Posts Tagged ‘Qom’

Iran Strikes: Big Week Starts

Tuesday, April 7th, 2026

(Feeling better today, thanks. I’m cautiously optimistic that I can keep these crackers down.)

It looks like a big increase in operational strike tempo against Iranian targets has kicked off today, well in advanced of Trump’s 8 PM EST deadline. A whole lot of infrastructure targets are being hit across Iran, along with heavy strikes against Tehran…

…and Kharg Island. “The targets that the US hit on Kharg Island included bunkers, radar station, ammunition storage. Landing docks were not intentionally targeted. Only would have been struck if Iranians fired something from next to them.”

A list of infrastructure strikes:

More news:

  • Stephen Green talks about the Israelis taking more regime scalps.

    The Israeli Air Force (IAF) escalated the stakes against Iran’s leadership yet again, going after the men in charge of Tehran’s oppression and terror organizations.

    One of this weekend’s big names is Maj. Gen. Majid Khademi, now confirmed dead, who until the moment of his vaporization served as the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) intelligence organization. Khademi’s death was confirmed Monday by an IRGC statement carried by the Iranian state Fars news service.

    The same IRGC statement said that funeral and burial arrangements would be announced later, hopefully with just enough of a heads-up for U.S.-Israel forces to conduct a strike on it.

    I don’t mean to sound so bloodthirsty on a gorgeous Monday morning, but you have to understand who Khademi was, what he did, and what his death might mean for the regime.

    As head of the IRGC Intelligence Protection Organization (IPO), Khademi reported directly to the Supreme Leader of Iran — whoever that might be these days — because he was in charge of both IRGC internal investigations and internal repression.

    So think of the IPO as a combination of a big city police department’s internal affairs division and Hitler’s Gestapo. The 45,000 Iranians reportedly murdered following last year’s big uprisings? Yeah, their blood is on Khademi’s hands. Be glad he’s dead.

    But there’s more — some speculative, some confirmed.

    An interesting tidbit: a pair of unverified rumors that lean into today’s news. The first — and quite persistent — is that Quds Force chief Esmail Qaani is an Israeli asset. Quds Force specializes in unconventional warfare, international terrorism, and military intelligence. Qaani became head following President Donald Trump’s assassination of former chief Qasem Soleimani in 2020.

    The second rumor is that Khademi was heading up an internal investigation of Qaani before getting blown up. If there’s any substance to these rumors, you can imagine the chaos right now inside Quds and the IRGC as a whole.

    But again, these are merely rumors.

    Not a rumor is OSINTechnical’s report on Monday that another recent strike also killed Yazdan Mir, “leader of the Quds Force’s Unit 840, a covert operational group responsible for conducting clandestine activities outside of Iran.”

  • “Iran’s overnight strikes towards Saudi Arabia’s Jubail petrochemical complex threatened to “derail the talks”, a senior Pakistani official tells Reuters. “A Saudi retaliation to the attack could draw Pakistan into the conflict under its defence pact with KSA.” Pakistan has been very critical of Iran’s actions, but hasn’t taken any direct military action against the regime since Operation Epic Fury kicked off. If Pakistan does join the war against the Islamic Republic of Iran, it will probably be because they’ve decided Iran is the weak horse and they can get in on the spoils of a United States victory. The Baluchestan border has been a constant source of friction between the two nations, and they actually fought a short conflict there in 2024. Also, Pakistan, unlike Iran, still has a functional air force, even though some planes (like Mirage IIIs) are quite old.
  • Speaking of Iran’s air forces, Netanyahu announced “We destroyed dozens of aircraft and helicopters at an Iranian airbase.” Honestly, I didn’t know there were any left to destroy…

    • As of this writing, there’s word that some sort of tentative ceasefire deal may be in the offing, assuming Iran agrees to open the Strait of Hormuz. Could be real, could be positioning.

    “Big Week” was a combined allied air offensive against Germany in 1944. The results were mixed.

    Update: Sort of looks like a ceasefire may be going into affect. Though limiting safe passage to “only with coordination” may be a deal-killer.

