Diego

Drones of an unknown origin were reportedly sighted over the remote joint U.S.-U.K. Diego Garcia installation located deep in the Indian Ocean. As we have frequently reported, this island base has long been a highly strategic operating location for the U.S. military. Beyond its large airfield that has been an epicenter of bomber operations over the decades, it plays many roles for the Pentagon. These include hosting Space Force operations, serving as a key port for U.S. Navy vessels, including nuclear submarines, and its lagoon provides shelter for a Sealift Command Prepositioning Ship Squadron.

The installation was targeted by Iranian ballistic missiles during the Epic Fury operation, but the threat posed by drones is even more plausible for the island outpost, especially at this extremely tense time as the standoff between the U.S. and Iran grinds on.

The issue of reported drones over Diego Garcia highlights a plausible threat of sea-launched drones that TWZ has been drawing attention to for years now. It also again raises concerns about the danger to critical infrastructure and aircraft parked in the open at Diego Garcia and many other U.S. installations. This is another issue TWZ has been highlighting for years.

“We are aware of reported sightings of drones (UAS) over Diego Garcia,” the U.K. Defense Ministry (MoD) told us Monday morning. “We are unable to provide any details about a situation which may affect the security or operation of the joint U.K.-U.S. base on Diego Garcia.”

“The U.S. and U.K. Commanding Officers on Diego Garcia consider and implement appropriate measures to ensure the security and safety of the base and the safety of the personnel on the island,” MoD added.

U.S. officials were less forthcoming.

“As a matter of operational security, we do not discuss specific force protection measures or security procedures at U.S. military installations,” an official from U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM) told us on Friday. “We remain vigilant in protecting U.S. personnel and facilities.”

Neither MoD nor PACOM would say what kinds of drones were sighted, when they were sighted, who was operating them or what, if any, defensive measures were taken as a result. Both military organizations were responding to our questions about an Aug. 7 posting on the Air Force amn/nco/snco Facebook page, an unofficial social media channel that posts about service topics.

“Inbox: ‘Diego Garcia. Drones spotted near fuel farm. Base on 0700 to 1900 curfew until further notice’ Note: message us if you have further information, thanks,” the post read.

On Sunday, the page published a second post on the topic titled “Diego Garcia Curfew reportedly due to Drone Threats.” The post displayed what the page purported to be an official listing of curfew times for various locations around the installation.

We cannot independently confirm the accuracy of these posts and have reached out to MoD and PACOM for details. MoD did not specify who reported the drone sightings over Diego Garcia, so we have asked for clarification. Making this an even more unusual event, Diego Garcia is essentially a closed island with no significant general population or tourists around to be operating drones on a recreational basis. So seeing one or more over the base would certainly raise alarms.

Though Diego Garcia is about 1,000 miles from Sri Lanka, the nearest large landmass, its remote location does not rule out the possibility of drone incursions by an adversary.

During the run-up to the launch of the Epic Fury operation against Iran, the FBI sent out an alert warning about the possibility of an Iranian drone attack on targets in California using uncrewed aircraft launched from ships off the coast. Though the alert was based on raw, unverified intelligence, and was sent out of an abundance of caution rather than any fears of an imminent action, the overall threat of drone attacks from ships is very real. You can read our feature about this very real threat vector and its relation to that questionable intelligence release here.

Generally speaking, there are long-standing concerns that Iran and/or other actors operating on its behalf could seek to launch asymmetric attacks on targets in the United States, as well as elsewhere outside of the Middle East, in retaliation for large-scale strikes or even in an unprovoked manner. The risks of Iranians deciding to take such action have historically been seen as especially high in any scenario where there might be an existential threat to the regime in Tehran.

There were enough concerns about an Iranian attack on Diego Garcia that F-16s were deployed there in February, before the war erupted, for protection primarily against one-way attack drones and cruise missiles. F-15Es were first deployed to Diego Garcia for this same purpose last year, in what appeared to be a first of its kind force protection change. As noted earlier, Iran clearly sees the installation as a top target, as it has long been something of a refuge for U.S. forces to fallback from the Middle East from, if need be. Iran subsequently launched two intermediate-range ballistic missiles at Diego Garcia during Epic Fury; however, neither struck the base.

