Iran’s strike on Israel appears to have been more effective at reaching its targets than an attack in April of this year.

Videos posted to social media and geolocated by NPR and the online investigations group Bellingcat show multiple warheads landing around two Israeli air bases: Nevatim Airbase in the south of the country and Tel Nof Airbase in central Israel. One video filmed near Tel Nof also appeared to show possible secondary explosions, indicating that ammunition or fuel may have been struck by a missile.

Videos also showed warheads landing in northern Tel Aviv, near the headquarters of Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad. Those warheads appear to have missed their target and did not inflict any real damage. One video showed a large crater about 500 yards from the spy agency’s headquarters.

6. A strike on Nevatim Airbase, verified by The Post, @JakeGodin and others. One of the heaviest documented so far. pic.twitter.com/37QlbnhvFB

Experts say the attack was somewhat more successful than the one in April of this year, which was almost completely neutralized by Israeli and American air defenses.  

“It looks like more missiles seem to be hitting targets in Israel this time around,” says Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, Calif. That could be in part because “the Iranians seem to be using newer, more sophisticated missiles.”

Both the U.S. and Israel downplayed the strikes. “This attack appears to have been defeated and ineffective,” U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a briefing Tuesday. The U.S. said it had fired about a dozen interceptors from warships in an effort to blunt the Iranian assault.

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According to reports in the Israeli media, the military acknowledged that the strike had damaged “several” air bases. However, it said that no aircraft had been destroyed. Israeli media reported that the attacks had mainly damaged maintenance areas and office buildings.

An Israel Defense Forces spokesperson declined to comment to NPR on casualties or damage resulting from the strike. The Israeli military spokesperson, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, said in a briefing on the social media platform X that “We don’t want to tip off Iran... Our air force and air force bases remain operational.”

⚡️ 🚨 Scenes of #Iranian Fateh missiles falling on the Tel Nof air base south of Rehovot pic.twitter.com/RDq9A1B9KF

Although the strike may have been limited in the damage it caused, it was a clear challenge to Israel’s much-vaunted air defense systems. Israel’s main system, called Iron Dome, has proven incredibly effective against rockets from nearby adversaries like the militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah. Iron Dome uses relatively cheap interceptor missiles, together with state-of-the-art radars and high-speed computing, to quickly determine which incoming missiles pose a threat. It only takes shots at the ones it determines are falling in populated areas.

But ballistic missiles from Iran travel much higher and faster than those fired from nearby Lebanon and Gaza. The missiles fly briefly into space before coming down on their targets near or at hypersonic speeds. Israel has a separate missile defense system known as Arrow, which is capable of intercepting missiles near or in space, but Arrow has fewer interceptors than Iron Dome.

A man takes photos of a destroyed building that was hit in Iran's missile attack in Hod Hasharon, Israel, Wednesday. Ariel Schalit/AP hide caption