Israel struck a centrifuge production site in Tehran early Wednesday, after successfully intercepting more than two dozen missiles launched by Iran toward Israel in the preceding hours.

Over 50 Israeli Air Force jets flew to Iran, where they struck a facility in which centrifuges were manufactured to expand and accelerate uranium enrichment for Iran’s nuclear weapons program, the IDF Spokesperson’s Office said.

”The Iranian regime is enriching uranium for the purpose of developing nuclear weapons. Nuclear power for civilian use does not require enrichment at these levels,” the IDF said.

The IDF also said it struck several weapons manufacturing facilities, including one used “to produce raw materials and components for the assembly of surface-to-surface missiles, which the Iranian regime has fired and continues to fire toward the State of Israel.” Another facility that the IDF struck manufactured components for anti-aircraft missiles.

IDF Spokesperson Effie Defrin said on Wednesday that the IDF “attacked five Iranian combat helicopters that tried to harm our aircraft.” 

“There is Iranian resistance, but we control the air [over Iran] and will continue to control it. We are deepening our damage to surface missiles and acting in every place from which the Iranians shoot missiles at Israel,” Defrin added.

Defrin said on Tuesday evening that, as a result of Israel’s air superiority in western Iran and the Tehran area, the Islamic Republic’s military efforts “have been pushed back into central Iran. They are now focusing their efforts on conducting missile fire from the area of Isfahan.”

Defense Minister Israel Katz said that “a tornado is passing over Tehran. Symbols of the regime are exploding and collapsing, from the broadcast authority and soon other targets, and masses of residents are fleeing. This is how dictatorships collapse.” 

Most of the projectiles fired from Iran toward northern and central Israel overnight were intercepted, and no injuries or fatalities were reported. 

In addition, Iran launched over 10 drones at the Galilee and the Golan on Wednesday morning, all of which the IDF intercepted.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Israel is running low on Arrow interceptors used to shoot down long-range ballistic missiles from Iran. Israel also uses the David’s Sling system against Iranian missiles. The Arrow is manufactured by Israel Aerospace Industries. The U.S. has augmented Israel’s air defenses with its THAAD system, but is concerned about its own stock of interceptors. The IDF told the Journal that “it is prepared and ready to handle any scenario.”

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wrote on X that Iran “must give a strong response to the terrorist Zionist regime. We will show the Zionists no mercy.” On his Persian X account, Khamenei evoked Khaybar, the site of a massacre of Jews by Muslims in the 7th century, along with an image of a man with a sword entering a burning castle. 

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed that it shot Fatah-1 hypersonic missiles at Israel, which move faster than the speed of sound and cannot be detected by missile defense systems. However, there is no evidence on the ground in Israel of that being the case. 

Iranian state media reported on Wednesday the interception of an Israeli drone near Isfahan, with footage of an aircraft that looks like an IAF Hermes 900. The IDF declined to comment. 

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar wrote a letter updating the U.N. Security Council on Israel’s Operation Rising Lion against Iran. The operation is “aimed to neutralize the existential and imminent threat from Iran’s nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs” and “specifically targets military facilities and critical components of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, as well as key individuals involved in Iran’s efforts to achieve nuclear weapons.” 

Sa’ar noted the Islamic Republic’s “public threats to eliminate the State of Israel, in stark violation of the UN charter, and its continued attempts to achieve the means to accomplish this by rapidly developing military nuclear capabilities, as well as its ballistic missile program.” He pointed out that the International Atomic Energy Agency censured Iran in a recent Board of Governors decision for its non-compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Sa’ar’s letter came after two missives from Iran to the UNSC about Israel’s strikes on the country.

Also Wednesday, the first Israeli rescue flights arrived from Cyprus, meant to help some of the over 100,000 Israelis stuck abroad while Israel’s airspace is closed. Israel Airports Authority said that 2,800 Israelis were expected to return on Wednesday. Israeli airlines El Al, Arkia, Israir and Air Haifa will be making further emergency flights to repatriate Israelis.

China’s foreign ministry said that it was telling citizens to leave Israel and Iran, and Russia’s ambassador to Israel, Anatoly Viktorov, said that the families of Russian diplomats left Israel via Egypt on Tuesday. 

