U.S. and Israeli forces struck more than 1,000 targets within the first 24 hours of launching Operation Epic Fury on Feb. 28, according to U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM).
Targets struck include command and control centers, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ headquarters, air defense systems, ballistic missile launch sites, naval ships—including submarines—and Iranian “military communications capabilities.”
CENTCOM issued a graphic documenting U.S. assets employed to conduct the strikes: B-2 stealth bombers; Patriot Interceptor missile systems; Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-ballistic missile systems; F-18, F-16, F-22 fighter jets; A-10 attack jets; F-35 stealth fighters; EA-18G electronics jamming jets; MQ-9 Reaper drones, “and special capabilities we can’t list here!”
The most notable strikes thus far was the opening salvo that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—who has ruled Iran as the regime’s supreme leader since 1989—and key Iranian military leaders, including IRGC commander Gen. Mohammad Pakpour, while they met in a Tehran compound.
CENTCOM said it struck Iranian ballistic missile sites with B-2 bombers but has not divulged what specific sites were struck and how effective those first-day attacks were.
“Last night, U.S. B-2 stealth bombers, armed with 2,000 lb. bombs, struck Iran’s hardened ballistic missile facilities,” CENTCOM said in a noon ET March 1 X post. “No nation should ever doubt America’s resolve.”
According to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, an international nuclear weapons monitor, more than 30 “known nuclear sites” and 17 missile sites in Iran were struck by missiles or drones, or targeted by U.S. and Israeli air forces in aerial assaults within the first 24 hours of the conflict.
Iranian nuclear sites targeted include Isfahan research and conversion plants, “deeply buried uranium enrichment infrastructure” in Qom Province, areas in Kermanshah and Tabriz “linked to missile storage or launch history,” and sites in Tehran “associated with command, intelligence and logistical operations,” the initiative said.
Tehran local media has reported missile and drone strikes on the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence, the Ministry of Defense, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, and the Parchin military complex.
President Donald Trump said on March 1 that the U.S. Navy plans to completely destroy Iran’s navy.
“I have just been informed that we have destroyed and sunk nine Iranian Naval Ships, some of them relatively large and important,” he said in a Sunday Truth Social post and video “We are going after the rest. They will soon be floating at the bottom of the sea, also! In a different attack, we largely destroyed their Naval Headquarters. Other than that, their Navy is doing very well!”
CENTCOM confirmed an Iranian Jamaran-class corvette is among the Iranian ships targeted and sunk pierside in Chabahar on the Gulf of Oman.
The Israeli Defense Force said on March 1 that first-day strikes were designed to “pave a path to Tehran” with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowing missile and aerial attacks on the Iranian capital would be escalated Sunday and in the days to come.
