Over the past 24 hours the IDF concentrated strikes on Hamedan province in western Iran — the first sustained Israeli targeting of the country's western flank. More than 200 targets were hit, described by the IDF as command centres, air defence systems, and weapons storage and production sites1. Among them: Shahid Nojeh Air Base, a primary Iranian Air Force facility roughly 300 kilometres west of Isfahan.
Nojeh is not a random base. It was one of the launch sites for Iran's April 2024 attack on Israel — Operation True Promise — when Tehran fired over 300 missiles and drones at Israeli territory in its first direct strike from Iranian soil. Hitting Nojeh two years later is the IDF closing an account opened in that exchange. The base housed F-4 Phantom and Su-24 aircraft squadrons; whatever remained of Hamedan's air capability after two weeks of broader degradation is now under direct fire.
The geographic expansion follows a deliberate pattern. Israeli strikes concentrated first on Tehran and surrounding military infrastructure, then moved to Isfahan's nuclear and aerospace facilities. Five days ago the IDF issued an evacuation warning for Tabriz — Iran's fourth-largest city in the northwest, home to a distinct Turkic minority with a separate political relationship to Tehran's central government. Hamedan confirms a parallel westward push. Iran must now defend three axes simultaneously — central, northwest, and west — with an air defence network the IDF has spent two weeks systematically degrading. Each expansion stretches Iran's remaining early-warning and interception capacity thinner across a country roughly seven times the size of the United Kingdom.
