IRGC Says Direct Missile Hit On Israel's Mossad Headquarters
After a night of more Iranian ballistic missile attacks on Israel, in response to Tel Aviv leading a war of regime change targeting Tehran, social media images have featured Mossad headquarters near Tel Aviv with huge plumes of black smoke above it.
Glilot military intel base appeared to be on fire after a ballistic missile reportedly struck it. Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is hailing the 'success' of the targeted attack. 'This morning, the IRGC's aerospace forces carried out a strike on the center of military intelligence of the Zionist regime's army, Aman, and the Zionist regime's center for planning terrorist operations, Mossad, in Tel Aviv, despite Israel's advanced defense systems, and this center is now on fire,' the Tasnim news agency quoted an official statement as saying.
The Israeli military has downplayed the incident, claiming instead that damage was limited to a parking lot; however, Israeli media reported that in the vicinity are secret backup sites tied to Unit 8200, Israel's elite cyber intelligence division, which may have been destroyed or suffered serious damage.
Both sides are clearly trying to take out the other's military and intelligence leadership and sites. Israeli warplanes are also especially focusing on destroying Iranian oil depots in order to wreck the Islamic Republic's economy.
On the other side, Israel also continued to tout battlefield successes. Israel has announced its forces killed a senior Iranian general overnight, shortly after eliminating his predecessor. The campaign against Iran's nuclear program and Iran's retaliatory missile attacks on Israel is now in its fifth day.
Despite widely circulating footage like the below, the Israeli government has not confirmed a hit on Mossad HQ, and is unlikely to offer verification:
⚡️Iran strikes Mossad headquarters in Israel's Herzliya, SNN reports pic.twitter.com/K87vh7nm00 — Sputnik (@SputnikInt) June 17, 2025
According to IDF statements in Israeli media:
An airstrike Monday night killed Maj. Gen. Ali Shadmani, the new head of the Khatam-al Anbiya Central Headquarters, also known as Iran's military emergency command. He had only been on the job for some four days, having replaced Maj. Gen. Gholam Ali Rashid, who was killed on Friday in Israel's opening strikes against Iran.
The IDF said Shadmani was de facto Iran's most senior military commander, the 'war chief of staff,' and was considered the closest remaining military figure to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has meanwhile said on Tuesday, 'I warn the Iranian dictator from continuing to commit war crimes and firing missiles at Israeli citizens.'
The Mossad headquarters in Gililot, Tel Aviv, has been confirmed hit by at least one Iranian ballistic missile. https://t.co/g58pvFFNOU pic.twitter.com/MkWeql74P9 — Egypt's Intel Observer (@EGYOSINT) June 17, 2025
'He should remember what was the fate of a dictator in a country neighboring Iran who chose this path against the state of Israel,' Katz added, in reference to Saddam Hussein.
Such a comparison should be deeply alarming, given the overthrow of Saddam in the wake of Bush's 2003 and invasion destabilized much of the whole region for years, leading to the rise of ISIS – and the US 'forever' occupation.
Also read: Trump Rejects Netanyahu's Request To Join War, As Israel Needs Large US Bunker Buster Bombs
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An Arab diplomat in deep contact with Iran says the red line is already very much in mind in Tehran: 'The Iranians are very careful so far not to do anything that can push the U.S. to get involved.' Following those reports, Iran over Monday night pared back the pace of its heavy bombardment of Israel, after consecutive nights of deadly, damaging strikes demonstrating the power of Iran's hypersonic missiles. In a new twist, however, Iran hit Israel with a daylight barrage on Tuesday morning — albeit one that was reportedly modest in volume, perhaps only 20 missiles. Of course, there's nothing modest about it if you happen to be in one of the impact areas: One of several footages, triangulation of which have allowed to suggest that IDF's Intel gathering unit 8200 was hit in Herzliya, outside Tel Aviv: — Bashkarma🇺🇸🌏🇷🇺 (@Karmabash) June 17, 2025 Earlier on Monday, Israel struck various targets in Iran, including the state-run television network IRIB in mid-broadcast (though it quickly resumed broadcasting with the same host). The IDF also claimed it killed a highly senior Iranian general who himself succeeded another general assassinated in Israel's opening of the war. JUST IN: Israeli Air Force strikes the studio of Iranian state run Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) in Tehran while they were on live newscaster was in the middle of a show when the building was hit. — Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) June 16, 2025 The Axios reports come in stark contrast to a stream of bellicose rhetoric emanating from Trump, along with potentially ominous moves of US military assets. On Monday, Trump used social media to say that 'everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!' Also yesterday, Fox News reported that the USS Nimitz -led aircraft carrier group was steaming toward the Middle East from the South China Sea, where it will join the already on-station USS Carl Vinson strike group. At the same time, a large number of military refueling aircraft were being deployed to Europe. Even if the reports of US diplomatic outreach are true, from Iran's perspective, little or nothing the Trump administration says can be trusted, and even ostensibly peaceful overtures must be evaluated as a potential tactic to set up a surprise US strike. After all, Israel's initiation of a war on Iran came two days before American and Iranian delegations were scheduled to meet in Oman for a sixth round of discussions pursuant to a new deal about Iran's nuclear program. Since Israel's attack, Trump has repeatedly stated that he knew about it in advance, saying for example that 'We were well-informed about everything,' and 'I always knew the date.' Here's what one official told Axios about the pursuit of a new meeting: 'A meeting with the Iranians this week is under consideration… They do want to talk. But what we don't know is, have they been brought to their knees fully so that they realize that in order to have a country, they have to talk? And assuming they get there, is there any degree of [uranium] enrichment you would allow them to have?' The suggestion that Iran is anywhere close to being 'on its knees' seems fanciful, considering Iran has launched multiple missile barrages, the effects of which have significantly exceeded expectations. Two dozen Israelis have been killed and at least 400 injured, with the country also enduring major hits to government buildings, apartment towers and power plants. The starring role in those barrages has been played by Iran's highly advanced hypersonic missiles — a weapon that neither Israel nor even the United States has in its arsenal: Another video of an Iranian Hypersonic missile hitting Israel. These missiles cannot be stopped. By anything. — ADAM (@AdameMedia) June 15, 2025 The unnamed official's rhetorical question about whether there's 'any amount of enrichment' the US would allow may offer a glimmer of hope for an end to the Israel-initiated war. Iran sees enrichment as a right it possesses as a sovereign state, and has repeatedly said an outright ban on enrichment is completely out of the question. Iran has long been under a religious order, or 'fatwa,' forbidding the development of any weapon of mass destruction, and the country has long assured the world that it has no intention of building a nuclear weapon — an assurance the US intelligence community validated in 2007 and has repeatedly re-confirmed since then — most recently, just this March. Meanwhile, anti-Iran hawks have been warning of an imminent Iranian nuclear bomb for more than three decades: The seeds of today's crisis were sown in May 2018, when Trump withdrew the United States from the nuclear deal that had been negotiated between Iran and various Western governments and signed in 2015. Under that deal, Iran agreed to a wide array of safeguards. They included eliminating its medium-enriched uranium, reducing its low-enriched uranium inventory by 98%, capping future enrichment at 3.67%, slashing its number of centrifuges, submitting to enhanced external monitoring and rendering its heavy-water reactor unusable by pouring concrete in it. At the time of Trump's withdrawal, Iran was in full compliance, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. In response to the re-imposition of US sanctions, Iran began straying from the deal's terms, seemingly pushing the only lever it had to bring the deal back and get out from under sanctions that have sapped Iran's economy and inflicted a cruel toll on innocent Iranian citizens. The 2015 deal was so thorough that Trump's pursuit of a new agreement puts him in the awkward position of finding a way to differentiate it from the one he repeatedly railed against on the 2016 campaign trail, and again as he killed it. Iran hawks have been pushing for a deal that bans nuclear enrichment altogether. Some may take that position out of sincere concern, but the most powerful hawks in Israel and America certainly take it with full knowledge that Iran will never accept it, helping pave the way for the US-led war they've long yearned for. Indeed, soon after Israel's war on Iran began, Israel and its US-based collaborators began pressing Trump to commit the American military to the fight — in defiance of his campaign promises to end the era of endless US wars. Trump needn't burden himself with that decision: The US Constitution vests the power to initiate war with Congress . This is not our if it were, Congress must decide such matters according to our Constitution.I'm introducing a bipartisan War Powers Resolution tomorrow to prohibit our involvement.I invite all members of Congress to cosponsor this resolution. — Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) June 16, 2025 Also read: White House Seeks Meeting With Iran's Foreign Minister As Iran Eases Punishing Strikes: Axios
