Tehran has been rocked by the most audacious strike of the war, as fifty Israeli fighter jets reportedly hammered a fortified complex in the capital believed to house Iran’s Supreme Leader’s main underground bunker, military and intelligence sources say.

Residents in northern Tehran describe the night sky turning white as wave after wave of low‑flying jets roared over the city, followed by a rolling series of deep explosions that shattered windows across affluent hillside districts and plunged whole neighbourhoods into darkness.

Israeli officials, speaking off the record, call it a “once‑in‑a‑generation decapitation raid” using F‑35s and F‑15s loaded with bunker‑buster and penetrating bombs, guided by months of satellite, cyber and human intelligence on the layout of the Supreme Leader’s hardened command network beneath the capital.

Early satellite imagery shows a sprawling Revolutionary Guard compound reduced to smoking craters, collapsed shafts and caved‑in tunnels. Iranian state TV rushed out a midnight statement insisting Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is “alive and directing operations,” but offered no live footage, only archival clips, fuelling intense speculation that the leadership was at least wounded, if not hit directly.

Ambulances and armoured convoys have been filmed racing in and out of sealed‑off zones, while air‑defence batteries fired wildly into the night long after the last jets had turned for home. Casualty numbers among IRGC commanders and security staff are believed to be high; civilians in surrounding districts have also been killed and injured by blast and debris.

Diplomats warn that if Israel has truly shattered the bunker at the heart of Iran’s power structure, the conflict has crossed from pressure campaign into an existential fight for regime survival — a shift that could unleash a level of retaliation the region has never seen.