Trump targeted by four FBI code-named counterintel probes that ensnared hundreds of Americans - John Solomon and Jerry Dunleavy

 

by John Solomon and Jerry Dunleavy

Abuse of Power? Director Kash Patel is building a criminal case in one operation, and planning the declassification of two others so Congress can be informed of abuses by previous administrations targeting Trump and hundreds of supporters with lawfare.

 

President Donald Trump and his supporters were targeted by four consecutive FBI code-named counterintelligence investigations over the last decade that secretly subjected hundreds of innocent Americans to privacy-invading tactics and essentially treated the man twice elected president as a national security threat for most of the first nine years of his political career, according to interviews and documents reviewed by Just the News.

FBI Director Kash Patel has personally led the effort to review the operations code-named Crossfire Hurricane, Round River, Plasmic Echo and Arctic Frost that stretched from summer 2016 to January 2025, uncovering evidence of a far-reaching dragnet that in some cases may have been predicated on false, misleading or uncorroborated justifications, officials said.

Many of the investigative files were hidden from view, even from most FBI agents, because they were marked "prohibited access" and controlled carefully by FBI leadership.

Patel's search has been aided by whistleblowers inside his agency, a handful of senior bureau executives close to the director and some members of Congress, particularly Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.

FBI's work hijacked by politics, invading citizens' privacy

Those who have seen the records told Just the News they chronicle how the FBI's expanded counterterrorism and counterintelligence missions after the Sept, 11, 2001, terrorist attacks eventually became hijacked by politics and led agents to deploy tools meant for terrorists and spies against everyday Americans in a bid to find a way to bring criminal cases against Trump.

One whistleblower this month told the FBI that surveillance and monitoring of Trump figures continued right up to the president’s January 2025 inauguration, according to multiple interviews.

Few inside Trump’s orbit were spared from targeting by their stature: a dozen members of Congress and their staffers, his future chief of staff Susie Wiles, journalists, campaign advisers, defense lawyers, and even Patel himself had their privacy pierced by warrants, wiretaps, FISA surveillance, phone record analysis, FBI assessments, or grand juries.

Many targets and subjects fell under the bureau’s definition of special circumstances targets because they have recognized constitutionally protected privileges – like lawyers, members of Congress, journalists, and political figures.

Even a political consultant turned documentary filmmaker who investigated Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings before joining Trump’s 2024 campaign was recently notified he was targeted in a criminal investigation that only recently was shut down, according to letters between Congress and the FBI reviewed by Just the News.

Michael Caputo had his emails and communications seized in 2023 by a “classified subpoena” issued about two weeks after he joined the Trump campaign and the email account the bureau penetrated “contained correspondence on The Trump Campaign’s private strategies and deliberations,” the correspondence stated.

Patel’s FBI has informed Congress that probe has been shut down. But the question of how so many Americans were targeted remains open.

At least 1,200 people that fall into the categories of special circumstances targets or subject were investigated under assessments by the FBI between 2018 and 2024 during Wray’s tenure, an explosive recent audit report to Congress revealed.

You can read that report here.

Gao_Report_Fbi_Assessments.pdf

Dhillon: "Criminal charges are indeed possible"

“There is growing evidence that may support a case that the FBI engaged between 2016 and 2025 in a conspiracy to violate the civil rights of Trump and his supporters under the color of government power,” a senior official with direct knowledge of the FBI’s current reviews told Just the News.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon recently told Just the News that criminal charges are indeed possible if federal officials intentionally violated civil liberties in politically weaponized investigations.

"The Department of Justice is at the heart of considering these issues right now, so I can't really talk about the specifics, but in general terms, yes, the Civil Rights Division and the DOJ generally does have the tool of a criminal conspiracy statute for conspiracy against rights," she said. "And this dates back to the start of the Ku Klux Klan."

"I would say all of those things are on the table for lawyers and DOJ officials and others who conspired with them at the state level, state prosecutors, state police and so forth, who conspired to violate civil rights, and it could also include executive branch officials from the first administration who knowingly conspired and orchestrated a violation of federal civil rights," she added

Just the News has confirmed that federal prosecutors lin Miami, led by U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones, are investigating the weaponization of intelligence and law enforcement against Trump and his allies as they build a potential grand conspiracy case spanning 2016, 2020, and 2024.

Evidence in the first and last of the counterintelligence operations is well known and mostly released: Crossfire Hurricane, which probed now-disproven Russia collusion allegations, and Arctic Frost, which looked at Trump’s effort to offer the Senate alternate electors ahead of the 2020 election certification on Jan. 6, 2021.

Documents declassified last year show, among other things, that the Obama administration and its intelligence officials misled Congress and others when claiming that the discredited anti-Trump Steele Dossier was not used in the 2017 U.S. intelligence community assessment on Russian meddling.

The Arctic Frost probe alone targeted nearly 400 conservative groups and individuals associated with Trump, according to evidence recently released by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

But officials said the two middle operations – which are just beginning to be declassified so Congress can be fully read in – may produce some of the most troubling abuses uncovered by Patel and his team and are the focus of ongoing criminal investigations into former FBI and DOJ personnel.

For instance, the Plasmic Echo investigation that explored whether Trump illegally took classified documents to his Mar-a-Lago home after his first term has already turned up evidence that FBI agents believed did not meet the legal standard for a search warrant. But agents raided the president’s home anyway in August 2022 after being overruled by DOJ, according to a bombshell revelation recently from Patel.

“[We] continue to pass versions back and forth after our pause and concern about [probable cause] for any of the locations outlined…” an agent wrote to the team. “What is the guidance for continuing to work on this document without any new information?”

Biden directly linked to lawfare against Trump

The Biden White House was also directly linked to the classified documents investigation into Trump, despite its denials, records show. Then-Attorney General Merrick Garland said he “personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant” for the FBI’s unprecedented raid of Mar-a-Lago.

Patel and a small team of inner circle agents also have found proof that the bureau, under former Director Chris Wray, obtained Patel’s own phone records, as well as those of Wiles, after Trump announced he was running in the 2024 presidential election and wiretapped a call between the future White House chief of staff on the pretense that her defense lawyer consented. Wiles’ lawyer has issued a statement adamantly denying he ever consented to such monitoring, raising the possibility false representations were made to a court for phone monitoring and the now infamous raid on Mar-a-Lago.