The threat from drones launched by ships is not just limited to Iran. Russia is suspected of sending drones over key European military installations from vessels.

Long-range one-way attack drones with endurance measured in many hundreds of miles, if not more than a thousand miles, are increasingly a staple in military arsenals globally, and have also been proliferating to non-state actors. Yet the drone threat isn’t just limited to these kinds of weapons for remote locales like islands. Ukraine has carried out devastating attacks on Russian radars and other targets on Crimea and elsewhere using short-range aerial drones launched by uncrewed surface vessels (USVs). This same capability set is proliferating around the globe, allowing for the USV to work as a relatively low-cost delivery system for highly precise and relatively inexpensive short-range drones that can then execute near-field attacks. The U.S. and others are also developing similar capabilities for its submarines and future uncrewed underwater vehicles (UUVs), which could even more easily sneak into close proximity to targets ashore before launching their deadly drone munitions.

The following video shows a Ukrainian USV launching drones against Russian targets:

SAN DIEGO — This is where it all started for Jim Harbaugh, this idyllic hilltop University of San Diego campus with its sweeping views of the city and ocean, Spanish Renaissance architecture and courtyards lined with palm trees.

Harbaugh had been an assistant coach elsewhere, learning the ropes as an offensive consultant at Western Kentucky and quarterbacks coach for the Oakland Raiders, but this was his first chance to be a head coach. It launched a second career for the longtime NFL quarterback, taking him to Stanford, the San Francisco 49ers — where his team fell just short of a Lombardi Trophy — to a national championship at Michigan, and now to the Chargers, with whom he’s beginning his third season.

The Chargers have moved training camp to USD for Tuesday and Wednesday this week, reuniting Harbaugh with a place legendary Raiders owner Al Davis advised him not to come.

“Awww, Jimmy, Jimmy, I thought you wanted to be a pro coach,” Davis, voice dripping with disappointment, told him in 2004 when he learned Harbaugh was leaving his Raiders gig.

“But Mr. Davis, you coached college football,” Harbaugh countered.

“Yeah,” Davis said, “but that was at USC, not U-S-D.”

Harbaugh knows he made the right decision, and never doubted it, even when he and defensive coordinator Dave Adolph — another NFL fixture — had to roll up their sleeves and scrub down the cramped and filthy USD locker room themselves; even when he and his assistant coaches routinely made hundreds of PB&J sandwiches to provide late-night snacks for their players, who don’t receive scholarships at the NCAA Division I FCS level; and even when he pushed himself so hard at practice — he was the head coach, mind you — that he got sick all over himself.

“He was very demanding of us,” recalled former Toreros linebacker Matt Gabbard, “but it wasn’t something he didn’t demand of himself.”

They still call it Harbaugh Hill, a steep dirt road overlooking the practice fields on campus. Football players would plod up it as part of their training camp, and Harbaugh would run with them and urge them along. It bothered him that nobody could keep pace with receiver Nick Garton, who also excelled in soccer and track in high school, and could breeze up the grade like it was nothing.

“Isn’t anybody going to challenge this guy?” Harbaugh said. “Finally, I said, ‘I’ll do it.’”

Jim Harbaugh smiles during a practice with the University of San Diego in November 2005.

(Lenny Ignelzi / Associated Press)

So he did, matching Garton stride for stride before losing his breakfast all over himself. The coach didn’t stop running, though.

“I finished second,” he said, recalling the episode after Chargers practice this week and clearly still proud of his accomplishment.

Harbaugh coached at USD for three seasons, starting in 2004, and was three years removed from his playing career. He was 40 when he took the job and still had thoughts of putting the pads back on. He even looked into playing arena football and entertained the idea of playing for the Los Angeles Avengers, but that thought only lasted a day or so. He really wanted to be a coach, and brought along his dad, Jack Harbaugh, to oversee the running backs in that first season.

Jim and Jack would carpool to campus every day from their Coronado homes, father and son talking plays, personnel, family and life.

“What I saw was passion,” said Jack Harbaugh, who spent six decades coaching high school and college football. “If I could use one word, it’s Jim’s passion for the game. He would coach as if that was maybe the last job he’d ever had.”

That resonated with the players.

