Israel can reach ‘places we spared, with yet unseen capabilities,’ IDF chief Halevi warns amid Iranian threats

Amid continuing threats by the Iranian regime to retaliate after Israel struck several military sites in Iran in response to an earlier missile attack, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi warned that the IDF is capable of even heavier strikes.

Visiting the Air Force’s Ramon base, Halevi told the aircrews that took part in the operation: “If Iran makes the mistake and launches another barrage of missiles at Israel, we will once again know how to reach Iran, reach even with capabilities that we did not use this time, and hit very, very hard both the capabilities and places that we spared this time.”

“We did this for a very simple reason — because we may be required to do it again. We didn’t finish this event, we are right in the middle of it,” Halevi added, stressing that the military continued its high alert levels on all fronts.

Since the Israeli operation that hit dozens of targets in around 20 sites spread across Iran, Iranian officials have threatened to hit Israel again while claiming that the Israeli strikes were not effective.

According to a Fox News report that cited a senior Israeli official, the Israeli operation dubbed “Days of Repentance” destroyed “the majority of Iran’s air defense.”

"The majority of Iran’s air defense was taken out." a senior Israeli official told Fox News. 

“Iran is essentially naked,” with no aerial defenses left, Amos Hochstein, the White House envoy leading Hezbollah-Israeli ceasefire talks, reportedly said on an internal call.

After the first direct Iranian assault back in April, Israel limited its response to a pinpoint strike that took out the radar of one of Iran’s four advanced, Russian-made S-300 long-range air defense systems, rendering it unusable.

Now, the Israeli Air Force completed the mission by destroying the remaining four S-300 systems.

In addition, the report said that several other radar systems used to guide the regime’s ballistic missiles that attacked Israel in April and October were also destroyed, effectively preventing a repeat attack.

New satellite images published by Associated Press also showed that an IRGC site in Shahroud, hundreds of kilometers east of Tehran, was also struck in the Israeli attack.

The Iranian regime had not acknowledged strikes in the area, only claiming that attacks happened in the western provinces and near the capital. The IRGC base was reportedly used to produce ballistic missiles and was also part of its space program.