The Cradle – October 20, 2026
US special envoy Tom Barrack conceded that a “ground kinetic” battle in Yemen by the US “seems fruitless” during a talk at the Global Security Forum in Qatar on 20 October.
“I think the president’s been clear that he supports Saudi Arabia and the backing that they need logistically he will supply. But America getting involved in a ground kinetic battle somewhere else seems fruitless.”
Barrack is Washington’s ambassador to Turkiye and special presidential envoy for Syria and Iraq.
He admitted that military force has failed in Yemen and that Riyadh is in a “very difficult position.”
“These kinetic reactions have never worked. It doesn’t work. It’s probably not likely that it’s going to work,” he said.
Barrack questioned whether US meddling across West Asia has helped or harmed the region, arguing that Ansarallah in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the resistance factions in Iraq would lose their reason to exist only once states took responsibility themselves.
He pressed for talks between Riyadh, Sanaa, and regional mediators, urging regional capitals to build their own alliances instead of leaning on Washington.
He went further, admitting that the US has had a hand in 23 regime changes across the region, none of which achieved their aims.
He declined to say whether the US-Israeli war on Iran launched on 28 February was a mistake, while conceding that it had unleashed unintended consequences across the region.
The admission comes as the Saudi-led coalition presses on with airstrikes on Yemen, drawing retaliatory missile and drone strikes by the Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF) on the kingdom.
Riyadh has turned to its defense partners under the Mecca pact, including Pakistan and Turkiye, after Washington declined its requests for direct US intervention against Yemen.
Barrack’s remarks follow Washington’s failed bid to subdue Yemen by military force, with more than 1,000 US airstrikes between March 2024 and April 2025 unable to halt Yemeni naval operations waged in support of Gaza, forcing the US into an Omani-brokered ceasefire with Sanaa in May 2025.
The campaign cost Washington $1 billion in its first three weeks alone, as Yemeni forces downed 17 MQ-9 Reaper drones and the US lost two F-18 fighter jets.
Ansarallah leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi said in November 2024 that the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier had retreated hundreds of miles after coming under Yemeni fire, while then US Under Secretary of Defense Bill LaPlante admitted he was “just shocked” by what Yemen’s missiles could do.
Europe fared no better, with Rear Admiral Vasileios Gryparis, commander of the EU’s Operation Aspides, telling Bloomberg in June 2024 that his Red Sea fleet needed to more than double in size and that US–UK strikes on Yemen were “not contributing to the solution,” after France withdrew one of his frigates citing the threat level.
On January 5, 2025, Saudi Arabia’s then ambassador to Bangladesh, Essa Youssef Essa Al Duhailan, delivered a stark reminder of a lost opportunity. Saudi Aramco, the Kingdom’s state-owned oil giant, had sent high-level delegations to Bangladesh three times between 2016 and 2018 to explore investment opportunities, including an oil refinery. Yet, according to the ambassador, […]
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Mohammed bin Salman is learning a lot about being a leader, although it is the Houthis who are giving him the lessons.
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Mohammed bin Salman is learning a lot about being a leader, although it is the Houthis who are giving him the lessons. The first one is that in the Arab world all promises of military support from neighbours are worthless. The second: only Iran has the power to stop the war in Yemen.
It’s hard to define Donald Trump’s legacy in the Middle East when, since the end of February this year, everything seems to point to him and the U.S. being a huge loser in a war against Iran. But one decision he did make more recently can be considered quite smart: not to hit the Houthis.
This group in Yemen has cultivated the model of how to stay in power even in the face of airstrikes from the U.S. They remain in mountainous regions, scattered as much as possible, and are the toughest fighters in the entire region. Trump’s decision in March 2025 to halt his own bombing campaign against them was probably the smartest thing the Donald has done in the region. He knew that they were just too tough, too resilient, and the price of U.S. shipping being hit in the Red Sea was just too great.
