As operations expand into central and southern Iran, they will yield new challenges for the IAF and the Military Intelligence Directorate (MID).
In recent days, there have been numerous reports in the foreign media about Israeli air force strikes on military sites in Shiraz, southern Iran, 680 kilometers from Tehran.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has established one of the main ballistic missile launch sites in Shiraz - a naval missile unit.
The Imam Javad base, northeast of Shiraz, is engaged in the production of missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles, according to a document by Alma Research and Education Center for Israel's security challenges in the north. Several underground systems and launch shafts have been identified at the site.
Another unmanned aerial vehicle base was located 5 km south of Shiraz, partly dug underground to improve its survivability against airstrikes, including five tunnels dug in the mountain. On October 1, the Iranian regime used this base to launch missiles at Israel. Foreign sources claim that the base area contains Shahab-3 missile launchers.
The Iranian Defensive Belt
The Iranians established missile bases in the area to form a defense belt in southern Iran and at the same time to pose a threat due to their geographical proximity to Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, and American regional interests.
The Air Force and MID are exerting very heavy pressure on the Iranian launch sites in western Iran. Therefore, they have no choice but to use other arrays to threaten Israel.
It is important to note that, according to foreign publications, most of the IDF's activity so far has been in western Iran (Khuzestan), central Iran (Natanz and Isfahan), and now Shiraz, as well as Kermanshah, in order to confuse the warning and detection systems of ballistic missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles.
Sources in the defense establishment estimate that the Iranians have no choice but to operate systems that have not been seriously damaged so far and are at a high level of capability.