War on Iran – 8

Previous Thread:  https://sovereignista.com/2026/05/04/war-on-iran-7/

My continuing appreciation to Jangjo for the regular updates – Blessings!

Jun 6

IRGC Public Relations: The US Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait and the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain were targeted by Iranian missiles.

🔹 At 1:30 AM, four violating tankers guided by the US military attempted to make an illegal passage through the Strait of Hormuz without coordination; one was targeted and the others retreated after warnings.

🔹 Following this incident, at 2:30 AM, US drones struck telecommunications towers in Qeshm and Sirik.

(Self-defense they call it these days – there are not enough words in the dictionary to describe what we are seeing and experiencing.).

🔹In response, the IRGC Aerospace Force launched ballistic missile strikes against the US Ali Al Salem Air Base and the US Fifth Fleet facilities.

🔹 We warn the aggressor and child-killing enemy that further aggression will trigger a broader response. You will bear responsibility for the consequences of the complete closure of the Strait of Hormuz to the export of your oil and gas.

Jun 4

Another ceasefire (is this now number 4?) announced.  I don’t think Hezbollah will care.  Somehow I don’t think Iran will care either.  And then, the current Lebanese chihuahua government is giving away Lebanon south of the Litani.

As a result of negotiations led by the United States, both Israel and Lebanon have agreed to implement a ceasefire, provided that this ceasefire is conditional on a complete halt to fire by Hezbollah and the withdrawal of all its elements from the area south of the Litani River.

Lebanon and Israel, under the guidance of the United States, have agreed to expedite the establishment of “pilot zones” in which the Lebanese Armed Forces will have exclusive control over the territory, with no presence of any non-state armed groups.

The future of the relationship between Israel and Lebanon must be determined exclusively by the two sovereign governments, and we reject any attempt by any country or non-governmental entity to hold Lebanon’s future hostage or to influence it.

Lebanon and Israel have no hostile intentions toward each other and have committed to continuing direct negotiations to build trust, address all outstanding issues, and work toward a comprehensive agreement between the two countries.

Jun 3

Here is the provocation:  Israel’s Ambassador to the US confirms Hezbollah rocket fire violates agreements and warrants strike on Beirut

🔴 “Israel agreed to refrain from attacking Hezbollah headquarters in Beirut on the condition that Hezbollah cease attacks on Israeli cities and communities. This morning’s attack is yet another blatant violation of those agreements.”

This is of course a lie. Hezbollah wanted a full end to the war.  If there is no end, they will continue.   If Beirut is stuck, Iran will not sit idle.

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No war / No peace continues with a twist in the tail.  The US is normalizing these little ‘self-defense’ attacks.

Bear in mind that there is no peace agreement in Lebanon, neither in Gaza. Lebanon (Hezbollah) said NO to a partial concoction and continued resistance. Commentators did not really integrate this and we get some skewed reporting. Gaza is continually being genocided little by little.

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Take a look at Spain, at South Africa, at Brazil, at Turkiye, Hong Kong, China, Mexico – and compare with public statements.

Jun 2

Various reports:

🔹Iran says it struck US military targets after American attacks near Strait of Hormuz

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it launched missile and drone strikes against a US air base and the HQ of the Fifth Fleet in retaliation for American attacks on an Iranian tanker and an IRGC telecommunications site. It also said it targeted a vessel it identified as US-affiliated and warned that further security incidents in the Strait of Hormuz would carry consequences for American forces. 

Iran is targeting US bases in Kuwait, Bahrain and Iraq following US attacks on Qeshm Island. Iran seems to have recognized that deterrence can only be established by forcing the US regime – the mafia co-opted by Greater Israel – to recognize every terrorist action has a cost. The US 5th fleet was targeted again.

🔹CENTCOM reports everything was intercepted, while I look at the footage and see the impact of missiles hitting the ground.  They also claim the ceasefire is continuing.

CENTCOM claims ‘self‑defense strikes’ on Qeshm

CENTCOM says it shot down Iranian drones and missiles aimed at Kuwait and Bahrain, and conducted self‑defense strikes on an Iranian ground control station on Qeshm Island. No US personnel harmed, they claim.

📹 The last week’s attack on Ali Salem Airbase in Kuwait – which CENTCOM also claimed to have thwarted – actually injured 5 US soldiers and destroyed at least one MQ‑9 Reaper drone. The “thwarted” attack still caused casualties and losses.

I guess Schryver saw the hits as well.  His comment is quite brutal.   “Iran launched several ballistic missiles toward regional neighbors; however, all failed to hit their intended targets.” What did they hit?”

According to IRGC Public Relations, the escalation followed a US strike on an Iranian oil tanker near the Strait of Hormuz, which damaged the vessel’s engine room. In response, the IRGC Navy said it struck a vessel, which it said was linked to US-Israeli interests.

The IRGC further stated that after the US targeted a telecommunications tower south of Qeshm Island, its forces responded by striking a regional airbase, a helicopter squadron, and the US Fifth Fleet headquarters.

It warned that if aggression continues, the response will be “different and heavier,” emphasizing that it had acted accordingly in this round of escalation.

The statement also stressed that any disruption to security in the Strait of Hormuz would carry a “heavy price” for US forces.

🔹American oil tanker Panaya was targeted

Part of the IRGC’s public relations statement:

Late last night, the US aggressor army hit an Iranian oil tanker near the Strait of Hormuz with an aerial projectile, which damaged the engine room of the oil tanker.