Tough times now for Saudi Arabia’s young crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who can’t be sleeping very well at night – if he is getting any sleep at all. His own decision back in 2015 to launch a bombing campaign against civilians mainly in Sanaa (and often wedding ceremonies) might be one he is regretting now. The Crown Prince’s own air force is still bombing the Houthis, but this time along the coastline in a bid to break their stranglehold on the Bab el-Mandeb straits. But the response by the Houthis – to bomb the living daylights out of Saudi Arabia’s main airport in Riyadh – has not only shocked leaders of the entire region but underlines a point that media based in Dubai, too used to writing flattering copy about the Crown Prince, might not make: the fate of this young country, with its young leader, is balancing on the edge of a knife. Many experts point out why the Crown Prince is so paranoid about security and the threat of a coup d’état by pointing out that it is only a matter of time before one of these Saudi pilots drops his payload on the Crown Prince’s palace instead – which would be the tinderbox moment for a regime to fall, for a leader to slip away in the dead of night and arrive perhaps somewhere in London, Tangiers or even California. While MbS is fretting about the state of the war with the Houthis, which is not going at all well, his main worry is not that this group enters KSA and does anything politically to destabilise the country. It is rather that the lack of confidence within the royal family – by enough princes – reaches a tipping point and he is either assassinated or given the opportunity to flee at a moment’s notice. The attack on the airport was really such a tipping point, as it showed not only how MbS’s leadership and the poor decisions he makes are evident (the airport should have been closed months ago, but it would look like a defeatist move) but also how vulnerable the entire country is to any attack by the Yemeni group. Such a vulnerability is the issue, given that it was the young Crown Prince himself who upped the ante with the conflict with the Houthis – and he has hundreds of princes whom he locked up in a five-star hotel and held hostage while extracting huge amounts of money from, as one of his first policy initiatives as leader, who all hold mock reverence to him as the country’s leader. But for how long?
“This could turn out to be existential for Bin Salman,” argues London-based MENA commentator Sami Hamdi. “UAE and Houthis are hammering him in Yemen, Trump has taken his money and turned his back on him, Netanyahu is violating him by insisting on an official invite for help (normalisation), his best friend Turki Al Sheikh continues to fleece him with unprofitable boxing matches and never-ending raves, and his international allies refuse to fight for him and are pushing him towards a deal that will be interpreted by all as a humiliation for him.”
Solitude seems to come with the job of being MbS in Saudi Arabia – a country always appearing to be on the cusp of being great and significant but never quite managing it. Recently MbS carved out the reputation of being a dynamic regional leader who allowed pop concerts with scantily clad Western performers, while his own mega-projects in the desert quietly get wound down, barely leaving the drawing board.
The real lesson of the Houthis for MbS is that they are simply too tough – and even Turkey and Pakistan, who presented themselves as allies for Riyadh militarily, are remarkably quiet. Some would even go as far as to call it a betrayal of the Arabs.
“Why does Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ‘rightfully’ live in a state of disappointment and betrayal from his Arab and American allies?” asks the legendary Egyptian journalist and geopolitical hack Abdel Bariatwan. “Where is Turkey and Pakistan, and where is the Mecca alliance? Isn’t it a disgrace that Iran is the only one volunteering to mediate to stop the war?” he asks.
The UK is dispatching fighter jets and military transport aircraft to defend Saudi Arabia against attacks from Iran-backed Houthi Islamic terrorists of Yemen, boosting its ally after the kingdom has been pummelled by strikes from the militant group in recent weeks.
The post UK Dispatches Fighter Jets to Defend Saudi Arabia from Houthi Attacks appeared first on Breitbart.
Saudi Arabia executed two Bangladeshis on October 14 but Dhaka’s response was conspicuously restrained. Its consulate in Jeddah reportedly sought formal confirmation and the foreign ministry requested details. Officials then reassured Riyadh that bilateral relations would remain unaffected. Public sentiment, reflected in a flood of angry and frustrated social media posts, stands in sharp contrast […]
The post Dhaka’s silence on Saudi executions puts remittances over lives appeared first on Asia Times.