“When we saw coach Harbaugh come in and have that next-level intensity, you kind of get chills running down your spine,” defensive back Phil Bretsch said. “Like, ‘Oh boy, this is going to be different.’ But you’re ready for it, right? We’re not there for any other reason other than we love football.”

The turnaround was abrupt. Harbaugh inherited a historically mediocre program and coached his team to a 29-6 record in three seasons. The 2006 team went 11-1, won the Pioneer League, and Harbaugh was a finalist for the Eddie Robinson Award, presented to the top coach in the FCS.

One of his biggest accomplishments was luring Adolph out of retirement. The defensive specialist was almost 70 and was a turnaround artist with all sorts of NFL franchises — Cleveland, Kansas City, Raiders and Chargers — but in his later years was the primary caregiver for his ailing wife. Harbaugh asked and asked and asked, and finally got a yes when he helped arrange for in-home care for the Adolphs for several hours a day.

Coaching at this level was about making sacrifices for the love of the game. There was no school money to feed the hungry players after their team meetings, so Harbaugh and the other coaches — essentially volunteers — shelled out for tubs of peanut butter, vats of jelly and dozens of loaves of bread every night.

“We were always on the hunt for calories,” Bretsch said. “I think I stayed alive off Carl’s Jr. 99-cent chicken sandwiches for about six months throughout my career. We always joked, ‘What if we would have had the training table the big programs had? What would we have been like?’”

But those teams had something different. They had Harbaugh.

“We had a competitive advantage from a coaching standpoint every game we went into,” said running back J.T. Rogan, who went on to work with Harbaugh at Stanford and Michigan. “I would refer to him as my father in football, but that would probably be diminishing the impact he’s had on my life.”

It wasn’t just about Harbaugh’s football mind or unwavering intensity and enthusiasm. He had connections. When he took his team up to play Menlo College, he had Jerry Rice deliver the pregame talk. Steve Mariucci spoke to the team as well. So did longtime college basketball coach Tom Crean, Harbaugh’s brother-in-law.

Jim Harbaugh huddles with his teammates during a game between the San Diego Chargers and Denver Broncos in October 2000.

(Stephen Dunn / Getty Images)

When the Toreros needed cold-weather clothing for a game at Dayton, Harbaugh cajoled the Chargers, with whom he spent part of his playing career, into donating some of their mothballed gear.

“We got turtlenecks with the Chargers insignia on them,” Rogan recalled. “We’d have these jackets with a big Chargers lightning bolt, the dark-blue stuff before the baby-blue stuff was en vogue.”

For Harbaugh, the job was part-coaching and part “Let’s Make a Deal.”

When Saint Mary’s dropped its football program, he called the East Bay school not only to recruit players but to round up equipment that would otherwise go unused. He wound up buying virtually everything the program had, writing a $10,000 check out of his personal account.

“I got all the practice pants, the helmets, the thigh boards, everything,” he said.

He rented a U-Haul and drove to Moraga to collect the stuff. When Harbaugh was about to head out, the Saint Mary’s coach asked one more question:

“You need goalposts?”

Harbaugh was all ears.

“He showed me these year-old goalposts,” he said. “They were beautiful. I put them in the U-Haul and took them too.”

Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh watches training camp at the University of San Diego on Tuesday.

(Gregory Bull / Associated Press)

With the truck loaded and as he was preparing to pull out, Harbaugh got a call on his cell. It was an unheralded USD quarterback recruit from Oakland named Josh Johnson. He was supposed to be at freshman orientation but didn’t have a way to get from the Bay Area down to San Diego.

Harbaugh was quick on his feet.

“He said, ‘My parents are working and can’t take me down there,’” Harbaugh said. “I said, ‘Tell you what, can you be ready in an hour?’ He said he could be, so I drove the U-Haul over to his place and picked him up an hour later.”

The two spent the next seven hours together, driving to USD. Even now, Harbaugh made clear he wasn’t bending the rules.

“It wasn’t an extra benefit for Josh Johnson,” he said. “I put him to work. He unloaded the whole truck.”

In his first practice, Johnson went from seventh on the quarterback depth chart to second. He would go on to become one of the greatest players in the history of the program, leading the Toreros to back-to-back Pioneer League championships. He set many school records, including his 2007 season in which he threw 42 touchdown passes with one interception.

