Iran war widens, Hizballah steps up strikes, with Jon Elmer

So you are watching and listening to the Electronic Intifada. I am John Elmer. This is the resistance report for day 895 of Israel's genocide, day 20 of the US Israeli war on Iran. Um I'm reporting this on the afternoon of Thursday, March 19th. Things are changing quickly, but this is the this coverage of the third week of the war will never change. Um so uh you're going to hear from the IRGC and the Iranian army. We're going to hear from the Iraqi resistance and Hez bollah. So stay tuned for that, but let's start as always with the maps of the regions. People can get our grounding here. We're seeing uh the first map of the US bases in the region that have been uh targeted, particularly Bahrain, Kuwait, um Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Muwaffaq al-Salti in Jordan, and then of course all across Israel. Um the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps um have said that they are dividing their operations about 40 to 60 um uh 40% to Israel, 60% to high-value targets in US positions throughout uh the Gulf region. So far the US uh has said that they've struck 7,800 targets in Iran. The IDF has 7,500 bombs dropped. The IRGC has fired more than 1,000 missiles, more than 3,000 drones, and Hezbollah and the Iraqi resistance have together carried out more than 1,000 operations. 1,300 people have been killed in Iran, 20,000 injured. Um uh about a dozen in Israel have been killed, and 12 more um across the entire Gulf region for all of these operations by the Iranians. Um so again, the uh massacre quotient is wildly um disproportionate to the Israelis and the Americans, as always. Let's take a look at the next slide. We will see these attacks grow. Each circle, the larger the circle, the more number of attacks, and you can see this covers up to March 13th from the beginning of the war. So, you really can see all the targeting of the groups. The red dots are Iranian. The black dots are the Iraqi resistance. The beige is Israel, and the gray in the south of Iran is the United States. And as I said, those bases across the region have been targeted. High-value targets has been Iran's strategy, knocking out radar systems upon which the aerial defense array is dependent, and preparing for a long war. They have been targeting these high-value targets early in the war that will make the later stages of the war a lot more difficult for the US and Israel to defend, and the Gulf states are already way in over their head trying to defend their territory from their US bases and installations in their territories. And increasingly today, although Ali will talk more about that after targeting oil infrastructure and gas infrastructure after the targeting by Israel of the South Pars gas field last night. We could see the next slide, the Strait of Hormuz. This is, of course, the main choke point that we're looking at. We're looking at a map here from the International Space Station, which shows that choke point. The north is the Iranian coast all the way across. You you see it's very tight into their territorial waters. Goldman Sachs was talking the other day, their energy their energy speaker was talking about the disruption of the global supply chain that even if the war ended today, which it surely is not, that the whole system the supply chain globally is is really breaking because we have ships that are stacked up on either side of the Strait of Hormuz. 20% of oil of the world's oil goes through there. 20% of the world's natural gas, also significant fertilizer going through there. And because the ships are all stacked up there, they're not going back to their ports. They're not um They're all in the wrong place. So the Strait of Hormuz is 18 million barrels a day pass through there under normal times out of the 100 100 million daily barrels in the world. 20% 20% of the global oil supply is effectively offline. Although as we'll see in a bit, Iran is still exporting oil through and their allies are as well. We could take a look at the next map and you can see the transits of the ships through the Strait of Hormuz starting from the day before the war started up until several days ago and you can see that it just basically completely stops. You can see some Iranian vessels going through clearly. You see a lot of GPS jamming when you're looking at this as well, which is why the ships are disappearing, but it gives you a good sense of the way in which the global oil supply has been choked off by strategic plan by Iran. So far [clears throat] have not had to mine um, the corridor through the Straits of Hormuz, but there was uh, some talk and some fear about that for uh, the US. But the real issue here is I'm going to uh, summarize this by um, an article that was in G Captain, which is a maritime news service uh, heavily military focused. Um, the problem with the escorts uh, creating an escort to get uh, US ships through uh, the Strait of Hormuz is just something simply that the United States cannot do. They do not have the capacity. They have 74 destroyers, guided missile destroyers in total. Um, 1/3 are in maintenance, 24 left for the uh, entire planet. The carrier strike groups um, they rely on several each as escort and protection. Um, so you're down to uh, about a dozen um, left over from that. Um, also they're slow. They'll take a long time to mobilize to get them into the region. Um, and of course Trump uh, spat on all his allies before then begging them for um, to come to to the uh, escort operation in the Strait of Hormuz. Each destroyer that would come would carry 96 vertical launch missiles, but they aren't all air defense. About a third are Tomahawks, a third are anti-submarine, and a third are anti-air. That leaves 32 air defense missiles per ship. When those run out, the ship has to sail to port to reload. The Navy eliminated most of the at-sea missile reload capability, so the round trip transit, reload, and return can take weeks. Uh, in this particular situation, they would be doing it uh, at Diego Garcia. But in the Red Sea example from last year, uh, it