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military | 4 Comments »

    BREAKING: Israel Hits Iran’s Nuclear Sites

    Thursday, June 12th, 2025

    Israel has announced again and again that they cannot accept an Islamic Republic of Iran, which has stated it desires the complete destruction of Israel, acquiring nuclear weapons. Right now they’re doing something about it.

    The IDF has started to attack dozens of Iranian nuclear sites.

    Warning sirens have been set off to get the public ready for potential Iranian counter attacks of ballistic missiles on Israel.

    Iran has not yet fired ballistic missiles, but has thousands of them.

    According to the IDF, Iran has enough uranium to weaponize it to nuclear levels to 15 nuclear weapons within days

    In recent days, Iran developed a plan with Hezbollah and Hamas and other proxies to destroy the State of Israel, potentially including attempts to attack via all borders, including Egypt and Jordan.

    This was the point of no return according to the IDF.

    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has entered the security cabinet.

    The IDF targets also include commanders, bases as well as nuclear sites, though the main goal is nuclear sites.

    Further, the IDF said in the last 20 minutes, Iran was taken by surprise and they were attacked in places they didn’t expect.

    There are reports of multiple airstrikes in Tehran:

    From JihadWatch:

    For decades, the Islamic Republic of Iran has attacked Israel via terrorist proxies, and spent vast sums developing nuclear weapons over taking care of their own people or growing their economy. In the wake of Hamas’ terrorist attacks of October 7, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pursued a steadfast policy of neutralizing or destroying jihadist threats against his country. Now he’s eliminating the threat of a nuclear Iran.

    Developing…

    Update: Via Instapundit:

    Update 2: Not quite breaking, but The Jerusalem Post put up this explainer on Iran’s nuclear sites 16 hours ago. Convenient…

    Update 3: Trying to find footage of the strikes on YouTube, but all I’m finding is those crappy, non-embeddable “shorts.” This Hindustan Times live feed has some footage.

    Update 4: NRO has a piece up.

    Initial reports suggest that Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency, conducted covert operations deep in Iran focused on its air defense and missile capabilities. Israel appears to have targeted Iranian military personnel and senior nuclear scientists with the strikes, including the chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces.

    Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz declared an immediate state of emergency upon Israel’s launch of the attack, with the Jewish state preparing itself for an immediate Iranian missile response.

    “Following the State of Israel’s preemptive strike against Iran, a missile and drone attack against the state of Israel and its civilian population is expected in the immediate future,” Katz said in a message blasted out to Israelis.

    Explosions have been reported in Tehran and in areas where Iranian nuclear facilities are located. Images and footage of the explosions have circulated widely on social media. It is not yet known if there are any casualties.

    The move comes after President Trump said earlier Thursday that he still believed in the possibility of a diplomatic solution to Iran’s nuclear buildup. Talks had been tentatively scheduled to resume in the coming days.

    “We remain committed to a Diplomatic Resolution to the Iran Nuclear Issue! My entire Administration has been directed to negotiate with Iran. They could be a Great Country, but they first must completely give up hopes of obtaining a Nuclear Weapon. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump posted on Truth Social on Thursday afternoon.

    Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. had no involvement in the Israeli operation.

    “Tonight, Israel took unilateral action against Iran. We are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region,” Rubio said in a statement.

    “Israel advised us that they believe this action was necessary for its self-defense. President Trump and the Administration have taken all necessary steps to protect our forces and remain in close contact with our regional partners. Let me be clear: Iran should not target U.S. interests or personnel.”

    Update 5: Jihad Watch:

    On Thursday evening, the long-anticipated Israel strikes began, targeting the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear sites and other key military facilities. The objective of Operation Strength of a Lion is to end the Iranian nuclear threat once and for all, as well as to destroy, as much as possible, the Islamic Republic’s ability to continue to wage war against the Jewish state via its proxies, Hamas, Hizballah, and the Houthis. The entire state of Israel was on emergency alert; the Israeli Home Front Command issued instructions to all Israeli citizens to comply with guidelines that would be issued as part of “preparations for a significant threat.”