Al Mayadeen| October 19, 2026
Egypt’s Civil Democratic Movement rejected any involvement of the Egyptian armed forces in a regional war on behalf of any side, insisting that Cairo make its decisions independently of foreign influence.
The movement said Monday that no outside party should dictate Egypt’s position, arguing that the country’s most important role lies in pursuing “wise mediation to establish peace.”
Turning to domestic affairs, the movement called on civilian opposition groups, its own members included, to begin preparing for the presidential election scheduled for 2030. The call follows President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s recent statement that his presidency will end in 2030 and that the matter of constitutional changes to alter that timeline is “completely settled.”
Parliament postpones debate on troop deployment
The statement comes as Egypt’s parliament has yet to take up a proposal to authorize the president to send troops abroad. Lawmakers adjourned an emergency session devoted to discussing support for Saudi Arabia, and deliberations were due to resume on Monday. The debate was postponed again on Monday, this time until October 26.
The session was convened at el-Sisi’s request after he said Cairo would take any action Saudi Arabia asks of it to defend its security and sovereignty.
Yemen’s Sanaa-based Parliament Speaker Yahya Ali al-Ra’i had urged Egypt’s parliament on Saturday not to let the country be drawn into the Saudi escalation, saying such a step would contradict Egypt’s historical role in defending Arab causes.
Yemeni scholars welcome Al-Azhar initiative
Separately, Al-Azhar urged the urgent formation of a mediation committee bringing together respected figures from across the Muslim world. It said the committee should start work immediately to end conflicts and wars in the Arab region, defuse crises, and bridge differences between the parties involved.
The Association of Yemeni Scholars, in turn, reaffirmed its commitment to engaging constructively and in good faith with the invitation extended by the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, expressing appreciation for the Islamic values and principles it conveyed.
The association also declared Sanaa’s readiness to host the committee proposed by the Grand Imam, comprising respected and wise figures from across the Arab and Islamic worlds.
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Press TV – October 18, 2026
Yemen has condemned the international community’s silence on Saudi Arabia’s ongoing aggression and blockade, saying it emboldens Riyadh to continue its atrocities.
The Yemeni Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates, in a statement released on Saturday, said the Saudi military continues to target ordinary people and civilian infrastructure, as it has done over the past years.
The ministry denounced Saudi strikes on civilians and non-military installations as a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and Additional Protocol I of 1977.
In the latest attack, a series of Saudi airstrikes targeted a residential neighborhood in the Maqbanah district of Yemen’s southwestern Ta’izz province, killing nine civilians, including a woman and a girl, and injuring 16 others.
The statement also censured the deafening silence of the international community, which claims to uphold human rights while lecturing others about them.
It noted that such an approach would offer Saudi officials the carte blanche to keep on their brutalities, and would make the international community complicit in Riyadh’s crimes and aggression.
The Yemeni foreign ministry then called on the international community, particularly the UN Security Council, the Human Rights Council, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, as well as human rights organizations, to abandon double standards, condemn the heinous crimes committed against Yemeni people, and pressure Saudi Arabia to honor its obligations under international humanitarian law.
The ministry finally emphasized that Saudi atrocities would not go unpunished, and that the House of Saud, “whose hands are stained with blood and whose fingers with guilt,” would be held accountable.
On July 20, the Sana’a government announced a maritime blockade against Saudi Arabia in response to “an unjust and oppressive siege” on Yemen for almost 12 years.
Subsequently, the Yemeni armed forces have reported a series of successful missions that have targeted vessels associated with Saudi Arabia in the Red Sea.
In March 2015, Saudi Arabia and its allies imposed a blockade on Yemen, initiating a comprehensive military offensive that received support in terms of military, political, and logistical assistance from the United States and several Western countries.
Tens of thousands of Yemenis have lost their lives; however, Saudi Arabia has failed to achieve its primary goal of reestablishing a puppet government that served its interests.
Al Mayadeen | October 18, 2026
The United Arab Emirates has reportedly agreed to resume funding selected forces in southern Yemen fighting the Yemeni Armed Forces, while Saudi Arabia has agreed to provide air cover for those forces, according to sources in Yemen.
