Iran

South Korea has taken note of remarks by U.S. President Donald Trump that Seoul is not doing enough to support U.S. efforts in its war against Iran, an official at the foreign ministry said Tuesday.

Trump has criticized South Korea, Japan and European allies for not helping the U.S. reopen the Strait of Hormuz, such as by sending warships to escort commercial ships through the waterway, amid the conflict in the Middle East.

“We have been paying close attention to President Trump’s repeated remarks,” Park Il, foreign ministry spokesperson, said in a press briefing.

“The government will carefully review the matter and make a judgment in close coordination with the United States,” he said.

Seoul has reportedly reached out to Washington seeking to clarify Trump’s recent remarks and was told they were not directed specifically at South Korea, but rather reflected broader disappointment over U.S. allies not responding to his calls for assistance.

Both sides share the view that Trump’s comments would have no impact on the bilateral alliance, including efforts to implement trade and security commitments as agreed under the joint summit agreements, sources familiar with the matter said.

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The war in Iran has created an energy shock in Africa.

The continent relies heavily on oil and gas imports from the Middle East.

Much of this supply is currently stuck on tankers near the Strait of Hormuz, which is closed.

Countries including Kenya, Ethiopia and Zambia are reporting shortages.

Africa’s largest oil refinery in Nigeria is pumping out crude at maximum capacity, but that’s nowhere near enough to meet the continent’s needs.

In addition, Africa’s energy infrastructure has suffered from years of underinvestment.

So, what choices do governments have to contain the crisis?

Abas Aslani of the Center for Middle East Strategic Studies argues that the US and Israel are playing “Russian roulette” with the Gulf’s environmental security following strikes near Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant.

Published on
07/04/2026 – 11:02 GMT+2

Both European and Asian markets opened slightly lower on Tuesday as investors brace for US President Donald Trump’s deadline for Iran to either agree to a deal, or have their energy infrastructure targeted by air strikes.

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The deadline falls at 8 pm Eastern Time (2 am CET), giving Iran until then to accept a deal that would keep the Strait of Hormuz open to all shipping or face what Trump has called the “complete demolition” of its civilian infrastructure, including every power plant and bridge in the country.

At the time of writing, Benchmark US crude is trading at $113.5 a barrel while Brent crude, the international standard, is around $111. Both prices are up around 1%.

The Euro Stoxx 50 and the broader pan-European Stoxx 600 are both up 0.5% as well.

The UK’s FTSE 100 is flat while Germany’s DAX 30 is around 0.2% higher, and France’s CAC 40 and Italy’s FTSE MIB have risen close to 1% each.

Over in Asia, there is a mixed reaction from markets in anticipation of the deadline.

South Korea’s Kospi has jumped 0.8% while Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 is effectively trading flat.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng is down 0.8% while the Shanghai Composite is slightly higher by 0.3%. Additionally, Australia’s ASX 200 and Taiwan’s Taiex both rose 2%.

On Easter Sunday, President Trump renewed the threat publicly for the last time before the deadline stating that “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!”

US futures and precious metals

On Tuesday morning, US futures are all trading between 0.1% and 0.3% lower.

The moves follow a strong close on Monday as the S&P 500 rose 0.4%, coming off its first winning week in the last six. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 165 points, or 0.4%, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 0.5%.

Monday also offered the first chance for US markets to react to a report from Friday that stated American employers hired more workers last month than economists expected.

These were encouraging signals for an economy that’s had to absorb painful leaps in costs for gasoline since the Iran war started.

The average price for a gallon of regular gasoline is nearly $4.12 across the country, according to AAA. It was below $3 a couple days before the US and Israel launched attacks to begin the war in late February.

In other trading, gold is up 0.77% at around $4,685 while silver is rose roughly 0.2% to $72.95 an ounce.

During the first month of the US-Israel war on Iran, the Houthis adopted a cautious approach, even though many expected them to move faster based on the nature of their close relationship with Tehran. This assessment is not wrong — the relationship is indeed strong — but what this view misses is that decision-making within the Yemeni group has increasingly become the product of an extended internal debate.

This debate goes back to the Houthis’ decision to launch military action in support of Gaza after Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, 2023. After the United States and Israel launched retaliatory strikes in March 2025, which lasted for two months, an agreement was brokered by Oman in May, bringing the fighting to a halt. This experience had a deep impact on the group.

Some Houthi leaders believe that the cost of that involvement over the past two years was high, not only in terms of military and leadership losses and civilian casualties, but also in terms of draining resources, damaging infrastructure and complicating the political track, especially with Saudi Arabia, which had put forward a roadmap for peace in Yemen in 2022.

This assessment did not remain at the level of abstract analysis; it became the basis for an internal discussion that produced two clear currents.

The first current leans towards caution. It seems that the previous experience proved that direct involvement does not yield strategic gains, but it does open costly fronts. This camp pushes for avoiding open confrontation, preserving existing understandings — especially with Saudi Arabia — and limiting action to political support or small, contained operations that do not drag the group into a large-scale escalation.

In contrast, there is another current that believes the present moment is crucial for the so-called “axis of resistance” created by Iran, and that absence or hesitation could cost the group its place in the post-war equation. For this current, this is a decisive moment to assert the Houthis’ presence, especially amid an expanding conflict and the likelihood of a reshuffling of the regional balance of power.

Two currents have shaped the Houthis’ decision-making over recent weeks. As a result, today the group has embraced neither full-scale engagement nor total absence. This was evident first in the escalation of political rhetoric during the first month of the war, then in the execution of limited, carefully calculated operations that began on March 27. There was a clear declaration of gradual intervention, close monitoring of developments, and a deliberate effort not to cross the red lines identified by the group’s military spokesperson, particularly those related to the Bab al-Mandeb Strait.

However, the balance between the two currents may become unstable at some point as the war escalates and widens regionally, and as Iranian and Houthi talk of a “unity of fronts” intensifies. The longer the conflict lasts, the less able the group will be to remain in this grey zone, and the stronger the pressure will be for deeper involvement.

With each new development on the ground, this internal debate may edge closer to a moment of decision: either entrenching caution as a long-term strategic choice, or shifting to broader involvement that may not be as gradual as was declared in Houthi statements.

What remains constant, however, is that the group has entered this phase with the accumulated experience of past years — a record that has taught it the cost of involvement and made it aware that entering a war is not merely a military decision, but an open-ended political, security, and economic trajectory. It has already paid that price in its previous confrontations with the US and Israel.

Thus, the question is no longer whether the Houthis will enter the war, but how they will enter and at what cost. Will they be able to set and maintain limits on their involvement? Will their calibrated entry avoid paying the full price? The answers to these questions will be made clear in the weeks to come.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

A US-Israeli strike has caused extensive damage to a synagogue in Tehran, according to a video published by Iran’s semi-official Mehr News Agency. Footage shows civil defence workers amid the rubble, with Hebrew-language books scattered on the ground.

US President Donald Trump said ‘Tuesday will be power plant day’ in a vulgar post on social media. He says the US plans to start bombing electricity infrastructure unless Iran opens the Strait of Hormuz. Al Jazeera’s Hala Al Shami looks at Iran’s power plants and the dangers of potential attacks.

Political analyst Trita Parsi says no one should be surprised that Iran has rejected the idea of a ceasefire deal with the US and Israel, given their history of violating previous agreements.

