Israeli Air Force strikes secretive nuclear site near Tehran
Military says partially underground facility housed scientists developing capabilities required for nuclear weapons; more than 4,000 bombs dropped in four days of fighting.
The Israeli Air Force struck a secretive Iranian nuclear site on the outskirts of Tehran on Tuesday, according to the Israel Defense Forces.
At a press conference, IDF Spokesman Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin said the target was a partially underground facility where a group of nuclear scientists had “worked secretly to develop capabilities required for nuclear weapons.” The site, he said, had become operational after the June 2025 conflict, when Iranian nuclear installations were previously targeted.
According to the military, Iran “did not halt its military nuclear activity and continued to develop the capabilities required for nuclear weapons,” even after that war. Instead, the IDF said, Tehran transferred infrastructure to “an underground site protected from aerial attack.”
Israeli intelligence, Defrin said, monitored the scientists’ movements and “located their new place of operation at this site,” enabling what he described as “a precise strike on the secret compound.”
The strike comes four days into a renewed confrontation that has already exceeded the intensity of Operation Rising Lion, the 12-day conflict in June 2025.
“Today we crossed the amount of munitions that the IDF dropped during the entire Operation Rising Lion,” Defrin said. During that war, roughly 4,000 bombs were used. In the current campaign, Israeli aircraft have now dropped more than 4,000 bombs in just four days.
Fighter jets have carried out 1,600 sorties since the start of the conflict, according to the military.
The scale of the bombardment reflects what the IDF describes as a sustained offensive against Iran’s strategic capabilities. “As part of the offensive effort, the air force continues to launch continuous waves of strikes against the Iranian regime's ballistic missile arrays and [air] defense systems,” the military said in a statement.
Since the beginning of the current conflict, Israeli airstrikes have taken out 300 Iranian missile launchers, the IDF said.