"If I ever pulled a stunt like that, I wouldn’t – and shouldn’t – have a license to practice law," the unidentified lawyer told Axios. "I’m as shocked as Susie." 

Sources told Just the News that the FBI has an intensive criminal probe ongoing and the first decisions on whether indictments are warranted could be made in a few weeks.

Punishment for asking about Biden family's Ukraine exploits

Meanwhile, the Round River investigation may prove the most troubling of all the counterintelligence probes targeting the Trump universe, though at present it remains mostly classified.

Agents only recently discovered the opening memo and files for the probe, which was started in the bureau’s Pittsburgh field office by targeting Trump lawyer and former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani for his efforts to investigate Hunter Biden’s and Joe Biden’s exploits in Ukraine, but it then expanded to look at numerous public figures who spoke out about Biden family corruption concerns.

Early whistleblower evidence from that case has raised grave concerns inside Congress about potential civil liberty violations, specifically that people in that investigation may have been targeted solely by virtue of their speech. Lawmakers fear the standards for who was targeted were simply talking points deemed by FBI counterintelligence to be "Russian disinformation."

In other words, reporters, lawmakers, moviemakers and lawyers who made certain allegations or raised questions about the Bidens’ dealings in Ukraine may have been assessed to be national security threats aligned with Russia worthy of investigation and treated as purveyors of disinformation interfering in elections, sources said.

Sen. Grassley's staff has played a critical role in helping the FBI search for records, passing along information from agency whistleblowers who sought protection from Congress during the Biden years long before Patel took over. One of Grassley's letters in 2022 appears to refer to the Round River operation, without naming it, and raised serious concerns about its constitutionality.

Grassley: "FBI’s false portrayal of acquired evidence as disinformation"

"The information provided to my office involves concerns about the FBI’s receipt and use of derogatory information relating to Hunter Biden, and the FBI’s false portrayal of acquired evidence as disinformation," the senator wrote. "The volume and consistency of these allegations substantiate their credibility and necessitate this letter.

He added: "Based on allegations, verified and verifiable derogatory information on Hunter Biden was falsely labeled as disinformation."

The files also show the bureau may have targeted the Pittsburgh office as the launching point to impede an effort by then-Attorney General Bill Barr to ask his federal prosecution team in the same city to investigate why an FBI informant report alleging Biden family corruption was not fully investigated when it first came in.

Grassley and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., previously told Patel that, in August 2020, “we were provided an unnecessary briefing by the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force that was designed to undermine our investigation into the Biden family.”

Most of the files on Round River, Plasmic Echo, and Arctic Frost were buried from Patel’s view when he arrived in what were known as prohibited access files, a tactic used during the Wray-era of the FBI to shield from view politically sensitive cases inside the bureau’s case management system known as Sentinel.

That left only certain officials aware of their existence, often in hidden files in secure storage areas known as sensitive compartmented information facilities, or SCIFs.

Patel has assigned a small team of agents to hunt for the files and uncover abuses, and he has been assisted greatly by a handful of senior executives who can navigate and find well hidden evidence in the bureau's storage system.

Another complicating factor is that the bureau just lost the man who produced much of the most explosive evidence to Congress over the last 14 months, Congressional Affairs Office Chief Marshall Yates, who was widely popular on Capitol Hill for achieving a level of transparency after years of stonewalled congressional requests, announced he was stepping down.

Deputy Director Andrew Bailey has been taking the lead in organizing the approach going forward, but he ruffled feathers internally and in Congress with comments some took to suggest he was going to slow the amount of damaging information being sent to Congress to thwart demands to fire agents who were involved in abusive investigations.

Bailey allayed those concerns with a memo Friday stating that production of evidence to Congress and to DOJ investigations was “imperative,” according to officials who received or saw the memo. 

John Solomon and Jerry Dunleavy

Source: https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/trump-targeted-four-consecutive-fbi-counterintel-probes-ensnaring

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UN and EU Condemn the Strike, Not the Regime: Double Standards, Selective Outrage - Pierre Rehov

 

by Pierre Rehov

The only goal, apparently, was "stability" -- no matter how morally flatulent -- but evidently preferable to actually having to do anything apart from lecturing everyone.

 

• United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres issued a statement... with the formulation that has become the UN's signature posture in moments of crisis: "The use of force by the United States and Israel against Iran, and the subsequent retaliation by Iran across the region, undermine international peace and security."

• The UN Security Council convened an emergency session. Russia and China denounced the operation as a violation of Iranian sovereignty. Several European governments echoed concerns about precedent and pressed for an immediate cessation of hostilities and a return to talk, talk, talk.

• France, Germany and the United Kingdom... quickly moved to place distance between themselves and the military operation... "We call for a resumption of negotiations and urge the Iranian leadership to seek a negotiated solution."

• These reactions -- never spontaneous improvisations -- reflect a dismissive European posture that has been consistent for years: a preference for managed "containment" over the inconvenience of actually having to address a problem head-on, and for diplomatic processes over taking decisive outcomes.

• The only goal, apparently, was "stability" -- no matter how morally flatulent -- but evidently preferable to actually having to do anything apart from lecturing everyone.

• The UN Human Rights Council has devoted more agenda items to maligning Israeli policies than to the far worse abuses in authoritarian states. Usually, in crises from Syria's civil war to Iran's crackdowns on dissidents, UN language is diluted through negotiated compromise and voting-bloc discipline.

• Abroad, terrorism has been used as a tool of coercion -- too often with the affected nations permitting success.

• Domestic political considerations — including the management of migration flows and relations with Arab states — have further complicated open endorsement of decisive military action.

• These moral gymnastics are not unprecedented. During the Cold War, debates at the UN reflected blocs more than principles. Authoritarian regimes benefited from solidarities rooted in ideology, transactional alliances, or sheer voting arithmetic.

• Coalitions within the UN General Assembly, including states with limited or no democratic credentials, shape the tone and content of resolutions. Within that environment, Israel has long been a focal target of attack, a convenient proxy through which regimes and blocs rehearse moral posturing while deflecting attention from the abuses they inflict at home.