WASHINGTON — The United States relied on dozens of aircraft, hundreds of personnel, secret CIA technology and a dose of subterfuge to rescue a two-man F-15E fighter jet crew downed deep inside Iran, a risky mission that President Trump and his top defense aides detailed Monday.

U.S. forces rescued the pilot within hours of the jet going down late Thursday, surging helicopters, midair refuelers and fighter aircraft deep into Iran after confirming his location, Trump said in a valedictory news conference at the White House, describing the military operation in an unusual level of detail.

The second aviator aboard the aircraft — the weapons systems officer — was rescued nearly two days later.

An A-10 Warthog, which was the attack aircraft primarily responsible for keeping in contact with the downed pilot on the ground, was hit by enemy fire while engaging Iranian forces, said Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The A-10 was “not landable,” Caine told reporters, but the pilot continued fighting before flying to a friendly country and ejecting. He was quickly rescued and is doing fine, Caine said.

The rescue of the F-15 pilot occurred before the Iranians could marshal a comprehensive search of their own, but finding and bringing home the weapon systems officer was an even more complicated endeavor.

The officer, who rode in the backseat of the F-15 flying under the call sign Dude-44 Bravo, was injured but followed his training to get as far from the crash site as possible. He managed to climb mountainous terrain and hide inside a cave or crevice. He contacted U.S. forces Saturday.

When a plane crashes in hostile territory, “they all head right to that site, you want to be as far away as you can,” Trump said.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe said the spy agency used “exquisite technologies that no other intelligence service” possesses to locate the aviator. At the same time, the CIA mounted a deception operation to mislead Iranians who also were trying to find him.

Ratcliffe said the search and rescue operation was “comparable to hunting for a single grain of sand in the middle of a desert.”

The CIA declined to respond to questions Monday about the kind of technology used to locate the airman.

Protected by an “air armada” of drones, strike aircraft and more, rescuers moved in on Sunday to pick up the weapons officer and bring him home.

Many of the dozens of aircraft that were part of the operation were there for deception, Trump said.

“We were bringing them all over, and a lot of it was subterfuge,” Trump said. “We wanted to have them think he was in a different location.”

Back in Washington, national security officials coordinated on a call, keeping the phone line open for nearly two days straight.

“From the moment our pilots went down, our mission was unblinking,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said. “The call never dropped. The meeting never stopped, the planning never ceased.”

Cooper, Toropin and Amiri write for the Associated Press. Cooper reported from Phoenix and Amiri from New York. AP writer Josh Boak contributed to this report.

Around two dozen protesters gathered outside the US embassy in Tel Aviv, calling for an end to the war with Iran and Lebanon. Police ordered the protest to disperse within minutes as tensions rose and members of the public confronted demonstrators.

Last month, images hit the internet showing a very stealthy, extremely long-endurance, very high-altitude intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance drone commonly (and unofficially) referred to as the RQ-180, or an evolution thereof, landing at a base in Greece. Many questions remain about the uncrewed aircraft and why it might be operating from Larissa Air Base.

However, as we noted in our initial reporting, the current conflict with Iran would be a very relevant fit for what the RQ-180 was likely designed to do. Furthermore, a secretive late Cold War-era drone program known as Quartz, intended to persistently monitor mobile nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles deep within the Soviet Union, offers a window into exactly why the RQ-180 could be in high demand in the Middle East now. There is no higher-priority standing mission for Operation Epic Fury at this time than finding and destroying Iranian launchers.

In many ways, the shadowy Quartz program from decades ago was a progenitor for what became a very large flying wing uncrewed aircraft that shares the planform of the B-21 (and the original B-2 design) and is likely at least part of the RQ-180’s origin story.

Strange arrival over Greece

To recap quickly, on March 18, local Greek news website onlarissa.gr first published pictures of what it misidentified as a B-2 bomber landing at Larissa Air Base, also known as Larissa National Airport. The base, which belongs to the Hellenic Air Force, but is also known to host U.S. Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drones, is situated in the city of the same name.

Onlarissa.gr outlet followed up its initial reporting by posting a video of the drone, seen below. Additional and increasingly more detailed imagery has subsequently emerged.

Το αμερικανικό βομβαρδιστικό Β-2 πάνω από τον ουρανό της Λάρισας

Per onlarissa.gr, the highly exotic aircraft had landed at Larissa after experiencing some kind of technical issue, citing unnamed sources. This remains unconfirmed, but it would explain why the drone touched down in broad daylight, rather than coming in under the cover of darkness. It could also have diverted there with an emergency, while operating out of another location, even one in the continental United States. It is worth noting that Larissa Air Base appears to have unique facilities built in recent years that seem to be very well suited for housing an aircraft like this.

TWZ previously reached out to U.S. Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) and the Pentagon for comment, but has not received any responses as of the time of writing. In a story published on March 24, Air & Space Forces Magazine said U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) also declined to comment.

Attention was also subsequently called to U.S. Air Force cargo planes having been tracked making unusual flights from Edwards Air Force Base in California to Larissa recently. One of those flights came on February 25, while another one occurred on March 9. A C-5M also flew to Larissa from Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma on February 25, according to Aviation Week. Whether there is any connection between these flights and the drone spotted at the base has not been confirmed at this time. Edwards is the Air Force’s main hub for aviation test and evaluation efforts, and flight testing of the RQ-180 was reportedly at least managed from there in the 2010s. The Air Force could also have moved other assets to Larissa via Edwards.

The shadowy state of the ‘RQ-180’

The current state of the RQ-180, or any designs that have evolved from it, on a programmatic level, is very murky. In addition to testing at Edwards, past reports have said that a unit at Beale Air Force Base in California began flying the drones operationally, at least on a limited level, by 2019. There has been talk of a large flying wing aircraft similar in configuration to the B-21 Raider bomber flying out of Plant 42 in Palmdale, also in California, under the cover of darkness for years.

There are very strong indications that a photograph that appeared on Instagram in October 2020 of an unmanned aircraft flying in the skies over California’s Mojave Desert near Edwards Air Force Base was the first sighting of an RQ-180. That picture also notably showed a drone with an overall white paint scheme. That aligned with a report from Aviation Week that the design had gained the nicknames “Great White Bat” and “Shikaka.” The latter of these is the name of a fictional sacred white bat that is at the center of the plot of the 1995 Jim Carrey comedy Ace Ventura 2. The drone seen recently flying over Larissa has an overall black or otherwise dark-colored paint job. TWZ has noted previously that an overall white/cream/light pastel color scheme could help the drone to hide better at high altitudes during the day, but that a dark scheme would be more relevant at night. It is very possible, if not probable, that multiple schemes have been tested for a drone expected to fly sorties lasting multiple days.

It has long been thought that the RQ-180 could be a much-discussed, more survivable replacement for the non-stealthy RQ-4 Global Hawk drone, the vast majority of which are now retired. At the same time, the U.S. Air Force, now together with the U.S. Space Force, has been engaged in a major effort to push more surveillance capabilities, including exactly some of what the RQ-180 is likely intended to do, into space. This has led to public force structure changes and deferrals of traditional airborne sensing capabilities, and could have resulted in the stealthy high altitude, long-endurance (HALE) drone program being scaled back.

