Day six of Operation Epic Fury/Rising Lion, and there’s a bunch of news from Iran, Lebanon, and even Azerbaijan. So lets dig in:
In an interview with Fox News, Netanyahu said, “The reason that we had to act now is because after we hit their nuclear sites and their ballistic missile program [in June 2025]… they started building new sites… underground bunkers that would make their ballistic missile program and their atomic bomb program immune within months.”
“If no action was taken now, no action could be taken in the future,” he said.
Moreover, envoy Steve Witkoff said the Iranians “bragged” about enriching Uranium.
US special envoy Witkoff, who together with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner led Washington’s negotiations with Tehran over the disputed nuclear program, said that Iran’s top negotiators boasted in the first round of talks this year of having enough highly enriched uranium to build 11 nuclear bombs.
“In that first meeting, both the Iranian negotiators said to us directly — with no shame — that they controlled 460 kilograms of 60% [enriched uranium] and that they’re aware that could make 11 nuclear bombs,” Witkoff told Fox.
Trump has asserted that the US “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities during the 12-day war last June, which would ostensibly render Iran incapable of immediately turning that enriched uranium into a bomb.
Still, Witkoff said the Iranian negotiators “were proud that they had evaded all sorts of oversight protocols to get to a place where they could deliver 11 nuclear bombs.”
He said that during that first meeting, the Iranian negotiators insisted on “an inalienable right” to enrich their nuclear fuel.
They now have an inalienable right to a pine box.
- “I hope all the folks watching understand what uncontested airspace and complete control means. It means we will fly all day, all night, day and night, finding, fixing, and finishing the missiles and defense industrial base of the Iranian military. Finding and fixing their leaders and their military leaders, flying over Tehran, flying over Iran, flying over their capital, flying over the IRGC, Iranian leaders looking up and seeing only US and Israeli air power.”
- We got the guy in charge of trying to assassinate American leaders, “Rahman Moadam, who’s head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps special operations division.”
- Admiral Brad Cooper explains the status of the operation:
More than 50,000 troops, 200 fighters, two aircraft carriers, and bombers from the United States are participating in this operation, and more capability is on the way. In the opening hours of Operation Epic Fury, US Central Command forces together with Israel delivered overwhelming and unprecedented strikes into Iran. Now, we’re less than 100 hours into this operation, and we’ve already struck nearly 2,000 targets with more than 2,000 munitions. We have severely degraded Iran’s air defenses and destroyed hundreds of Iran’s ballistic missiles, launchers, and drones. And in simple terms, we’re focused on shooting all the things that can shoot at us.
- “We are also sinking the Iranian Navy. The entire Navy.”
- “We will not stop.”
- Back to Shapiro: U.S. consulate in Dubai was hit by drones. No casualties because it was evacuated.
- “How do you know that Iran is really losing? Because Qatar has turned. So Qatar, which has always played this sort of middle ground between the United States and Iran. Well, now they’re turning on the IRGC and actually arresting members of the IRGC in Qatar.”
- He debunks the myth that we’re using $2 million Patriot missiles to shoot down $35,000 drones, says most are being down down with $25,000 air-to-air missiles. “And you know who’s going to run out of $25,000 iterations more and faster? The US or the piss-poor Iranians?”
- “If we get in a spending war with Iran, Iran don’t have no money. It is a problem for them.”
The Iranian regime splits its air power between two forces, the conventional Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force and the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force. Available public information about the size of Iran’s air fleet is somewhat contradictory in the details. The independent analysis site WarPowerIran states Iran has 778 aircraft, but “while impressive in terms of available quantity of aircraft, the IRIAF suffers from an aging fleet and limited military-industrial capabilities as they relate to modern combat platforms.”
Similarly, “FlightGlobal’s World Air Forces 2025 listed 65 F-4s, 35 F-5s, 41 F-14s, 18 MiG-29s, 21 Su-24s, and 12 Mirage F1s in the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force, plus a smaller number of tankers and special-mission aircraft. Iran has also received an unknown number of Yak-130 light attack aircraft in recent years.”
The Yak-130 is the most modern of those aircraft, but it’s really most suitable as a low-cost trainer. If you actually need to go up against F-22s and F-35s in that thing, you’re in deep, deep trouble. And indeed, an Israeli F-35 shot one down.
Beyond that, it’s not an air force, it’s an impressive aviation museum. The MiG-29 is the only plane in active service with any modern military. The F-14 is the next most modern, and the vast majority of U.S. planes were deactivated in the late 20th century. The F-5 has proven really durable for Third World air forces, but no one mistakes it for a modern fighter. The F-4 is a Vietnam War staple retired everywhere except Greece, Turkey and Iran.
