Israeli Campaign Against IRGC

After an Israeli strike in Damascus on 1 April 2024 killed senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Mohammad Reza Zahedi, Iran attacked Israel directly for the first time on 13–14 April with some 300 drones and missiles, nearly all intercepted by Israel with the United States, Britain, France and Jordan. Iran fired about 180 ballistic missiles on 1 October 2024, and on 26 October Israel destroyed air-defense and missile-production sites. On 13 June 2025 Israel launched Operation Rising Lion, a twelve-day war that hit the nuclear sites of Natanz and Isfahan and killed IRGC commander Hossein Salami, armed forces chief of staff Mohammad Bagheri, Gholam Ali Rashid, aerospace chief Amir Ali Hajizadeh and nuclear scientists including Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani and Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi; American bombers struck Fordow on 22 June before a ceasefire on 24 June.

The conflict escalated again in 2026, when a joint US–Israeli campaign struck Iran's leadership and strategic infrastructure, and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed on 28 February 2026. Together with the earlier loss of commanders and nuclear scientists, it was an unprecedented blow to the Islamic Republic, which had called for Israel's destruction since 1979, and the most dramatic phase yet of the direct Israel–Iran conflict.