• European diplomacy has often equated stability with the absence of open war, even if that equilibrium rests on coercion, intimidation, and the slow metastasis of threat.

• For those invested in negotiated containment, the US-Israeli response appears destabilizing. For others, it represents the removal of a huge source of instability — the elimination of a regime whose worldview treats conflict not as a failure of policy but as the essence of policy. The divergence reflects differing premises about how order should be maintained and what price is acceptable for maintaining it.

• Whether Europe and the UN will reinterpret this moment as a correction of what needs to be done to a destabilizing presence, or whether they persist in framing malignancy primarily as a procedural violation, remains uncertain. What is already visible is that the reflex of "caution" — so immediate, so uniform, so instinctive — has exposed the enduring tension between legal niceties and the urgent need to act.

The UN faces renewed scrutiny over the consistency of its posture toward authoritarian regimes versus democratic states. The decapitation of Iran's theocratic leadership is not merely a regional episode; it is a stress test for multilateral institutions that have often confused procedural language with strategic seriousness. Pictured: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres hosts Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian at the UN General Assembly on September 25, 2025, in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Over the course of 48 hours, the strategic architecture of the Middle East shifted with a speed few could have anticipated. A coordinated Israeli-American operation, prepared in secrecy and executed with surgical exactitude, began by striking key command nodes of the Islamic Republic of Iran, including senior leadership figures, nuclear enrichment infrastructure and long-range missile facilities — and culminated in eliminating Iran's Supreme Guide Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The operation was framed as a decisive effort to end a system whose doctrine rests on the permanent destabilization of its neighbors and nearly half a century of arresting, torturing and murdering tens of thousands of its own citizens. Tehran's response has followed in waves. Ballistic missiles and drones have been launched not only at Israel, but at regional states hosting American assets — including the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain — confirming that the confrontation was never confined to a bilateral dispute.

Iranian officials and military commanders had warned that American bases across the region would be treated as military targets, language that broadened the theater from a localized clash to a confrontation with the Western security presence as such.

Against this backdrop, the reactions from European capitals and from the United Nations were swift — and revealing. Within hours, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, issued a statement whose opening line set the tone: "I condemn today's military escalation in the Middle East." He continued with the formulation that has become the UN's signature posture in moments of crisis:

"The use of force by the United States and Israel against Iran, and the subsequent retaliation by Iran across the region, undermine international peace and security." The statement concluded with the point that allows the organization to appear principled while remaining inert: "All Member States must respect their obligations under international law, including the Charter of the United Nations."

The language was calibrated, procedural, formulaic. What it avoided was any sustained engagement with the ideological zealotry of the regime, or with the decades of destabilizing conduct that had preceded the strikes. The UN Security Council convened an emergency session. Russia and China denounced the operation as a violation of Iranian sovereignty. Several European governments echoed concerns about precedent and pressed for an immediate cessation of hostilities and a return to talk, talk, talk.

France, Germany and the United Kingdom, while condemning Tehran's attacks on neighboring states, quickly moved to place distance between themselves and the military operation. Their joint statement used a phrase that expresses Europe's enduring instinct: "We call for a resumption of negotiations and urge the Iranian leadership to seek a negotiated solution."

French President Emmanuel Macron, speaking publicly and on social media, intoned:

"The current escalation is dangerous for everyone. It must stop... The Iranian regime must understand that it now has no other option but to engage in good-faith negotiations to end its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, as well as its actions to destabilize the region."

The British and German positions followed the same patronizing platitudes: insistence that they were not participants in the strike, condemnation of Iran's retaliatory salvos across the Gulf, and an immediate pivot back to negotiation as the legitimizing grammar of European diplomacy. On X, the cadence was consistent across ministers and ministries: defense of "international law," fear of regional spillover, and repeated emphasis on safeguarding civilians and maritime corridors.

These reactions -- never spontaneous improvisations -- reflect a dismissive European posture that has been consistent for years: a preference for managed "containment" over the inconvenience of actually having to address a problem head-on, and for diplomatic processes over taking decisive outcomes. The European Union's institutional voice crystallized in the official statement by its foreign policy representative, Kaja Kallas, which should be read as an explicit, doctrinal template:

"We call for maximum restraint, protection of civilians and full respect of international law, including the principles of the United Nations Charter, and international humanitarian law."

The statement then shifted to regional blame allocation -- in unusually direct language for Brussels: "Iran's attacks and violation of sovereignty of a number of countries in the region are inexcusable. Iran must refrain from indiscriminate military strikes." The same document then reaffirmed the EU's deepest instinct — to privilege "diplomacy" as the preferred policy:

"The European Union will continue to contribute to all diplomatic efforts to reduce tensions and to bring about a lasting solution to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon."

Even as Iranian missiles and drones targeted states hosting NATO forces, European institutions stressed concerns about the disruption of energy markets and the safety of maritime routes — and warned that "the disruption of critical waterways, like the Strait of Hormuz, must be avoided." The only goal, apparently, was "stability" -- no matter how morally flatulent -- but evidently preferable to actually having to do anything apart from lecturing everyone.

The UN's institutional reflex seems to follow an established pattern. For decades, UN General Assembly resolutions have disproportionately targeted Israel, often in numbers that dwarf condemnations of far more venomous regimes. The UN Human Rights Council has devoted more agenda items to maligning Israeli policies than to the far worse abuses in authoritarian states. Usually, in crises from Syria's civil war to Iran's crackdowns on dissidents, UN language is diluted through negotiated compromise and voting-bloc discipline. The present crisis unfolded within that same architecture: the immediate emphasis from UN podiums was to advocate containing escalation and restoring "international peace and security," even when the subject at hand was the need to dismantle a regime that defined itself through perpetual confrontation with the West.

The Islamic Republic of Iran's record is neither ambiguous nor marginal. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, its leadership has articulated a venomous ideological hostility toward Western liberalism and democracy by portraying them as decadent and spiritually corrosive — not merely as competitors, but as enemies of the revolutionary project. Under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, this worldview hardened into a state doctrine: "exporting the revolution," sacralizing "resistance," and normalizing proxy warfare.

Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Bashar Assad regime in Syria, militias in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen have not been peripheral instruments but pillars of a regional strategy designed to encircle Israel, bleed American influence, and fracture sovereign states through permanent low-intensity conflict.

At home, repressing women, persecuting minorities, and crushing dissent are not episodic excesses; they are mechanisms of regime survival. Abroad, terrorism has been used as a tool of coercion -- too often with the affected nations permitting success. Iran's nuclear weapons program advanced under the cover of perpetual negotiations, while its ballistic missile development and production proceeded in parallel. The regime's hostility was embedded in doctrine.

Yet European statements rarely invoke Iran's record with any moral clarity. Instead, they emphasize fears of precedent — the risk that regime change through force might normalize unilateral intervention. The concern is not trivial, but it becomes analytically incomplete when divorced from context. For decades, Iran has eroded the very norms now cited in its defense: proxies have crossed borders as policy; ballistic missiles have threatened multiple countries; nuclear ambitions challenge the non-proliferation order; hostage diplomacy and extraterritorial intimidation became routine. The insistence on procedural etiquette in the moment of crisis reveals Europe's long investment in managing, rather than resolving, the threat from Iran.

Economic interdependence is not incidental. Several European states have maintained commercial ties with Iran even under sanctions regimes. Unworkable strategies for energy diversification intensified Europe's anxiety about Gulf stability.

Domestic political considerations — including the management of migration flows and relations with Arab states — have further complicated open endorsement of decisive military action. The result is a posture of distance from Washington's and Jerusalem's operation, emphasizing autonomy while avoiding direct confrontation — and returning, almost automatically, to the language of negotiation as the moral alibi of strategic caution.

At the UN, the broader geopolitical alignment was equally telling. Russia condemned the strikes in the most categorical terms, aligning rhetorically with Iran. China issued familiar calls for sovereignty and restraint, seeking to preserve a posture of order while benefiting from being off the West's radar for a bit. Within this constellation, European representatives positioned themselves as guardians of multilateralism. The cumulative effect is a chorus of caution directed more forcefully at the actors who are dismantling Iran's regime -- Israel and the US -- rather than at the regime's long record of destabilization — a pattern that has become so normalized that it is often mistaken for moral sophistication.

These moral gymnastics are not unprecedented. During the Cold War, debates at the UN reflected blocs more than principles. Authoritarian regimes benefited from solidarities rooted in ideology, transactional alliances, or sheer voting arithmetic. The contemporary landscape differs in form but not entirely in substance. Coalitions within the UN General Assembly, including states with limited or no democratic credentials, shape the tone and content of resolutions. Within that environment, Israel has long been a focal target of attack, a convenient proxy through which regimes and blocs rehearse moral posturing while deflecting attention from the abuses they inflict at home.

The deeper analytical question concerns the concept of "stability." European diplomacy has often equated stability with the absence of open war, even if that equilibrium rests on coercion, intimidation, and the slow metastasis of threat. The Israeli-American operation in Iran has shattered that equilibrium. For those invested in negotiated containment, the US-Israeli response appears destabilizing. For others, it represents the removal of a huge source of instability — the elimination of a regime whose worldview treats conflict not as a failure of policy but as the essence of policy. The divergence reflects differing premises about how order should be maintained and what price is acceptable for maintaining it.

European governments are probably now recalibrating policies shaped by decades of appeasing Iran. The UN faces renewed scrutiny over the consistency of its posture toward authoritarian regimes versus democratic states. The decapitation of Iran's theocratic leadership is not merely a regional episode; it is a stress test for multilateral institutions that have often confused procedural language with strategic seriousness.

Whether Europe and the UN will reinterpret this moment as a correction of what needs to be done to a destabilizing presence, or whether they persist in framing malignancy primarily as a procedural violation, remains uncertain. What is already visible is that the reflex of "caution" — so immediate, so uniform, so instinctive — has exposed the enduring tension between legal niceties and the urgent need to act.

Pierre Rehov, who holds a law degree from Paris-Assas, is a French reporter, novelist and documentary filmmaker. He is the author of six novels, including "Beyond Red Lines", "The Third Testament" and "Red Eden", translated from French. His latest essay on the aftermath of the October 7 massacre " 7 octobre - La riposte " became a bestseller in France. As a filmmaker, he has produced and directed 17 documentaries, many photographed at high risk in Middle Eastern war zones, and focusing on terrorism, media bias, and the persecution of Christians. His latest documentary, "Pogrom(s)" highlights the context of ancient Jew hatred within Muslim civilization as the main force behind the October 7 massacre.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/22324/un-eu-condemn-strike-not-regime

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Our Long Road to War With Iran - Victor Davis Hanson

 

by Victor Davis Hanson

For decades, Iran cultivated a myth of invincibility through terror and proxies—until war exposed the regime as weaker, poorer, and far more fragile than the world had feared.

 

 

Until last year, for some 46 years, Iran enjoyed a North Korea-like reputation in the heart of the Middle East: always unpredictable, reckless, dangerous, inevitably to be nuclear, self-destructive, and nihilistic.

All that said, was it really ever all that formidable?

The mullahs came into power after the removal of the Shah and, subsequently, the interim secular socialists. They did so by taking American hostages, murdering opponents, executing former supporters, and transforming the most secular and modern of the Middle East Muslim nations into the most medieval that routinely hung homosexuals, adulterers, and almost anyone who questioned the authority of the ayatollahs. In other words, these were gruesome people, but they didn’t necessarily have a competent military.

The theocracy’s only constant with the prior monarchical Iran was that it inherited near limitless oil and natural gas reserves, sophisticated arms, and the Shah’s modernized cities. It controlled the key strategic chokepoint at the Strait of Hormuz and enjoyed a geostrategically critical location between Asia and the Middle East. It fueled Iran’s historical chauvinism and pique that the millennia-long historical preeminence of Middle Eastern Persia was not fully appreciated by its Arab neighbors. So there were lots of natural advantages—and all for the most part squandered.

Under the camouflage of Shiite puritanism and otherworldliness, the ayatollahs proved even more corrupt (and far more incompetent) than the Shah’s entourage. They fought a destructive eight-year war with Saddam Hussein’s overrated Iraqi dictatorship and showed they were mostly just as militarily incompetent.