There certainly has been no clear evidence, at Beale or anywhere else, of the establishment of the kind of infrastructure that one would associate with the RQ-180 reaching a more advanced operational state and serial production. It is possible that the drone could share facilities with the B-21 under the larger umbrella of the Long Range Strike (LRS) family of systems. The RQ-180 is very likely intended, in part, to work in concert with the Raider, and there may even be some commonality between the two aircraft. The RQ-180 and/or related designs very likely played a direct role in risk reduction efforts that helped sell the Long Range Strike-Bomber (LRS-B) concept, and possibly the win by Northrop Grumman of that contract.

B-21 Takeoff and Landing

So, where the RQ-180 stands in terms of its overall capacity and its future remains unclear, but they are clearly being used on operational sorties, at least in a limited manner.

Iranian missile threats persist

After more than five weeks of fighting, the conflict with Iran is still grinding on. Despite the United States and Israel having substantially degraded the ability of Iranian forces to launch retaliatory missile and drone strikes, they have not stopped entirely. Iran has been digging out underground missile bases struck by American and Israeli forces and getting them back into operation, sometimes within hours, The New York Times reported just last Friday, citing U.S. intelligence reports. That followed other reports stating that Iran still retains a vast arsenal of missiles and drones, as well as a significant number of launchers to fire them.

In recent weeks, publicly available data from multiple sources has, at times, shown relatively small, but noticeable upticks in Iran’s launches. There are also signs that more of those threats are evading interception, though whether this has translated to more damage and/or casualties from impacts is unclear.

When it comes to launchers, Iran has invested heavily over the years in road mobile designs for firing ballistic and cruise missiles, as well as drones. This includes types that can be hard to distinguish from normal civilian trucks, especially those used for launching short-range ballistic missiles.

✈️🎯60+ strike flights: The IAF completed additional waves of strikes in western Iran targeting the Iranian regime’s missile launchers, defense systems, and live-fire arrays. pic.twitter.com/I1rRLBJlUR

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) March 3, 2026

Iran also has extensive underground ‘missile cities’ and other hardened sites that launchers can sprint to and from, and even fire from within in some cases. Beyond the main missile storage and launch sites, Iranian authorities have clearly had plans to disperse these weapons across the country. Reports have said that more authority to employ them has been delegated to lower echelons of command to minimize the impacts of separate U.S. and Israeli strikes on command and control nodes, as well.

On top of all this, Iran still has longer-ranged ballistic missiles that it can fire from areas further to the east, where the volume of U.S. and Israeli strikes has only more recently begun to grow. What’s left of Iran’s air defenses, which presents a real threat, is therefore likely to be more intact in those regions. In general, many of Iran’s air defense systems are also road mobile and can pop-up suddenly. All of this creates challenges for finding and fixing Iran’s remaining launch capacity, let alone neutralizing it.

Three weeks of Operation Epic Fury.

The Joint Force owns the skies, but Tehran holds the Strait. Additional U.S. fighter aircraft and naval assets arrived in both theaters, and Marine expeditionary forces are en route.

8,000+ Iranian targets and 130+ ships struck, per CENTCOM. pic.twitter.com/Xk8XYs1sP2

— Ian Ellis (@ianellisjones) March 23, 2026

The Israeli Air Force has dropped over 16,000 bombs in Iran since the start of the war, in over 800 waves of strikes, the military says.

According to the IDF, over 10,000 separate strikes have been carried out on 4,000 targets. pic.twitter.com/gkU4rW4s8T

— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) April 1, 2026

In this context, there is a clear need to be able to readily detect launchers, which can pop out suddenly and unexpectedly from cover, across vast areas. Known missile storage sites and launch areas around them also need to be persistently surveilled. The ability to find launchers faster opens up new options for striking them. Just tracking and recording their typical movements would also help further refine interdiction and intelligence-gathering strategies going forward.

As TWZ has previously explored in great depth, the RQ-180 is best understood as a very high-flying, very long-endurance, and very stealthy intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance platform that is capable of penetrating and persisting deep into enemy airspace. Its primary means of achieving that mission would be a radar with ground moving target indicator (GMTI) and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) capabilities, but radar would be just the primary component of a larger sensor package, which would likely include powerful electro-optical sensors and passive radiofrequency ones.

At its most basic, GMTI allows battle managers to see the enemy’s ground movements in real-time and then quickly adapt their game plan to counter those enemy forces before they can ever attack, or even pose a threat to friendly forces. GMTI is also a critical capability for detecting changes in force posture, establishing patterns of enemy movements over time, and identifying new targets of interest. Modern GMTI products can also be looped into a ‘kill web’ for rapid targeting purposes.

Some of this is also achieved through the aforementioned SAR mode, which basically provides a satellite-like image of a target area using radar. It also has the ability to see some things optical systems cannot, and, like GMTI, it can work under nearly all atmospheric conditions, day or night. When paired with GMTI, SAR can be used to help positively identify targets, as well as gain better situational awareness about the targets being tracked.

Passive electronic intelligence collection that allows for radiofrequency-emitters to be quickly detected and geolocated via onboard antennas and interferometry-based computing is another part of the equation. Long-range optical sensors can also provide higher-fidelity intelligence and spot movements of infrared signatures over large areas. You can imagine how fuzing all these capabilities together, combined with advanced networking, on a single platform could be incredibly potent. Basically, detecting a target or target group of interest, and then training advanced sensors on it to rapidly build up a high-quality understanding of what is going on and even to provide real-time targeting data to ‘shooters’ would be this aircraft’s bread and butter.

All of these are capabilities that would be ideally suited to the very high-priority task at hand of searching for Iranian launchers across the country’s vast terrain.

This all brings us back to Quartz and the very specific mission set that drove that program. Quartz is the best-known codename for a drone conceived as part of what was officially dubbed the Advanced Airborne Reconnaissance System, or AARS program.

The lead-up to Quartz

AARS/Quartz was itself born out of a succession of earlier developments. Proving that using a stealth platform to penetrate enemy air defenses and to stay over contested territory for hours on end while transmitting data collected without being detected is one of the biggest revolutions in warfare of the 20th Century. This capability was demonstrated on the tactical side at the dawn of stealth technology by Northrop’s Tacit Blue. That aircraft was developed as part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) highly classified Battlefield Surveillance Aircraft-Experimental (BSAX) program, which began in the late 1970s. 

Tacit Blue notably served as a periphery risk reduction effort for the Advanced Technology Bomber (ATB) program that would result in the B-2. However, its reason for being was to show that a stealthy aircraft carrying a huge radar can penetrate enemy air defenses and loiter for prolonged periods of time, collecting GMTI radar data and other intelligence information.

The radar for BSAX was a low probability of intercept design that had come from Pave Mover, another DARPA effort. Pave Mover ultimately led to the non-stealthy and now-retired E-8 Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) aircraft, but offshoots of that radar technology did end up elsewhere, including on the B-2. Low probability of intercept/low probability of detection (LPI/LPD) radars and communications suites are now key tenets of stealth aircraft design, in general. Keeping signal emissions, which an enemy can use to spot and track threats, to a minimum is critical for low-observable (stealthy) aircraft designs. Pave Mover was also tied into DARPA’s Assault Breaker program, which focused on proving out various technologies to enable standoff targeting of enemy forces, especially large Soviet armored formations on the move, deep behind the front lines.