The United Arab Emirates, a Defense Ministry spokesperson said air defenses detected 812 drones and intercepted 755, with 57 getting through and causing damage.
Kuwait said it intercepted 283 drones. A Bloomberg-compiled tally put the first two days of the war at 541 drones targeted at the UAE, 283 at Kuwait, 36 at Jordan, 12 at Qatar and nine at Bahrain. Combined with the UAE’s later figure, the publicly reported totals indicate at least about 1,150 drones launched at regional targets since February 28, with the overall number likely higher.
Naval sinkings stats snipped.
During yesterday’s briefing, Caine released some figures indicating the Iranians are losing their ability to fire ballistic missiles and drones: “As of this morning, U.S. Central Command is making steady progress. Iran’s theater ballistic missile shots fired are down 86 percent from the first day of fighting, with a 23 percent decrease just in the last 24 hours, and their one-way attack drone shots are down 73 percent from the opening days.”
Iran’s democratic opposition groups — monarchists and republicans, secular and religious minorities, leftists, liberals, and every ethnicity — are united… on four foundational principles: Iran’s territorial integrity; individual liberties and equality of all citizens; separation of religion and state; and the Iranian people’s right to decide a democratic form of government. Many Iranians, often despite facing bullets, have called on me to lead this transition. I am in awe of their courage, and I have answered their call. Our path forward will be transparent: a new constitution drafted and ratified by referendum, followed by free elections under international oversight. When Iranians vote, the transitional government dissolves…. A free Iran would extend [the Abraham Accords] by immediately recognizing Israel and pursuing a broader regional peace framework linking Iran, Israel and our Arab neighbors in cooperation rather than conflict.
This isn't just about Iran. Every country watching this is doing the math. Every country that has been quietly drifting toward Beijing's orbit, betting that China is the future, is watching Beijing issue press conferences while its strategic partner gets regime-changed.
The…
— China Uncensored (@ChinaUncensored) March 4, 2026
(Hat tip: Instapundit.)
- “What’s happening in Lebanon right now might end up being one of the most consequential events of the entire war. Israel and Hezbollah are at war again.”
- “What’s really significant here is what the Lebanese government just did in the middle of this. A total ban on Hezbollah’s military and security operations. If you would have told us that we’d be making an episode on that just two years ago, we would have thought you were dreaming. Or possibly really rather drunk.”
- For years people assumed an attack on Iran would mean Hezbollah would unleash an unstoppable barrage of rockets on Israel.
- Skipping over the glorious execution of Operation Grim Beeper.
- “The Lebanese government chose, after decades of weakness, to go after Hezbollah. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam’s cabinet declared an immediate, total ban on all Hezbollah military and security activities and ordered the group to surrender its weapons to the state.”
- “President Joseph Aoun, the former army commander who had been elected after Hezbollah could no longer block the vote, called the decision final.”
- “In what has been the most notable development of all, Nabih Berri, the speaker of parliament and leader of the Amal movement, Hezbollah’s most reliable political partner for decades, refused to vote against the measure.” This is huge, since Amal is the only other Shia party in Lebanon’s parliament next to Hezbollah.
- “There’s a pretty sizable camp in Washington that sees the current moment as the best chance anyone will ever have to finish Hezbollah off, and they’re not being quiet about it.”
- Israel is haunted by it’s failure to destroy Hezbollah in its 2006 incursion, and by its inadvertent creation of Hezbollah following it’s 1982 incursion to go after the PLO.
- “The situation today is genuinely different. First and foremost because the Lebanese state is the one driving the push to restore its sovereignty, backed by a president who seems absolutely determined to disarm the militants on his territory once and for all.” No, first and foremost, Iran is done. Without their funding, Hezbollah would be nothing.
- “All of this is the complete opposite from 1982 and 2006, where it was variously an Israeli occupation force imposing order from the outside and an international community with very little legitimacy, respectively. This willingness was a long time in the making, but now that it’s surfaced, it doesn’t appear likely to be disappearing anytime soon.”
❗️BREAKING: An Iranian Shahed-136 drone struck the city of Nakhchivan in Azerbaijan, Azerbaijani state media reported. The target was likely Nakhchivan Airport. #Iran pic.twitter.com/UeQsADtDSm
— NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@NOELreports) March 5, 2026
Again, this is what significant news I thought was worth including. If you have additional information you thought I should have included, leave it in the comments below.
