Missiles go silent but Iran-Israel cyber war is just ramping up

The video shows two powerful blasts roughly a second apart just steps away from the main hospital in the Tajrish area, near the capital's bustling Qods Square.

One hits a building, sending a huge cloud of smoke up on the other side of the street, and another lands between cars at an intersection.

The second blast hurls the vehicles and a huge plume of smoke high into the air.

At the time of the explosions, around 15:30 local time on June 15, the street was busy with vendors, shoppers, metro passengers and traffic as many had still not left the capital for safer places.

Other videos of the incident posted earlier on social media showed extensive flooding caused by damage to a major water pipeline from the second blast, adding to the chaos. A three-year-old child reportedly drowned in the flood.

The 12-second footage, released on social media on Thursday, appears to be from a traffic surveillance camera.

The footage emphasized the harm endured by Iranian civilians apart from Israeli strikes which assassinated commanders and nuclear scientists and pummeled key military and nuclear facilities until a June 24 ceasefire.

Iran's health ministry reported 610 people were killed in the conflict and 4,746 injured.

Independent tallies put the toll higher—1,190 according to the US-based human rights group HRANA, which reported military deaths just above 400, with the rest either civilians or yet to be determined.

Verified

Some activists and social media users allege that the video was digitally manipulated or AI-generated.

However, Factnameh, an Iranian fact-checking website, and BBC both deemed the footage genuine, comparing it with other images from the area of the impact.

Victims

Iran reported 18 people killed, including a pregnant woman and her child, and 46 injured in the strike but has not released a full list of victims.

The Israeli military reported the killing of Brigadier General Mohammad Kazemi, chief of the IRGC Intelligence Organization, his deputy Brigadier General Hassan Mohaqeq, and military intelligence officer Mohsen Bagheri on the same day.

Iran confirmed their deaths but neither side has disclosed the exact location of their deaths.

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Other incidents with high civilian casualties

On June 23, Israel launched several missiles at Tehran’s Evin Prison, calling the site a “tool of repression.”

Among the dead were two prison officials, Ruhollah Tavasoli and Vahid Heydarpour, as well as Evin's top prosecutor Ali Ghanaatkar. Dozens of detainees, medical staff, visiting families — including a young child — and even a bystander were also killed.

Another Israeli attack on June 24 in Astaneh Ashrafieh in northern Iran killed 16 people, most of them from the same extended family, and completely destroyed several homes.

The bombing targeted nuclear scientist Mohammad-Reza Sadighi, who had survived an earlier Israeli attack in Tehran but lost his 17-year-old son Hamidreza in the airstrike.

The group urged the Communications Ministry and the Infrastructure Company to “immediately end the deliberate disruptions to online access.

“Over 400,000 small and medium-sized enterprises, whose livelihoods millions of Iranians depend on, are facing complete collapse," the open letter dated July 2 said.

Internet access in Iran was disrupted on June 13, the first day of the 12-day war with Israel, and was completely cut on June 17. Partial service has since resumed, but connection speeds and access remain severely limited.

State media defends blackouts citing cyber war

On Saturday, the IRGC-affiliated Fars News Agency said the disruptions may reflect a large cyber war targeting national infrastructure, describing the attacks as organized and part of a “hidden battle growing more severe by the day.”

During the war, officials justified the shutdowns as a measure to block Israeli reconnaissance drones allegedly using Iranian SIM cards and to disrupt intelligence gathering via WhatsApp. But military and communications experts have dismissed those remarks.

“I categorically reject the Islamic Republic’s claims. No evidence has been presented to show that Israel uses SIM cards for drones," Mehdi Yahyanejad, an expert in internet technologies, told Iran International.

"Even if that were the case, a nationwide internet shutdown is not a logical solution," he said.

The daughter of top military commander Ali Shadmani—killed shortly after his appointment to lead Khatam-al-Anbia Central Headquarters—said her father carried no smart devices during the war, and that “Israel’s precision targeting went far beyond WhatsApp or traditional espionage.”

Her remarks followed accusations from Gholamreza Jalali, head of Iran’s Passive Defense Organization, who said WhatsApp was used to locate and kill Iranian commanders—a charge Meta has denied.

Layoffs, collapse feared in tech sector

The Internet Business Association, in its letter, cited ongoing disruptions—DNS tampering, throttling, protocol filtering, and loss of global access—as already triggering mass layoffs, stalled investment, and startup shutdowns.

“We are witnessing a broad wave of job cuts, halted investment in the startup ecosystem, and announcements of company closures—that is to say, bankruptcies,” the letter said.

The group warned that continued interference “threatens public trust, accelerates elite migration, and risks the death of Iran’s tech sector,” demanding an immediate end to all forms of service degradation.

Iran ranked near the bottom in global internet freedom last year. According to the Tehran Electronic Commerce Association, the country is placed among the lowest in speed and reliability out of 100 surveyed nations.

Surveys suggest 84% of Iranians rely on VPNs to access free internet.

The data, provided by a research group at Oregon State University, suggest that six Iranian missiles hit military targets across northern, central, and southern Israel, including what the report describes as a major air base, an intelligence facility, and a logistics center.