The famously ugly Tacit Blue, also nicknamed the “Whale,” produced results that were revolutionary, as you can read more about here. Even the most capable existing penetrating intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft available at the time, like the SR-71 Blackbird, could only take a snapshot in time of the enemy and its posture. Satellites were far more predictable and could only provide the same ‘moment in time’ intelligence, and in a much less flexible manner. Tacit Blue could watch for hours with the enemy not even knowing it was there.

This meant the quality of intelligence Tacit Blue was capable of collecting was of far greater value. Metaphorically speaking, the SR-71 was like documenting a wedding by loudly running through a crowd and snapping a few photos. Tacit Blue was like rolling hours of videotape at the same wedding by an invisible cameraman. It was an absolute game-changer. The information was also transmitted securely using a LPI data link in near-real-time so that it could be rapidly exploited, not once the aircraft returned to base.

A drone to hunt Soviet mobile ballistic missiles

AARS/Quartz can be seen as something of a strategic parallel to the more tactically-minded BSAX effort and the Tacit Blue demonstrator. It was conceived as a cooperative effort between the U.S. Air Force, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). NRO, the very existence of which was only declassified in 1992, is and has historically been responsible primarily for intelligence-gathering via satellite. However, it was also involved in ISR drone operations in the 1960s and 1970s.

In the 1980s, the Reagan Administration grew concerned about a gap in reconnaissance assets, in the air and in space, to persistently track and monitor Soviet mobile nuclear-armed intermediate-range and intercontinental ballistic missiles.

“As spy satellite systems came on line in the 1960s, they shared the same fundamental operational scheme as the SR-71. Both conducted reconnaissance with relative impunity but were so fast that they only provided episodic coverage. The Soviet system of fixed air bases, missile silos, and command centers of the Cold War’s first 30 years favored ‘fast pass’ reconnaissance, however, so its weaknesses were not evident until the strategic equation shifted in the late 1970s,” Thomas Ehrhard wrote in a monograph, titled Air Force UAVs: The Secret History, which the Mitchell Institute for Airpower Studies published in 2010. “Soviet mobile missiles (both nuclear and air-to-air) and the advance of aviation technology opened the door for a true loitering surveillance UAV called AARS.”

Ehrhard pointed to three missiles as particular drivers behind the AARS program. The first of these was the road-mobile RSD-10 Pioneer, known in the West as the SS-20 Saber, a nuclear-armed intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) with three warheads in a multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) configuration. The SS-20 had an immensely destabilizing impact on the security environment in Europe. Its appearance was a central factor in the United States and the Soviet Union ultimately signing the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 1987.

Contemporary reports said that the Soviets were also looking into an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) based on the SS-20, which itself may have been the result of an abortive ICBM program. After the Soviet Union fell, Russia subsequently developed the RS-26 Rubezh, which it described as an ICBM, but many believed it to actually be an IRBM akin to the SS-20. The INF treaty ultimately collapsed in 2019, rendering the issue moot. Five years later, a new Russian intermediate-range missile, called Oreshnik, emerged after one was fired at Ukraine. The U.S. government has assessed Oreshnik to be based on the RS-26.

The other Soviet missiles that helped make the case for AARS/Quartz were two ICBMs, the rail-mobile RT-23 Molodets (SS-24 Scalpel) and the road-mobile RT-2PM/RS-12M Topol (SS-25 Sickle).

RT-23/SS-24 SCALPEL MOD 1 ICBM

RT-2PM/SS-25 SICKLE ICBM

In his 2010 monograph, Ehrhard describes the Reagan-era view of the resulting problem set as follows:

“The technological problem of holding these mobile missiles at risk, one that NATO had never solved with the SS-20, now became vastly more complex [with the inclusion of the SS-24 and SS-25]. U.S. forces had to constantly monitor their movement and electronic emissions, something neither fast-pass satellites, U-2s, nor the SR-71 could accomplish. The mission also entailed breaking the over two decade-long declaratory policy of not overflying the Soviet Union, a prospect the Reagan Administration apparently felt was worth the gain. To complicate matters further, they needed a platform that could track those missiles in a nuclear detonation environment while flying from remote bases in the continental US. Operating and receiving imagery from such a craft beyond line-of-sight using space relays would prove daunting. The political and design challenges loomed large, but in the end the Air Force/NRO/CIA consortium opted for a leap-ahead system.”

With all this in mind, AARS/Quartz was seen as a national imperative. The very long-endurance drone, penetrating deep into Soviet airspace, would be able to locate many of these threats, allowing them to be targeted during the opening throes of a potential apocalypse – something we will come back to later on.

By the mid-1980s, contracts were doled out to Lockheed and Boeing to develop what at the time could be seen as the most ambitious ‘silver bullet’ aerospace program of its time, albeit one that had very few eyes on it as it was deeply buried in the classified realm. Ehrhard writes:

“To accomplish the loitering surveillance mission, this UAV needed autonomous (i.e., not remote controlled), highly reliable flight controls, and a design capable of intercontinental ranges from bases in the US zone of the interior with extreme high altitude capability (long wingspan with sailplane-type lift and multi-engine propulsion to reach altitudes more than 70,000 feet). Moreover, it had to carry an array of high-resolution sensors, high-capacity satellite communications capabilities, and various antennas—all in a package that was stealthy to the point of being covert. The cost of developing each technology piece alone would be staggering, but integrating them presented an even greater challenge – thus the project became a magnet for the best and most starry-eyed technologists in the black world. As one CIA engineer said in an anonymous interview, this project was ‘the cat’s pajamas,’ and ‘the single most fun project I ever worked on’ because it stretched every conceivable technology area.”

Ehrhard does not elaborate on the expected sensor package, but an LPI/LPD radar with GMTI and SAR modes, as well as other sensors, would have been needed for a stealthy platform tasked with this mission set. As noted earlier, electronic emissions, which can be detected passively, were also seen at this time as a key way to spot and track mobile missile launchers.

A highly ambitious undertaking

By all indications, AARS/Quartz was seen as a very ambitious effort from the start, but one that could yield impressive capabilities needed to address a mission requirement critical to national security. It should be noted that the U.S. military was pursuing a host of advanced stealth aviation technology programs at around the same time. Many of the efforts would go on to produce real results, if they hadn’t already by the mid-1980s, and this is just based on what is known publicly. Northrop’s stealthy Tacit Blue demonstrator flew for the first time in 1982. Lockheed’s F-117 Nighthawk reached an initial operational capability the following year. The Advanced Technology Bomber (ATB) program that would lead to the B-2 was well underway by this time, too.

In the end, AARS/Quartz did not fare as well as many of its contemporaries, at least from what we know. The program ran through the end of the Reagan years and into the 1990s under the administration of President George H.W. Bush. It morphed and changed hands considerably from a smaller ‘bleeding-edge’ NRO-led program into one that was integrated into a new national unmanned aircraft strategy. This, in turn, caused its mission set to balloon as a maelstrom of stakeholders demanded many capabilities out of a single platform that was already beyond the available technology of the era.

Ehrhard’s 2010 monograph sums up just how bloated AARS became by the 1990s:

“[David A.] Kier[, NRO’s Deputy Director from 1997 to 2001] said the large version of AARS, which according to some reports had a wingspan of 250 feet, cost less than a B-2, but more than $1 billion a copy. Reportedly, the production plan called for only eight vehicles at a cost of $10 billion, each of the vehicles capable of an amazing 40 hours on station after flying to the area of interest.”

