The IDF struck Kermanshah on 3 April, killing Makram Atimi, commander of Iran's central ballistic missile unit, along with several battalion commanders. The strike was a targeted decapitation of the IRGC command layer responsible for coordinating Iran's longest-range missile operations.
The killing is the latest in a sustained Israeli campaign against Iran's missile command structure. CENTCOM reported over 12,300 targets struck across the campaign, yet the ballistic missile programme has continued operating. The UAE's cumulative Intercept totals , 457 ballistic missiles as of 3 April, confirm the barrages have not stopped.
That paradox is central to assessing what Atimi's death means. Removing a commander disrupts coordination and degrades institutional knowledge. It does not destroy the missiles he commanded, the operators who fire them, or the targeting data already in the system. RUSI assessed that Israeli Arrow-3 stocks were nearing exhaustion at current expenditure rates; the demand on those batteries has not meaningfully eased despite earlier command-layer strikes.
The Kermanshah strike also reinforces the geographic reach of Israeli operations inside Iran. Kermanshah sits 525 kilometres from Tel Aviv. Precision strikes at that range against a named commander represent a level of targeting intelligence that Iran has consistently failed to anticipate.
