Why are Iran's hypersonic missiles proving to be almost unstoppable by Israel's air defense systems, this is due to..., secret lies in...
New Delhi: The Israel Iran war has made the whole world understand the need for air defense. The Iron Dome air defense system saved Israel from attacks by Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. As long as attacks were being made by rockets and normal missiles, not a single projectile caused damage inside Israel. But as soon as the number of attacks by hypersonic and ballistic missiles increased in these attacks, the Israeli Iron Dome, Arrow and other systems are having to work hard. For the first time in October last year, Iran fired around 200 ballistic and hypersonic missiles. Now the question arises whether any country has any answer to hypersonic missile attack or not.
It is very difficult to track a hypersonic missile, which flies at its lowest speed of 5 Mach or 6174 kmh in the atmosphere, and then launch an air defense missile against it.
Iran's hypersonic missiles caused massive destruction at many places in Israel. Hypersonic missile is one of the most the most lethal weapons in today's era because it is very difficult to detect it and then engage it. The slowest hypersonic missile is of 5 Mach, which if we try to understand in kilometers, it can cover a distance of about 6173 kilometers in an hour. The aerial distance between Israel and Iran is close to 2000 kilometers. It travels 5 times faster than the speed of sound and the maximum speed can be up to 10 Mach.
A faster high-hypersonic interceptor missile whose speed is around 10 to 25 Mach or a hypersonic air defence system is required to intercept a hypersonic missile. Currently, no country in the world has such an interceptor.
Ballistic missiles are of different ranges. After launch, it reaches space and then according to the parabolic principle of physics, it enters the atmosphere and rains down on its target. When it comes down from space, its speed is 25 Mach or 30870 kmh which is high hypersonic speed. It is almost impossible to stop them.
When a ballistic missile comes down, it falls down due to the effect of gravity. At this time, none of its rocket motor engines are in action to manoeuvre it. Currently, Israel has systems to stop only the ballistic missiles which are very effective against short range rockets, drones and missiles. For short and medium range ballistic and cruise missiles, it has anti-ballistic interceptors like David's Sling, Arrow-2 and Arrow-3. Apart from this, last year America has given them Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) System.
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Indian Express
12 minutes ago
- Indian Express
Sheltering in a bunker, Iran's supreme leader names potential successors
Wary of assassination, Iran's supreme leader mostly speaks with his commanders through a trusted aide now, suspending electronic communications to make it harder to find him, three Iranian officials familiar with his emergency war plans say. Ensconced in a bunker, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has picked an array of replacements down his chain of miliary command in case more of his valued lieutenants are killed. And in a remarkable move, the officials add, Ayatollah Khamenei has even named three senior clerics as candidates to succeed him should he be killed, as well — perhaps the most telling illustration of the precarious moment he and his three-decade rule are facing. Ayatollah Khamenei has taken an extraordinary series of steps to preserve the Islamic Republic ever since Israel launched a series of surprise attacks last Friday. Though only a week old, the Israeli strikes are the biggest military assault on Iran since its war with Iraq in the 1980s, and the effect on the nation's capital, Tehran, has been particularly fierce. In only a few days, the Israeli attacks have been more intense and have caused more damage in Tehran than Saddam Hussein did in his entire eight-year war against Iran. Iran appears to have overcome its initial shock, reorganizing enough to launch daily counterstrikes of its own on Israel, hitting a hospital, the Haifa oil refinery, religious buildings and homes. Iran's top officials are also quietly making preparations for a wide range of outcomes as the war intensifies and as President Trump considers whether to enter the fight, according to the Iranian officials, who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the ayatollah's plans. Peering inside Iran's closely guarded leadership can be difficult, but its chain of command still seems to be functioning, despite being hit hard, and there are no obvious signs of dissent in the political ranks, according to the officials and to diplomats in Iran. Ayatollah Khamenei, 86, is aware tateither Israel or the United States could try to assassinate him, an end he would view as martyrdom, the officials said. Given the possibility, the ayatollah has made the unusual decision to instruct his nation's Assembly of Experts, the clerical body responsible for appointing the supreme leader, to choose his successor swiftly from the three names he has provided. Normally, the process of appointing a new supreme leader could take months, with clerics picking and choosing from their own lists of names. But with the nation now at war, the officials said, the ayatollah wants to ensure a quick, orderly transition and to preserve his legacy. 