The reported arrangement signals a possible thaw in relations between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi after months of disagreement over the scope of each other’s political influence in Yemen.
The renewed coordination comes as the Yemeni Armed Forces continues to make gains and Saudi Arabia faces repeated drone and missile attacks targeting its territory, airports, and energy infrastructure.
Gulf rivals reconsider their positions
Southern forces, particularly the Giant Brigades, were previously trained and funded by the UAE and are considered among the more effective formations in the fragmented coalition opposing the YAF. Abu Dhabi withdrew its involvement in Yemen in January, cutting off financial support to forces it had backed, following pressure from Saudi Arabia.
The reported agreement suggests that advances by the YAF are prompting rival Gulf powers to reconsider their differences. However, neither Saudi Arabia nor the UAE has responded to a recent demand by southern separatists for an independence referendum that would restore the borders in place between 1967 and 1990, when Yemen was divided into two states.
The Southern Transitional Council (STC) has also yet to agree to deploy its forces beyond the boundaries of the former South Yemen. Saudi approval of a referendum could potentially remove that restriction, although no such agreement has been announced.
Attacks on Aden intensify pressure
The Aden government announced a counteroffensive last week aimed at retaking Sanaa. The campaign achieved limited gains around Majzar near Marib and the Bab al-Mandab Strait, but was met with a sizeable retaliation by Sanaa’s forces.
On Friday, two missiles struck Aden airport; Information Minister Moammar Al-Eryani said the missiles landed about 500 meters from the Yemenia Airways aircraft and roughly 100 meters from the runway’s midpoint. No casualties were reported.
The attack followed a strike on a presidential palace in Aden that killed at least five people and wounded 16, further underscoring the risks facing the Gulf-backed south.
Relations between the STC and Riyadh remain strained. STC leader Aidarous al-Zubaidi fled to Abu Dhabi in January after an unsuccessful attempt by the council to assert control across southern Yemen and announce a referendum on independence within two years.
Saudi Arabia subsequently bombed UAE arms shipments intended for STC forces. Abu Dhabi then announced its withdrawal from Yemen, while the Saudi-backed government said it would seek to prosecute Zubaidi for treason.
Egypt and UK face decisions over military support
Regional involvement is also expanding beyond the Gulf rivals. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has called for an emergency parliamentary session to authorize possible military action to “defend” Saudi Arabia if requested, while emphasizing that Egypt would not undertake offensive operations.
Sanaa’s Parliament Speaker Yahya Ali al-Ra’i warned Egypt against a potential involvement in the Saudi military aggression against Yemen, urging Cairo not to allow itself to be drawn into a confrontation that serves Riyadh’s policies.
In an urgent letter to Egyptian Parliament Speaker Hisham Badawi, al-Ra’i expressed serious concern that developments could lead to Egyptian military participation alongside Saudi Arabia, stressing that such a move would contradict Egypt’s historical role in defending Arab causes.
In the UK, discussions continue over a Saudi request for additional military assistance. London has deployed an RAF Voyager aerial refueling aircraft, but some Arab officials are pressing for further support.
The prospect of deeper British involvement raises legal concerns. In 2019, the UK Court of Appeal ruled that the government had acted unlawfully in granting arms export licenses during the previous Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen in 2015–2016. The Campaign Against Arms Trade argued that officials had failed to properly assess potential violations of international humanitarian law, prompting revisions to export licensing procedures.
Sanaa’s resistance against Saudi aggression followed a brutal, years-long siege that caused one of the worst famines in modern history. The Ansar Allah government has made clear that their fight against Saudi Arabia will not cease so long as Riyadh continues to escalate it even further.
The Yemeni Armed Forces forces have remained firm in their resistance under the banner of a military equation: blockade for blockade and escalation for escalation.
By Mohammad Molaei | Press TV | October 18, 2026
The two-week exchange of fire between the United States and Iran, triggered by Washington’s attempt to force open an illegal southern corridor through the Strait of Hormuz, represented the most consequential direct military confrontation between them since the 40-day war.