Over decades, they killed and wounded thousands of Americans by bombing U.S. embassies, barracks, and bases in the Middle East—without directly confronting the American military. For years, they sent lethal shaped charge IEDs to the Shiite insurgents to slaughter and maim thousands of Americans in Iraq and to the Taliban to do the same in Afghanistan.

At the first sign of popular protests, the regime never hesitated to gun down thousands of unarmed protesters. And, of course, they were abject hypocrites—hating the West, damning the Great Satan—and sending their pampered children to universities in America. The apparat proved quite earthly in its desire for money, estates, foreign travel, and the good life.

Their general strategies were never hard to follow.

One, the theocrats’ prior familiarity with Americans under the Shah and in exile in Europe bred an irrational fixation with and hatred of the West in general that made them useful proxies for the grand designs of communist and then later oligarchic Russia, and later ascendant communist China.

Iranian realpolitik alliances with secular communists were based on the quid pro quo of granting Russia and China access to the Gulf, selling oil to China, and buying arms from both.

Two, they were endlessly chagrined that the Persian Shiites had been overshadowed by more populous Sunni Arab neighbors that supposedly lacked their own historical sophistication and more legitimate claims of embodying and speaking for global Islam.

So they would correct that historical travesty by doing their best to mobilize their clients and proxies to bully, isolate, and weaken Arab autocracies, especially those that are pro-Western.

Three, their planned eventual destruction of Israel would ensure that theocratic and Shiite Iran regained its lost prestige and honor by finally accomplishing what the Sunni world had failed to do. By arming murderous clients in Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, the West Bank, and Yemen, they fashioned a global network of death that compromised European foreign policy toward the Middle East and terrified Western leaders and many of their Arab neighbors.

Fourth and finally, they sought to diminish the role of the United States in the Muslim world, drive it from the Middle East, and wage a virtual 47-year opportunistic war against American citizens and soldiers, with help from their terrorist surrogates.

Iran’s zenith in power and prestige came during Obama’s presidency (2009–17), and the so-called “Iran Deal” that they believed would guarantee them eventual nuclear power status.

But far more importantly, their massive acquisitions of air, land, and sea weapons and the empowering of terrorists, coupled with their passive-aggressive claims to victimhood, both scared and enticed President Obama into dropping sanctions. Soon, he was apologizing for supposed past sins and nocturnally sending them millions of dollars in Danegeld.

But worse by far, Obama thought he had squared the circle of neutralizing the supposed Middle Eastern Iranian juggernaut by envisioning it as an empathetic victim—and eventual friend if not ally.

Iran was to be rebooted as the Persian and Shiite righteously aggrieved underdog—bullied unfairly by Western imperialists and their surrogate corrupt Arab petro-kingdom clients for its asceticism and courage in fighting the West since its own birth in 1979.

Obama would remedy this “injustice” by bolstering Iran as a counterweight to not just the Sunni Arab world but to Israel itself. The reset would include an American détente with the murderous pro-Iranian Assad regime in Syria, the supposedly benign neglect of Hezbollah’s takeover of Lebanon, and the championing of the “Palestinians,” which de facto had insidiously become indistinct from Hamas terrorists.

Such creative tension between the Iranian Shiite crescent and a diminished Arab world would be adjudicated from time to time by Obama himself, whose America would go from oppressor to ally of the oppressed.

So by 2017, Iran, for some reason, was considered all-powerful in the Middle East with its missiles, soon-to-be nuclear status, and Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthi killers who would murder Westerners and Israelis year after year. For the last seven American presidents, the very thought of challenging Iran militarily had been considered taboo, all the more so after the American misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq.

No one, perhaps not even the Israelis, actually calibrated the true status of Iranian arms or diplomacy. Despite its huge advantages in population, Iran could not defeat Iraq and was reduced to sending 10-year-olds as human pawns to clear minefields. It never directly confronted Israel but always used surrogates to murder Jews, either abroad, as in the slaughter in Argentina, or through its “ring of fire” terrorist cliques that surrounded the borders of the Jewish state.

In sum, no one apparently realized—with the exception of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu—that beneath its rough, ugly shell, theocratic Iran was rotten and decayed inside. Its corruption and the hatred of its own people ensured that even its huge revenues and sophisticated Chinese and Russian weapons could never translate into a modern, lethal military.

And in summer 2025, the Israelis and Americans first proved that Iran was indeed hollow.

Its Arab partner in Syria imploded in weeks. The supposedly goose-stepping Hezbollah shock troops were decimated.

The scary subterranean Hamas may have proved deadly in surprise attacks against unarmed women, children, and the aged, but they were nearly obliterated by the IDF.

The Houthis mimicked Iran’s madness as they sent drones and missiles to shut down the Red Sea and hit Israel. But the U.S. and Israel finally taught them that while the Houthis had no power to harm their enemies’ interior, their Western opponents easily could destroy their airports, ports, power generation, and modern economy in days, and would happily do so if the terror continued.

So here we are, in March 2026, watching the systematic destruction of the entire five-decade façade of a supposedly invincible Iranian military, the systematic elimination of its theocratic leaders, and the dismantling of the Iranian military and Revolutionary Guard terrorists.

The regime has no military ability to ensure its survival. Instead, its rope-a-dope strategy assumes that the U.S. will be attuned to domestic criticism, the looming midterms, the price of gas, and pressure from allies to end the war before the global economy sinks into recession.

We are left somewhat confused. Why did prior presidents not hold Iran accountable for its killing, thus nourishing the myth of Iranian invincibility? Why did Israel not respond earlier to Iran itself rather than just its terrorist clients?

And what now are the surviving theocrats thinking? What is their strategy of survival?

The remnants of the theocracy intend to ride out the bombings and, at some point in extremis, expect an armistice from “negotiations.” Their ultimate strategy is to wait out the tenures of both Trump and Netanyahu and hope for another sympathetic president like Obama, or a non compos mentis Biden, or someone ideologically akin to Mamdani or AOC.

When Trump and Netanyahu are out of office, they dream of using their oil to rearm and resume their role as Chinese and Russian proxies, eventually getting the bomb, and the second time around, perhaps using it.