Iran has launched about 400 ballistic missiles and hundreds of drones at Israel, hitting 40 impact sites since the beginning of the operation on Friday, according to the Israeli Government Press Office. There have been 24 fatalities and over 804 injured, eight of whom are in serious condition. About 3,800 people have been evacuated from their homes and 18,766 damage claims were submitted to the Israel Tax Authority.

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) cautioned on Tuesday that bombing Iran’s underground Fordow nuclear facility would leave significant enriched uranium buried underground.

“I’m a little confused on all the conversation about dropping a bunker buster on a mountain that’s filled with enriched uranium, and how that solves the problem. If you’re going to try to get enriched uranium out of the country, dropping a big bunker buster on it may disable the centrifuges in [Fordow], but you still have 900 pounds of enriched uranium sitting there,” Lankford told Jewish Insider. “And so to me, the most strategic thing we can do is find a way to get that enriched uranium out of there and also take out their capacity to do any more enrichment.”

He added that such an operation could be “[with Iran’s] consent [through a deal] or kinetic [military operations], one or the other.” Most experts believe that Israel lacks the ability to destroy the Fordow facility without U.S. assistance.

“They can’t have that level of enriched uranium sitting there in those centrifuges, all spinning, but just burying that uranium inside the mountain, I think, doesn’t solve the problem either,” Lankford continued.

Andrea Stricker, the deputy director of the nonproliferation and biodefense program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said that the risk from nuclear materials remaining at Fordow after an Israeli or American strike would be minimal.

“If the Israelis target Fordow they would likely render it, for all practical purposes, inaccessible. The highly enriched uranium stocks could survive but would be very difficult for the Iranians to reach,” Stricker told JI. “The United States using the 30,000-pound massive ordnance penetrators would effectively destroy the material or entomb it inside. “

She added that there is “little concern about a major radiological incident in either case. Any radiation and chemical hazard would be minimal and localized to the facility, requiring people to wear protective gear.”

She compared the possibility to the Israeli strikes on above-ground facilities at Natanz, where the International Atomic Energy Agency reported no significant concerns about radiological contamination outside the site.

Asked about whether the U.S. should be pushing for regime change in Iran, Lankford said that “the best thing that could happen is regime change there,” but did not endorse the idea of using U.S. forces to achieve that goal. President Donald Trump suggested on Tuesday that the U.S. could kill Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah, Ali Khamenei.

“This is a regime that chants, over and over, ‘Death to America. Death to Jews.’ And they’ve actively worked towards assassinating President Trump, assassinating former members of our cabinet, working for the undermining of the United States government, attacking our warships through the Houthis off the coast of Yemen,” the Oklahoma Republican said. “We need to see regime change there because I’m not sure things get better for the Iranian people, or for the region, until there’s new leadership with a very different vision.”

He said that while the nuclear threat is the most pressing issue, it’s hard to see how the situation will improve, how the Iranian government can ever be trusted or how the Iranian people could have better lives under the Islamic Republic regime.

Lankford said that, under war powers limitations, the U.S. military may not be able to get involved until it is attacked directly or until the administration can provide evidence that Iran is planning a direct attack on the United States or U.S. personnel, as it did for the 2020 killing of Quds Force Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

The Oklahoma senator said in a CNN interview that the U.S. should not “rush into a war” but added that “when we are attacked, when we are threatened, we can’t just sit back and pretend that’s not going to happen.”

“If 9/11 taught us anything, when people chant ‘Death to America’ thousands of miles away, that does have consequences, they can carry that out,” Lankford continued

He noted on CNN that there are also 700,000 Americans in Israel, and that what happens in the region will impact them. Lankford also said Iran is “dancing on a threshold there seeing how close they can get to attacking Americans without our response.”

Speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill, Lankford expressed support for the continued provision of U.S. aid to Israel to defend itself and carry on its military operations, and criticized colleagues who he said had not argued that additional congressional authorization was needed in order to provide U.S. support for Ukraine but are now taking a different approach to Israel.

“There seems to be a double standard among some of my colleagues that they strongly defend the rights of Ukraine to defend themselves, but hesitate on Israel,” Lankford said.