“Air Force officials were so leery of the UAV’s autonomous flight concept (no pilot had moment-to-moment control) that they reportedly insisted the flying prototype carry a pilot to handle in-flight anomalies and that the final design include a modular, two-place cockpit insert to make it optionally piloted. ‘By the time everyone got their wishes included,’ Kier said, ‘it [AARS] had to do everything but milk the cow and communicate with the world while doing it.’”

“With all of AARS’s leading-edge sensors and communications links, each of which posed substantial technical challenges in its own right, flight reliability quickly became the biggest design hurdle, according to Kier. The technologies were so secret, and the value of the payload and the air vehicle was so great that its loss over unfriendly territory was unthinkable. One defense official remarked, ‘If one had crashed, it would have been so classified we would have had to bomb it to ensure it was destroyed.’”

“Sailing along on the glut of black money in the late 1980s, AARS kept moving forward despite its continually expanding, problematic requirements list. As happened with [the] D-21 and Compass Arrow [drone programs] in the early 1970s, however, AARS was about to have its most vital mission curtailed.”

“The end of the Cold War brought the expensive program to a halt. An Air Force general familiar with the project said: ‘When AARS was invented, there was more money than they [the NRO] could spend. After the Cold War, the money went away and projects like that could not possibly survive.’ Like predators stalking a wounded animal, manned alternatives to AARS emerged. One proposal would put a sophisticated target acquisition system on the B-2 stealth bomber – the so-called RB-2 configuration. The proposal had value as a terminal tracking system, but the RB-2 lacked a method of off-board cueing to direct it to a search area.”

…

“As it turned out, none of the alternative programs made the cut, for not only was the Cold War officially over with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but the venerable Strategic Air Command was disbanded in June 1992. With that move, AARS lost its primary military constituent and the AARS alliance began to crumble.”

“…The Air Force pulled funding on AARS, and it was terminated in December 1992 by the intelligence community hierarchy just as it was to enter full scale development. AARS was, in the final analysis, a misfit. It was a major aircraft program backed by a satellite organization (the NRO), and a risky unmanned surveillance platform slated for a combat pilot-led Air Force—hardly an edifice solid enough to survive the removal of its strategic underpinnings. No one organization provided focus or advocacy for the program. As a result, the “perfect” surveillance UAV faded away even as the ultimate Cold War satellite system, Milstar, and the equally exotic B-2 stealth bomber managed to survive, backed as they were by one service, and powerful sub-groups within that service, who were culturally and operationally attuned to those configurations.”

By 1990, Lockheed and Boeing are also said to have been directed to combine their previously separate work on AARS/Quartz.

Kier, who Ehrhard also identifies as the last AARS program manager, says the drone’s design ultimately evolved into something that “resembled a substantially scaled-up version of DARPA’s DarkStar.” Lockheed’s DarkStar, which eventually received the designation RQ-3, was a stealthy tailless design with an ovoid central fuselage and with very long, slender, and straight main wings. Boeing was also a major subcontractor for the RQ-3.

DarkStar was also referred to as “Tier III-minus,” a moniker that reflected the requirements for the drone, which were truncated compared to a planned Tier III type. Tier III was a more direct follow-on to AARS, but was already envisioned as a smaller and less capable, and one would imagine less expensive, uncrewed aircraft. There were also additional lower capability tiers, one of which ultimately led to the RQ-4 Global Hawk. Ehrhard says some members of Congress and of industry did attempt to drum up support for a true successor to AARS/Quartz, unofficially referred to as Tier IV, but without success.

With regard to the RQ-3, at least two flying examples were built, the first of which crashed in 1996 after suffering a control system malfunction. DarkStar had vanished completely from the public eye by 1999, but it has since emerged that a direct line can be traced between it and the stealthy RQ-170 Sentinel via another secretive drone called the X-44A, which TWZ was first to report on back in 2019.

When it comes to AARS/Quartz, the full scale and scope of what exactly came out of the hundreds of millions, and possibly billions, spent on the program over at least a decade, remains unclear. Clearly, major leaps were made in the critical communications, command and control, structural, and sensor technologies needed to make the system a reality. There are rumors that sub-scale risk-reduction test articles were flown, but details surrounding the program remain highly secretive. 

A mission requirement that rhymes

As we noted earlier, many questions remain about the RQ-180, as well as the overall status of that program. At the same time, fast forward some three decades or so from the end of AARS (and its immediate successors), and there are now echoes of the Cold War mission requirements that prompted that program, including in the current conflict with Iran.

The Iranian arsenal of conventionally-armed missiles is not anywhere near the same kind of threat as Soviet nuclear-tipped IRBMs and ICBMs. Still, they do present very real threats, especially for strikes on large critical infrastructure targets and as terror weapons when loaded with cluster munition payloads. The current conflict has demonstrated that strategy also puts immense strain on Israeli missile defenses, which could have broader ramifications, as you can read more about here. Iran’s short-range ballistic missiles offer additional flexibility against targets on land or at sea. In addition, it has been clear for years now that Iran is very willing to launch conventional ballistic missile attacks.

As already noted, the launchers for these missiles are mobile, and some are configured to look like typical civilian-style trucks at a casual glance. Some operate from hardened and underground bases. A number of those facilities were even built with ports that allow missiles to be fired from within, though it is unclear how extensively Iran has made use of that capability in the current conflict. These apertures have likely been repeatedly struck by the U.S. and Israel.

The underlying challenge of finding Iran’s ballistic missiles, and doing so with enough time to attempt to strike them before they launch, has clear similarities to the mission that drove AARS/Quartz. The Iranian case is perhaps more complex in certain respects, given the larger number of smaller missiles, many of which could be dispersed over a broad area. Still, the long-range weapons that threaten Israel are clearly the top priority and would be the easiest to spot for an asset like the RQ-180.

CENTCOM:

The Iranian regime is using mobile launchers to indiscriminately fire missiles in an attempt to inflict maximum harm across the region.

U.S. forces are hunting these threats down and without apology or hesitation, we are taking them out.pic.twitter.com/l4lxbTlAf4

— Clash Report (@clashreport) March 3, 2026

🚨 WATCH: CENTCOM releases footage of strikes on fortified missile bases in southern Iran. The first footage includes hits on tunnel entrances and on mobile and stationary launchers at the missile base in Hajjiabad, Iran. pic.twitter.com/wuoi5GEhqp

— Major Sammer Pal Toorr (Infantry Combat Veteran) (@samartoor3086) March 22, 2026

Iran is responding to external threats by releasing a new video showcasing one of its underground missile tunnel systems, packed with missile engines, mobile launchers, and a range of advanced weaponry. The footage prominently features the Paveh cruise missile, the Ghadr-380… pic.twitter.com/ILsdlrPtQy

— Basha باشا (@BashaReport) March 25, 2025

Furthermore, Iran’s air defenses have been significantly degraded after some five weeks of U.S. and Israeli strikes, on top of the losses during the 12 Day War last year, but threats remain. As noted, the northeastern end of the country has seen fewer strikes compared to other areas, overall. Total air supremacy over Iran has yet to be achieved.