The Iranian response to the unprovoked and illegal American aggression was not a chaotic escalation but a methodical, layered military campaign that drew on years of doctrinal development, weapons investment, and operational planning.
The efforts of the Islamic Republic’s armed forces, spearheaded by the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) aerospace and naval branches, executed a decisive and swift response.
What unfolded was a layered operation with nine distinct but interlocking lines of effort. Each line reinforced the others. Infrastructure degradation reduced American operational tempo; area denial forced repositioning that compounded the effects of that degradation; extended-range precision strikes demonstrated that repositioning offered no sanctuary; ISR attrition blinded American targeting systems; terrorist suppression closed the land flank, while strikes on utility infrastructure imposed costs on host nations and denied services to American bases.
One can employ the open-source reporting, satellite imagery, and the observable pattern of strikes to examine each dimension of Iran’s military response in detail, and construct a coherent operational picture. It is getting exceedingly clear that the ceasefire period has very likely translated to a window for reconstitution and preparation in Iranian strategic calculus.
The primacy of solid-fuel tactical ballistic missiles
Iran’s decision to anchor its retaliatory campaign in solid-fuel tactical ballistic missiles was not accidental. It reflected a decade-long investment in a specific capability designed precisely for this kind of confrontation. Solid-fuel ballistic missiles offer decisive operational advantages over their liquid-fuel predecessors. They require no fueling time at the launch site, dramatically compressing the window between a launch order and missile departure.
This matters enormously in a sensitive environment where adversary assets, particularly MQ-9 Reaper drones and maritime patrol aircraft, are actively hunting for launch preparations.
A liquid-fuel missile requires a visible, time-consuming fueling sequence that creates a detectable signature. A solid-fuel missile can be transported, erected, and fired in a fraction of that time, often before a targeting solution can be developed and a strike authorized.
These missiles are road-mobile, launched from transporter-erector-launchers (TELs) that can disperse across Iran’s mountainous terrain, making pre-emptive targeting extremely difficult.
Having destroyed much of the air defense systems belonging to the US and its Arab allies using the older, less sophisticated liquid fuel missiles in previous wars, Iran’s strikes this time primarily relied on its tactical solid-fuel ballistic missile inventory, meaning the various variants of the Fateh family.
Simply put, the choice of solid-fuel systems reflected a calculated assessment of the adversary’s weakened interception capacity, an assessment that proved accurate.
The air defense inventory crisis
Perhaps the single most consequential factor shaping the operational environment was the state of US and allied air defense missile inventories.
The United States entered this round of military aggression with critically depleted stocks of its most capable interceptors. The Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) and Standard Missile-6 (SM-6), which arm Aegis-equipped destroyers and cruisers and provide the American Navy’s primary ballistic missile defense capability at sea, have been drawn down through a combination of expenditure in the Red Sea campaign against Yemen, the costly defense of Israel during two previous wars, and the simple reality that production rates have never kept pace with consumption.
The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, which provides upper-tier defense against medium and intermediate-range ballistic missiles, is similarly constrained.
The decision not to employ Aegis and THAAD at full capacity was therefore a forced one. The United States simply could not spend its remaining meager inventory of SM-3 and THAAD interceptors against Iranian tactical ballistic missiles, which, while accurate and damaging, are not the only threats to American interests.
Doing so would have left the United States strategically exposed against another serious contingency in East Asia or Europe. The calculus was that American military bases had to absorb more hits to preserve the interceptors.
Moreover, the Patriot system, which bore the brunt of terminal-phase defense in recent weeks across the region, was in no better condition. Years of expenditure across Ukraine, the occupied territories, the Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea mission have drawn PAC-3 and PAC-3 MSE stocks to extremely low levels.
The Pentagon’s response was telling. Rather than accelerating full-capability PAC-3 MSE production, it has chosen to pursue the cheaper, less capable PAC-3ACE Cost Reduction Initiative variant. More revealing still were the recent PAC-2 GEM-T orders, an older interceptor not procured by the US in decades, signaling just how severely stocks had been exhausted.