took 3 weeks to reload um, the missile uh, guided missile destroyers of their anti-aircraft uh, uh, missiles. So, it's just something that is impossible to do. Let's look at the next slide. You can see um uh the Strait of Hormuz again a satellite image. Trump said that he needed minesweepers, but it was reported in the days before the war began that the US pulled out several minesweepers that were already in the region. Um just to give you a sense of how little prepared they seemingly were for this massive uh war that has taken place. If we look at number six, we can see an attack on uh a vessel. This is uh an American flag vessel hit by uh two explosive-laden unmanned boats uh off the uh coast of Iraq here. Um this has been one of 16 um vessels that have been targeted um along this and the IRGC Navy spelled it out clearly. They said vessels in the Strait must understand that this insecurity is the result of US and Israeli aggression and they must expect wartime conditions for them and their allies in the Strait of Hormuz. So, wartime conditions are to be expected uh in this area and that has effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz to um US and allied transits. We can see in this next slide from the Wall Street Journal that that has not uh impacted uh Iran. We're looking at a headline from the Wall Street Journal this week that says Iran's control of Hormuz means it is exporting more oil today than before the war. Their currency has increased as well. Iran has apparently allowed um some Chinese vessels to pass through and apparently last week a couple of uh Indian LNG tankers, um but they are not allowing allies of the US or Israel to pass through there. Um there was a recording played by the Wall Street Journal that showed um that had on board with Chinese tankers and they uh, radioed that they are friendly and the Iranian navy allowed them to pass. Um, so still Iranians are still exporting their oil. And I want to give you in this next one, there's going to be audio in it, but I want to just this video came out this week from a dash cam from a car um, who was beside uh, an Israeli strike in uh, Hamadan in the western area of Iran and we're going to go to that now. So that was an attack on uh, a nearby position and you can just see from inside that car. First of all, the dignity and a plum that uh, that the driver handled that uh, pretty tense situation with, but just give you an idea uh, of what it's like to drive down a street uh, in Iran uh, at any point uh, over this uh, these last 20 days. Um, 36 ambulance uh, stations have been uh, damaged or destroyed. Six hospital units uh, completely out of service um, and 18 health care frontline uh, paramedics have been killed. Of course, we're seeing that in uh, Lebanon as well. And Iran said this week that 43,000 non-military locations uh have been damaged or destroyed so far in the first 20 days of this war. We can look at number nine here. We talked about this before the war um about uh how the United States was setting up its positions at these bases. They consolidated them. We talked about that um with Muafaq al-Salti in Jordan, where there was too many planes uh the the entire tarmac um area was full of planes. And essentially what the US is doing is concentrating its air defenses around a few key places. Um this is the Prince Sultan uh air base in Saudi Arabia, and Muafaq al-Salti in Jordan has the same kind of thing. Um they have concentrated their air defenses. And this is satellite image from Maxar Vision uh from China, but uh I meant to read read this out last week when we were doing uh looking at satellite mapping because uh the satellite company Planet, where most uh of the western open-source intelligence mapping comes from, they put out a statement last week that said, "As part of Planet's commitment to responsible data practices and the safety of personnel on the ground, we are implementing temporary adjustments to imagery across the designated area of interest across the Middle East. All new imagery collected over the Gulf States, uh Iraq, Kuwait, uh and adjacent conflict zones will be subject to a mandatory 96-hour delay before it is available in our archive. This change applies to both high- and medium-resolution data. This measure is intended to prevent adversarial actors from using recent data uh for immediate battle damage assessment and is rooted in our commitment to ensuring the safety of allied NATO partner personnel and civilians on the ground." So, pretty remarkable stepping uh falling into line of an American satellite company that has made it so the battle damage assessments that we saw in the first couple weeks haven't been happening, but if we look at the next uh the next slide, we can see that these tankers, those are that we saw on the previous slide, those are KC-135 aerial refueling tankers and they were all globbed together on the tarmac and this Wall Street Journal story five Air Force refueling planes hit in an Iranian strike on Saudi Arabia. Five US Air Force refueling planes were struck and damaged on the ground at Prince Sultan airbase in Saudi Arabia according to two US officials. That is the risk of concentrating your assets all in one area, which we foreshadowed on the pre-war build-up show four four weeks ago's show now. So you can see that there they KC-135 StratoTanker. These are refueling aircraft that refuel the fighter jets in the air. It allows them to extend their range. It allows them to stay up in the air on their bombing sorties. They're critical part of the overall asset infrastructure that the US are using for this war. And you'll see on the next slide, we saw this week two of these planes apparently collide in the air. This is a statement from the United States Central Command about the loss of a KC-135 over Iraq, which it describes as friendly territory, although we're going to watch a lot of Iraqi resistance videos that would suggest otherwise. One of the planes crashed, lost all six of the crew on board. And that put and the second, if we look at the next slide, you can see the second plane managed to limp into Ben