Operation Red Wedding: How The Elimination Of Iran's Military Leadership Was Planned
- 18.06.2025, 17:25
The Israeli Air Force managed to eliminate key figures within 12 minutes.
In late November 2024, the Defense Ministry decided to plan a large-scale operation against Iran in order to severely damage its nuclear program. As part of Operation Red Wedding, the Israeli Air Force managed to eliminate key figures in Iran's military leadership within 12 minutes, wrote Details.
While the IDF was battling Hizbullah in Lebanon, senior military intelligence and air force officers gathered at a hotel in central Israel for about ten hours to map out strategic enemy centers that the IDF could hit to inflict maximum damage. A range of targets were identified: senior General Staff officials, the air defense system, missile and UAV storage sites, launching systems and nuclear centers.
After the first meeting, a seminar was held at the headquarters of "Unit 8200" with 120 officers ranging in rank from lieutenant colonel to brigadier general to analyze the intelligence and develop a plan of action. The best minds in military intelligence and the Air Force were trying to figure out how to break through Iranian defenses and strike critical centers. Three months passed, but there was still no acceptable solution and no clear plan.
Starting in February, the military met again and decided that the operation needed to address several tasks simultaneously. By March, the plan was ready. It was called "The Red Wedding," taken from one of the most memorable and dramatic episodes of "Game of Thrones."
The secret plan was to secure a 1,500-kilometer air corridor and attack senior leaders of Iran's military formations. The IDF leadership said it was a plan on the verge of fantasy. In the end, the intelligence and air force was able to eliminate ten high-ranking leaders of Iran's military forces in 12 minutes.
According to sources, more than 200 fighter jets attacked more than 100 targets across Iran. Each squadron, depending on the area of operation, was given the coordinates of Iranian generals to be eliminated. Some of the members of the Iranian Armed Forces General Staff were asleep at home, some were at headquarters, some were elsewhere. Intelligence knew the location of a number of generals. The locations were given to the Air Force and the plan is known to have worked.
It became clear in the first hours that three of the Iranian regime's most senior military commanders had been eliminated: the regime's chief of staff of the armed forces, Mohammad Hossein Baqeri; IRGC commander Hossein Salami; and the head of the central staff, Hatem Ghalam Ali Rashid. Over time, the list of killed generals grew.
According to the first hours of the war, Iranian headquarters were disoriented and there was no one to command defensive actions.
In the preemptive strike on Iran, more than 20 Iranian commanders were killed, including the head of the military's intelligence directorate and the commander of an IRGC unit that operated surface-to-surface missiles.