The IDF confirmed that a senior Iranian military official tasked with coordinating regime operations against Israel was killed in a precision Israeli strike in the heart of Tehran on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The military identified the target as Abu al-Qassem Baba\u2019iyan, who it said served as head of the military bureau of Iran\u2019s supreme leader<\/a> and chief of staff of the regime\u2019s emergency command.<\/p>\n According to the IDF, Baba\u2019iyan was responsible for coordinating between different branches of the Iranian regime to advance operations against Israel and to activate the regime\u2019s emergency mechanisms amid the ongoing conflict.<\/p>\n Baba\u2019iyan had also been appointed to head the office of Iran\u2019s next supreme leader<\/a>, who has not yet been confirmed, after Mohammad Shirazi, the military bureau chief of former supreme leader Ali Khamenei, was killed in the opening strike of Operation Roaring Lion.<\/p>\n He was also appointed head of the regime\u2019s emergency command after his predecessor, Ali Shademani<\/a>, was killed by the IDF during last year’s conflict.\u00a0<\/p>\n “His elimination joins a series of eliminations of senior figures in the Iranian terror regime conducted by the IDF since the beginning of Operation Roaring Lion and constitutes the degradation in the Iranian leadership to advance military activities,” read an IDF statement.<\/p>\n In a statement issued later Sunday by the IDF, the military said it struck some 50 ammunition bunkers and additional regime targets in Tehran throughout Sunday.<\/p>\n Among the targets hit was the Revolutionary Guards\u2019 space and satellite headquarters, which the military said served as a reception, transmission, and research center for the Iranian Space Organization. The site also included the command and operations building for the Khayyam satellite, launched in August 2022, which the IDF said had been used by the IRGC\u00a0for surveillance of Israel and other countries in the region.<\/p>\n The IDF struck over 400 targets throughout Iran over the past day, a military spokesperson announced on Sunday.<\/p>\n Among the targets the IDF successfully took out were several of Iran’s F-14 fighter jets, along with detection and air defense systems which posed a threat to IDF aircraft.<\/p>\n The jets were located at the airport in Isfahan, the city where Israel had previously destroyed Ghadr-class ballistic missiles<\/a> and their launch platforms. Another strike conducted on Friday by the IDF destroyed 16 ‘Quds Force’ aircraft at the Mehrabad airport in Tehran<\/a>.<\/p>\n Some 19 people were killed in airstrikes near Isfahan on Sunday morning, Iranian media later reported.<\/p>\n Iran received 79 of the US-made F-14’s in 1976 when the country was still ruled by the Iranian Shahs<\/a>. These were taken by the Islamic Republic after the 1979 Revolution.<\/p>\n