'The top priority is the preservation of the state,' said Vali Nasr, an Iran expert and professor of international affairs at Johns Hopkins University. 'It is all calculative and pragmatic.' Succession has long been an exceedingly delicate and thorny topic, seldom discussed publicly beyond speculations and rumors in political and religious circles. The supreme leader has enormous powers: He is the commander in chief of the Iran Armed Forces, as well as the head of the judiciary, the legislature and the executive branch. He is also a Vali Faqih, meaning the most senior guardian of the Shiite faith. Ayatollah Khamenei's son Mojtaba, also a cleric and close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, who was rumored to be a front-runner, is not among the candidates, the officials said. Iran's former conservative president, Ibrahim Raisi, was also considered a front-runner before he was killed in a helicopter crash in 2024. Since the war started, Ayatollah Khamenei has delivered to the public two recorded video messages, against a backdrop of brown curtains and next to the Iranian flag. 'The people of Iran will stand against a forced war,' he said, vowing not to surrender. In normal times, Ayatollah Khamenei lives and works in a highly secure compound in central Tehran called the 'beit rahbari' — or leader's house — and he seldom leaves the premises, except for special occasions like delivering a sermon. Senior officials and military commanders come to him for weekly meetings, and speeches for the public are staged from the compound. His retreat to a bunker shows how furiously Tehran has been struck in a war with Israel that Iranian officials say is unfolding on two fronts. One is being waged from the air, with Israeli airstrikes on military bases, nuclear facilities, critical energy infrastructure, commanders and nuclear scientists in their apartment buildings in tightly packed residential neighborhoods. Some of Iran's top commanders were summarily wiped out. Hundreds of people have also been killed and thousands of others injured, with civilians slain across Iran, human rights groups inside and outside the country say. But Iranian officials say that they are fighting on a second front, as well, with covert Israeli operatives and collaborators scattered on the ground across Iran's vast terrain, launching drones at critical energy and military structures. The fear of Israeli infiltration among the top ranks of Iran's security and intelligence apparatus has rattled the Iranian power structure, even Ayatollah Khamenei, officials say. 'It is clear that we had a massive security and intelligence breach; there is no denying this,' said Mahdi Mohammadi, a senior adviser to Iran's speaker of Parliament, Gen. Mohammad Ghalibaf, in an audio recording analyzing the war. 'Our senior commanders were all assassinated within one hour.' Iran's 'biggest failure was not discovering' the months of planning Israeli operatives had conducted to bring missiles and drone parts into the country to prepare for the attack, he added. The country's leadership has been preoccupied with three central concerns, officials say: an assassination attempt against Ayatollah Khamenei; the United States' entering the war; and more debilitating attacks against Iran's critical infrastructure, like power plants, oil and gas refineries and dams. Should the United States join the fight, the stakes would multiply significantly. Israel says that it wants to destroy Iran's nuclear program, but experts say that only the United States has the bomber — and the enormous 30,000-pound bomb — that might be capable of penetrating the mountain where Iran has built its most critical nuclear enrichment facilities, Fordo. Iran has threatened to retaliate by attacking American targets in the region, but that would only risk a wider, and possibly more devastating, conflict for Iran and its adversaries. The fear of assassination and infiltration within Iran's ranks is so widespread that the Ministry of Intelligence announced a series of security protocols, telling officials to stop using cellphones or any electronic devices to communicate. It has also ordered all senior government officials and military commanders to remain below ground, according to two Iranian officials. Almost every day, the Ministry of Intelligence or the Armed Forces issue directives for the public to report suspicious individuals and vehicle movements, and to refrain from taking photographs and videos of attacks on sensitive sites. The country has also been in a communication blackout with the outside world. The internet has been nearly shut down, and incoming international calls have been blocked. The Ministry of Telecommunications said in a statement that these measures were to find enemy operatives on the ground and to disable their ability to launch attacks. 'The security apparatus has concluded that, in this critical time, the internet is being abused to harm the lives and livelihoods of civilians,' said Ali Ahmadinia, the communications director for President Masoud Pezeshkian. 