Iran missiles batter US bases, with Jon Elmer

You are watching and listening to the Electronic Intifada. I am John Elmer. This is the resistance report on day 1,014 of Israel's genocide in Gaza and it's day 139 since um the US and Israel uh launched war on Iran. I will be I am reporting this on the afternoon of Thursday, July 16th. Of course, things are always moving quickly. We are going to start with the Strait of Hormuz here with the maps as always and just to point out that the Strait of Hormuz was entirely open on February 27th, the day before uh the US-Israeli uh surprise attack uh on Iran. Um and the Iranians have been clear that the only way it'll be open again is under Iranian control. So, what we're looking at here is actually a photograph from the International Space Station uh taken by an astronaut. You're looking on the left is the Gulf of Oman where there are basically no ships for the US blockade. There's 20 ships in total, but they're all further much further out uh a field not wanting to be targeted from the land of Iran, which you can see on the bottom of this photograph um the rocky cliffs and hillsides, the mountainous area along the coast is a key strategic military asset uh tactical asset as well. I broke that down on the show last week, so I won't do that again here today, but if you didn't catch it, you can always find those on the resistance report playlist on our uh Electronic Intifada YouTube channel. Um but the Iranians were clear this week on Saturday um they announced that the Strait of Hormuz will be closed until further notice until the end of US interventions. No vessels will be allowed to pass. The IRGC spokesman said the Strait of Hormuz will never be opened through US aggression. Respect uh for the rights of the Iranian people is the only way that the strait will open. Um so, they have been very clear on this. They were very clear on this before the war. They told us in January, if not earlier, that if there was a war, the war would be taken all across the region to the US bases, the security architecture in the Gulf, and in Jordan, and in Israel would all be targets. Uh and the Strait of Hormuz would be closed. And everyone seemed to think that that was not surprising. Apparently, in the White House, they didn't get that memo, and they seemed shocked that the Strait of Hormuz is closed, and they think they can take these half measures to open them. And Iran is just very clear that that is not going to be the case. If we look at this next map, you can see the territorial waters and the routes um that Iran um the Iranian route in the north um you can see it there. It's in the orange lines. That is the route that is safe and secured um until the US blockade. Um but that is the safe and secure way to exit. The Iranians were clear to say that they had gotten uh oil exports out of the Strait of Hormuz, which total 20% of the world's supply, 35% of its seaborne supply. Um they got it nearly back up to 50% of what it was before the war um on their own channel, and we're working to increase that number. Um the US launched attacks again this week, and they're closed, and shipments through the strait are virtually nil again, as they have been for a long time. We'll get to some graphs at the end that will show you what that looks like. Um but the US has been violating basically every provision of the memorandum of understanding. Um the management of the strait is the obvious one. The other obvious one is Lebanon. Israel continues its uh destruction under a ceasefire in Lebanon. That was point number one. But, the US also revoked the sanctions waiver. That was uh a violation of clause 10. There's been several hundred US airstrikes in Iran. They've been threatening Iranian officials with assassinations. Um those are also violations of 1, 2, and 13 clauses. Um still no movement on frozen funds. And of course, the the real one is uh the Strait of Hormuz. And then the next one is Lebanon. And both of those um fronts, the MOU was clear as day on what was supposed to happen in the Strait and in Lebanon. And there uh of course, the structural violation of that. So, that we have these terms like ceasefire that just does They don't mean anything. And we still here at Electronic Intifada have not come up for with a better word for it since uh for generations. We had a word for it that no longer applies anymore. Let's take a look at the next one. Another photograph um taken from uh an SLR camera from the International Space Station. So, there's no trickery here. This is just the um the same SLR camera you'd see uh on the street taking this photograph that shows the Persian Gulf where um the fight over the Strait of Hormuz is virtually existential to these countries. As is a wider war expanding to their countries which is going to happen if the US uh Trump said that next week he's going to bomb power plants um and take the country of Iran down. Um the first thing the Iranians are going to do is take down the power in these uh single uh point of failure countries like Bahrain uh that you see there on the map. On the map on the bottom left, we go Kuwait and then there's Saudi. Um and then Bahrain, [clears throat] Qatar uh is the big peninsula that you see there. Then the UAE and Oman uh up into the Strait of Hormuz that you can see in the top there. Um those countries, each of those that I just listed, they are all single