Gurion Airport where the US also has been using a civilian airport for its military assets. And again, I showed you that in the prelude to the war episode that we did that we saw dozens of these refuelers in in Ben Gurion Airport. And you can see on the tail there that it's broken and you can see it even closer there. Some of the KC-135 pilots were talking about how near a miss that um that tail rudder being broken would be for landing and how close it was to losing two planes. So, they Americans have said that it was it was over friendly airspace. It was not friendly fire. Supposition that the Americans are putting forward is that the planes collided. What we don't know and what we do know from Yemen is that incoming fire has made uh fighter jets and aircraft carriers change their course rapidly, drastic change of course that could have led to this accident as well. But so far all we know is from the Americans and we'll see if they tell us the full story about this. But now because of the five on the tarmac in Saudi Arabia and the two more here in Ben Gurion, seven critically important strategic assets are out of the battle here now. Are we on 13? Is this Yes, this is 13. Okay, so let's move to Iran. Just to say more than 200 American soldiers have been wounded. That is the number that the Americans are going with at this point right now. But again, really dragging their feet on civilian casualty numbers coming out from the United States and also from Israel unsurprisingly. So, let's move to Iran's response. We are looking here on the screen at the main weapons that Iran uses. The Shahed 136 drone has been wreaking havoc across the region. Um and then their ballistic missile collection, which puts them as one of the world's uh top missile uh countries. Uh those have been used. We're seeing here the Emad, the Fattah, which is um which travels at hypersonic speeds, and the Khorramshahr 4, which is um has a 2-ton warhead or also a um submunitions warhead. And you're going to see those uh launched in the coming slides. On the next um the next slide, number 15 here, we're going to see uh again the sort of sizing uh comparisons of each of these families of weapons that the Iranians have been firing consistently uh throughout uh this battle. Um although what you'll hear from the Americans and from the Israelis is that 90% drop in drones and missile uh firing from day one. But that's not how you evaluate a war. First of all, day one is of the war is generally a shock and awe type uh um approach, um which means you use much more on the first day than you would in the days to follow. Um but it's also not Iran's strategy to just dump their missile stocks. They're planning for a long war, a war of attrition, a war that once it ends, they still need to be in um in in still have the ability to defend themselves. Um and so they have been striking high-value targets, advanced radars, um military-industrial uh base of Israel, targeting US bases that have basically destroyed most of these bases. Um and that has been what their strategic aim has been. So, the Americans uh prattling on about uh how there's 90% less missiles from the first day is mostly a statement about how many missiles there were on the first day. Not a a drop in the missiles. The missiles have been steady. Um the Israelis talk about um consistently talk about eight and nine um missile uh attacks each day sending people to the shelters up and down Israel. Um so just to talk about that 90% number. And then Trump says 100% so we won't even bother with with that. Um let's look at the next slide and you can see uh here's the launches. Um each of these this launch is the 54th wave. We're now up uh I believe the 64th wave was today. Um but you can see the launch of the Ghaddar. There's the Fattah uh hypersonic uh travels at Mach 16 has a uh maneuverable re-entry vehicle makes it a survivable and accurate missile. This is the Khaibar Shekan family of missiles that people may remember uh are what the Ansar Allah movement used. Uh they call theirs the Palestine two. Um and we saw that being used to target Israel. For their part Ansar Allah has stayed uh on the sidelines of this battle. They have the ability to really choke uh the international um economy if they were to shut down the Red Sea and the uh Suez Canal. Uh this is an Imad that you're seeing going up now. Liquid fuel you can see the liquid fuel launchers um have more of the red flames. This is the Sejjil. This was the debut of the Sejjil in this um this is the one of the more advanced uh and newest of Iran's um the IRGC Aerospace uh Force missile production. This was released first in 2023. Um and uh after this I'll give you a better uh a shot of that missile. It's a multi-stage missile 1,000 kg warhead. If we see it on the next slide there, you can see the multi-stages, which allow it to greater survivability through each of the stages, the boost stage, the mid-course flight stage, and then the terminal stage. Each stage is controlled on that multi-stage missile, which makes a problem for missile defense. So, a sophisticated missile that we're seeing there. Um Let's look at number 18. This is the 58th wave. You're going to see the Ghader series here being launched. You get a good view of that one. And the Ghader carries a 1-ton warhead. It's also the one that they have had sub-munitions warhead. The Ghader has about 20. We've seen somewhere between a dozen and 20 sub-munitions released from the Ghader over the skies of Israel is where we really see it. Of course, these missiles are also There's the Fattah again. You can see the difference in the solid fuel launch there. And again, so Israel saying that these are happening all throughout the day. And in the next slide, we are going to have sirens. You're going to see the Ghader arriving in Israel coming up. So, heads up for the sirens. And you can see that they break apart and they force the Iron Dome and David's Sling, the lower level interceptors to try to find to try to hit those, of course, depleting their air defense while also striking a wide range. You can see there there's about 