hormuz, where about a fifth of global oil passes. Capital Economics said a contained war means eighty; a long one, a hundred.

Did it end quickly?

No. An unnamed Israeli source told Israeli media that day that the operation would last four days. The Institute for Science and International Security records a ceasefire on April seventh or eighth.

Four days. Try six weeks.

That's the thing about February twenty-eighth. It wasn't designed as a strike. CSIS called it the initial salvo of a longer conflict aimed at systematically degrading the Iranian government... and the people who planned it told themselves it would be over by Wednesday.