point of failure um electrical grids, power grids, um even their oil and gas infrastructure, as we've seen, um is not resilient enough to handle this extended conflict. They've had to shut down many of their installations in these countries. And the Persian Gulf is a critical it's critical to the world economy. The World Bank said this is the largest oil shock ever disruption, oil shock disruption, ever recorded. Um and like I said before, 35% of seaborne crude oil goes through the Strait of Hormuz, 20% of the world's supply of oil in total, and a little bit more than that of the supply of liquid natural gas. Not to mention the fertilizers, the precursors, the petrochemical products, um all massive disruptions that were told at the beginning of the war that would only last for a week or two. And even those uh predictions of a week or two had oil markets uh in flux because um it takes a long time to recover from this. The basic sort of shipping understanding is that for every day of blockage, it takes at least a week to recover from that. Um and so, you know, we're into now day what, 130-odd. Um so, you're talking multi-year recovery in store here. Um and that's if things go well, and there's not a way to just uh re uh to put the oil back into the market, okay? There has to be ships to take it. The ships are all in the wrong ports. They're not in the places they're supposed to be. The pipelines that ship it uh are only so big. You can't pump uh you can't increase the level uh of flow, the flow rate. Um you can't increase that. So, there's limitations that are beyond um, simply the blockage of the strait. Once that is completely open, you still have more than a year of crisis. And as we know in in Qatar, um, there're going to be several years before their uh liquid natural gas um systems are up and running. Uh same with Iraq and Kuwait, they were at zero um barrels exported. Um, so they've been virtually shut down. It takes weeks, months to get back up uh on that as well. So, Trump is really flirting with uh global economic crisis that he said just a few weeks ago um, that he didn't want to be a part of being the president that led the world into that um as he stands on the precipice of doing that. Let's look at the next map that will show you what we're looking at here um, with the countries a little bit better marked. There you see Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, and the Strait of Hormuz. You also see the depth of the water. Um, the Strait of Hormuz is a tiny channel through which uh this travel goes, and that's why the US isn't traveling through it. You can see if you look at the Strait of Hormuz directly and then look up into the left, um, that's the Zagros Mountains. That has overwatch over the entire Gulf. So, um, Iran is in a really strong position here. Uh the US and Israel put them in this position, and Iran is never going to go back to how it was before. They said that uh numerous times that they're not the Strait of Hormuz is not going back to the way it was before the surprise war uh on Iran. Um, and so, we have another week uh uh of conflict here where the US uh attempts to have solutions. Let's look at number five cuz this is their solution. Uh they're just going to blockade uh the Iranian ports. Uh so, this was CENTCOM a couple days ago announcing their blockade along the Iranian coast. But, what are they going to use to block? Are they putting ships? Are they escorting ships? Are they blocking those ships from exiting with their vessels? No, they are air air power only. There's no escort. It relies entirely on air escort, which is a minor up upgrade from the previous time the US block blockaded Iran a few weeks, I guess maybe months, weeks, months ago. Um when they uh they said that what they were going to do to help ships go through the Strait of Hormuz was set up a hotline. So, the ships could call a hotline and then cross their fingers that they make it through the strait. So, this is the American solution for this. Um and again, there's uh signals of a hotline in this one, too, at the end of uh CENTCOM >> [snorts] >> uh that the CENTCOM statement that went along with this announcing of the blockade. They said, "All mariners are advised to monitor notice to mariners broadcast and contact the US naval forces on bridge-to-bridge channel 16 when operating in the Gulf of Oman and Strait of Hormuz approaches." Um so, you can radio them on the same channel that the Iranians are going to tell you you cannot cross. Uh and they will tell you that and they have told uh ships that this week alone, as we will see in this next slide. Um you can see the uh UKMTO Maritime Transportation Organization. This is a an arm of the UK Navy um that is carrying that is doing this monitoring. And you can see again on this one, if you look where the spot with the red circle is, it's in the Omani channel. Iran targeted the tankers in the uh in the uh Oman channel, which is not the channel that is managed by Iran. And the IRGC Navy said on Saturday in previous statement, we had said the previous statement that I had just read. Um they said we had said that foreign interference and illegal routing of ships in the Strait of Hormuz would result in a decisive response and disrupt the increasing flow of traffic in the Strait. Hours ago, these warnings were ignored and several ships incited by foreigners attempted to deviate from