That the world’s most sophisticated air defense enterprise was compelled to resurrect a 1990s-era design to sustain basic readiness is the starkest indicator of the American munitions crisis that Iranian planners appear to have understood, measured, and exploited with precision.
The situation among Persian Gulf states was equally dire. Saudi Arabia and the UAE had expended substantial portions of their Patriot PAC-3 interceptor stocks during years of Yemeni military missile and drone attacks, and entered the 40-day imposed war with depleted inventories. The situation is even direr in Kuwait and Bahrain, with the Persian Gulf microstates effectively running out of Patriots, being forced to solely rely on American-operated systems.
PAC-3, the most capable variant of the Patriot system against ballistic missiles, has effectively been exhausted in several batteries. PAC-2, the older and less capable variant, is the only available option in certain areas against Iranian missiles, and even that missile is running low as well. The collective air defense architecture of the Persian Gulf states, which had appeared formidable on paper, has been effectively hollowed out.
Iranian operational planners were aware of these facts. The sequencing and volume of Iranian missile salvos during the exchange reflected a deliberate attempt to exploit the gap between what the defense could theoretically intercept and what it could actually intercept given real-world inventory constraints.
Iran’s multi-layered operational strategy
What distinguished Iran’s response from a simple missile barrage was its architectural coherence. Iranian planners did not merely fire missiles at American targets; they executed a phased, multi-domain retaliatory campaign with distinct operational objectives at each stage, each phase creating the conditions for the next.
The campaign can be understood as having five interlocking lines of effort: infrastructure degradation, area denial and operational displacement, precision strike at extended range, ISR and logistics attrition, and proxy terrorist force suppression.
Together, they constituted a campaign design far more sophisticated than most Western analysts had publicly credited Iran with possessing.
The overarching logic was one of progressive operational constriction. Rather than attempting to destroy US forces – an objective beyond Iran’s reach given American conventional superiority – the campaign aimed to degrade, displace, and exhaust them.
Each successful strike reduced American operational capacity; forced repositioning that consumed time and resources, and demonstrated to regional partners that proximity to American occupation forces carried real costs.
Infrastructure degradation
The first phase of the Iranian retaliatory campaign targeted the physical infrastructure of American military power in the Persian Gulf region. This was not indiscriminate bombardment. Satellite imagery and post-strike assessments revealed a pattern of targeting that prioritized specific high-value nodes: radar installations, fuel and ammunition storage facilities, maintenance hangars, and communications infrastructure.
Radar systems were a particular priority. The ability to detect, track, and target Iranian missiles and UAVs depends on a layered network of radar systems. By striking radar installations at air bases, Iran degraded the situational awareness that underpins both offensive operations and defensive intercepts. A radar that is destroyed or forced offline creates a coverage gap that cascades through the entire air defense architecture.
Logistics infrastructure was targeted with equal deliberateness. Fuel depots, ammunition storage sites, and maintenance facilities at American bases around the Persian Gulf were struck with sufficient accuracy to cause meaningful operational disruption.
An air force that cannot fuel its aircraft, rearm them, or repair battle damage cannot sustain sortie rates. The targeting of logistics was a direct attack on the tempo of American air operations to derail the American aggression against Iranian sites and reduce the pressure on Iranian forces.
The accuracy of these strikes, achieved at ranges of several hundred kilometers, validated the operational utility of Iran’s solid-fuel ballistic missile force and demonstrated that the IRGC aerospace force had developed the targeting data, launch procedures, and quality control necessary to achieve consistent results against fixed infrastructure.
The anti-access/area denial campaign
The most strategically significant dimension of the Iranian retaliatory campaign was its systematic execution of an Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) strategy that progressively pushed American air operations out of the Persian Gulf and into increasingly distant and operationally constrained locations.
The logic of A2/AD in this context was straightforward. The closer American aircraft operate to Iran, the shorter their flight times, the larger their payloads, the less refueling they require, and the more sorties they can generate per day.