    Almost immediately after the air strikes began in Tehran, the propaganda war also entered a new phase. The Iranian military posted on X: “Remember, we didn’t initiate it.”

    Ah, but it did. The Islamic Republic of Iran initiated this Israeli strike on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas operatives, funded and directed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, brutally tortured and murdered 1,200 Israelis. The Islamic Republic of Iran initiated this Israeli strike when its leaders regularly screamed “Death to Israel” (as well as “Death to America”) and repeatedly vowed to destroy Israel. As recently as May 17, the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, declared: “The Zionist regime, which is the dangerous and lethal cancerous tumor of this region, must undoubtedly be removed, and it will be.”

    In fact, the Islamic Republic of Iran initiated it by regarding Israel as an enemy from its earliest days. The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic in 1979, replaced the Israeli embassy in Tehran with an embassy of “Palestine.” He decreed that the last Friday of the Muslim fasting-and-feasting month of Ramadan would henceforth be known as Al-Quds Day. Al-Quds is the name that modern-day Arabs and Muslims use for Jerusalem, and Al-Quds Day from its inception was the occasion for an orgy of hatred for Israel, jihadist saber rattling, and declarations that the Jewish state would soon be completely destroyed and a new genocide of the Jews would begin.

    Update 6: Two big bits of news from Ed Driscoll at Instapundit:

    Reminding people, yet again, that Mossad is probably the best intelligence service in the world…

    Update 7: From Not the Bee:

    This is a good time to remind people that just because someone has posted a video to Twitter doesn’t make it true, or current. Old videos get recycled as new war footage by the unscrupulous all the time…

    Update 8: LiveMap snapshot:

    Including reports of strikes at Qom, Qasr-e Shirin and Tabriz.

    Closeup of Tehran:

    Update 9: “Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei is alive, security source tells Reuters.” Pity, that…

    Update 10: LiveMap: “Israeli military radio – Israel has carried out five waves of strikes against Iran so far. Channel 13 Israel, citing sources, reported: The Air Force has launched hundreds of raids inside Iran since the start of the military operation.”

    Update 11: LiveMap: “Najaf base in Kermanshah” struck… “Armed Forces Commander Mohammad Bagheri” killed…”Revolutionary Guards camp in the western Iranian city of Borujerd” hit.

    Update 12: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit:

    Update 13: Israeli strikes on Iran to “continue for days.”

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    Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad, Military, video | 4 Comments »

    Coronavirus Update for February 20, 2020

    Thursday, February 20th, 2020

    Basically every dystopia you’ve seen or read about in the last 20 years is happening in China right now. Here’s a roundup of Coronavirus news:

  • The official infection figures everyone believes are understated:

    Total confirmed cases: 75,751
    Total deaths: 2,130
    Total recovered: 16,847

    There are some MSM outlets saying that, based on those official numbers, the worst of the outbreak has passed. I wouldn’t wager much money on that proposition…

  • American evacuees from the Coronavirus-stricken Diamond Princess cruise ship have been flown to the Nebraska Medical Center campus in Omaha. (Yesterday the official Coronavirus tracker showed a jump in U.S. cases to 29 based on that, but today the tracker number is back down to 15. Curious…)
  • Over 700 people in Washington State being “under supervision” for possible coronavirus infection? “The figure includes close contacts of laboratory confirmed cases, as well as people who have returned from China in the past 14 days that are included in federal quarantine guidance.”
  • Walter Russell Mead on why China is the real sick man of Asia:

    Epidemics also lead us to think about geopolitical and economic hypotheticals. We have seen financial markets shudder and commodity prices fall in the face of what hopefully will be a short-lived disturbance in China’s economic growth. What would happen if—perhaps in response to an epidemic, but more likely following a massive financial collapse—China’s economy were to suffer a long period of even slower growth? What would be the impact of such developments on China’s political stability, on its attitude toward the rest of the world, and to the global balance of power?

