A senior Israeli official said that the IDF “will eliminate most of the [Iranian regime's] missile launchers, the Israeli public will return to routine, and then [operations] will not be limited in time," in an interview with Walla on Tuesday.
“The challenge for the Air Force is to try to reduce Iran’s firing capability to a negligible minimum, and then we will continue in a situation with unlimited time to do the job in Iran,” the official added.
“We count the destruction of launchers; we have destroyed 80% of the launchers. We need to destroy 95% of the launchers, and then if there is the firing of one missile every few days, it will be possible to return to normal life, like during the period of fire from the Houthis.”
The unidentified senior source further added that “larger groups of launchers are easier to hunt than individual launchers here and there. We will hunt the remainder down, but it is impossible to predict the exact day when this will be achieved. It will take a few more days we can return to routine.”
The official asserted that Israel will “crush [the Iranian regime] until they fall, weaken them more and more, and continue attacking their entire repression apparatus until the Iranian people recover and overthrow the regime.
Conflicting messages on end of war
The official’s statement came after United States President Donald Trump spoke on Monday and shared a conflicting message regarding the end of the war.
Trump stated that the war in Iran is “almost complete,” and that the US is “far ahead” of the original timeline of four to five weeks that was presented at the beginning of the campaign.
At the same time, Trump hinted that he has his own candidate in mind to replace Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, but did not elaborate.
According to the American president, the war “will not end this week, or next week, but it will end very soon.” “Everything they had is already gone, including their leadership,” Trump said.