Conversely, every additional hundred kilometers of distance imposes compounding costs: greater tanker support, longer mission times, reduced payload, increased crew fatigue, and more complex coordination. By rendering the Persian Gulf operationally untenable for American air assets, Iran systematically degraded the offensive capacity of the aggressors.
The first displacement was from the Persian Gulf itself. Sustained missile and drone attacks against air bases made sustained operations from those locations unfeasible. The American response was to shift primary air operations to bases in Jordan – Al-Azraq and Muwaffaq Salti –which offered greater distance from Iranian missile systems.
Iran’s response was to extend its reach to Jordan. Multiple strikes against American bases, documented by US casualties and satellite imagery showing damaged hangars and destroyed aircraft, demonstrated that Iran had the capability to contest operations from that distance.
The retaliatory strikes destroyed American aircraft, damaged infrastructure, and forced the US war machine to reconsider the viability of Jordan as a primary operating location.
The second displacement was to the occupied territories. American air assets, including tanker aircraft critical to sustaining long-range strike operations, were pushed further west to Israeli military bases.
This displacement carried its own operational costs. The distance from Iranian targets increased further, and the concentration of American assets in the occupied territories created its own targeting opportunities for Iran, which has demonstrated both the willingness and capability to strike at extended ranges.
A particularly telling indicator of this displacement dynamic was the repositioning of the RQ-4 Global Hawk strategic reconnaissance aircraft, which had been operating from Al Dhafra in the UAE and from Jordanian facilities, to Sigonella Naval Air Station in Sicily.
The Global Hawk, with its long endurance and high-altitude sensors, is a critical ISR asset for tracking Iranian missile launches and providing targeting data. Its displacement to Sicily represented a dramatic reduction in persistent surveillance coverage over Iran and the Persian Gulf, with direct consequences for the effectiveness of American strike operations.
A qualitative leap in extended-range precision
One of the most significant revelations of the recent round of US aggression and Iran’s retaliation was the demonstrated accuracy of Iranian ballistic missiles at ranges exceeding 1,000 kilometers. Previous assessments of Iranian ballistic missile accuracy had generally been skeptical about the ability to achieve consistent precision at such distances. The strikes on Jordanian targets, located well over 1,000 kilometers from Iranian launch sites, completely shattered that skepticism.
The circular error probable (CEP) – the radius within which 50 percent of strikes fall – observed in the Jordanian strikes was dramatically smaller than what Iranian missiles had previously demonstrated at comparable ranges. Strikes that hit specific buildings, specific aircraft shelters, and specific sections of structures, rather than simply landing somewhere on a base, indicated a qualitative improvement in guidance accuracy that demands explanation.
Several hypotheses present themselves, and the evidence suggests that the answer likely involves a combination of all of them. First are technical improvements. Iran may have upgraded the terminal guidance systems on its Kheibarshekan, Haj Qasem, and Fattah variants, potentially incorporating improved inertial navigation, satnav receivers, or optical terminal seekers that allow the missile to better correct its trajectory in the final phase of flight.
Second are tactical improvements. Iranian launch crews may have refined their pre-launch survey procedures, improving the accuracy of the initial position fix that the missile’s inertial navigation system uses as its reference point. Third are software improvements, which mean updates to the missile’s flight control algorithms could improve trajectory optimization and reduce the accumulated errors that degrade accuracy over long distances.
The most likely explanation is a combination of all three – a systematic program of improvement across the technical, procedural, and software dimensions of missile accuracy that had been underway for years and was now being demonstrated operationally for the first time at this range, following the experiences of the 40-day war.
The MQ-9 hunt
The MQ-9 Reaper drone occupied a central and uniquely vulnerable position in American military offensives against Iran. The Reaper is not merely a strike platform but the primary persistent ISR asset used to locate and track mobile Iranian missile launchers, particularly after the heavy attrition of similar Israeli military systems.
Without the MQ-9’s ability to loiter for extended periods, the capacity to find and destroy TELs before they fire, or to conduct battle damage assessment after strikes, is dramatically reduced.