'We are safeguarding the security of our country by shutting down the internet.' On Friday, the Supreme National Security Council took it a step further, announcing that anyone working with the enemy must turn themselves into the authorities by the end of the day on Sunday, hand over their military equipment and 'return to the arms of the people.' It warned that anyone discovered to be working with the enemy after Sunday would face execution. Tehran has largely emptied out after orders by Israel to evacuate several highly populated districts. Videos of the city show highways and desolate streets that are typically clogged with bumper-to-bumper traffic. In interviews, residents of Tehran who remained in the city said security forces had set up checkpoints on every highway, on smaller roads and at entry points in and out of the city to conduct ad hoc searches. Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a reformist politician and a former vice president, said in a telephone interview from Tehran that Israel had miscalculated Iranians' reaction to the war. Mr. Abtahi said that the deep political factions that are typically in sharp disagreement with one another had rallied behind the supreme leader and focused the country on defending itself from an external threat. The war has 'softened the divisions we had, both among each other and with the general public,' Mr. Abtahi said. Israel's attacks have set off a resurgence of nationalism among many Iranians, inside and outside the country, including many critical of the government. That sense of common cause has emerged in a torrent of social media posts and statements by prominent human rights and political activists, physicians, national athletes, artists and celebrities. 'Like family, we may not always agree but Iran's soil is our red line,' wrote Saeid Ezzatollahi, a player with Iran's national soccer squad, Team Melli, on social media. Hotels, guesthouses and wedding halls have opened their doors free of charge to shelter displaced people fleeing Tehran, according to Iranian news media and videos on social media. Psychologists are offering free virtual therapy sessions in posts on their social media pages. Supermarkets are giving discounts, and at bakeries, customers are limiting their own purchases of fresh bread to one loaf so that everyone standing in line can have bread, according to videos shared on social media. Volunteers are offering services, like running errands to checking on disabled and older residents. 'We are seeing a beautiful unity among our people,' said Reza, 42, a businessman, in a telephone interview near the Caspian Sea, where he is taking shelter with his family. Using only one name to avoid scrutiny by the government, he added: 'It's hard to explain the mood. We are scared, but we are also giving each other solidarity, love and kindness. We are in it together. This is an attack on our country, on Iran.' Narges Mohammadi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and the country's most prominent human rights activist, has spent decades in and out jail, pushing for democratic change in Iran. But even she warned against the attacks on her country, telling the BBC this past week that 'Democracy cannot come through violence and war.'
Time of India
17 minutes ago
- Time of India
Ukraine says received Russian bodies in war dead exchanges
Kyiv received the bodies of 20 Russian soldiers instead of Ukrainian ones during exchanges of war dead with Moscow, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in remarks made public Saturday. He accused Russia of "not checking" who they were sending, and suggested Moscow might be doing it on purpose to conflate the number of Ukrainian bodies they had. The repatriation of fallen soldiers and the exchange of prisoners of war has been one of the few areas of cooperation between the warring sides since Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Play Video Pause Skip Backward Skip Forward Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration 0:00 Loaded : 0% 0:00 Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 1x Playback Rate Chapters Chapters Descriptions descriptions off , selected Captions captions settings , opens captions settings dialog captions off , selected Audio Track default , selected Picture-in-Picture Fullscreen This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Opaque Semi-Transparent Text Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Caption Area Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Drop shadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Nunca use o saca-rolhas para abrir um vinho. O motivo vai te surpreender Blog Amo Vinhos Undo Moscow and Kyiv agreed earlier this month during talks in Istanbul to exchange the bodies of 6,000 soldiers each. "It has already been confirmed during repatriations that the bodies of 20 people handed over to us as our deceased soldiers are Russian," Zelensky said in remarks released on Saturday. Live Events "Sometimes these bodies even have Russian passports," he added. An "Israeli mercenary" fighting for Moscow was also among those sent, he said. Tens of thousands of soldiers have been killed on both sides since the war began. Neither country regularly releases information on military casualties. Zelensky said there were currently "695,000 Russian troops" on Ukrainian territory.