Theocratic Iran, in its fantasies, still believes that if it ever destroyed Israel with a bomb or two, the world, especially given the recrudescence of Western antisemitism, would be appalled—for a day or two.

Then it would resume business with it. And with a dozen or so deterrent nuclear-tipped missiles, the Iranian ritual boilerplate of crazed pronouncements would follow of supposedly welcoming a nuclear pathway to an eternal virginal Paradise.

And thus, we would go full circle back again to a “crazy” Iran, its murderous clients, and its unhinged—but effective—threats.

Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is an American military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004, and is the 2023 Giles O'Malley Distinguished Visiting Professor at the School of Public Policy, Pepperdine University. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush, and the Bradley Prize in 2008. Hanson is also a farmer (growing almonds on a family farm in Selma, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism. He is the author of the just released New York Times best seller, The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation, published by Basic Books on May 7, 2024, as well as the recent  The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, The Case for Trump, and The Dying Citizen.

Source: https://amgreatness.com/2026/03/10/our-long-road-to-war-with-iran/

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IDF strikes Hezbollah funding apparatus assets - JNS Staff

 

by JNS Staff

The IAF strikes were carried out "to further deepen Hezbollah's military degradation," the military said.

 

Smoke rises after an Israeli airstrike targeting Hezbollah terrorist assets in Beirut's southern suburbs, March 9, 2026. Photo by Daniel Carde/Getty Images.

Israeli Air Force jets on Monday carried out a wave of strikes targeting a Lebanese association used by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorist group to fund its weapons and operatives, the army said on Tuesday.

Funds provided by the Al-Quard Al-Hassan group enabled Hezbollah “to purchase weapons and weapon production materials, and to pay terrorist salaries to support their terror activities,” the IDF stated.

The IAF strikes were carried out “to further deepen Hezbollah’s military degradation, this is following the IDF’s strikes against the association’s assets last week,” according to the military statement on Tuesday.

 

צה"ל השלים גל תקיפות נוסף נגד נכסי אגודת "אלקרצ' אלחסן" של את ארגון הטרור חיזבאללה: כ-30 נכסים של האגודה הותקפו בשבוע האחרון

מטוסי קרב של חיל האוויר בהכוונת אמ"ן, השלימו אתמול סדרת תקיפות נוספת נגד נכסים ומחסני כספים של אגודת "אלקרצ׳ אלחסן", ששימשו למימון הפעילות של ארגון הטרור… pic.twitter.com/N4P1RQXnQV

— צבא ההגנה לישראל (@idfonline) March 10, 2026

The IDF noted that while Al-Quard Al-Hassan’s activities pose “a blatant threat to the people of Israel,” Hezbollah has also used the association to exploit Lebanon’s financial crisis and rebuild its military capabilities.

“The terrorist organization aggravates the crisis, taking advantage of the population’s weak socioeconomic position to deepen the population’s dependency and shore up its military presence,” the statement said.

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“The IDF is operating with determination against the Hezbollah terrorist group as a result of the terrorist organization’s decision to deliberately attack Israel on behalf of the Iranian regime, and will not tolerate any harm to the residents of the State of Israel,” concluded the military.

Hezbollah began firing missiles and UAVs at the Jewish state on March 2, in retaliation for the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. He was slain by an Israeli Air Force strike on his Tehran compound in the opening shot of “Operation Roaring Lion/Epic Fury” on Feb. 28.

In response to the terror organization’s violation of the U.S.-brokered Nov. 27, 2024, ceasefire deal, Jerusalem launched an aerial campaign against Hezbollah, in addition to ordering IDF troops to advance and take control of additional areas in Lebanon to halt cross-border fire.

תוך עשר דקות ובפעם הרביעית היום: צה"ל תקף את המשגר ממנו נורו הרקטות לעבר צפון הארץ לפני זמן קצר pic.twitter.com/7EVtvP72NH

— צבא ההגנה לישראל (@idfonline) March 9, 2026

Soldiers of the 401st Brigade are operating in Southern Lebanon “as part of the forward defense posture aimed at thwarting terrorist infrastructure,” according to an IDF statement on Monday.

In one operation in the area, the troops discovered a Hezbollah rocket launcher that had been used to fire rockets toward Israeli territory, the military said. The soldiers were said to have dismantled the launcher.

In addition, the IDF “struck and eliminated” a Hezbollah operative who had used the launcher to attack the Jewish state, according to the army.

Sa’ar meets U.N. Lebanon coordinator

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar told Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the U.N.’s special coordinator for Lebanon, on Monday that “over the past week there have been more attacks against Israel from Lebanese territory than from Iran.”

“I stated that Hezbollah joined the war following Iranian pressure, as it did on Oct. 8th,” the top diplomat told Hennis-Plasschaert during the Jerusalem meeting, in reference to the terrorist group’s cross-border assaults in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel’s south.

Sa’ar said he had “detailed our decision not to evacuate our residents from northern communities this time, and stressed our commitment to protect them.”

Met with UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon @JeanineHennis in Jerusalem.
I stated that Hezbollah joined the war following Iranian pressure, as it did on Oct. 8th. They did it again against the interest of Lebanon.
Over the past week there have been more attacks against Israel… pic.twitter.com/WGCTG6hWbA

— Gideon Sa'ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) March 9, 2026

The deployment of IDF soldiers to Southern Lebanon is “critical for preventing an invasion of Hezbollah’s ground forces and attacks against Israeli citizens and communities,” Sa’ar said, noting that weakening the terror group is in Jerusalem and Beirut’s mutual interest.

“Hezbollah initiated an attack against us,” Sa’ar told the envoy, “and no member of the international community is acting to stop it besides us.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Beirut on Saturday that if it fails to uphold the truce, which requires it to disarm Hezbollah, its aggression “will bring catastrophic consequences upon Lebanon.”

“It is time for you, too, to take your destiny into your hands,” he told the Lebanese government, declaring that “in any case,” Jerusalem will do “everything necessary to protect our communities and our citizens.”

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun on Monday accused Hezbollah and Iran of working to “collapse” the Lebanese state and expressed his openness to holding “direct negotiations” with Israel, per AFP.