Tags: Abraham Accords, Admiral Brad Cooper, aircraft, Amal, Azerbaijan, Ben Shapiro, Benjamin Netanyahu, China, Dan “Razin” Caine, drones, Dubai, F-14, F-35, F-4 Phantom, F-5 Tiger II, Hezbollah, IDF, Iran, Iranian air force, Iranian navy, Iranian Revolutionary Guards, IRIS Shahid Sayyad Shirazi, Israel, Jihad, Jim Geraghty, Joseph Aoun, Lebanon, MiG-29, Military, Mojtaba Khamenei, Nabih Berri, Nawaf Salam, nuclear weapons, Operation Epic Fury, Operation Rising Lion, Qatar, Rahman Moadam, Steve Witkoff, Su-24, Suchomimus, video, Yak-130
“Ben Shapiro declares Iran toast”
Well I guess that settles it then.
Rules of Engagement for Operation Epic Fury: “[W]e will fly all day, all night, day and night, finding, fixing, and finishing the missiles and defense industrial base of the Iranian military. Finding and fixing their leaders and their military leaders,..”
If their political leaders take refuge in a hospital, fix and finish them. If their religious leaders take refuge in a mosque, fix and finish them. If their munitions are hid in a school, fix and finish them.
“All-ye, all-ye out are in free” applies only to those who capitulation involves the surrender of their weapons and troops.
‘Nuff said.
“‘Ben Shapiro declares Iran toast.'”
“Well I guess that settles it then”
Today’s Latin lesson: Ipse dixit
“Ipse dixit is a Latin phrase that translates to ‘he himself said it.’ In legal contexts, it refers to a statement made by an individual that is accepted as true based solely on the authority of the person who made it, rather than on any supporting evidence. This term often arises in discussions about the validity of claims that lack independent verification.”
Unless you believe Pentagon press briefings are pure propaganda, Ben Shapiro’s assertion is irreproachable. If you take offense at Jews expressing satisfaction at the demise of their enemies, (cf. w/Feast of Purim) tomorrow’s Latin lesson will be titled “Argumentum ad Hominem’.
Plot-A/Plot-B:
It seems the air campaign in Iran will conclude successfully. If the ground war in Lebanon has a similarity felicitous end, Israel will have achieved on a small scale what the USA did in WWII: bomb Japan into submission and invade France to dislocate and route enemy forces so as to liberate the host country.
A new order will be imposed on the Middle East, similar to post-war Pax Americana.
Ben Shapiro? Really?
His analysis is worthless propaganda.
– Unless he’s actually able to provide us with “$25,000” missiles.
“Unless you believe Pentagon press briefings are pure propaganda”
All press briefings of any kind are pure propaganda.
President Trump’s 30 day suspension of India/Russia oil sanctions provided some POL pricing respite overnight, but the small decline was overwhelmed by a surge early this morning. WTI is now trading at $ 86.47, up 8.01%
AAA reports the U.S. national average regular gasoline price at the pump rose by $0.069 to $3.320 per gallon over the last 24 hours. 2.1%
AAA reports the national average diesel fuel price at the pump rose by $0.16 to $ 4.330 over the last 24 hours. 3.9%
Diesel fuel on the Frankfurt bourse is quoting at $ 1,068 per metric ton, down 2.18% since yesterday. Moldova has exhausted their diesel supply, as Ukraine effectively stole their supplies.
OD Napoleon said yesterday that NATO has not provided air-to-air missiles to Ukraine for three weeks. Ukrainian aircraft are down to a few AIM-9 Sidewinders; flying with most pylons empty. Evidently the AAM cupboard is empty.
Zelenskiy has expressed anger that the U.S. and Israel launched over 800 Patriot PAC-3 interceptors on the first day of combat with Iran. The U.S. is now issuing PAC-2 interceptors as the supply of PAC-3’s has been exhausted. This will be the hot topic of President Trump’s meeting with American military-industrial complex executives later today.
A major conflict between Hungary and Ukraine has broken out. OD Napoleon said yesterday that the Druzhba pipeline will not be restarted until after Hungary’s April 12th election. Ukraine has refused EU inspection of the pipeline (because it was never actually damaged). The Hungarian government has issued a 3 day ultimatum. Hungarian police also arrested seven Ukrainian employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank who were cought with over $ 100 million in hard currencies and gold which are believed to be the proceeds of aid theft.
feels like a lot of people are underestimating the scope of the damage to IRGC
the rate of strikes just seems to keep accelerating
another week and their military assets will be gone
also am I seeing HIMARS launchers? is Pete bringing in artillery?
hoping this ends without a lot of boots but won’t be shocked if the Marines take Kharg
The underlying subtext of the coverage I see on the financial channels (CNBC and Bloomberg) is that all the problems Iran is causing in world markets, especially re: oil, is some kind of argument against the decision to take out the regime.