Johnson, now playing for the Cincinnati Bengals, has played for 14 NFL franchises, some more than once. That’s the most in league history for a quarterback. It’s an astounding rise from a tiny, non-scholarship university in San Diego. An odyssey of an ascent.

Harbaugh, for one, can relate.

Maiara Niehues scored for the fourth straight match and Ary Borges added a goal as Angel City defeated the league-leading San Diego Wave 2-0 at Snapdragon Stadium on Saturday.

After goalkeeper Luisa Agudelo failed to corral the ball, Niehues beat defender Perle Morroni to the ball and headed it home for the 1-0 lead in the 17th minute.

Sveindís Jonsdottir’s long throw into the box in the 26th minute was put away by Borges to make it 2-0 in the 26th minute.

Angel City attacker Jun Endo went down with a non-contact injury in the 33rd minute and was assisted off the pitch visibly shaken.

Borges took down midfielder Kimmi Ascanio in the box, resulting in a penalty kick for the Wave (9-5-1) in the 86th minute, but Lia Godfrey’s shot from the spot hit the post.

Angelina Anderson had six saves for her fourth clean sheet of the season for Angel City (6-1-6).

San Diego’s shutout streak came to an end at 242 minutes.

Baltimore, United States – Muslim Americans are grieving after two gunmen last week opened fire at the Islamic Center of San Diego, killing three people.

But at the annual conference for the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) in Baltimore, community leaders stressed the urgency of turning the sorrow into action.

Nearly 25,000 people turned out for the annual event, held on Saturday and Sunday. Speakers addressed the recent shooting, pointing to the courage of the three victims as examples for the broader community in a time of heightened Islamophobia.

“We owe them more than condolences. We owe them resolve,” said Lena Masri, a lawyer at the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

She explained how the victims — a security officer, a caretaker and a neighbour — sacrificed their lives to save others. The security officer, Amin Abdullah, exchanged fire with the shooters, while the other two victims, Mansour Kaziha and Nadir Awad, rushed to help and called for emergency services.

“They protected the physical space of our community: the masjid [mosque], the school, the children, the teachers, the worshippers,” Masri explained.

“Our responsibility is to protect the civic space of our community: the right to worship, the right to speak, the right to organise, the right to defend Palestine, the right to build institutions.”

That was the recurring theme of the conference: that the Muslim American community cannot afford to be passive and must draw on its strength to push back against bigotry and hate.

Speakers emphasised voting, organising and donating to community institutions and candidates who align with Muslim Americans. They also underscored the need to hold officials accountable and push for an end to Israel’s atrocities in Palestine.

“We owe Gaza more than grief. We owe Gaza advocacy that cannot be intimidated into silence,” Masri said.

Islamophobia and Palestinians’ dehumanisation

Symbols of Palestine could be seen everywhere at the conference, from bags emblazoned with watermelons and flags to keffiyeh-patterned scarves, shirts and water bottles.

At a bazaar featuring dozens of vendors, conference-goers left messages of solidarity on a tent that will be sent to Gaza by the charity Life for Relief and Development (LIFE).

In speeches and on panels, advocates drew a link between anti-Muslim bigotry in the United States and Israel’s abuses in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and Lebanon.

Some of the loudest promoters of Islamophobia in the US are also staunch Israel supporters, among them right-wing commentator Laura Loomer and Congressman Randy Fine.

Both Loomer and Fine are allies of US President Donald Trump, whose administration has unleashed a crackdown to deport critics of Israel who live in the US but are not citizens.

Altaf Husain, a professor at the Howard University School of Social Work, said anti-Palestinian voices are trying to “scare” Muslims as a means of silencing criticism of Israel.

“They want to shut this down, so it’s a direct connection,” Husain told Al Jazeera.

He said the large turnout at the ICNA conference shows that the community is not intimidated and will not back down.

In the response to the shooting in San Diego, Husain pointed out that the community raised more than $3.5m for the victims’ families and moved to bolster security around Muslim institutions.

Layers of security

Saad Kazmi, the president of ICNA, said the organisation relied on three layers of protection to secure this weekend’s event: its own security guards, an outside firm and local law enforcement agencies in Baltimore.

