The military operation against Iran entered its sixth day on Thursday. Iran has warned of retribution against the United States for sinking one of its warships in international waters, and Tehran continues to hit out at the wider region, with Azerbaijan the latest country to suffer strikes.
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**Thursday’s live updates below. All updates in Eastern time**
07:55 AM: Fake News?
You may have seen posts from ‘OSINT’ (Open Source Intelligence) accounts on social media this morning claiming a U,S, F-15E Strike Eagle was shot down over Iran overnight. Very serious business if true, but U.S. CENTCOM moved fast to dismiss it this morning, stating the claims are “baseless and NOT TRUE”.
The F-15E is the same aircraft that saw three fall to friendly fire over Kuwait on Monday. All pilots and crew ejected and were recovered unharmed. We are now led to understand they were shot down by a single Kuwaiti F/A-18 Hornet, according to the Wall Street Journal, anyway.
07:40 AM: Iran continues to hit Israel
As expressed, Iran is throwing ordinance all over the Middle East and even into the Eastern Mediterranean, but the bulk of its attacks remain focussed on Israel. We’ve heard claims that the Iranians are slowly running out of missiles, and per The Times of Israel the fifth consecutive air raid on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem today involved only a “small number of missiles” and no injuries.
U.S. military sites through the Middle East are also a key target and the Iranian military said it had launched drones against a U.S. base in Kuwait this morning.
07:30 AM: Iran denies attack Azerbaijan
Several drones hit an exclave of Azerbaijan this morning including an airport, leading to condemnation by the Azerbaijani government and threats of retaliation. Now the Associated Press notes both that Iran is denying being the author of the attack of its northern neighbour, and that Tehran has already “repeatedly denied” other strikes on civilian targets after they happened.
07:15 AM: Double helpings
Losing one ship in the Indian Ocean simply wasn’t enough: Iran says it’s going to send another. After the destruction of the IRIS DENA by submarine-launched Torpedo in international waters off the south coast of Sri Lanka, Columbo says a second Iranian warship is headed their way.
It looks like since we first heard of it this morning the ship has already arrived in Sri Lankan territorial waters, which may provide it some respite from being hunted by the U.S., given territorial waters are a very different matter to the high seas, where the last strike took place. Read more here.
05:45 AM: Iran calls for Trump’s blood
Tehran is attempting to make a fulcrum out of the sinking by submarine-launched torpedo of their warship in international waters on Wednesday morning, by framing it as some sort of war crime. If you’ve been on social media at all in the past 24 hours, you’ve probably seen some of these arguments aired.
As reported by Simon Kent this morning, the message from Iran is clear, that President Trump will pay for this insult:
yatollah Abdollah Javadi Amoli, in one of the few clerical statements so far from Iran, added the country was “on the verge of a great test” and called on state television for “the shedding of Zionist blood, the shedding of Trump’s blood.”
“Fight the oppressive America, his blood is on my shoulders,’” he said in a rare call for violence from an ayatollah, one of the highest ranks within the clergy of Shiite Islam.
05:15 AM: Iran strikes Azerbaijan
The Iranian strategy of attacking, essentially, absolutely everyone within range with no regard to whether they had any part in America & Israel’s decapitation strikes over the weekend continues unabated with a drone hit the passenger terminal of the airport in Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan exclave. Two people were reportedly injured.
According to a statement from the Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a second drone landed “near a school building”. They demanded Iran apologise for the strike and said they “reserves the right to take appropriate response measures.”
The Azerbaijan Ministry of Defence was less coy, and threatened retaliation. They said in their statement that the military was “preparing the necessary response measures to protect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of our country, ensure the safety of civilians and civilian infrastructure, and these attacks will not go unanswered.”
05:00 AM: Israel shows off guncam footage
We reported yesterday that the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) were celebrating their first ever manned air to air kill with their U.S.-made F-35 against a Yakolev-130, a jet trainer Iran had pressed into frontline service. Now Israel has published FLIR footage of the kill, showing the perspective from an aircraft with a clear height advantage looking down on the passing small jet before it explodes, soaring through the air with a streak of fire.
For earlier livewire updates from Wednesday please click here
