Posts on Monday, March 2, 2026

Top Hezbollah political leader Muhammad Ra’ad, head of the group’s parliamentary faction and one of Iran’s most prominent proxies in Lebanese politics, has reportedly been assassinated in Beirut. According to the Israeli war room, Ra’ad, who led the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc in Lebanon’s Parliament since 2000 and was a key figure rejecting disarmament and advocating for Hezbollah’s armed domination, was killed in precision strikes early Monday.According to MTV Lebanon (Murr Television), a leading independent Lebanese television station:

Most of us are familiar with the term “the fog of war” to describe the gauzy details that emerge in the breaking news environment of an outbreak of hostilities. Originally, it had been a description applied to military matters, but in the past generation or so, it has expanded to include the information pathways that emerge when conflicts erupt. What we have sadly come to expect is that news outlets are often the ones operating a fog machine as news breaks.This being a common occurrence, and also due to the sensitivities attached to the activity,

Several" U.S. Air Force (USAF) F-15E Strike Eagles crashed near Al Jahra, Kuwait, with both the pilot and weapons systems officer ejecting safely and surviving, according to footage circulating online and media reports. "The spokesperson for the Ministry of Defense stated that several U.S. military aircraft crashed this morning, confirming the complete safety of their crews," according to a statement from the Kuwait Ministry of Defense on X on Monday. "He explained that the relevant authorities immediately initiated search and rescue procedures, whereby the crews were evacuated

New Delhi: Iran’s Shahed-136 drone struck the Saudi Aramco oil refining facility at Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia’s key energy hub, early Monday, according to several social media posts online. The attack prompted the temporary shutdown of the Ras Tanura refinery, as per a Bloomberg report. The strike triggered a fire at the site, however as per reports blaze was “small and controlled.” There have been no reports of casualties so far. The drone strike on Saudi Arabia’s Ras Tanura refinery comes amid rising Middle East tensions, with recent Iranian missile and drone attacks on Gulf states and Israel following international military airstrikes.

Smoke was seen rising from the vicinity of the US embassy in Kuwait, and firefighters and ambulances were seen in the area, a witness told Reuters on Monday The embassy issued a security alert on Monday, saying that there is a continuing threat of missile and UAV attacks over Kuwait. People were urged to avoid approaching the embassy and to take cover in their residences. Unverified social media reports also indicated that a fighter jet was downed in Kuwaiti airspace. Kuwait intercepted hostile drones on Monday, the third consecutive day of Iranian retaliatory strikes on neighboring Gulf states in response to US and Israeli attacks on the Islamic Republic.

At long last, the F-35 has scored its first true air-to-air kill in the aircraft’s history during Operation Epic Fury. A squadron of F-35s reportedly took down multiple MiG-29s soon after the strikes against Iran took place, marking a pivotal moment for the new family of jets. The F-35 had yet to score a kill against an adversary aircraft, with both American and Israeli operators only having used them to target drones up to this point. No footage of the fight has been released to date, and it is unclear how many MiGs the F-35s have eliminated.

The UK has agreed to a US request to use British military bases for "defensive" strikes on Iranian missile sites, Sir Keir Starmer has said. But the prime minister said the UK had learned lessons from the "mistakes of Iraq", and was not involved in the initial strikes on Iran and "will not join offensive action now". Sir Keir said the basis of the decision to accept the US request was the "collective self-defence" of allies and protecting British lives, accusing Iran of pursuing a "scorched-earth strategy". The BBC understands the US is likely to use RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean for strikes on Iranian missile sites.

It was hardly necessary to consult Nostradamus to predict that the Democrats, who profess to abhor oppressive authoritarian theocracies, would denounce President Trump’s decision to topple the government of Iran — the very definition of such a regime. Nor was it a surprise that they downplay or simply ignore the obvious elation with which the Iranians themselves greeted the long overdue demise of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It is striking, however, that the Democrats fail to see that their reflexive attacks on Trump for taking action (snip) reinforces the public perception that their party is weak and out of touch.