20 in that Ghader uh, clip. The next one we can see the launch of the Khorramshahr 4 um, at night. Um, this is again the two uh, ton warhead um, carried on it and this is the one that has sometimes cluster um, submunitions in it that are released way up in the atmosphere and spread out over a wide distance. So, not a bomb and not really effectively described as a cluster munition, although um, while thousands of people die in Iran and Lebanon, Amnesty International wants us to call that a cluster bomb um, which it is clearly not. Um, if we could take a look at the next one, you'll see uh, the Khorramshahr 4 incoming with audio. Or no, there's no audio in this. This was taken actually interestingly by um, uh, a leading member of Israel's aero dis aero aero air defense uh, array uh, a retired officer and he uh, recorded this off of his roof. Didn't seem like he was so concerned about the uh, censorship, but that gives you a good uh, a good view of uh, the 80 submunitions that are in the uh, Khorramshahr 4, also a new uh, missile. You can see it there. It's a pretty good shot of it. If for people not watching, you're just watching streaks in the sky uh, separated by a great distance by this point. Um, working effectively. We've seen that a number of times. In this next slide, this is interesting because NBC took this footage. It's crisp footage. Um, the audio is in, but they this is from the first day, but they only released it um, they only released it this week despite it being from the first day. So, they are obviously following uh, censorship laws um publishing this late. Let's take a look at this number 22. And so these are the strikes we did see on the opening day of the war um hitting Tel Aviv. We saw that in true promise three hitting Tel Aviv, but we really haven't seen a lot of that in this um in this stage of the battle. The um civilian targets are have not been the objective of the Iranians. They are trying to keep the it seems to keep the escalation ladder um to keep the escalation in place and not climb the escalation ladder um because right now um I think from Iran's point of view they believe that they're winning this war. They have the global economy um by the throat. Um they have the American bases in the region in a very uh uncertain future um and they are they have been saving their missiles uh especially their advanced missiles for um the period after um the targeting of these radars that we had seen in every uh Gulf state all around um the high value targets and a battle of attrition. So and I think that matches with what we are going to see in the visuals um throughout this. Number 24 you can see them targeting Nevatim airbase which is a key uh sorry this is a strike on a road outside of Jerusalem where you can see the impact of the warhead. When they're not sub-munitions, that's a direct, that's a direct strike on the road outside of Jerusalem. You can see the massive crater that we're looking at. This is a photo from Reuters. Even seeing these kind of photos are rare through the censorship and they're always a number of days delayed. So now let's look at 24. You can see the targeting of Nevatim airbase. You can see this from a closed-circuit camera that we're seeing here. And we know from the previous True Promise operations that you can see the bases being hit even though they're out in the desert. Nevatim is south of Beersheba in the Negev desert. And it has been a target in all three of the previous True Promise operations. You can see the next slide as well as you can see this incoming missile strike on Nevatim airbase. And censorship does prevent us from seeing what is happening and what is being hit on those airbases which are regularly being targeted. You can see that in the field reports by the IRGC about those targets. Let's take a look at number 26. You can see the two here main air defense systems. The THAAD system. We know the radar was knocked out. It's key advanced early warning radar was knocked out half half a billion dollar radar knocked out. You can see that this is from Reuters, an infographic from Reuters. The Patriot system is firing 4 million dollar interceptors and we saw yesterday in the UAE one of those um appeared to uh misfire and dumped its uh of interceptors at nothing coming in um expending um in tens of millions of dollars. The THAAD interceptors are $15 million and after uh all of these videos of Iranian launches the uh CENTCOM decided to put one out on there. So, let's let's watch them try to copy what the Iranians do here. So, we're seeing the launch of THAAD interceptors here. $15 million right there being sent up in the air. Uh a single interception. Presumably, if they had more film on this, they would be showing us more of these. Um there you see a night THAAD interceptor that's going to just head up into the sky. Uh it doesn't appear to be targeting anything. So, just in those uh 6 seconds, you watched $30 million uh be sent up into the sky. Um number 28, Iran is still downing drones. Um there's a number of these videos that we could bring every single week. This is an MQ-9 Reaper that was downed over Bandar Abbas. Um the IRGC are apparently using their Majid air defense system um for these takeouts and there the number that the Iranians claim is 120 drones between the Israelis and Americans taken out. I don't know um we haven't seen the numbers broken down uh specifically, but we have for sure seen dozens uh on air and you've seen almost a dozen just on this show uh alone. Um [snorts] let's take a look at number 29. There's going to be audio in this as um IRGC drones target uh US bases. >> [snorts] >> So this are that's at IRGC Aerospace underneath it in that first slide and here you're seeing the Shahed 136s being launched and the black ones are interesting cuz those are uh usually exported to Russia. Um so it's unclear uh it seems to be suggesting that um Iran is using some of its export supplies uh as well, but what we haven't seen is the more advanced drones. They're still firing uh the 136s um from the essentially from the old stock and we're still now we're 20 days