“Whoever launched those missiles wanted to bring about the collapse of the Lebanese state, plunging it into aggression and chaos … all for the sake of the Iranian regime’s calculations,” he told European officials.

Aoun’s in his proposal called for “establishing a full truce” with the Jewish state, “logistical support” for the Lebanese Armed Forces to disarm Hezbollah, and direct talks under international auspices.

Lebanese Foreign Minister Youssef Raggi previously said Hezbollah’s “unlawful activities,” including a “blatant” drone attack on a U.K. military base on Cyprus, defied the will the Lebanese people.

“We will not allow Lebanon to be turned into a platform for Iranian agendas,” Beirut’s top diplomat had tweeted on Sunday evening.

Smoke trails from missiles fired by Hezbollah terrorists toward Israel are seen over Southern Lebanon, March 8, 2026. Photo by Ayal Margolin/Flash90.

However, the head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary group, Mohamed Raad, vowed on Monday night that the terrorist organization would defend its existence “whatever the cost”, saying Hezbollah had “no other option to preserve honor, pride and dignity than the option of resistance.”

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa—a former Al Qaeda terrorist known also as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani—came out in support of his Lebanese counterpart’s plan, stating, “We stand alongside Lebanese President Joseph Aoun in disarming Hezbollah,” according to the AFP report.

Hezbollah fired artillery shells into Syria overnight on Monday, Syrian state media reported. Syrian officials said artillery shells fired from Lebanon impacted near the village of Serghaya, west of Damascus.

The Syrian Armed Forces accused the Iranian-backed terror group of targeting its military positions near the border, telling state media its soldiers have identified Hezbollah reinforcements in the area.

Since Hezbollah joined the Iranian regime’s war on U.S. assets, Israel and regional countries on March 2, the IDF has struck more than 600 terrorist targets across the Land of the Cedars “from the air, sea and ground,” according to military data released on Sunday afternoon.

As part of the campaign, the IDF has carried out several dozens of strikes in the Beirut area, including five in the capital’s suburbs of Dahieh, a Hezbollah stronghold, the military said on Sunday.

JNS Staff

Source: https://www.jns.org/idf-strikes-hezbollah-funding-apparatus-assets/

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Ramping up security in Judea and Samaria - Josh Hasten

 

by Josh Hasten

As part of the effort, the IDF is closely coordinating with individual communities and their security personnel to prevent terrorist attacks.

 

The Israel Defense Forces has ramped up operations in Judea and Samaria since the start of Operation Roaring Lion on Feb. 28, to ensure that would-be terrorists living under the Palestinian Authority don’t take advantage of the situation to launch a new front.

As part of the effort, the IDF is closely coordinating with individual communities and their security personnel to prevent terrorist attacks.     

During an exclusive briefing with JNS, Cpt. Adi Stoler, head of the International Department of the IDF’s media branch, said that since “Operation Rising Lion” in June 2025, the military has put emphasis on keeping the situation in Judea and Samaria quiet, so it can focus on other arenas. 

Stoler said that the IDF has been working offensively, conducting mass operations and pushing farther into terrorist hubs in P.A. villages and population centers. And on March 6, it announced that it had apprehended more than 200 Palestinian terrorists over the course of the previous week.  

Among those arrested were bomb makers, weapons dealers, Hamas affiliates, terrorism inciters and suspects planning to carry out attacks, according to the IDF.

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At the same time, the army has been taking defensive measures, such as ensuring that roads, bus stops and commercial centers are protected, while working to make sure that individual communities have functioning observation systems and appropriate fencing to prevent infiltrations. 

Furthermore, Stoler claimed, since the Hamas invasion and massacre on Oct. 7, 2023, the Islamic Republic has been trying to ignite Palestinian terrorism in Judea and Samaria. 

“Iran saw the area as Israel’s soft underbelly, and transferred millions of dollars to its proxies there, for the purpose of recruiting terrorists and purchasing weapons,” she said. “This forced us to work differently. We know that we must take out the terrorist hubs entirely.”  

Binyamin Regional Council governor and Yesha Council chairman Ysrael Ganz conveyed to JNS that Judea-Samaria is working in close and full cooperation with above security forces to reinforce the protection of the communities, especially at this time.

He explained that the IDF has increased its deployment along the country’s eastern border and the seam line, with additional battalions stationed in the communities and along the roads. 

“The guiding principle is clear: increasing deterrence and delivering an unequivocal message that alongside the campaign on the various fronts, the IDF is fully prepared and ready here in Judea and Samaria as well,” Ganz said.

In addition, he stressed, “It is important to note that residents are demonstrating extraordinary resilience. The council is operating around the clock to ensure the most stable emergency routine possible, while strictly adhering to all security guidelines.”

Requesting anonymity, the director of regional security for a municipality in Judea and Samaria told JNS that upon the start of the current war, the IDF deployed two additional battalions of reservist combat soldiers—roughly 1,000-2,000 troops—to each region in the area.

He stated that this is particularly necessary during the ongoing Muslim month of Ramadan, which he said has been a period, historically, when terrorists have targeted Jews in Israel. 

“One of my main concerns is the possible threat of attempted terrorist infiltrations from nearby Palestinian villages into Jewish communities, by those seeking to show solidarity with Iran during the war,” he added.

Natalie Sopinsky, spokesperson and director of development for Hatzalah Judea and Samaria, which provides volunteer-based emergency medical services, told JNS that she is aware of at least four new encampments or observation points established by residents over the past week in strategic locations across Binyamin, Samaria and the Jordan Valley to enhance security.

She also pointed to several new agriculture farms that have been established recently along the Jordanian border, to boost security and safeguard Israel’s state lands. However, she bemoaned the fact that none of these farms has a bomb shelter or protected space for taking cover during missile attacks.  

She went on to highlight another aspect of the situation: the role of women. Since many men have been called up for reserve duty, she said, it is the women who are protecting the home front and taking on first-responder shifts. 

“Our women medics, paramedics and ambulance drivers are bearing a heavy burden now with resolve,” she said. “While also protecting their families, they are doing a ‘man’s job’ by taking on all the medical emergencies—during wartime. They are Wonder Women.”   

