They were counting votes. Israel was counting targets.
On Tuesday, Israeli forces struck a meeting of Iran’s Supreme Council as officials gathered to select a successor to the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to a senior Israeli official who spoke to Fox News.
“Israel struck while they were counting the votes for the appointment of the supreme leader,” the official said.
But it wasn’t just a strike. It was a statement.
The message was that no room in Tehran is beyond reach. Not the bunker. Not the council chamber. Not the backroom where power is handed from one cleric to another.
More than 40 of Iran’s most senior leaders, including Khamenei, have been killed since the campaign began. Forty-nine were eliminated in the opening salvo of Operation Epic Fury early Saturday, fracturing the regime’s command structure and crippling its military networks.
Israeli analysts now estimate more than 1,000 enemy combatants have been killed since the United States launched Operation Epic Fury and Israel began its parallel campaign, Operation Roaring Lion.
The figure comes from Israel’s latest battle damage assessment.
The regime appears hollowed out.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu framed the offensive as a campaign of prevention.
“With these ballistic missiles, these weapons of mass death, these weapons, they bombed all these countries,” Netanyahu said. “And when they developed these ballistic missiles, they’ll try, and eventually they’ll bomb you. This is what President Trump understood,” Netanyahu said.
Vice President JD Vance emphasized the mission’s limits this week.
“There’s just no way that Donald Trump is going to allow this country to get into a multi-year conflict, with no clear end in sight and no clear objective,” Vance said. “He’s defined that objective as Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon and has to commit long-term to never trying to rebuild the nuclear capability.”
The joint assault entered its fourth day Tuesday with no sign of slowing.
President Donald Trump said the operation was ahead of schedule after the early elimination of Iran’s top leadership. Meanwhile, the United States urged Americans to depart 14 countries across the Middle East as Iranian counterattacks intensified. The State Department closed two embassies in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
The Gulf Cooperation Council warned Tehran it would take “all necessary measures,” including possible military action, in response to Iran’s missile and drone strikes.
We’re watching a historic shift in the Middle East — what comes next?