and 3,000 drones uh into this battle and of course the same targets here UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, and by these drones. and uh again the Iran is a world-class producer of these drones. They are cheap to produce 25 to 50 grand uh at the most. Um and they can be launched from particularly from anywhere as you see they're being launched off a road. Um there. Um let's take a look at number 30 cuz you can get a close-up here of the quad launcher that they're using the multiple launch uh drone system. Yeah, so multi-launch drone system instead of a rocket system. We've seen that the canister launches. We've seen larger ones than that. We've seen shelves um that have eight on the shelf um fired one after another. which is useful to fire multiple at a time because it can be dangerous, could be tracked. Um so, the more you can get off, the better you are. Number 31, it's not just the IRGC, it's also the Iranian army. These are Iranian army drones launching uh Arash. This is Arash, the Iranian army launching Arash 2 drone swarms. The Arash has a 2,000 km range. It's almost a hybrid cruise missile that can be steered um by a man in the loop. It's a 150 kg warhead. Um and we've seen these be used a lot by uh long These are long-distance ones, but we've seen the shorter-range ones uh the Hadit 110 used all over the Gulf to target bases. Now, let's take a look at the Iraqi resistance. They have got drone operations going on as well. Here, we can see a first-person quadcopter drone. Um this got a lot of attention this week because the first-person drone gives you a view of the drone hitting um some kind of American position inside Camp Victory. This is their Baghdad uh airport base, and you can see the the drone flying around. And these are the drones that we see in Ukraine and Russia. Um and they show they would show if a soldier was there on camera before they were killed. And I guess there's some supposition that Americans will somehow care more if they see um this quadcopter hitting their troops than the much more capable Shahed drones. And of course, the ballistic missiles. So, this is a something that is new for seeing for the first time in this battle, um but it's not a qualitative edge over um the other weapons that have been used. Um but the Iraqis have a lot. Let's take a look at 33 here cuz we have a uh I stitched together a bunch of drone operations here. We're looking at the Iraqi resistance in an underground uh launch station. You see the fighters in their desert camo uh moving through tunnels uh in Iraq to get to these launching sites. Um there's a crew of about uh at least half a dozen that we're seeing here. And we're seeing the uh Shahed 101 drones that are used by the Iraqis uh a lot. Um they're going to see them launched from a protected underground position. Um there's signs that they're showing to show the date and the target and the targets are um uh usually in Iraq. Um they're they're pledging allegiance to uh new supreme leader and saying that they are on the battlefield for him with their drones and their rockets. Um and they're going to open the roof here of this sheltered launch space. Uh and launch their drones. Now we're getting an overhead shot of it. So, they're putting in their uh resistance video. Uh they're up in their resistance video game for sure in uh the Iraqi resistance that we're seeing here, the launch of the two drones from a safe uh particular uh from a safe spot. This is the um There's a number of the Islamic resistance in Iraq is an umbrella group. Um It has links that go back to Qassem Soleimani and the uh Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force training these forces during the war um during the US occupation of Iraq and the greater uh war on terror in the region. So, in a lot of ways we're seeing come together um fighting forces that were prepared by the same organizations fighting in this war. The targets of these operations, there's been more than 500 Iraqi resistance. There you're seeing the embassy building in Baghdad burning. US bases in Kurdistan, 50 operations, 48 by drones and two by missiles. This is just by one group, Guardians of the Blood Brigades. They've targeted Camp Victory in Baghdad 21 times, 17 times by drones and four by missiles. Targets in Syria, 11 operations, nine by drones. In Jordan, 13 operations, all by drones. They've also targeted Saudi Arabia, nine operations, all drones and also Kuwait, six operations. All by drones. So, that's one group, 110 operations just by this group over 15 days. Al Jazeera reported yesterday that there's been more than 3,000 missiles and drones fired at the Gulf states, including 2,000 at the UAE, Israel's biggest ally in the Gulf states. So, pretty significant scale of operations from the Iraqi resistance that have been going on throughout this battle. They joined the battle on the first day and they're putting out 25 operations each day, day in and day out. Sometimes as many as 35 or 40. Let's take a look at 34. You can see one of their targets. This is the counter um This is the counter rockets, artillery and mortars, the C-RAM radar targeted at the US Embassy base in Baghdad. You can see that destroyed um trying to down a drone. It was a drone that hit it, so it's made for rockets, artillery, and mortars, but it should be um the C-RAM because the D is the drones, and that has been what has been destroying these radars across the region. And we get a a view of it here because in Baghdad you're in uh a downtown area, whereas the uh the other targets of these radars are out in the desert, and we were getting the uh battle damage assessment from the satellite footage that we are no longer getting. Um we can take a look at 35. You can see that the um radar here is completely destroyed, multi-million dollar uh radar uh being destroyed. Um 36, you see um there's audio in 36. You're going to see the C-RAM. So, you can see it there just launching 20 launching 20 mm rounds uh just firing it out over the city. Uh close in um that's the last line of defense is the C-RAM. Um the radar being destroyed on it surely makes it slower, um but you can see also just the way that they're doing this, firing uh effectively 20 mm bullets rapid fire into the city to try to shoot down uh one drone. Uh the next one we can see uh the same thing. 