Israeli Air Force strikes Tehran again as IDF says campaign is roughly halfway done

The Israeli Air Force carried out a fresh wave of airstrikes on Tehran on Monday, with explosions reported across several districts of the Iranian capital. The Israeli military said the strikes targeted Iranian regime infrastructure, without specifying which facilities were hit. The timing was notable. The strikes came within hours of President Trump announcing a five-day pause on U.S. military action against Iranian energy infrastructure, making clear that Israel is operating on its own schedule regardless of American diplomatic signaling.

What the IDF said about the campaign's progress

The Israeli military stated separately on Monday that it is approximately halfway through its overall campaign against Iran. That framing is significant because it tells both Tehran and Washington that Israel does not consider this conflict near resolution. A halfway point implies a defined target set that is being worked through methodically rather than a series of reactive strikes. The IDF has not disclosed how many targets were included in the original campaign plan or what categories of infrastructure remain on the list.

Over the four weeks of the conflict, Israeli strikes have hit Iranian air defense systems, ballistic missile production facilities, and military command sites. The shift to regime infrastructure in Tehran represents an escalation in the geographic and political sensitivity of the targets. Strikes inside the capital, on facilities associated with the government rather than military hardware outside the city, carry different implications for Iran's domestic political situation.

How Monday's strikes fit with Trump's pause announcement

Trump's Monday announcement paused U.S. strikes on Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for five days. It said nothing about Israeli operations. Israel and the United States coordinate closely on Iran strategy, but the Israeli military has its own chain of command and its own operational timeline. The fact that Israeli strikes on Tehran continued on the same day as Trump's pause announcement signals that the two allies are not operating as a single entity in this conflict, at least not at the tactical level.

This is not the first time Israeli and American actions have diverged during a joint operation. During the 1991 Gulf War, Israel absorbed Iraqi Scud missile strikes without retaliating because the U.S. asked it to stay out of the coalition conflict. The current situation is different in that Israel is an active participant in the campaign against Iran and has its own direct security stakes in degrading Iranian military capability. There is no indication that the U.S. asked Israel to pause its strikes alongside the American halt.

What regime infrastructure means as a target category

The Israeli military's use of the phrase regime infrastructure is deliberately broad. It can encompass communications facilities, government ministry buildings, security and intelligence headquarters, and infrastructure used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps within Tehran's city limits. Iran has historically embedded military and security facilities inside civilian urban areas, which makes targeting decisions in Tehran considerably more complex than strikes on remote missile production sites or radar installations.

Iran's state media reported casualties from Monday's strikes but did not provide specific numbers. Tehran residents have been living under periodic air raid alerts since the conflict began four weeks ago, and the city's infrastructure has been affected by earlier strikes on power generation and water systems in surrounding areas. Monday's strikes reportedly produced explosions in at least three separate districts, suggesting multiple simultaneous or sequential strikes rather than a single targeted hit.

What the midpoint assessment means for the conflict's duration

If the IDF's halfway assessment is accurate, the current campaign has roughly another four weeks of planned strikes remaining at the current pace. That timeline extends well beyond Trump's five-day diplomatic pause and beyond any near-term ceasefire scenario unless Iran agrees to terms that satisfy Israel's stated military objectives. Israel has said its goals include eliminating Iran's ballistic missile production capacity and degrading the IRGC's offensive military infrastructure. Neither objective has been publicly declared complete. The next confirmed diplomatic checkpoint is the expiry of Trump's five-day pause, which falls over the coming weekend.