ByYONAH JEREMY BOB
Updated:

Defense Minister Israel Katz and IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir, on Wednesday, confirmed that the IDF had crossed the threshold of having dropped 15,000 bombs on Iran since the war started on February 28.

A statement said that the volume of bombs dropped was more than four times higher than the IDF used during Operation Rising Lion in June 2025.

That said, the pace of the bombing has mostly dropped on a steady basis since mid-March.

In the early days of the war, both Israel and the US were dropping around 1,000 bombs or striking around 1,000 targets daily.

That was never a pace either side could maintain, simply due to wear and tear on the fighter jets and the need to give the limited number of fighter pilots time to sleep.

ANTI-MISSILE BATTERES fire interception missiles toward incoming ballistic missiles launched from Lebanon, as seen in northern Israel, during the war with Iran and Hezbollah and ongoing missile fire toward Israel, March 16, 2026.
ANTI-MISSILE BATTERES fire interception missiles toward incoming ballistic missiles launched from Lebanon, as seen in northern Israel, during the war with Iran and Hezbollah and ongoing missile fire toward Israel, March 16, 2026. (credit: AYAL MARGOLIN/FLASH90)

Already after a few days of the war, the pace started to slow.

Israeli strikes on Iran slowed radically mid-March

But in mid-March, the pace of attacks dropped radically.

From March 13 to 19, the total number of bombs dropped by Israel grew only from around 10,000 to around 12,000.

Putting these numbers together with days in which the IDF mentioned 50 or 200 attacks, the rate has dropped from 1,000 per day to 200 or fewer on some days.

It appears that from March 19 to 25, there were likely some days where the level of bombing increased as compared to the week before.

At the same time, the bombing levels still remain far below the pace of early March.

Likewise with the US, from March 18 to 23, the number of targets which the US struck grew only by 1,200 from 7,800 to 9,000.

Adding these numbers together, the US average would be down to 240 targets struck per day, and likely it is now lower than that, as it was probably higher around March 18.

In addition, while the IDF sends out endless updates about the different 3,000-plus targets it has hit (it seems that it uses an average of four or more bombs per target), the US has been sending fewer updates each week as the conflict has been extended.

Next, on March 19, IDF sources said that around 90% of the pre-war designated targets had already been hit.

In other words, even if the planes and pilots were not getting tired and worn out, and even if the public numbers published were not telling the public clearly that the war has markedly slowed down, it would need to slow down because Israel and the US are running out of targets.

This is true because Israel and the US will not (and might not be able to) try to target the entire 400,000 Iranian military and one to two million Basij from the air.