37 is going to be um another view of the same operation from a couple nights ago. And there you hear it. A direct target on the base, so one was hit by the by the C-RAM, and we saw that one crash land and blow up just outside of the base, and then that was a direct hit on the base. And if we look at 38 here, this is interesting. This is footage showing Bahrain being used for HIMARS launches, ballistic missile launches by the US at Iran. A video verified by the New York Times shows the ballistic missiles being launched from Bahrain in the direction of Iran and what appears to be the first confirmed instance of an attack on the Islamic Republic originating from the Persian Gulf from a Persian Gulf country since the war began using using the country for offensive operations. This was revealed by accident in a propaganda video by by CENTCOM. And so, it's the the government of Bahrain said that that it has not participated in any offensive operations. We can see on the right of this image that I'm showing you. On the left, you can HIMARS launcher, the missile launcher, and on the right, you can see it launching. And so, we clearly know that this is being that this that Bahrain at least is being used for offensive operations. You can guess that that they're not alone in that since the United States and Israel began the war on Iran earlier this month, more than 100 missiles and 200 drones have been launched at Bahrain, mostly concentrated on the United States 5th Fleet, which is the naval command for CENTCOM and and one of its two crucial bases, three crucial bases in the region with Al Udeid in Kuwait in Qatar, and then the bases in Kuwait are also key. So, that is the Iran front. We are going to move now to Lebanon and take a look at operations in Lebanon. We can start with the map. More than 1 million displaced displaced persons already in Lebanon, approaching a thousand killed, 2,200 wounded, um, including 38, uh, health care and paramedic workers, 74 wounded among health care workers. Um, we saw that, uh, rocket barrage along the border wounded, uh, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich's son. Uh, that got a lot of attention, but the information is being held tightly by, uh, Israel on this front as usual. Um, but let's take a look at, um, uh, Naim Qassem, the chief of, uh, Hezbollah here, uh, releasing a video. Um, with his fighters in a tunnel. You're watching the fighters move through the tunnel and you're this is the speech from Sheikh Naim Qassem from a couple of days ago. He says, "Let it be clear, the battle we are waging is the battle of the resistance and the people of the resistance against the Israeli aggression on Lebanon. We have taken on as resistance the lessons and morals of the previous battle. The enemy's threats do not scare us and the enemy will see our strength. There is no such thing as defeat or surrender in our dictionary. We will remain in the field regardless of the sacrifices. We will not retreat. This is our country. We will not allow anyone to control its fate, its decisions, and how its people live." He said, "This is an existential battle. We have prepared ourselves for a long confrontation. The word now is for the field." So, the word now, uh, as Hezbollah likes to say, as Nasrallah used to say, um, watch the field now. Um, we're beyond words and this is showing Hezbollah's readiness for this battle that we will see over the coming minutes that have been um impressive uh rate of operations by Hezbollah that exceed any of the previous rounds of battle um after October 7th including the focus war um on Lebanon and Hezbollah at the end of 2024. So, their pace of operations is higher now. Hezbollah's carried out 426 operations as of yesterday and they go round the clock. When the day of their uh field reports ends, they loop back and they're already uh they're already on um the new day. There's no uh no letup in uh Hezbollah operations. Um, they've had a high of 51 uh operations in a day, a high of 47 and they're averaging 27 operations a day. The 2024 war, they average 22 operations. The IDF said 150 rockets a day uh are being fired. So, um Hezbollah has rejoined the war in full force uh and full capability, which is something that if you listen to Western uh defense analysts, you were told uh was impossible because they had been degraded. Not true. They are on the battlefield stronger than ever. Let's take a look at number 41. We have seen now the uh reintroduction of the Almas um anti-tank got top attack anti-tank guided missile system here. We're watching on We're on the missile for this view. The camera's on the end of the missile and we're seeing it uh hone in on the uh on the tank uh on the turret hatch of the tank. Uh a direct hit on that tank. We've We're seeing several tanks hit each day. Uh this is of course the clearest one and to remind viewers that the Almas is a um reverse-engineered system that was an Israeli Spike system that Hezbollah captured in the 2006 war, moved to Iran, they reverse-engineered it and made the Almas, and are now killing Israeli tanks with that weapon. Um the next one you can see as a Kornet anti-tank missile strike. Again, we're seeing at pretty significant distances. Um which is part of the geography of the area, but also puts lie to this idea that it Israel is invading. Um Israel's moving to forward positions that they had already established. What you saw there on screen was a massive berm with troops up on top of it. That was uh the Jabal Balat uh station. It's a forward base. And there you can see with the uh you can see the the Kornet strike again at significant distance, but a direct hit on what appears to be a tank uh on the edge of that base there. Um That's one of five forward bases that Israel has set up and and Hezbollah has been hammering those five bases that are set up. Um according to the Israelis, there's been more than 