Iranian missiles targeted Mossad HQ in Tel Aviv: Report

While the scale of the damage that approximately 180 missiles — the number put out by the Israeli military — caused in Israel remains inconclusive, reports have emerged saying that one of the targets was the country’s intelligence agency Mossad’s headquarters in Tel Aviv late Tuesday night.

Images have emerged and media outlets — such as CNN and The Guardian — have reported craters caused by one of the missiles not far from the Mossad headquarters. One of the reports described the crater as 30 feet deep and 50 feet wide at a distance of about 50-100 feet from the Mossad headquarters.

PBS foreign affairs and defence correspondent, Nick Schifrin posted a video report on X, showing a crater and identifying the site close to the Mossad headquarters on the outskirts of Tel Aviv.

These reports make it obvious that one of the high-profile targets of the Iranian attacks — that were launched after the approval of its Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — was Mossad, which is believed to have been behind attacks in Tehran that killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in July, pager and walkie-talkie blasts in Lebanon in September, and the targeted missile attack on Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah last week.

Khamenei hailed the Iranian attacks on Wednesday as “Victory from God and a near conquest” in a social media post.

Israel has not reported any injury due to the barrage of missiles that Iran fired at it. But one person was reported killed in the West Bank.

However, it is still too early to conclude how much damage the Iranian missiles caused in Israel, which sounded a Red Code alert, advising citizens to take shelter in nearby bomb-protected bunkers in Tel Aviv.

Besides the Mossad headquarters, the Nevatim Air Base and Tel Nof Air Base were likely other top targets of the Iranian attack.

CNN reported that at least two missiles fell near the Mossad HQ in Tel Aviv’s Glilot neighbourhood, which is a densely populated area with a number of residential and commercial buildings.

It also reported that a significant number of Iranian rockets hit the Nevatim base in southern Israel’s Negev desert. It is the same facility — one of Israel’s largest — that Iran had targeted in its previous attack on April 13. The Israeli military, however, said the damage was minimal.