the approved route and disregarded our warnings on channel 16. Uh, it doesn't say that. I'm adding that. Correct the course and navigate within the designated channel. Consequently, one ship which had turned off its systems, uh, its AIS systems and endangered maritime security was fired on with a warning shot and brought to a halt. Iran is clear. They are going to fire on ships that take this route, uh, this Omani route, which by the way is, again, virtually nil. Um, the most traffic that was happening when it was getting up to 50% that was entirely, virtually entirely through, uh, the Iranian channel. And so, because of that, the United States has attacked Iran, uh, every night for the last, uh, week or so. Um, and and every single time the US strikes, Iran strikes back because they are not willing to accept, uh, the US dictating terms during a ceasefire um, that they cannot achieve during a war. So, let's look at number seven. We have missile launches. Again, there's not a ton to see on these ones, but this was a an Emad that says game over, USA. They painted on the that. You can see the launch, um, of this medium-range ballistic missile. The Emad is, um, an 1,800 km range. So, these are the ones they're firing at Jordan, um, with a 750 kg warhead, which is uh, comparable size to the Mark 84 bombs, the US and Israeli bombs that are dropped on, uh, Gaza and, uh, Lebanon and, um, um less in Iran because they've been scared to fly over uh Iran because of their air defenses. They've been using mostly standoff fire still. Um but in any case, a warhead that is considerable um on on that weapon. And this uh this series of uh uh launches showed Ghader's, Emad's, Kheibar Shekan's, Fattah 110. So, we're seeing uh a broad use of uh missiles again that we were told were down to, you know, whatever dumb numbers they said, 12%, 20%. They have no idea how many missiles Iran has, nor whether their attacks on Iran did anything to these missile uh capabilities. Let's look at 7 uh B here. Again, this is just from yesterday. This is waves three through seven of the uh Iranian response targeting um aerial defense arrays and logistics hubs in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan along with airbases that are being targeted. Uh Sheikh Isa uh airbase in Bahrain, Ali Al Salem airbase in Kuwait, the KGL logistics center in Kuwait as well was struck. Um so, that these are all targets that are consistent. These bases are US bases that are getting battered. Um and these are all solid fuel uh launches that we're seeing here. And the solid fuel launch is um it's it's a lot it's a lot better. You don't have to go out with your men into the field and fill up the uh the liquid missile um and be out in the field at risk. Um the solid fuel is instant ready to fire. It can be stored underground, unlike uh liquid fuel which corrodes the uh the solid fuel can be underground. So, say when uh the US or Israel bombs a missile silo and closes the missile silo, it doesn't do anything to the missiles inside because the solid fuel can last for years underground. They don't need any uh care. And so, as soon as the war was over, Iran dug out the missile silo silos and began launching instantly again uh missile capabilities that they have and that they will always have. This war, the US and Israel will run out of interceptors long before Iran runs out of missiles. Let's take a look at number eight because it's not just the IRGC, it's also Artash, the army, the Iranian armed forces. Here they are launching Arash two long-range drones at Muwaffaq al-Salti airbase in Jordan. >> This is one of the main uh main hubs for the US in Muwaffaq al-Salti. And they wrote uh to the uh Jordanian people and said that um that these bases on the first days of the attack, Muwaffaq al-Salti was used by the arrogant American regime to target uh and brutally murder 168 schoolchildren and teachers in Manab. And then the IRGC says to uh says to Jordan, "Your serious demand of dismantling American occupation bases in the region would be a great help in saving the people of Palestine and restoring security to the region. We wish you every success, Jordan." And they said the same thing to Kuwait, making it clear that the targeting is happening in these countries because of the hosting of US airbases that are carrying out the aggression on Iran um in an attempt to destroy the country as Trump has repeatedly said. Um so, you can see those drone launches by the army there. Number nine, we can look at a little bit of the uh battle damage assessments. And again, this is from Mench Osan. She does great uh Osan he does great work here. And this is uh funny to be shown just because of how low resolution it is because of the blanket ban indefinite commercial blackout requested by the United States government to prevent adversaries from gaining tactical intelligence. In other words, showing that these bases are getting hammered like we saw in the first weeks of the beginning of the war um on this program. Again, you can go back and find those where we went through all the satellite imagery of all of the destroyed uh assets uh and here is Menk Osint uh doing his best with low-resolution imagery because um all of these satellite companies adhered to the US uh order despite the US government issued a formal request for provide for formal request for providers to voluntarily implement an indefinite