The conflicts pitting Israel against Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon continued on Tuesday, though with no clear substantial progress for any side.
The IDF and the US continued to bomb Iran in several parts of the country, with the hope of gradually reducing the ballistic missile threat and weakening the Islamic regime sufficiently for regime change. However, none of the specific targets that were hit appeared to be of great significance.
For example, the military noted on Tuesday that it had destroyed “most of the central assets” of the regime’s internal security forces and of the Basij militia in the Ilam Province of western Iran.
According to the IDF, Iran’s internal security forces and Basij carried out numerous terror plans and perpetrated the brutal repression of Iranian protesters during the December-January period.
When pressed by The Jerusalem Post about why Ilam Province is significant compared to the larger and more well-known provinces, the IDF did not respond.
No major hits
Although the IDF announced on Thursday that over 400 regime locations have been bombed, on Monday, it had said that only 1,900 fighters have been killed, which is out of an estimated 400,000 Iranian soldiers, around 125,000 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces, and one to two million Basij militia, of which 200,000 are hardcore members.
Likewise, Iran continued to fire ballistic missiles at Israel throughout the day, but achieved no major hits, though shrapnel fell in several areas.
On Tuesday evening, Magen David Adom confirmed that it was searching for damage, following reports of shrapnel falling in the Beit Shemesh area.
The police said no injuries were reported, though minor structural damage was reported in the Menashe region.
Additionally, Coast Guard and bomb squad officers responded to several sites where shrapnel from missile interceptions fell, causing minor property damage.
Technical failure?
Also on Tuesday, the IDF said that an atypical technical failure led to two Hezbollah missiles impacting central Israel on Monday, with interceptors missing their marks, and without even a warning siren.
One of the missiles hit Ramle, and the second struck an open area in the Mateh Yehuda Regional Council; both missile strikes lightly wounded many civilians.
Despite the failure, most of the missiles fired on Monday were intercepted by Israel’s multilayer air defenses.
Also, the IDF said that the technical failure did not occur because of some new kind of Iranian technology, but rather the missiles fired were weapons that the IDF is acquainted with.
Following a probe into the incident, the IDF said that “adjustments were implemented to strengthen interception capabilities against similar threats in the northern area.”
A second man who was wounded by an Iranian cluster bomb attack in central Israel on Monday died of his injuries on Tuesday, medical officials announced.
Cluster munitions
Separately, the IDF Home Front Command said on Tuesday that 50% of the ballistic missiles that Iran has fired on Israel during the current war have been cluster munitions.
This is a shift from the June 2025 war with Iran, when occasionally the missiles were built of cluster munitions, but most were not.
Typically, Iranian ballistic missiles have 500 to 1,000 kilograms of explosives in them and strike one target, causing significant damage to the target and its immediate surroundings.
However, cluster munitions might contain dozens of eight-kilogram size bombs, which spread out over a 10-kilometer square radius.
On the one hand, each hit from a cluster munition causes less damage than a single ballistic missile hit.
On the other hand, each hit can still be deadly. Each hit can penetrate multiple floors in a single building, and, if such a missile breaks apart before it’s shot down, can cause a wider number of dangerous impacts.
When discussing the issue, the IDF was pressed about criticism that, in recent days, it has repeatedly sent millions of Israelis into bomb shelters and safe rooms when Iran has only fired a single missile, which was unlikely to have endangered so many people in different locations at once.
The IDF explained that its “polygon” – its algorithm for evaluating which cities to warn based on the estimated trajectory of a ballistic missile – errs on the side of saving lives, even if it inconveniences people in their daily routines.
That said, the IDF said that, whenever it can, it does exclude certain parts of the country from receiving warnings where the chances of them being targeted are very low.
Each launch also includes an assessment of the specific warhead and how large the explosives it carries are.
On the Lebanese front, the IDF renewed its strikes against Hezbollah and the group’s infrastructure in Beirut, including 80 additional strikes, the military confirmed on Tuesday.
The IDF also confirmed it had identified a cell of Hezbollah terrorists getting ready to fire rockets on Israel, but that it had struck them first.
According to the IDF, it has destroyed at least 70 Hezbollah missile launchers during the current conflict with Hezbollah.
Moreover, IDF Divisions 36 and 91 encountered and killed some Hezbollah fighters as they moved deeper into southern Lebanon as part of Israel’s forward-leaning defense of the northern border.
Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.