Killing leadership and scientists could explain beyond errent strikes why there were hits in residential areas.

Indeed, that appears to be what happened. Photos of very precise strikes blowing out particular apartments on single floors.

It was all done pretty much simultaneously - I was watching on X from the moment it kicked off - reports were coming in of the first wave attacks on all of residential areas, multiple nuclear sites and ICBM sites with local videos.

Second wave has been underway for a while now - including attacks on oil refineries.

Remember that the IAF has a much bigger fighter force than the RAF - it has an estimated 45 x F-35I + 66 x F-15I/A/C + 174 F-16I/C in service at present with outstanding orders for 30 more F-35I and 25 x F-15IA (Israeli specific F-15EX).

HVAAs have been evacuated from Al Udeid and heading West - 2 x USAF RC-135V/W + 1 x RAF RC-135W

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GtSpezuW...jpg&name=large

Their tanker aircraft are going to working overtime to meet the needs of multiple days of sorties back and forth.

Noted - one would assume then that even though Iran's air defences were pretty much destroyed in the last strikes, this time IAF jets flew into Iraqi air space and launched stand off weapons from there, given the range restrictions of those jets and limited air-to-air refueling capability of the IAF.
The rumoured Israeli RA-01 drone and the new Golden Horizon stand off weapon may have been used in Iranian air space to attack more distant sites in eastern Iran.
Lots of questions though under those assumptions. How can a stand off weapon pack enough punch to extensively damage a site like Natanz?

Codswallop. North Korea has nuclear weapons. As does Russia, yet the only nation who has used them in anger remains to be the United States.

How can a country the size of Isreal put out an operation with 200 combat aircraft ,when the RAF say it’s impossible to crew such a fleet with a population nearing 70 million?

Time and time again I keep hearing “yeah but who will crew them” be it for the airforce or the navy etc. What are they doing we aren’t?

IAF has released photos of Sufas carrying GBU-39 SDB.
That weapon has a declared range of 68 miles.
So unless some of the targets were right on the border (AD radar sites etc) that would suggest IAF F-16Is were operating inside Iranian airspace?

Pissing off the neighbours and US funding

It's getting increasingly difficult for airlines to fly East/West. Most are banned from Russian airspace, Ukraine is off limits and now most of the Middle East!
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....c4e364f772.jpg

Citizens of Israel have compulsory military service so they all have to do a few years. Also, they've already been on a war footing
for a few years so their available reserve forces would be quite large.

One would have thought thr Iranian military leadership would have thought better than to spend a comfy night at home last night, given the mood music coming from Israel.

And by acting like Israel has done, that situation is likely to remain the status quo for quite some time. A far better position to be in than the alternative!

The atomic bombs were last (and first) used in anger 80 years ago. There is a reason for that.

Question
 

Can I just check, are people here all happy that Israel can do whatever they want?

Pre-emptive strikes against senior officers, their families and their neighbours as they slept.

Strikes against nuclear facilities.

What if they’d launched their own nukes.

Is all this cool?

As long as big brother is there to mop up the mess when everything gets ugly.

BV

Well happy is not a word I would use. But certainly not happy if Iran was in position to manufacture nuclear weapons.

There is anomaly here Bob - everyone on the Russia/Ukraine thread is thirsting for more action to counter the Russian threat whilst you are questioning Israeli action to stop the madder Iranians procuring nuclear weapons !

IF Iran had nuclear weapons the world would be a much more dangerous place as I guess that they would be much more likely to use them than even the North Koreans - so IN THIS CASE the West should be thankful that the Israelis are taking action to stop the threat at source.

Eliminating scientists and leaders ‘ at home ‘ with very unfortunate collateral damage is in this instance possibly justified unlike the mass killings in Gaza.

‘What if’ questions are irrelevant - because they didn’t! You can even argue that what Israel did today prevented it from having to use its nuclear weapons in the near future.

Everything else is the ‘least bad’ option.

’Happy’ is not a word I would use but I would rather see what happened today, happen, than do nothing and have Iran finish developing its nuclear weapons programme!

That bit I'm fine with.

Regardless of where one stands on the formation of Israel, they are there now, and have to continually fight for their survival. Their neighbours have had several golden opportunities to wipe them off the map, and have bottled it every time.

Iran would love to see Israel removed from the map, therefore Israel, based on prior experience, would rather take pre-emptive action against an existential threat. I would do the same in their shoes.

I'm not sure that the Iranians are much more likely to use N weapons. People have said that about every non-western new nuclear power in my life-time. Russia, China, N Korea, Pakistan, India. And there has been a distinct, and powerful, group of the religious in Iran saying the whole concept of N weapons is an appalling sin.