Actually, it is simply confirmation of the importance of making it. Whatever mischief the Mullahs have caused now is a mere pittance of what they could have done once they had nukes.
A possible reason why the Lebanese government is now taking action: if they don’t, Israel could march right up to the Litani River and declare everything south of that to be part of Greater Israel. Unlike when they were there last time, this time they’d empty the native population (who hate the Israelis, so no big deal to Israel).
Yes, there would be much teeth-gnashing and cloth-rending by all the usual leftist, but this time Israel might not care.
Lebanon got the memo: if you don’t control a patch of dirt for long enough, it’s no longer yours.
Don’t forget to drop a bunker buster down the Well of the Mahdi. The Shia sect is based on this belief. No more well, no more reason to be a Shia. Qom probably has an underground city underneath it. Where else are they hiding the nuke material.
Watch for the plumes to show when dropping the bunker buster, those would be the ventilation shafts.
I am very far indeed from an expert on standard Shia 12er eschatology (much less other, smaller sects), but my understanding of belief in the Mahdi’s occultation is that he is not physically present in the well (or cellar), but out among the peoples of the earth, unrecognized, therefore bombing the well would not affect Shia belief one whit.
“Ben Shapiro? Really?
His analysis is worthless propaganda.”
& etc. : “All press briefings of any kind are pure propaganda.”
So is the propaganda “worthless” or is it “pure”?
Hegseth: Iran is ‘toast,’ and the US and Israel will rain down ‘death and destruction’
Defense secretary promises complete control of Iran’s skies within a week, says US forces can keep fighting ‘as long as we need to,’ though defenses ‘can’t stop everything’; hails capable, courageous Israel
Within a week, the US and Israel “will have complete control over Iranian skies,” US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth asserted on Wednesday during a press conference at the Pentagon alongside Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, exclaiming that Iran was “toast.”
https://www.timesofisrael.com/hegseth-iran-is-toast-and-the-us-and-israel-will-rain-down-death-and-destruction/
There’s that “toast” word again. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth employs the term to describe a situation whereby the bombing campaign exercises complete control of Iranian air space. Similarly, “toast” is the descriptor used by Ben Shapiro.
Is seems as though.Shapiro is simply repeating (reporting) what Pete Hegseth declared to be the situation in Iran. So to impugn Ben Shapiro is to cast doubt on the credibility of Pete Hegseth.
Is the Secretary of Defense fabricating war reports? Do his detractors have credible evidence that would reveal these press briefings to be a hoax? The Gaffer sez, “worthless propaganda” and Andy Markcyst agrees that we are being fed “pure propaganda “.
I am inclined to believe the Secretary of Defense because a lot of video feeds indicate that Israel and the USA are running sorties “all night and day, day and night”. This seems to indicate complete air superiority.
Show the hand you’re holding, fellas because I’m calling your bluff.
A completely subjective perception. Propaganda is information warfare, no more, no less. I used to be very much a “believe my government” kind of guy. Not anymore.
The Gaffer says:
March 6, 2026 at 6:20 AM
Ben Shapiro? Really?
His analysis is worthless propaganda.
– Unless he’s actually able to provide us with “$25,000” missiles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Precision_Kill_Weapon_System
https://x.com/Aviation_Intel/status/1971275077506478570
https://x.com/clary_co/status/1971311816249835723
my longer comment got moderated for links, perhaps – look up APKWS II.
“my longer comment got moderated for links, perhaps – look up APKWS II.”
Does it feature a recipe for avocado TOAST?
“my longer comment got moderated for links, perhaps – look up APKWS II.”
Does it feature a recipe for avocado TOAST?
“A completely subjective perception. Propaganda is information warfare,”
Propaganda is not a pejorative term.
Origin and history of propaganda
propaganda(n.) 1718, “committee of cardinals in charge of foreign missions of the Catholic Church,” short for Congregatio de Propaganda Fide “congregation for propagating the faith,” a committee of cardinals established 1622 by Gregory XV to supervise foreign missions. The word is properly the ablative fem. gerundive of Latin propagare “set forward, extend, spread, increase”
The way you are using It infers deceitful communication, an example if the logical fallacy, Petitio principi.
Operation Epic Delusion.
It’s based on ahistorical assumptions about air power and the durability of totalitarian regimes. The skill and professionalism of the Israeli and American militaries shouldn’t blind us to the fact that there is no realistic endgame here.
Trump expected the build-up to spook the Iranians into making a deal (in a recent interview, Witkoff said that Trump was “surprised” that this didn’t work). That was Plan A. Plan B was that a decapitation strike would scare the Iranians into a deal. That didn’t work. There’s no Plan C beyond hope. And, as the old adage says, hope isn’t a strategy.