1,100 strikes so far in Lebanon. Um and Israel believes that there's a thousand Radwan uh special forces that are below the Litani River ready for that for the battle. The Israelis have three divisions right now spread across uh the Lebanon border. Um the 36th division is in the forward uh position on these bases. Um the 91st Galilee division is taking uh the eastern sector, and on the western sector is the reserve 146th division. Um so they are planning to battle what they think are a a thousand Radwan forces. Unclear how good their intelligence are on that. I would suspect not great. Um, let's take a look at 43. There's also daily rocket barrages as I said, 150 um rocket and missile attacks from Lebanon each day. Some days more. This operation you're seeing here was 200 rocket barrages. Um, and Hezbollah has um issued evacuation warnings to all residents of Kiryat Shmona are requested to evacuate immediately. All residents of the town of Nahariya are also requested to evacuate immediately and head south. That was eight days before. There has been multiple times in those eight days that they have been warned. And then this operation came uh eight days after that warning, 200 rocket barrage um, from their multiple launch rocket systems. And you can see um the fighters here launching those rockets. Um, Hezbollah has brought cameras along on these operations a little bit more than we were seeing in the last round. Um but you can see the launch of these rockets. We saw on the show last week the Iron Dome really struggling to handle these. One of the reasons for that is the early warning radars have been knocked out. Um, and so the early warning radars would give a more precise location to the weaker radars. And then those weaker radars can dial in on the small segment that they need to worry about. When the early warning radar is out, that doesn't exist anymore. And these radars are picking them up late. They're not picking them up on an accurate trajectory and therefore makes it more difficult to intercept. We're seeing that with the Iron Dome because it's down close to the ground and you can see them missing. Um it's a little harder to tell if that's happening with the missiles um that travel uh out of the atmosphere and return to the atmosphere, but um yeah, you can imagine that the loss of these high-value radars is having a significant impact uh on the radar um tracking system that the entire air defense array is underpinned on. Just to put a further point on that. So, this is a 200 rocket barrage, and we can see in the next slide what it looks like uh from the Israeli side, number 44. We took out the uh the audio track out of this one cuz the Israelis are just so shocked at what's happening that they're just making squealing noises that don't uh don't make for good radio and television, but as you can see um the Iron Dome is not intercepting uh these rockets that we're seeing during this barrage, um certainly not enough of them uh to to match the false uh exaggerated interception rate that the Israelis like to tell people um both to make their equipment look sophisticated, but also to uh so their population doesn't freak out. Um number 45, let's watch 45 because this is the launch uh of a of a Fattah 110 ballistic missile. um You can see Nasrallah there on the missile, it says essentially um praising God for supplying this. Uh who gave this to us? We could not have done this alone, and there you see the launcher. Blessings to you, to the master of time, the lord of time. Uh and on the launcher of this uh ballistic missile, again, this is headed for the IDF's home front command headquarters southeast of Tel Aviv. So, um an accurate missile with a heavy warhead, 300 to 500 kg warhead sent at a very strategic location with accuracy and from close distance, which makes it a lot more difficult to intercept um than um when they're fired from Iran and have a trajectory more established um for uh the air defense array. Uh the next one we see here 46 is a Fatah 6 versus Glilot. And again, high-value targets. And this video is interesting cuz you can watch the fighters out here at night. Uh in the audio track, you can hear the the fighter jets buzzing overhead. Um but they're out here in the dark setting up their missile launcher for the Fatah 6 barrage that's going to be targeting Mossad and Unit 8200 headquarters at Glilot. There's a lot of dark uh on this video, but it's because the fighters are setting up out in the open uh to launch this barrage uh and don't have lights on so that uh they're not spotted. Um the Fatah 6 is a 302 mm rocket uh 225 km range with a 150 kilo warhead. You can see that with the lights, the number of fighters they're going to truck launch um these uh heavier missiles. The Fatah 6 um has a guidance kit that was added to the 302 um and there's a number of Hezbollah additions that they have made onto these to put precision guided kits on previously unguided rockets um to effectively make them a missile and they're targeting uh much more effective. The fighter at the end here is saying that um that they are committed to the covenant, the covenant of Hezbollah. They are rooted in this land. We are defending its honorable people, he says before he launches. There you get a good look of the truck launcher and the size of the Fatah uh six. It's uh it's a large missile. Um that was part of this barrage. There's a whole uh series of Fatah missiles that have been improved. And these are some of the things that are left over from the last war because Israel told us that they had destroyed some uh untrue number percentage of Hezbollah's missile um and rocket capability. But those numbers uh coming into the war were believed to be in the tens and hundreds of thousands for each type of missile. They're 122 mm Grad rockets. They had 100,000 of them. Um so even if um some percentage of them were knocked out, they still have significant capabilities. And that's what Naim Qassem was talking about uh in that opening uh in his in his speech that we are ready for a long fight. We are prepared for it. Um we have shifted with the lessons