This is not a hypothetical assessment either, as underscored by the recent loss of a U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle. In the ensuing efforts to recover the F-15E’s crew, an A-10 Warthog crashed after being hit by hostile fire and two rescue helicopters were also damaged. American forces deliberately destroyed additional aircraft – reportedly two MC-130J special operations tanker transports and four Little Bird helicopters – inside Iran to prevent the capture of sensitive material. This came after the MC-130Js had become disabled after touching down at an austere operating location during the final mission to retrieve the downed Strike Eagle’s Weapon System Officer.

Last month, a U.S. Air Force F-35A fighter also had to make an emergency landing after reportedly being hit by an Iranian surface-to-air missile. In addition to damage to the aircraft, there are reports that the pilot suffered shrapnel wounds, as well. There have been reports of other close calls since the conflict began.

Iran’s IRGC released a footage reportedly showing U.S. F-35 jet being hit over Iran.

Note that we can’t independently confirm the authenticity of the footage. pic.twitter.com/9N0ePd2LLf

— Clash Report (@clashreport) March 19, 2026

This is exactly the environment where a very high-flying, extremely long-endurance, and very stealthy drone, like the RQ-180, would be valuable, if not critical, to perform the aforementioned mission. The drone would simply fly outside the range of Iranian defenses if need be and likely fly nearly directly over most of them without fear of being shot down. From that perch, which could be far above where normal jet aircraft fly (60,000-70,000+ feet is possible) it would be able to monitor massive swathes of Iranian territory for movement of launchers and indications of launches, especially around known launch areas and storage sites.

It is also important to note here that much has changed in the past 20 years, let alone the past 40, which makes a successor to the AARS/Quartz concept more viable now, in general. Massive leaps have been made in every single relevant technological area. Examples include the fielding of operational semi-autonomous high-altitude, long-endurance drones, huge breakthroughs in composite structures and satellite data links, and the miniaturization of highly-powerful sensor systems. Just the available satellite bandwidth alone and the increases in onboard computing power were so far advanced by the mid-2000s already compared to the 1980s. Added to that now is the ability to crunch through all the data collected onboard using artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies, which further helps make use of the bandwidth available..

AARS/Quartz was never intended to exist in a vacuum. It was explicitly seen as a part of an ecosystem that also included the B-2 bomber (to strike the targets the drone found) and the Milstar communications satellite constellation (to help transmit relevant data). The B-2 and Milstar did enter service, although the former did so on a very truncated level due to post-Cold War drawdowns. The U.S. military has made further investments since then in advanced networking capabilities as part of integrated kill web architectures. The B-2 and other relevant capabilities that could directly tie in with the RQ-180 are being employed publicly in the current conflict with Iran. It is possible, if not highly plausible, that this integration has already existed for years, in part as a result of the development of the LRS family of systems.

There is a degree of precedent here already, with regard to Iran specifically, with the RQ-170 Sentinel. RQ-170s are understood to have conducted extensive flights over Iran in the 2000s and into the very early 2010s, particularly to provide persistent monitoring of nuclear sites. Those missions were thrust into the public eye in 2011, when an RQ-170 went down in Iran and was captured largely intact.

The fact that the Sentinel has been flying operationally for nearly two decades, at least, also just underscores the degree to which stealthy, persistent drone surveillance capabilities had already advanced decades ago. That being said, the RQ-170 is a medium-altitude platform that was developed as a more tactical-level asset for surveillance of smaller areas. It does not fulfill the continued requirements for something like the RQ-180, able to fly at much higher altitudes over far greater distances for much longer periods of time, while carrying huge sensors, and was never intended to do so.

It’s also worth noting here that any decision to employ a highly secretive and sensitive asset like the RQ-180 over Iran would still carry major risks. Stealth aircraft aren’t invisible or completely immune to threats, and accidents do happen. As noted earlier, a technical issue of some kind may well be the only reason why we got a clear look at the drone during the day at Larissa in Greece, to begin with. At the same time, there is something of a precedent for taking these kinds of risks with regard to Iran, specifically, even outside of the demands of open conflict. After the RQ-170 went down in Iran, it is very likely that Russia and China had opportunities to analyze the drone in detail. But the technologies in the RQ-170, and its very design, are understood to be far less exquisite than what would be found in the RQ-180.

But even as an RQ-180 would have an even more pressing use case against a peer competitor like China, which is drastically expanding its nuclear arsenal and has thousands of road-mobile ballistic missiles, risking such a sensitive asset over Iran is paired with the high stakes involved with this operation, especially in regard to Israel. Iran’s massive and rapidly growing number of long-range missiles were a stated reason Trump decided he had to act now. The administration has said that soon Iran would be able to oversaturate any defenses if action wasn’t taken. It is this same threat that would be a major factor in using such a prized asset for Epic Fury, to do whatever possible to limit the damage to Israel, and to America’s Arab allies as well.

When the secretive drone first emerged at Larissa, comparisons were also drawn to an Israeli design referred to as the RA-01. That uncrewed stealth aircraft has a roughly similar planform, but is a smaller overall design that likely falls between the RQ-170 and the RQ-180. It has been very active during the conflict, being seen in videos. It would be of no surprise if it were tasked with hunting Iranian missile launchers, as well.

It should be stressed that we still do not know for sure why the secretive drone is at Larissa and what operations it might have been conducting, or still is, from the Greek base. As mentioned at the start of this piece, U.S. authorities have, so far, declined to comment on the uncrewed aircraft’s presence there at all.

At the same time, its emergence does come at a time when the capabilities of the RQ-180, or an evolution thereof, would be in extremely high demand to support current operations over Iran, and specifically to address the urgent need to counter Iran’s long-range weapons, just as the progenitor of the concept was meant to do nearly four decades ago.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

Iran’s Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant has been targeted four times since the United States-Israel war on Iran began more than a month ago.

And the World Health Organization (WHO has warned of “catastrophic” risks if a radioactive release occurs.

Tehran has accused the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog of inaction – an allegation that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) rejects. But it does acknowledge that the situation is of deep concern.

Why are the attacks happening, and what risks do they pose?

Presenter: James Bays

Guests:

Tariq Rauf – Former head of verification and security policy coordination at the IAEA

Abas Aslani – Senior research fellow at the Center for Middle East Strategic Studies

Alicia Sanders-Zakre – Head of policy at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says US forces are carrying out more strikes on Iran than any day since the start of war.

US president says Washington, as the ‘winner’ of the war, has a ‘concept’ for charging a toll in strategic waterway.

President Donald Trump has suggested the United States may be looking to charge a toll in the Strait of Hormuz after the war, a move that would likely require direct US military control over the strategic waterway.

Asked on Monday whether he would accept a deal that would allow Iran to take fees from ships to traverse the strait, the US president said: “What about us charging tolls? I’d rather do that than let them have them. Why shouldn’t we? We’re the winner. We won.”

Trump reiterated that Iran has been militarily defeated, a claim that he has been making since the early days of the war, despite Iran’s sustained drone and missile attacks across the region and its continuing blockade of Hormuz.

“The only thing they have is the psychology of, ‘Oh, we’re going to drop a couple of mines in the water.’ All right, no, I mean, we have a concept where we’ll charge tolls,” Trump told reporters.

Hormuz, which connects the Gulf to the Indian Ocean, lies mostly within Omani and Iranian territorial waters. About 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) passed through the strait before the war.

Trump’s latest comments came as he issued what he called a “final” ultimatum to Tehran to reopen the strait and agree to Washington’s terms or face attacks against Iran’s civilian infrastructure, including bridges and power plants.

