Israel says it has delivered a “strategic knockout” to Iran’s most feared unit, announcing that a joint US–Israeli operation has destroyed the main Quds Force headquarters, shattering the IRGC’s overseas terror arm in one of the most audacious raids of the war.

According to security sources, waves of Israeli F‑35s and US strike aircraft hit a sprawling command complex on the outskirts of Tehran used by the Quds Force to coordinate operations from Lebanon and Syria to Iraq and Yemen. Precision bunker‑busters and cruise missiles slammed into hardened bunkers, underground war rooms and communications hubs, triggering hours of secondary explosions as fuel and munitions ignited.

Early ᴀssessments speak of dozens of senior officers killed and entire planning cells wiped out. Satellite imagery reviewed by Western analysts shows collapsed tunnels, scorched compounds and a crater where the main headquarters building once stood. Rumours are already swirling about the fate of several top Quds Force commanders; Tehran insists they are “alive and directing the fight,” but has offered no proof.

Simultaneous strikes hammered Quds Force safe houses and logistics hubs in Damascus, Deir ez‑Zor and along the Iraq–Syria border, in what one US official calls a “systemic decapitation of Iran’s external warfare network.”

Iran’s leadership has branded the raid a “mᴀssacre of our forward‑defence vanguard” and vowed that “from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, American and Zionist ᴀssets will pay.” Proxies from Hezbollah to Iraqi militias have declared a “new phase” of retaliation.

For a region already on fire, the question now is whether wrecking the Quds Force’s nerve centre will shorten the war — or unleash a wave of revenge attacks that turns a ᴅᴇᴀᴅly conflict into something far more uncontrollable.