learned from the previous battle and we're applying them uh on the ground in this battle. Um there you see the multiple launcher in the corner there. Um and you can see the truck mounted uh truck launched um system there. And there you see Nasrallah um his supplication saying, "God, you who when it matters most or when matters become most difficult, you open the door for us that even imagination could not reach." Um so they had Nasrallah and then Nasrallah signed that. So that was his uh message from the Quran for his fighters and they're using that uh at the base of the launcher. Again, something that we have seen with all of these resistance groups linking these to their fallen commanders um recognizing their history and respecting it uh >> in the battle uh today uh as we have for the last 3 years really. Let's look at number 47. Um this is a drone unit, and this is this one is rare. I'm trying to give you a cross-section of uh of Hezbollah videos. They released more than that this week, but these are a good cross-section. And this is something we don't see much from Hezbollah. This is a long single tracking shot um from the GoPro camera on the fighter's head um that gives you an idea of the battle space. Um you can see the guerrillas in the jungle here essentially. You're talking about the bush, the forest, um the hilly forests of South Lebanon. Um you can see the shelter it gives, and they're launching Hezbollah built uh Sayyad 107 drones here, a drone swarm targeting uh Israeli base Zibqin, which is an armor and weapons production base. Again, high-value targets hit with a drone swarm. This is from uh the 9th of March. The the video was released this week, and you can see them setting up each of these uh Sayyad 107 drones um hooking up their guidance systems, um launching them. They're rocket-assisted launch, um but also just the landscape. And that's why when Israel says it's invading Lebanon, you need to look at this surroundings. You need to see the bush, the trees, the mountains. What it means to invade um to truly invade and not just tell your people uh in a press release that you're going um to fight um because this is a very difficult battle space. And a video like this that we don't see very often. Part of the reason we don't see it is because of the expanse of this area. Um, it's not like Gaza where they could have okay, where they carry out the operations. They have video of it. They send a runner um, to get the video. Um, here you have fighters in positions spread out all across many, many miles of the south. Um, and the distance that they have between them and and the Israelis is also a significant distance, which is why you see those um, um, anti-tank guided missile strikes taking uh, so long to get there and how good a shot it is to get it to cover those multiple kilometers. Um, more than five in some cases. Uh, but that's why we don't get the same type of videos as we get uh, on the ground in Gaza and why we get videos uh, often a week or more later. Um, because of the spread-out nature of this battle. And you can see they're launching these um, from full shelter of the bush in South Lebanon. They're also on the high ground uh, in South Lebanon. And so you can see they're uh, here the fighter says it's time to it's time to move out. So they launched their dozen drones um, and the still the same single shot. It's a interesting shot there. Uh, let's look at number 48. Another rocket barrage. This is against uh, the an Israeli base um, in the upper Galilee. Um, and this is one of 98 operations that Hezbollah carried out in the 72 hours around this. Um, so they're carrying out a tempo as I said that's greater than we had seen in previous battles. Um, uh, and it's significant that they are getting us these videos over this large space. You can see them controlling their controller there. Um, and there you see them saluting their um, fallen leaders, Hisham Safieddine, Nasrallah. Uh, Safieddine was assassinated after Nasrallah and Naim Qassem, who is the uh, secretary general of Hezbollah today. So, all three of those on um, the launcher of this barrage. And again, as Hezbollah likes to do, they show you uh, settler camera footage of the strikes um, [snorts] uh, in Ain al-Zahab which is just north of Safed. Um, in 49, we have see a cruise missile. So, this is the first we have seen uh, in this round of the launch of a cruise missile. You can see the turbojet on the top there. We're seeing a picture of Nasrallah again um, in this shed. Um, and you're going to see um, written on the wall um, a verse from the Quran that says um, to prepare against them whatever force you can. Um, so again, uh, strong messaging, tight messaging um, as ever. Um, Fabian Hinz from the International Institute for Strategic Studies noted that on that Pava cruise missile, an Iranian cruise missile, um, that he noticed um, jamming resistance uh, CPRA antenna for satellite navigation um, on that. So, even more difficult to bring down. Um, and one final operation, uh, a rocket barrage versus Nahariya. Again, Nahariya is on the northernmost uh, west coast of Israel. Um, this is a swarm of Sayyad 107 drones built by Hezbollah and 122 mm Grad rockets um, targeting the uh, coastal city. Again, they were given evacuation warnings um, as uh, early as the 8th of March to evacuate those uh, communities that are right along the border that Israel is using as military bases from which to strike Lebanon. And so they matched Israel's evacuation warnings with warnings of their own. Again, so this is by the time you watch this video Hezbollah will be 500 operations deep. They're carrying out um in the in the 30s basically operations every single day and they said that this battle is existential and that they are prepared to be in the field for the entire battle as long as is necessary which maybe isn't quite the same language that we heard during the October 7th Lebanon front. So we'll have to keep our eyes peeled on that. That is the Lebanon front and this has been the resistance report for day of Israel's genocide in Gaza and day 20 of the US Israeli war with Iran.