The US president told reporters on Monday that any deal with Iran must include reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

“We have to have a deal that’s acceptable to me, and part of that deal is going to be, we want free traffic of oil,” he said.

Reports have suggested that Iran is already charging a toll for some of the few ships it is allowing to pass through the strait.

“The Strait of Hormuz situation won’t return to its pre-war status,” Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf wrote on X last month.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has also called for “new arrangements” to manage the waterway after the war, ensuring safe passage for ships and protecting Iran’s interests.

“I believe that after the war, the first step should be drafting a new protocol for the Strait of Hormuz,” he told Al Jazeera in March. “Naturally, this should be done between the countries that lie on both sides of the strait.”

The White House said last week that Trump is considering asking Arab countries to pay for Washington’s expenses in its war on Iran.

Iran has rejected a ceasefire proposal from the United States, but says it sees a need for a permanent end to the war, its official news agency has reported. As of Monday, the United States and Iran were considering a framework aimed at ending their five-week conflict, as Tehran stressed its desire for a durable resolution and resisted pressure to quickly reopen the Strait of Hormuz under a temporary ceasefire.

According to the official IRNA news agency, Iran delivered its response to the U.S. proposal via Pakistan, rejecting the idea of a ceasefire and underscoring the need for a permanent conclusion to the war.

The response outlined 10 provisions, including ending regional hostilities, lifting sanctions, and supporting reconstruction efforts, IRNA reported.

According to a report from Axios that cites “four U.S., Israeli, and regional sources with knowledge of the talks,” the two-tier plan was to start with a 45-day ceasefire, planned to lead into a longer-term peace deal.

A senior Iranian official confirmed to the Reuters news agency that Tehran had received the ceasefire plan from Pakistan.

April 6 (Reuters) – Iran and the U.S. have received a plan to end hostilities that could come into effect on Monday and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a source aware of the proposals said on Monday.

A framework to end hostilities has been put together by Pakistan and exchanged…

— Tala Ramadan (@TalaRamadan) April 6, 2026

Pakistan has been playing a leading role in negotiations, with its Army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, reportedly in contact throughout the night with U.S. Vice President JD Vance, special envoy Steve Witkoff, and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi.

Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, was in contact “all night long” with U.S. Vice President JD Vance, special envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, a source told Reuters.

— Idrees Ali (@idreesali114) April 6, 2026

One major sticking point appears to be Iran’s refusal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for a “temporary ceasefire.” Around a fifth of the world’s oil supply usually passes through the strait, which Iran has effectively blocked.

The same Iranian official told Reuters that the United States is not ready for a permanent ceasefire. Tehran will not be pressured into accepting deadlines and making a decision, the official added.

Iran and the United States have received a plan to end hostilities that could come into effect on April 6 and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a source aware of the proposals said https://t.co/i98nhEFDcr

— Reuters (@Reuters) April 6, 2026

Over the weekend, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to obliterate Iranian power plants and bridges if it doesn’t agree to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz by 8:00 p.m. Tuesday (U.S. Eastern Time). “If they don’t come through, if they want to keep it closed, they’re going to lose every power plant and every other plant they have in the whole country,” Trump said in an eight-minute interview with The Wall Street Journal on Sunday. 

Today, Trump reiterated that the Tuesday deadline is final.

(Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday the Tuesday deadline he has set for Iran to make a deal is final, adding that Iran’s proposal was significant but not good enough.

— Phil Stewart (@phildstewart) April 6, 2026

Trump also issued an expletive-laden warning on his Truth Social website: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

Trump reiterates his demands to Iran: “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell” pic.twitter.com/aZb8sSjGBU

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) April 5, 2026

Iran’s parliament speaker responded with a warning that the US president’s “reckless moves” would mean “our whole region is going to burn”.

Iran’s deputy foreign minister said that those threats could amount to war crimes. “The American president, as the highest official of his country, has publicly threatened to commit war crimes,” Kazem Gharibabadi said on X, citing provisions of international law.

“The threat to attack power plants and bridges (civilian infrastructure) is a war crime under Article 8(2)(b) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court,” he said, cited by AFP. Gharibabadi also warned that Iran would “deliver a decisive, immediate and regret-inducing response to any aggression or imminent threat.”

Iran has itself attacked civilian infrastructure on the Arabian Peninsula, including desalination plants critical to providing water to people living there.

Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, condemned Trump’s threats and argued that he was being misled by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “Your reckless moves are dragging the United States into a living HELL for every single family, and our whole region is going to burn because you insist on following Netanyahu’s commands,” Qalibaf posted on X.

Iran’s central military command also responded to the latest threats, promising “much more devastating” retaliation if the U.S. military starts to hit civilian targets.

According to Barak Ravid, global affairs correspondent for Axios, the 45-day ceasefire is “one of many more ideas” being discussed.

🚨🇺🇸🇮🇷A White House official told me the plan for a 45-day ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran is “one of many ideas” being discussed at the moment. “The President has not signed off on it. Operation Epic Fury continues. President Trump will speak more at 1pm”, the White House… https://t.co/gKzZ30ZMaL

— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) April 6, 2026

UPDATES:

Author’s note: We will be updating our readers on what we know about the F-15E WSO recovery in a separate piece.

UPDATE: 4:15 PM EDT –

A recent post on X by the U.S. Central Command shows U.S. Marines preparing an example of the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) during Operation Epic Fury.

UPDATE: 4:10 PM EDT –

Reuters reports that four Iranian army ground force officers were killed on Sunday during an operation to counter U.S. aircraft in Isfahan, citing the semi-official Fars news agency. It is unclear if this is connected to the F-15E WSO recovery operation, which was taking place in the same region at that time.

Four officers of the Iranian army’s ground forces were killed during clashes with US aircraft in the central Isfahan province on Sunday, the state-affiliated Fars news agency reports, saying they died while engaging attacking warplanes, helicopters and drones. pic.twitter.com/l46hpCwyKr

— Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) April 6, 2026

UPDATE: 4:00 PM EDT –

Temporary markings in the form of Easter eggs appeared on the nose of this U.S. Air Force U-2S spy plane, seen departing RAF Fairford, in England, for a mission this morning.

U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth says the United States will step up its strikes on Iran under Trump’s orders.

“Per the president’s direction, today will be the largest volume of strikes since day one of this operation. Tomorrow, even more than today. And then Iran has a choice.”

UPDATE: 3:40 PM EDT –

Trump today repeated his familiar assertions about the success of the war and the performance of the U.S. military (it has performed “unbelievably well,” he said), while also praising the “very historic” rescue of the second crew member from the Air Force F-15E shot down over Iran last week.

Shifting to his latest deadline for Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz (8:00 p.m. ET on Tuesday), he added:

“The entire country can be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night.”

Trump warned that if Iran failed to meet his deadline, it would be left with “no bridges” and “no power plants,” saying the country would be reduced to “the Stone Ages,” reiterating his previous threat to send Iran “back to the Stone Ages.”

He later reinforced that warning, saying strikes on Iran’s bridges and power plants could begin from 8:00 p.m. ET tomorrow and suggesting the operation could be completed in as little as four hours.

“Every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding, and never to be used again … I mean complete demolition by 12 o’clock. And it will happen over a period of four hours if we wanted to. We don’t want that to happen.”