withhold of imagery. And they all volunteered. And uh it's to mask the damage on these bases that are being battered and destroyed, some of them almost entirely as we know from previous reporting when the satellites did work. Um and that is what's ongoing today. These are accurate strikes on these bases. They're not uh shots in the dark. We're clearly hitting uh what they're intending to hit. Let's look at number 10 cuz this is a a wave of drone and missile attacks again versus Jordan uh and Gulf bases that you can see uh being launched here. A lot of long-range drones that are the Arash 2s. They're virtually cruise missile type uh drones, highly effective. There's the Shahed 101s that are also highly effective and used often. I think there's probably one Shahed 136s in these, but you can't quite see. Um these all look to be 101s. That might have been a 136 there. But the fact is they have thousands if not tens of thousands of these drones. They can hit everywhere in the Gulf cuz it's like literally just across the water. As you saw from those maps off the top, it's very easy to hit them not just from the coastline, but from inside the country. Um and that is what is going on here and has been. This is There has been 10 waves uh by the Iranians. And again, I explained this last uh last time the war was on, but the wave does not mean it's not equal to a salvo. If they fire these missiles it it in, you know, one after another, um it doesn't count as one wave. One wave is the whole series covering several hours from multiple different places firing. So, a wave is a lot more than a salvo, and they're at 10 waves uh from the IRGC of missiles and drones. And the Artash, the army, the armed forces of Iran are all are also at 10 waves of drone strikes that they have carried out. Um let's take a look at what it looks like in the countries that are being targeted. This is what it looks like uh facing forward towards incoming missiles in Bahrain. There's going audio in this clip, and then it's going to loop um one time with no audio. So, it's it's a single clip that is looped. So, let's let's go to that now. And so, each of those pops, those are PAC-3 Patriot missile interceptors. $4 million a hit. They're firing multiple of them at each drone and missile because they can't uh count on the quality of the intercept. So, what you're looking at there is just like tens of millions of dollars going up in a I think that video is 11 seconds. An 11-second video. Um that's just not sustainable. It's not sustainable for the United States. It it's not sustainable for these Gulf countries. Although, I did pick this up from uh Channel 13 in Israel, where the commander of Israel's missile defense array, he said, "Don't worry, we have sufficient stockpile of interceptor missiles and we are prepared for every scenario." So, Israel just smirks and says, "Yeah, we saved all our interceptors because the US came and used all of theirs uh to save us again." You know, the gives them allowance and fights its battles for them uh and gives them all of its resources to carry out this genocide that if the United States did not do that, would not be continuing. Let's look at number 12 because you can see the damage on the base here, and this is by Soar Atlas that has in a way this new uh Atlas 3D Atlas company that just came out a few weeks ago um has been able to kind of circumvent the um the low-resolution imagery by layering these maps as 3D maps, and so we see here the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain. This is the US Navy Central Command hub uh in Bahrain being targeted, and you can see the indication of where the strikes were, which we'll see on the next slide. Um you can see the way that they have done this to show the damage, but look at the resolution. So, they're getting the lowest possible resolution, like 100 km resolution. Um [snorts] like look at that. That is That is essentially censorship. That's what it looks like on a document when you get a Freedom of Information Act request and it's redacted. They're redacting the military bases in effect here by giving low-resolution uh satellite imagery and banning all quality satellite imagery, but using these layered maps that Soar's doing here um is actually a workaround that's pretty uh interesting development that has just come out in the last little while. So, uh check out Soar Atlas. They've been on top of this. And so, what that's the blur there that you would see, that's the satellite image, but because they're layering it, the blur can show that you have low resolution, but you can show it up on this crystal-clear map that is logged in the same file in the same map, in the same atlas. Um so, it's really remarkable technology that is circumventing the uh blackout. Let's look at the next slide. It's even Those are Qiam 1 and Fateh 110 and Fateh 313 solid fuel missiles that you see launched there. Sorry for the no warning there. It's an audio file. I should have told you that the missiles were coming. Um number 15 will show the damage at Al Udeid. Again, SOAR doing this. This is Al Udeid showed up from July 12th. Um but only yesterday, if we look at the next slide, um this came out a couple days after that, >> um that they show this uh hangar being blown out. And you can see that where it struck. And then, if you look on the right, you can see a truck parked there. And then, the blowout panels