Iran understood this dependency and targeted it systematically during this campaign. The campaign against MQ-9 assets operated on multiple levels. Ground-based air defense systems, which had previously demonstrated the ability to engage high-altitude targets, were used to engage Reapers operating over Iranian territory and adjacent areas.
But Iran also struck the ground infrastructure that supports MQ-9 operations: the maintenance facilities, fuel systems, satellite communication ground stations, and launch-and-recovery equipment that allow the aircraft to operate.
Western media reporting confirmed the destruction of a number of MQ-9 aircraft on the ground at Jordanian bases and, in a particularly striking detail, the destruction of some aircraft while still in their transport canisters before assembly.
This achievement indicates that Iran has developed targeting intelligence on the logistics chain supporting drone operations, not merely the operational bases themselves. Destroying aircraft before they are assembled and made operational is a force multiplication achievement. It eliminates capability before it can be employed, at a point when the aircraft is most vulnerable and least defended.
The cumulative effect of the MQ-9 campaign was a significant degradation of American persistent ISR coverage over Iran. This directly reduced the effectiveness of the hunt for mobile missile launchers, allowing Iranian TELs greater freedom of movement and survivability.
Suppressing proxy terrorist forces in Iraq
From the first day of the exchange, Iran conducted daily retaliatory strikes against armed terrorist groups in Iraq that had the capability and potential motivation to conduct land attacks against Iranian territory or to serve as a forward platform for American-directed operations.
This campaign was methodical and comprehensive, targeting personnel concentrations, weapons storage facilities, and command infrastructure.
Iran’s western flank, which includes the border with Iraq, represents a potential vulnerability. Armed terrorist groups in Iraq, some with historical ties to American intelligence, could in theory conduct cross-border raids, provide intelligence for American strikes, or serve as a distraction that forced Iran to divert defensive resources.
By striking these groups preemptively and continuously, Iran sought to exhaust their operational capacity before it could be brought to bear.
The daily rhythm of these retaliatory strikes was itself a message. It demonstrated that Iran had persistent targeting intelligence on these groups’ locations, that it was willing to expend munitions on this secondary campaign even while conducting the primary campaign against American forces, and that it intended to maintain pressure regardless of any ceasefire negotiations that might be underway.
The logic of reciprocity
Iran’s retaliatory strikes on electrical and water infrastructure in Kuwait represented a deliberate response that operated on two distinct logics simultaneously.
The first was reciprocity: Iran’s own civilian infrastructure had been targeted, and the strikes on Kuwaiti infrastructure were a direct signal that such targeting would not be absorbed without response to the aggressor and its facilitators.
The second was military utility. American forces in the Persian Gulf region depend on host nations’ electrical grids and water supplies for base operations. Infrastructure that serves both civilian and military purposes is, under the laws of armed conflict, a legitimate military target when the military use is substantial and the strike is proportionate.
The targeting of Kuwait’s infrastructure was also a message to Persian Gulf states more broadly. Kuwait, like Bahrain, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, hosts American military facilities and had provided varying degrees of support to American operations.
By demonstrating the ability and willingness to strike Kuwaiti infrastructure, Iran was communicating that the costs of hosting American forces were not abstract. They were concrete, immediate, and would be borne by the host nation as well as the American military.
The pillars of operational success
Iran’s two-week retaliatory campaign against American aggression and attempts to force open an illegal southern corridor through the Strait of Hormuz largely succeeded on every dimension that its operational planners had identified.
The exchange demonstrated that Iran had developed, over decades of institutional study and investment, a military capability genuinely capable of contesting American power projection in the Persian Gulf region, even after two high-intensity wars.
It demonstrated something relevant to the strategic environment of the region – that the costs of American military aggression in the Persian Gulf had increased substantially; that the infrastructure of American power projection was more vulnerable than pre-war assessments had suggested; and that Iran possessed both the capability and the operational sophistication to exploit those vulnerabilities in a systematic and disciplined manner.
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