by Yonah Jeremy Bob
According to the officer from the IDF's clandestine satellite intelligence division, the goal of the attack was to maintain Israel's supremacy in space, especially regarding satellite surveillance.
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In an extremely rare public statement, an IDF Unit 9900 intelligence official said on Monday that Israel has destroyed an Iranian base which was focused on building technologies to shoot down Israeli satellites and other adversaries' satellites.
According to the officer from the IDF's clandestine satellite intelligence division, the goal of the attack was to maintain Israel's supremacy in space, especially regarding satellite surveillance.
"We are leading many efforts to preserve the IDF's freedom of action in the arena of space, and to harm the capabilities of Iran to act and to build such forces," said the Unit 9900 official.
He complimented the Defense Ministry and the broader defense establishment - Israel Aerospace Industries is the lead Israeli satellite developer - to help "IDF intelligence to continue to operate surveillance satellites and to provide critical intelligence for the war, to provide warnings [of ballistic missile launches] and to" target adversaries throughout the Middle East.
The site was used to develop Chamran 1, which was launched into space in September 2024 by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Iran's space program fuels fears of long-range missiles
In September 2024, Iran launched a satellite into space with a rocket built by the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), state-run media reported at the time.
Iran described the launch as the second comparable launch to place a satellite into orbit with the rocket.
At the time, Tehran identified the satellite-carrying rocket as the Qaem-100, which the IRGC used in January for another successful launch.
The solid-fuel, three-stage rocket put the Chamran-1 satellite, weighing 60 kilograms (132 pounds), into a 550-kilometer (340-mile) orbit, state media reported.
The US intelligence community’s 2024 worldwide threat assessment warned that Iran’s development of satellite launch vehicles “would shorten the timeline” for it to develop an ICBM.
The IDF on March 8 attacked Iran's Aerospace Headquarters for launching satellites, technology which had potential dual use for being incorporated in future attempts to develop nuclear weapons, which could be fired long range into space and hit the US.
The headquarters had been used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to promote its aerospace efforts, including the 2022 launch of the Khayyam satellite, successfully launched by Iran using a Russian Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
When that satellite was successfully launched into space, it caused serious national security and intelligence concerns for Israel and the West.
Until attacking the site on Sunday, Israeli officials were concerned that the Khayyam and the latest space cooperation between Moscow and Tehran would increase Iran’s capabilities to potentially launch ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) as well as improve its monitoring of targets in the Jewish state and throughout the region in the short-term.
An additional concern for Jerusalem was that Khayyam and future Russian-Iranian satellites could reduce Israeli spies’ ability to penetrate the Islamic Republic’s border with operations which hold back its nuclear progress.
Earlier in 2022, The Washington Post reported that Russia was preparing to provide Iran with an advanced satellite that would enable it to track potential military targets across the Middle East, sending shudders through much of the region
The
Washington Post report had said that the new satellite would allow
"continuous monitoring of facilities ranging from Persian Gulf oil
refineries and Israeli military bases to Iraqi barracks that house US
troops," citing three unnamed sources - a current and a former US
official and a senior Middle Eastern government official briefed on the
sale.
On December 28, 2025, just before protests in Iran kicked off,
leading into the current war, Iran launched three domestically developed
satellites into space simultaneously from a Russian launch site just as
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was on his way to meet with US
President Donald Trump to discuss the Iranian threat and other regional
issues.
Israeli officials interpreted the launches, which were announced multiple times in advance, as a show of the Islamic Republic's defiance of attempts by Jerusalem and Washington to impose a new balance of power on it following the war between the parties in June 2025.
Prior to the June war, Tehran managed numerous satellite launches in recent years, some on its own, and some in conjunction with Moscow.
During that period of time, such satellite launches were often viewed by the Jewish state and by America as a grave danger, due to their being a potential dual-use threat and a move toward producing nuclear weapons, including intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which might eventually reach the US.
However, following the June war, Iran's nuclear program was in shambles.
This left the significance of the satellite launches as more of an open question until last week, when Israel started to attack it.
The IDF also launched a third attack against the IRGC's Aerospace Division at a site in Tehran on March 13.
No specific satellites were mentioned as having been developed or launched from the site, but the IDF said it was the central site for research relating to the area of space warfare applications.
Regarding Israeli dominance of space against Iran to date, Israel has revealed that during the June 2025 war, its comprehensive space-based intelligence gathering captured tens of millions of square kilometers through day-night surveillance, producing over 12,000 satellite images of Iranian territory.
Reuters contributed to this report.
Yonah Jeremy Bob
Source: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-890119