um from the strike that blew out the whole front of the hangar. Um and if we look at the next one, SOAR has done this again with a with a very elegant map layering here. So, you can see this base. Um Al Udeid is the most important uh base for the US in the region. And it was severely damaged during the first round of this war, though the US covered it up. Um the main combined air operations center at Al Udeid airbase was hit multiple times and rendered inoperable during the war. That's a pretty big story that was uh erased from history by the US uh in their cover-up of this war that has been pretty outrageous and I've said it before like we've covered I covered military lies for my whole life and these ones are particularly egregious that CENTCOM is engaged in here. Um is there one more sore? Is there 16 B? Yeah, well, more missiles. This is Artesh. This is the army again firing cruise missiles at the Gulf and Kuwait again and also cruise missiles being fired at hostile US enemy vessels. Um and the public relations of the Iranian army said in response to repeated attacks of malice and aggression by the United States against our country the army of the Islamic Republic of Iran a few hours ago targeted communication systems, fuel depots, Patriot air defense batteries, observation towers, and ammunition depots belonging to the US terrorist army in Kuwait with its attack drones. Furthermore, the navy of the army of the Islamic Republic of Iran in response to missile attacks on some of its military centers targeted US enemy vessels with anti-ship cruise missiles. Again, vessels that are hiding not in the strait, they don't want to be anywhere near the strait and are being fired on regularly. Trump kind of spouted off in one of his um uh the ways that he did. He said that one of their ships was fired on 110 times um a week and a half ago. So, whether he's just making that up whole cloth or mixing up statistics or not, um he wanted people to know that their ships are being fired at constantly. Um let's take a look at number 18 cuz again Mensch OSINT has done a great job. I appreciate his work and you should all follow it. It is open-source work not done by uh uh enemy army allied genocidal army aligned people which a lot of the OSINT is. But here you can see all of the targets. 17 bases the Iranians said have been targeted. Prince Sultan Air Base in Jordan, Muwaffaq al-Salti in Jordan, multiple sites in in Kuwait, Camp Boring is a massive logistics hub base, Ali al-Salem Air Base in Kuwait, the Al Jaber Air Base in Kuwait, Kuwaiti Navy ship, the Fifth Fleet is the center as I said of the Navy operations in Central Command. So all of the Navy ships in the area. And Al Udeid Air Base is the most important. And before the war, the largest US base. But of course, the US evacuated all of their most of their soldiers and put them into civilian hotels behind human shields. Something we also covered in the early part of the the war with Iran. Let's take a look at 19 cuz this is the ultimate This is the ultimate hold. This is from Bloomberg's Bloomberg's terminal tracking uh Strait of Hormuz. And you can basically you don't even need to see the X and Y axes here. You can figure out the day that the war started with a surprise attack, a really uh duplicitous um uh attack, surprise attack, sneak attack during negotiations. The Strait of Hormuz closed. And it basically those little bubbles those little spikes along the way are when the Iranian channel was operative. And then you see right towards the end of June, they're getting it back up as they said to 50%. I mean, I think that was a bit of a generous it wasn't up to 50%, but they were moving in the right direction, clearly. And then you see the month ends and the and Trump starts the war back up again, presumably in large measure because of Israel, who's been working behind the scenes to tank this agreement the whole time and spark a war, but look, you can see how big that hole is in the global economy for fuel. This is what the World Bank called the largest fuel disruption ever ever. So, that has to be replaced. And each day that it goes on, it adds more time for how long it can be replaced. So, just because the you know, the Trump chasing the stock market and the oil price every day, that's not particularly relevant to the longer view of this of how long can the how long can the resiliency in the market hold this together because oil oil traders believe that this could not go this long. They believed that this was a few weeks and it would be utter catastrophe. There's been some games played behind the scenes. The UAE did a currency swap with the US to save them from going broke. You know, there's other ways that the US has ratcheted up its production to try to fill in some of the gaps. People using strategic oil reserves that Trump said only had four more weeks and we've just added a week and a half to that from the closure. So, there's ways that are kind of right now temporarily mitigating the harm, but this isn't going away and it cannot be fixed in a day, in a week, in a month, or even in a year. So, they're playing with the global economy risk global recession. And they're doing it for basically so that they can continue a genocide in Gaza, in Lebanon. And this is this is where we're at for the resistance report on day 1,014 of the genocide in Gaza. And again, I am Thursday, July the 16th.