While there is anxiety in the community over the rise of Islamophobia and Trump’s immigration crackdown, he said Muslim Americans must take matters into their own hands and work with “sensible” people across the political spectrum to defeat hate.

“We are very thankful that we live in a country that is ruled by the Constitution and law,” Kazmi told Al Jazeera.

Kazmi added that the shooting in San Diego only added to the community’s determination to assert and protect its rights. The Islamic centre in the city, he noted, did not shut down after the attack.

“If anything came out of this, it is that there are more attendees to the masjid, more people who believe that the way forward is to strengthen ourselves, strengthen our community and march on,” Kazmi said.

After the shooting, Loomer doubled down on her anti-Muslim rhetoric, calling on immigration authorities to target the Islamic Center of San Diego.

She also called for the deportation of all Muslims from the US, describing them as an “invasive species”. But few Republicans disavowed Loomer, who maintains close ties to the White House.

Rather, more than 60 Congress members have joined the Sharia-Free America Caucus since it was established in December. CAIR has designated the caucus a hate group.

At the state level, governors and local legislators have disparaged Islam while also pushing to penalise Palestinian rights activism.

Texas and Florida, for example, have labelled CAIR a “terrorist” group, while implementing measures against “Sharia law” that critics consider anti-Muslim dog whistles.

Rights under attack

In March, after CAIR sued Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over its “terrorist” designation, a federal court blocked the label from being imposed.

In his ruling, Judge Mark Walker wrote that DeSantis’s executive order (EO) targets the Muslim community as a whole.

“It should be lost on no one that Defendant’s EO targets one of America’s largest Muslim civil rights organizations for indirect suppression of speech. But, as we all know, it is easy for those in power to target minority groups with little pushback,” Walker wrote.

“Sadly, history teaches that it is often minority religious groups who find themselves in the crosshairs.”

On Saturday, several panels praised the US legal system and the laws that protect freedom of religion and speech. But the panellists argued that human rights do not defend themselves; people must step up to protect them.

“You’ve got to imagine rights are a territory, and you have to occupy that territory. If you do not actively occupy that territory, that territory will be taken from you. And that is exactly what has been happening,” Tom Facchine, an imam from New Jersey, said.

Last year, Palestinian immigrant Leqaa Kordia found her rights in jeopardy when immigration agents knocked on her door and detained her over her activism against Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.

Kordia spent more than a year in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention before an immigration judge ordered her to be released in March.

But Kordia — who is still fighting deportation — told ICNA conference attendees on Saturday that she has no regrets, encouraging them to remain politically active and engaged.

“Speaking up, it comes with a cost … It cost me my health, my life, literally my freedom, and I’m living in uncertainty that tomorrow I’m going to be here, or I’m going to be deported,” she said.

“It comes with a cost, but it’s worth it. It’s worth it because silence, it costs even way more than speaking.”

Two gunmen have killed three people at the Islamic Center of San Diego in what police are treating as a hate crime. Police say the attackers, aged 17 and 19, died from self-inflicted gunshots. A security guard was among those killed.

BREAKINGBREAKING,

Authorities say they are deploying ‘significant resources’ to the scene of the incident at Islamic Center of San Diego.

Police in California have said they are responding to an active shooter at a mosque in San Diego.

Authorities called on residents in Monday to avoid the area of the incident at the Islamic Center of San Diego.

There have been no official reports of casualties, but the Associated Press news agency cited officer Anthony Carrasco as saying that he believes people have been shot.

The police department said later on Monday that the situation remains active but has been “contained” without providing further details. “We have significant resources on scene at this time,” the department said.

Aerial television footage shows a heavy police presence outside the mosque.

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria said he is continuing to receive reports about the incident. “Emergency personnel are on scene and actively working to protect the community and secure the area,” he wrote on X.

The office of California Governor Gavin Newsom said he is following the situation and coordinating with local law enforcement agencies. “We are grateful to the first responders on the scene working to protect the community and urge everyone to follow guidance from local authorities,” the office said in a statement.

The mosque is in a heavily residential neighbourhood about 9 miles (14 km) north of downtown San Diego. It is the largest mosque in San Diego County, according to its website.

More to come…