In response to this aggression and violation of the Strait of Hormuz regulations, a floating vessel belonging to the Zionist American enemy named Panaya was targeted by IRGC Navy missiles.

Jun 1

The situation has changed materially. Check Jangjo’s update in the comments and Daily Chronicles.

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The situation still is No War / No Peace. It is being stretched out so that ol’bloody’Netanyahu can decimate Lebanon as much as is possible, before he is forced to stop. And he will be forced to stop. France (of all places) has called for an emergency security council meeting fwiw.

So we will continue reporting until this war is over  The focus is on Lebanon where Hezbollah with its new drones is causing havoc for the IDF. Here is a PressTV commentary on the IDF eventually and at last grabbing Beaufort Castle. They did this before in a previous war, and could not hold it.  This Castle is empty and besides value as high ground, has no value and now is an issue of propaganda.

5 kms of failure: How South Lebanon’s Beaufort Castle laid bare Israeli military weaknesses
By Ali Hammoud

Israeli military’s arrival at the perimeter of Beaufort Castle, sitting atop a strategic hill near Nabatieh city in South Lebanon, has been presented as a landmark achievement.

Yet measured in raw distance, the operation amounts to an advance of just five kilometers – from the border settlement of Metula to the ancient fortress perched above the Litani River.

Five kilometers. A stretch of ground that took over three months of direct ground combat, preceded by fifteen months of continuous aerial bombardment, to secure. That simple geographic fact transforms a supposed triumph into an uncomfortable mirror, reflecting the profound weaknesses of an over-technologized and risk-averse army now struggling to overcome them.

The scale of the forces thrown at this narrow axis exposes a deep institutional anxiety. To move a mere five kilometers, the Israeli command did not deploy a single brigade or even a division. It assembled a stacked task force that reads like a roll-call of its most prized formations.

The 98th “Fire” Division, Israel’s premier paratrooper and commando formation, was deployed alongside the 36th Armored Division, normally reserved for major conventional breakthroughs.

The Golani Brigade and Givati Brigade, the backbone of Israeli infantry, were committed in full. The 7th Armored Brigade, the country’s oldest and most storied tank unit, also rolled in.

The “Fire” Brigade layered on precision artillery and drone networks, while the multi-dimensional Unit 888 – a boutique hybrid force experimenting with networked robotics and AI-driven targeting – was given a live-fire audition.

Overhead, combat drones and loitering munitions saturated the sky. On the ground, unmanned robots were pushed forward to avoid risking soldiers against anticipated counter-fire.

This was not a scalpel operation. It was the entire toolbox emptied onto a single, five-kilometer-deep strip of south Lebanon.

And still the advance stalled.

The initial frontal push along the Yohmar-Beaufort axis – prepped with hundreds of airstrikes and relentless artillery barrages – bogged down badly. Israeli occupation forces were forced to abandon direct mechanized assault in favor of painstaking dismounted infiltrations by special infantry units slipping through the eastern river valleys.

That the most technologically drenched army on earth had to resort to quiet, boots-on-the-ground infiltration to cover a distance a civilian could jog in under thirty minutes is not a testament to tactical flexibility. It is a confession that supremacy in the air, in cyber, and in intelligence did not translate into usable control of the ground.

What makes this disproportion between effort and outcome even more damning is what was absent from the battlefield.

Before Israeli troops ever crossed the border, the Lebanese Armed Forces had spent weeks confiscating weapons caches and systematically destroying military infrastructure and equipment belonging to Hezbollah in the very sector around Beaufort.

Israeli occupation forces did not walk into a fully wired, prepared defensive system. They entered a zone where a significant portion of the resistance movement’s underground networks, weapons stores, and fortifications had already been degraded by a third party.

The environment was, by any reasonable military assessment, pre-softened.

Yet the Israeli advance still required the full weight of multiple elite divisions to push forward at a crawl. This raises a devastating question: if a pre-degraded five-kilometer stretch demanded this magnitude of firepower and took these many months, what exactly is the sustainability of the entire ground offensive?

The answer points directly to the Israeli military’s core weakness. Its doctrine has become trapped in a contradiction it cannot resolve.

Overwhelming technological dependence – sensors, drones, satellites, precision-guided munitions, robotic scouts – has not produced decisive battlefield speed or shock. Instead, it has bred a profound risk aversion.

Commanders use technology not primarily to destroy the enemy with economy and surprise, but to sanitize the battlefield and insulate troops from direct contact.

The result is a military that consumes stunning quantities of expensive munitions to inch forward, terrified of the human cost that any real encounter might bring.

It is an army that has trained itself to see the ground as something to be burned before it is walked on. That mindset turns even a trivial tactical advance into a vast, slow-moving logistical and psychological operation.

Beaufort Castle, for all its symbolic weight, stands as an indictment of that paradigm.

A force structure that requires two divisions, the nation’s most decorated brigades, and an endless airborne armada to secure five kilometers of terrain – after a rival army had already degraded the defenses – is not a force demonstrating power. It is a force revealing its limits.

Technology, it turns out, cannot substitute for the willingness to close with the enemy. And a five-kilometer crawl is still a crawl, no matter how many flags are raised at the end of it.

Ali Hammoud is a Lebanese writer and researcher.