“The radar signatures we analyzed show definitive blast patterns at five separate military sites,” Corey Scher, a researcher with the Oregon State team, told The Telegraph. “These are consistent with missile strikes that likely occurred during the height of the conflict.”

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) declined to confirm or deny the reported damage. “What we can say is that all relevant units maintained functional continuity throughout the operation,” a military spokesman told The Telegraph.

The Telegraph reported that the missile strikes described in the radar data appear to be separate from the 36 previously reported impacts on residential and industrial areas, which caused widespread damage.

Iranian missile penetration increased during conflict, report says

According to The Telegraph, the proportion of Iranian missiles that penetrated Israeli air defenses increased during the war, rising from about 2 percent early in the conflict to roughly 16 percent by day seven.

The report did not offer definitive reasons for the increase, but cited expert suggestions that the causes “may include the rationing of a limited stock of interceptor missiles on the Israeli side and improved firing tactics and the possible use of more sophisticated missiles by Iran.”

Iranian officials told The Telegraph that the use of simultaneous drone and missile attacks was intended to confuse Israeli defense systems. “Many [drones] don’t even get through—but they still cause confusion,” one unnamed Iranian official said.

The Israeli media on Friday quoted a military official as saying that Iran began the conflict with around 400 missile launchers and that “we destroyed more than 200 of them, which caused a bottleneck in their missile operations.”

The same official estimated that Iran started the war with 2,000 to 2,500 ballistic missiles and is pursuing mass production that could dramatically expand its arsenal.

A more comprehensive analysis of the damage to both Israeli and Iranian infrastructure is expected from the Oregon State research group within two weeks, according to the report.

The group uses radar-based methods that detect changes in the built environment, but it acknowledged that full confirmation of military site hits would require either on-the-ground access or high-resolution satellite imagery.

Officials now cite rising demand and long-standing shortfalls in generation capacity as the cause.

The grid is unable to meet current consumption levels, prompting scheduled two-hour power outages daily, Iran's state electricity company chief, Mostafa Rajabi Mashhadi said. “The demand exceeds production,” he said, adding that outages would decrease only if energy use fell.

“The shortages will ease whenever the energy crisis is reduced to a minimum,” he said, a vague promise that has done little to calm public anger.

Iranian citizens have begun circulating videos of renewed blackouts in cities like Ahvaz, where summer temperatures regularly exceed 50°C.

“After the war ended, the Islamic Republic went back to factory settings,” one resident said in a video sent to Iran International.

Electricity generators, once confined to bakeries, were now being used by most businesses, driving up noise and pollution, he added.

Subsidy system overhaul planned

In parallel, Mohammad Bahrami Seifabadi, a lawmaker on the parliamentary energy committee, unveiled a new two-tier pricing scheme for power and gas.

“Each person will have a fixed energy quota and pay full cost beyond that,” he said, framing it as a replacement for Iran’s current subsidies system.

“Instead of subsidizing consumption, energy support will go to each national ID and individual,” Bahrami added.

Temporary stability during war

Power outages had temporarily eased during the recent 12-day confrontation with Israel, with many workplaces shut. Officials implied the grid had improved, but analysts say the drop in usage, not any reform, was responsible.

“Power cuts during the war were because everything was closed, but the government claimed the credit,” said Reza Gheibi, an Iran International journalist. “Now the deficiencies are back in the open.”

Energy Minister Abbas Aliabadi promised earlier this week that nighttime blackouts would be minimized. “If necessary, disruptions will occur more during the day,” he said in early June.

Successive Iranian summers have seen repeated electricity shortages, often described by officials as “imbalances” between supply and demand.

Energy experts attribute the crisis to underinvestment, dilapidated infrastructure, and a chronic failure to expand power generation, which is estimated to lag by roughly 14,000 megawatts.

A resident of Ahvaz said the latest outages have been especially punishing: “It feels like they are making us pay for the war with Israel.”

“Post-conflict situations must not be used as an opportunity to suppress dissent and increase repression,” the experts said in a statement, referring to the aftermath of Iran-Israel conflict which began on June 13 and ended with a ceasefire.

The experts which included UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mai Sato, said they were alarmed by reports that at least six individuals, including three Kurdish men, had been executed on charges of “espionage for Israel.”

They also cited the arrests of hundreds of people, including journalists, human rights defenders, social media users, foreign nationals — particularly Afghans — and members of ethnic and religious minorities such as Baha’is, Kurds, Balouchis and Ahwazi Arabs.

The experts expressed concern over the detention of human rights defender Hossein Ronaghi and his brother and Swedish-Iranian academic Ahmadreza Djalali who they said faced imminent execution with his whereabouts unknown.

The experts warned that Iran’s parliament was advancing legislation that would categorize intelligence activities on behalf of “hostile governments” as “corruption on earth” — a charge punishable by death under Iranian law.

“Criminalizing the sharing of information in broad language violates the rights to freedom of expression and information,” the statement said. “This legislation also represents a worrying expansion of the death penalty that violates international human rights law.”

They also condemned the deteriorating conditions of prisoners transferred from Evin Prison following Israeli strikes on its facilities.

Many detainees were moved to the Great Tehran Penitentiary and Qarchak Prison and held in inhumane conditions. The whereabouts of some prisoners remain unknown, the experts said, describing the situation as amounting to enforced disappearances.