Naveed

Secretary Rubio’s Call with Turkish Foreign Minister Fidan - United States Department of State The below is attributable to Principal Deputy Spokesperson Tommy Pigott: Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke today with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan to discuss recent developments in Iran and...

#Turkiye questions #US clandestine plan to Kurdish militants in #Iran www.state.gov/releases/off...

US CENTCOM announced the first-ever combat use of Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) ballistic missiles, the ATACMS replacement, in Iran. The missiles were launched from M142 HIMARS launchers. #Iran

Yes, turns out the ICBM test launch today only carried two RVs. The Mk12A can carry up to three. Normally they fly 1 or 3 warheads. Here’s the more detailed USAFGSC description: www.afgsc.af.mil/News/Article...

#Iran fired missile into #Turkey's airpace, which NATO intercepted over Eastern Mediterranean.

In #Pakistan, Iran attacked via its mercenaries and proxies to hide behind plausible deniability.

#Azerbaijan? Will it be also?

Anthropic’s AI model Claude gets popularity boost after US military feud Claude climbs to top of app store charts in US and UK after being blacklisted by Pentagon over ethics concerns

For the lazy or brainless, #Trump's nemesis is becoming a hot favorite.

Better to steer clear of these glamorous tools disabling your brain. #AI

Nonetheless, good luck.

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

France's the world’s fourth-largest nuclear arsenal, with about 300 warheads. They can be deployed from four submarines, at least one of which is constantly at sea, or delivered by Rafale fighter jets. Officials say France spends about 13% of its defence budget maintaining its nuclear deterrent.

“This is genuine strategic convergence between our countries [aimed] at giving real depth to the defence of our continent,” Macron said. But he emphasised that the key aspects of French deterrence — no shared decision-making and absolute autonomy for France — would stay the same.

France said in-depth talks had already been conducted with Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece and Sweden, and they were willing to move ahead with deeper co-operation.

France offers to deploy nuclear deterrent across Europe for first time President Emmanuel Macron lays out doctrine of ‘forward deterrence’

“It could provide, depending on the circumstances, for the deployment of elements of our strategic forces on allied territory,” Macron said. This could include fighter jets or other weapons that make up France’s nuclear deterrent, which could be sent for exercises. www.ft.com/content/45d9...

From #Iran's slain forward defense doctrine to #France's evolving forward deterrence:
“Today, a new step of France’s deterrence can now be taken. We are entering the path of what I call forward deterrence,” the French president said at the SSBN subs naval base in Brittany.

which Israel claims was backed by Iran and changed a longstanding calculus in Israel: that despite having penetrated the circles of several enemy heads of state, from Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser to Syria’s Hafez al-Assad, their killings were off-limits even at times of war.

it bought photographs of missile defences; and even mapped the jogging route of a major politician by bribing Israeli citizens, according to Israeli prosecutors. The second event, Shine added, was the October 7, 2023 cross-border attack from Hamas . . . .

In 2022, a group tied to Iranian security services released data purportedly siphoned from a phone belonging to the Mossad chief’s wife. Iran also hacked CCTV cameras in Jerusalem during the 2025 war to get real-time damage reports that the Israelis had censored from broadcast

The Israeli military added that striking in daylight provided an advantage. “The decision to strike in the morning rather than at night allowed Israel to achieve tactical surprise for the second time, despite heavy Iranian preparedness,” it said.

But the Americans had something even more concrete — a human source, both people familiar with the situation said. The CIA declined to comment.

Israeli intelligence had information from signals intelligence, such as the hacked traffic cameras and deeply penetrated mobile phone networks. One of the people said it showed that the meeting with Khamenei was on schedule, with senior officials heading to the location.

for a target as high value as #Khamenei, failure was not an option. Israeli military doctrine requires that two separate senior officers, working independently from each other, confirm with high certainty that a target is in the location that is to be attacked and who he is with.

#Israel used a mathematical method known as social network analysis to parse through billions of data points to unearth unlikely centres of decision-making gravity and identify fresh targets to surveil and kill. All this fed an assembly line with a single product: targets. #Iran

Inside the plan to kill Ali Khamenei Israel spent years hacking Tehran’s traffic cameras and monitoring bodyguards ahead of the assassination of Iran’s supreme leader

Long before the bombs fell, “we knew #Tehran like we know #Jerusalem”, said one current #Israel|i intelligence official. “And when you know [a place] as well as you know the street you grew up on, you notice a single thing that’s out of place.” #Iran www.ft.com/content/bf99...