Josh Hasten

Source: https://www.jns.org/ramping-up-security-in-judea-and-samaria/

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IDF targets IRGC weapons research headquarters in Tehran as Israel, Iran continue to trade blows - James Genn

 

by James Genn

Strikes were also reported in Isfahan, Karaj, Zahedan, Kermanshah, and other Iranian cities, eyewitnesses and local media cited by Iran International claimed.

 

An IDF F-35 "Adir" shot down an Iranian Air Force YAK-130 fighter jet on March 4, 2026.

(photo credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON UNIT)

 

The IDF stated that it struck in Tehran and several other Iranian cities in a series of statements overnight between Monday and Tuesday.

The military identified several operatives in Iran's ballistic missile program operating in the west of the country, preparing to launch missiles towards Israel on Monday. Following their identification, an Israel Air Force fighter jet struck and dismantled the launcher and killed the operatives before a launch could occur, the military confirmed on Tuesday.

The military stated that the Air Force struck several pieces of IRGC infrastructure in Tehran overnight on Monday, including at an IRGC research facility for ballistic missiles, the Quds Force headquarters, and several weapons and air defense systems. 

The IDF stated that the research complex was within the IRGC’s central military university, which is also used as an emergency asset and a gathering site for operational activity.

A video sent to Iran International shows the sky over western Tehran lighting up after a massive explosion caused by an attack in the early hours of Tuesday pic.twitter.com/Llhj96sTa6

— Iran International English (@IranIntl_En) March 9, 2026

Videos of the strikes circulated online. London-based anti-regime outlet Iran International published footage that appears to show a strike which caused a "massive explosion" in Tehran early on Tuesday. One such video sent to Iran International shows the sky over western Tehran lighting up after a massive explosion caused by an attack in the early hours of Tuesday.

Several fighter jets were heard over the capital, according to witnesses cited by Iran International.

Strikes in Karaj, Kermanshah, Nazarabad, and more

An additional post by the outlet appears to show a strike in Karaj, west of the capital, that allegedly turned the sky blue and caused power outages in the region.

A video obtained by Iran International shows the night sky over Karaj, west of Tehran, suddenly turning bright blue following an airstrike early Tuesday. Karaj residents are reporting widespread power outages following the attack. pic.twitter.com/nOBHprKTNo

— Iran International English (@IranIntl_En) March 9, 2026

The outlet also shared footage that appears to show a police headquarters in Kermanshah, western Iran, heavily damaged by US-Israeli strikes.

A video obtained by Iran International shows the remains of Kermanshah’s police headquarters after US-Israeli airstrikes. pic.twitter.com/iBG8r23RK5

— Iran International English (@IranIntl_En) March 9, 2026

According to the outlet, local media stated that a number of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) bases and Basij paramilitary facilities in Karaj, Nazarabad, Andisheh, and Shahriar were targeted by drone and missile strikes.

Other media outlets cited by Iran International reported explosions in Isfahan, with an eyewitness telling the anti-regime outlet that blasts were heard in the city.

Other eyewitnesses told Iran International that explosions were heard in Ahvaz on Monday afternoon, and local outlet Haalvsh reported that explosions were heard across different parts of Zahedan, southeastern Iran, on Monday night.

James Genn

Source: https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-889456

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Fifty percent of Iranian ballistic missiles have been cluster munitions, IDF reveals - Yonah Jeremy Bob

 

by Yonah Jeremy Bob

Typically, Iranian ballistic missiles have 500 to 1,000 kilograms of explosives in them and strike one target, causing significant damage there and to the immediate surroundings.

 

A view of an Iranian missile after it fell near Qamishli International Airport, near the Turkish border in the Qamishli district of Hasakah, Syria, on March 4, 2026, amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran.

(photo credit: Amjad Kurdo / Middle East Images / AFP via Getty Images)

Fifty percent of the ballistic missiles that Iran has fired on Israel during the current war have been cluster munitions, the IDF Home Front Command said on Tuesday.

This is a shift from the June 2025 war with Iran, when occasionally the missiles were built of cluster munitions, but most were not.

Typically, Iranian ballistic missiles have 500 to 1,000 kilograms of explosives in them and strike one target, causing significant damage there and to the immediate surroundings.

However, cluster munitions might contain dozens of smaller eight-kilogram bombs which spread out over a 10-kilometer square radius.

On one hand, each hit from a cluster munition causes less damage than a full single ballistic missile hit.

Rocket trails are seen in the sky above the Israeli center coastal city of Netanya amid a fresh barrage of Iranian missile attacks on March 9, 2026. (credit: Jack GUEZ / AFP via Getty Images)

On the other hand, each hit can still be deadly, can penetrate multiple floors in a single building, and if such a missile breaks apart before it's shot down, can cause a wider number of dangerous impact areas.

IDF faces criticism of overusing missile alerts, disrupting routines

While discussing the issue, the IDF was pressed about criticism that in recent days it has repeatedly sent millions of Israelis into bomb shelters and safe rooms when Iran has only fired a single missile, which was very unlikely to have endangered so many people in different locations at once.

The IDF explained that its "polygon," its algorithm for evaluating which cities to warn based on the estimated trajectory of a ballistic missile, after such a missile is launched from Iran, errs on the side of saving lives, even if it inconveniences people in their daily routines.

That said, the IDF said that whenever it can, it does exclude certain parts of the country from receiving warnings where the chances of them being targeted are very low.

Each launch also includes an assessment of the specific warhead and the size of the explosives it carries.

Two Hezbollah missiles hit central Israel, interceptors missed, no warning sirens sounded

Meanwhile, the IDF said on Tuesday that an atypical technical failure led to two Hezbollah missiles hitting central Israel on Monday, with interceptors missing their marks and without even a warning siren.

One of the missiles struck Ramle, and the second hit an open area in the Mateh Yehuda Regional Council, lightly wounding a bunch of civilians.

Despite the failure, most of the missiles fired on Monday were intercepted by Israel's multilayer air defenses.

Also, the IDF said that the technical failure did not occur because of some new kind of Iranian technology, but rather the missiles fired were weapons the IDF is acquainted with.

Following a probe into the incident, the IDF said that "adjustments were implemented to strengthen interception capabilities against similar threats in the northern area." 

Yonah Jeremy Bob

Source: https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-889489

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