Time of India
19 minutes ago
- Time of India
Iran-Israel war news: Alarming reports claim sleeper cells may be deployed across western nations by Tehran
Iran sleeper cell terror threat: Is the West prepared for Tehran's desperate response to Israeli strikes?- Iran sleeper cell threat is once again under the spotlight as Western intelligence agencies raise alarm about Tehran's increasing desperation amid heavy Israeli strikes. With Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei forced into hiding and Iran's military leadership in disarray, security experts warn that the regime could now resort to activating its global network of sleeper agents to retaliate. These individuals, embedded across Western nations, may receive orders to target public spaces, religious sites, or high-profile political figures — including U.S. President Donald Trump, who remains a top target due to his role in the killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in 2020. Could Iran's sleeper cells be waiting for a signal to attack in the West? Security analysts fear that Iranian sleeper cells, long suspected to be lying low in Western nations, could be preparing for activation. Barak Seener, a defense analyst at the Henry Jackson Society, told The Sun that Tehran's vulnerability may make it more dangerous than ever. 'They live amongst us in regular communities… when given the signal, they already know what they are going to be doing,' Seener said. This comes at a time when Iran's top military command has been dismantled by Israeli strikes. With nuclear facilities under attack and missile stockpiles destroyed, asymmetric warfare through hidden operatives may be Iran's only remaining card. Targets could include embassies, public infrastructure, synagogues, or even dirty bomb attacks in urban areas like Central London. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Clay Travis Supports IFCJ & Israel IFCJ | The Fellowship Donate Now Undo Was there really a plot to assassinate President Trump? Yes, and it wasn't a vague threat. Last year, U.S. prosecutors charged Iranian national Farhad Shakeri with plotting the assassination of then-President-elect Donald Trump. According to the charges, Shakeri was instructed by an IRGC official to prepare a seven-day plan to carry out surveillance and potentially kill Trump as revenge for ordering the drone strike that killed IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani in 2020. Former National Security Adviser John Bolton confirmed that Trump remains 'at the top' of Iran's assassination list. The attack would have sparked a global crisis, and experts say it signals how far Iran is willing to go to exact revenge on perceived enemies. Live Events How many Iran-linked plots have been uncovered in the UK? At least 15 Iran-linked terror plots, including kidnappings and assassination attempts, have been disrupted in the UK in recent years, according to counter-terrorism officials. MI5 has warned of a 'sharp rise' in threats against Iranian dissidents, especially following the Hamas-led October 7 attacks that heightened tensions in the Middle East. In 2023, journalist Pouria Zeraati was stabbed outside his London home. He had been reporting on human rights abuses by the Iranian regime for Iran International. UK police believe the attackers were Iranian proxy agents who fled the country within hours of the assault. Zeraati called the attack a 'warning shot' from Tehran. Why hasn't the UK officially declared the IRGC a terrorist group? Despite mounting pressure, the British government has not yet formally designated Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization. Critics, including analyst Barak Seener, argue that this loophole allows IRGC-linked operatives to operate within mosques, charities, and community centers in the UK, some of which have directors appointed directly by Khamenei. Kasra Aarabi of United Against Nuclear Iran stated: 'The IRGC is the most antisemitic armed Islamist extremist organization in the world. The failure to proscribe it is putting British lives at risk.' MI5 reports that since 2022, there have been 20 IRGC-backed plots targeting individuals on UK soil. Is Iran preparing for a new wave of global terror? Intelligence sources across Europe and the U.S. fear that Iran is preparing to unleash a global campaign of terror as retaliation for ongoing military losses and international isolation. The IRGC supports groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, both already designated terrorist organizations in the UK and U.S. But experts warn Iran might now take direct action through sleeper agents in the West. Reporters Without Borders found that nearly 50% of journalists covering Iran from the UK reported physical or verbal threats, with some receiving anthrax hoaxes or threats targeting their families. A female journalist was even threatened on a London bus with the chilling words: 'We will kill you.' Major General Hossein Salami of the IRGC warned in 2022: 'You've tried us before. Watch out because we're coming for you.' This threat now feels more urgent than ever as the regime's stability crumbles. What's at stake for Western nations? With Iran's regime increasingly cornered and under siege from Israeli forces, the potential activation of sleeper cells across Europe and the U.S. could lead to a sharp spike in domestic terror threats. These operatives, trained and guided by the IRGC, may see their mission as martyrdom — not just revenge. The stakes are high. Experts say this isn't just about regional conflict anymore. It's a global security challenge — one that could see targets as high-profile as President Trump or as commonplace as journalists, dissidents, or local places of worship. And unless governments act swiftly — particularly the UK — to label the IRGC as a terrorist group and cut off its influence networks, more lives may be at risk. FAQs: Q1. What is the Iran sleeper cell threat in the West? Iran may activate sleeper agents in Western countries to carry out terrorist attacks if it feels cornered. Q2. Why is President Trump a target in Iran's terror plot? Iran reportedly plotted to assassinate President Trump in revenge for killing General Soleimani in 2020.