    China’s financial markets are probably more dangerous in the long run than China’s wildlife markets. Given the accumulated costs of decades of state-driven lending, massive malfeasance by local officials in cahoots with local banks, a towering property bubble, and vast industrial overcapacity, China is as ripe as a country can be for a massive economic correction. Even a small initial shock could lead to a massive bonfire of the vanities as all the false values, inflated expectations and misallocated assets implode. If that comes, it is far from clear that China’s regulators and decision makers have the technical skills or the political authority to minimize the damage—especially since that would involve enormous losses to the wealth of the politically connected.

    We cannot know when or even if a catastrophe of this scale will take place, but students of geopolitics and international affairs—not to mention business leaders and investors—need to bear in mind that China’s power, impressive as it is, remains brittle. A deadlier virus or a financial-market contagion could transform China’s economic and political outlook at any time.

    Many now fear the coronavirus will become a global pandemic. The consequences of a Chinese economic meltdown would travel with the same sweeping inexorability. Commodity prices around the world would slump, supply chains would break down, and few financial institutions anywhere could escape the knock-on consequences. Recovery in China and elsewhere could be slow, and the social and political effects could be dramatic.

  • China expelled three Wall Street Journal reporters over that editorial:

    Beijing’s propaganda campaign to paper over the depredations of its heavy handed quarantines and other outbreak-suppression efforts was launched into hyperspeed earlier this month as the international community – including the WHO – started questioning everything – from whether Beijing deliberately hid information about the outbreak in the early days (looks like it did), to whether the virus was originally developed in a bioweapons lab in Wuhan before being unleashed on the public (…), to whether Beijing was actually capable of resolving this issue without some kind of intervention.

    These doubts likely played some role in Beijing’s decision to refuse to allow foreign experts into the country – though it gladly accepted shipments of facemasks and medicine – as the most important thing is that the Communist Party project an image of strength upon the global stage.

    Which is probably why this editorial annoyed them so much.

    From time to time, China expels foreign journalists. In recent years, reporters from Bloomberg, WSJ and the New York Times have been booted from the country. But early Wednesday morning, the Wall Street Journal reported that three of its reporters – Deputy Beijing Bureau Chief Josh Chin and reporter Chao Deng, as well as reporter Philip Wen have been ordered to leave China in five days, according to Jonathan Cheng, WSJ’s Beijing bureau chief and a formidable foreign correspondent in his own right.

  • China’ economy is still flatlined.
  • And the Chinese government is telling its citizens to get ready for austerity. Which will come as quite a shock after two decades of overinflated smoke-and-mirrors growth.
  • Coronavirus may be twenty times more readily transmittable from human to human than SARS.
  • Significantly more cases reported in Japan, South Korea, and Singapore.
  • “Are China’s coronavirus figure reliable? Wait, are you suggesting that a communist government might lie?

  • I guess that’s why they’ve deployed 1,600 online trolls to combat the spread of non-Communist-Party-approved information.
  • It’s not just China: The World Health Organization wants tech companies to censor non-approved truths.
  • Speaking of lying, Republican senator Tom Cotton says that China refuses to “hand over evidence concerning the bio-safety level 4 research lab in Wuhan despite a new report from biological scientists at the South China University of Technology saying it may have been the source of the coronavirus outbreak.”
  • China deploys 40 mobile incinerators to Wuhan. “According to the reports, the mobile incinerators are able to destroy up to five tons of waste per day – burning a load in as little as two seconds.” Assuming the average Chinese person is 150 pounds, that means that collectively these 40 incinerators can dispose of 2,666 bodies a day.
  • More numbers out of line with government figures:

  • Get ready for coronavirus-induced drug shortages.
  • Things have gotten so bad in China that some residents have openly called for revolution, and for freedom in both Hong Kong and Tibet:

  • Changes in grocery shopping:

  • Meanwhile in Iran: Two dead and a reported military lockdown in Qom. Qom being the heart of the mullah’s regime, it could also be a long overdue coup by the regular army. Or an attempt to forestall a coup by the Republican Guards/Basij.
  • Finally, here’s a link to N95 facemasks. They’ve gotten pricier, but these show up as in-stock…

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    Posted in Communism, Foreign Policy, Media Watch | No Comments »