#Qatar downs intruding two Iranian AF jets.

#Iran doing all it can to provoke #GCC states to enter the war, along side Israel and the #US.

What a risky gamble.

No #Arab state will take the bait.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, is dead at 86 He played a behind-the-scenes role in Iran’s Islamic revolution, served as president in the 1980s and dominated the country for more than three decades.

The ayatollah’s siblings included an estranged younger brother, Hadi #Khamenei, a reformist cleric who ran afoul of the establishment. He was brutally beaten by Basij members in 1999 after giving a sermon criticizing powers of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2...

Ali #Larjani is as pragmatist as Itamar Ben-Gvir.

#Israel #Iran

t.co/asvEYiKT3K

High-rise residential building struck by Iranian drone in Bahrain | CNN Video geolocated and verified by CNN shows Iranian Shahed drones striking the upper floors of the Era Views Tower in Manama, Bahrain, a residential high-rise roughly a mile from a US Navy base.

Shahed drones see two different applications. In Russia during the first half of the invasion, they were launched against military targets. Later, Russia made it a mass killing device. Iran uses it for psyops and media effect. In GCC, they are a nuisance. edition.cnn.com/2026/03/01/w...

The Islamic Republic's next generation of leaders: A profile of Alireza Arafi - Middle East Institute

Arafi's been vocal about support for the military and the IRGC,stating that #Iran’s determination to build up its military defenses is unstoppable. In another instance of showmanship, Arafi wrote to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Iraq congratulating him on the ISIS defeat. mei.edu/publication/...

Unlike last year, when #Iran waited a whole day to respond, on Saturday the regime began firing ballistic missiles back at #Israel within two hours.

It’s thought that more than 200 were aimed at Israel across the day, with 35 entering its airspace.

www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2...

Opinion | The Man Who Destroyed Iran

Under his reign, #Iran’s population has been isolated from the global financial system for decades. Its currency was among the world’s most devalued, its passport among the most denied, its internet among the most censored. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/28/o...

The volleys of short-range missiles being aimed at the #US bases in Gulf states shows Iran's lack of medium range missiles (MRBMs), hence only 30 fires so far and intercepted in #Israel.

#Iran's launch sites are being attacked in real time.

Record 129 press members killed in 2025; Israel responsible for 2/3 of deaths - Committee to Protect Journalists Key findings Introduction At a time when armed conflict has reached historic levels around the world, journalist killings also reached an all-time high primarily due to the actions of one government: ...

Here's what passes for the West's vaunted Middle East democracy.

cpj.org?p=553549

Newsom Exposes How Trump Belittled ‘Schmuck’ Jared to His Face The president thinks his daughter settled and revealed that he wanted Ivanka to date a top sports star and not Jared Kushner.

Trump said he was disappointed to learn that his eldest daughter was already dating Kushner, whose father spent two years in federal prison for tax evasion, witness retalitation and other charges.
Kushner sat silently as Trump tore into him.
www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump...

Kazakhstan plants tens of thousands of trees in giant effort to reintroduce tigers Tigers will soon roam Kazakhstan for the first time in over 70 years as conservationists undertake a gargantuan effort to restore part of their lost habitat. The last of Kazakhstan's Caspian tigers disappeared in the late 1940s, after years of hunting, habitat loss and declines in prey numbers. Now, the Central Asian country has an ambitious plan to reintroduce the world's largest cats to their historic lands. So far, two captive tigers (a male and a female) are already in Kazakhstan as part of a breeding-and-release project, while the country is expecting its first wild tigers to be transported from Russia in the first half of 2026. However, for the program to be a success, the tigers need plenty of places to live. That's where an enormous tree-planting project comes in. Last year, the Kazakhstan tiger reintroduction program — led by the government of Kazakhstan with support from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the United Nations Development Programme — planted 37,000 seedlings and cuttings near a giant lake in southeast Kazakhstan's South Balkhash region, where tigers used to live, according to WWF Central Asia. This adds to the 50,000 seedlings planted between 2021 to 2024. Tree planting is a...

Kazakhstan plants tens of thousands of trees in giant effort to reintroduce tigers
->Live Science | More on "Kazakhstan tiger reintroduction habitat restoration" at BigEarthData.ai | #Forest #Tree