.@POTUS: “We have a plan, because of the power of our military, where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o’clock tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business…it’ll happen over a period of 4hrs if we want it to. We don’t want that to happen.” pic.twitter.com/965HCIV9HB

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 6, 2026

UPDATE: 3:45 PM EDT –

In a surprising disclosure, Trump today suggested that Washington armed (Kurdish) Iranian opposition groups during the January demonstrations.

Trump:

We sent some guns; they were supposed to go to the people of Iran. You know what happened? The people we sent them through kept them.

I am very upset with a certain group of people, and they will pay a big price for that. pic.twitter.com/dACg5aZyMS

— Clash Report (@clashreport) April 6, 2026

“President Trump told me the United States sent guns to the Iranian protesters,” Trump told Trey Yingst on the Fox News channel.

“He told me, ‘We sent them a lot of guns. We sent them to the Kurds.’ And the president says he thinks the Kurds kept them. He went on to say. ‘We sent guns to the protesters, a lot of them.’”

As well as lending credence to Iran’s claims that the protests were foreign-inspired, the disclosure would appear to put Kurds in an even more dangerous position. For their part, Kurdish groups have denied the claims.

This puts Kurds in such a dangerous position, particularly with the threat at the end. (Kurdish groups have denied Trump’s claims.) Yesterday, a lot of people blamed the journalist who reported Trump’s comments, hard to do that in this case. https://t.co/Wz6ogQbnCf

— Winthrop Rodgers (@wrodgers2) April 6, 2026

UPDATE: 3:50 PM EDT –

Trump today implied that the widening rift between the United States and NATO began when he floated the idea of taking over Greenland.

“It all began with, if you want to know the truth, Greenland. We want Greenland. They don’t want to give it to us. And I said, ‘bye, bye.’”

He made the comments ahead of a scheduled visit to the White House later this week by NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte — whom Trump, for what it’s worth, describes as a “wonderful guy” and a “great person.”

“NATO is a paper tiger. We didn’t need them, obviously, because they haven’t helped at all.”

Trump on NATO:

It all began with Greenland. We want Greenland, and they don’t want to give it to us, and I said, “Bye-bye!” pic.twitter.com/Jhp0izwfht

— Clash Report (@clashreport) April 6, 2026

Earlier today, U.S.-Israeli strikes killed the intelligence chief of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, according to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

“Major General Majid Khademi, the powerful and educated head of the Intelligence Organisation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was martyred in the criminal terrorist attack by the American-Zionist enemy… at dawn today,” said the Guards in a post on their Telegram channel.

BREAKING: Majid Khademi, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Intelligence Organisation, has been killed, according to state media. pic.twitter.com/NaMHbNx6Hm

— Al Jazeera Breaking News (@AJENews) April 6, 2026

The IDF has continued airstrikes against Iranian targets, including further attacks on Mehrabad International Airport in Tehran, a major hub for commercial flights, which is also used by the government of Iran, and is one of the bases of the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF). A video released by the IDF shows multiple Mi-8/17 Hip-series helicopters being targeted on the ground at Mehrabad. The IDF claims that “dozens” of aircraft were hit.

The IDF says it destroyed dozens of Iranian aircraft during strikes on three airports in the Tehran area overnight.

According to the military, the strikes were aimed at causing a blow to the Iranian air force and IRGC air force.

Dozens of Israeli Air Force fighter jets hit… https://t.co/wuBaitmzw8 pic.twitter.com/9pCvmrGvkf

— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) April 6, 2026

U.S. forces located on Bubiyan ​Island, Kuwait, were targeted by ‌Iran, Ebrahim Zolfaghari, the spokesperson of Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, said ​in a video ​statement shared by state media ⁠on Monday. Bubiyan is the largest of Kuwait’s coastal island chain, located in the northwest of the Gulf. Zolfaghari said that Iran targeted satellite equipment and munitions on the island with drones, adding that U.S. forces had relocated there from Arifjan camp in Kuwait after that base was repeatedly struck by Iran.

BREAKING: Iran targeted US forces relocated on Kuwait’s Bubiyan island, the spokesperson for Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters Ebrahim Zolfaghari said in a video statement shared by state media. pic.twitter.com/GLwEkjLJFX

— Al Jazeera Breaking News (@AJENews) April 6, 2026

Israeli rescue teams were searching through debris on Monday for two people still missing after a missile strike in the northern city of Haifa, authorities said. The projectile, reportedly launched from Iran, hit a residential building, killing two people.

Officials said the direct impact on the seven-storey structure caused severe damage, leaving parts of it partially collapsed. Videos showed rescuers combing through the rubble with flashlights, navigating broken concrete and debris as the search continued.

“We have a major destruction site,” said Elad Edri, chief of staff of Israel’s home front command. Israel’s fire and rescue services said later that two of four people trapped under the rubble had been found dead.

A senior Home Front Command search and rescue officer describes the 18-hour effort to recover the four bodies at the site of an Iranian ballistic missile impact in Haifa as one of the “most complex” rescue operations of the war.

According to the officer, the four victims were in… pic.twitter.com/ltxhfAA2AK

— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) April 6, 2026

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has warned that strikes near Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant pose a serious risk to nuclear safety and must cease.

Located in the country’s south, the facility, which is home to a 1,000-megawatt reactor, has reportedly been targeted four times since the start of the latest conflict.

Rafael Grossi, director of the IAEA, said that any strikes around the area “could cause a severe radiological accident with harmful consequences for people and the environment in Iran and beyond.” He added that one strike hit just 250 feet from the plant perimeter. “A nuclear facility and surrounding areas should never be struck,” he said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said it can confirm ‌recent impacts of military strikes close to Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant, but said that the plant itself was not damaged https://t.co/REx5AQ76kr

— Reuters (@Reuters) April 6, 2026

Israel has struck a major petrochemical facility at Iran’s massive South Pars natural gas field, according to multiple news agencies.

Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, confirmed what he described as “a powerful strike on the largest petrochemical facility in Iran,” which accounts for roughly half of the country’s petrochemical output. Meanwhile, Israeli military spokesperson Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said there would be “no immunity” for Iran as negotiations continue.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz:

The IDF forcefully struck Iran’s largest petrochemical plant. This key facility accounts for about 50% of Iran’s petrochemical output. This follows an attack on Iran’s second-largest facility last week.

As a result, both facilities, which… pic.twitter.com/DOYQ4iHVFK

— Clash Report (@clashreport) April 6, 2026

Katz’s remarks followed an earlier report from the Fars News Agency stating that “several explosions” were heard at the South Pars petrochemical complex in Asaluyeh.

The development raises doubts about ongoing efforts to secure a ceasefire between the United States and Iran. The field, which Iran shares with Qatar, is the largest natural gas reserve in the world and lies beneath the Persian Gulf. The latest strikes come just weeks after widespread international criticism of Israel’s March 18 attack on the same South Pars gas field.

Airstrikes hit petrochemical facilities at Iran’s South Pars gas field a short while ago, Iranian state media reports.

The Fars news agency says there was an “enemy attack” on “South Pars Petrochemical in Asaluyeh.”

Israel bombed gas infrastructure in the area last month.

— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) April 6, 2026

Iran widened its attacks on Gulf energy infrastructure over the weekend, carrying out drone and missile strikes on petrochemical sites in Kuwait, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates. The Revolutionary Guards also said they had targeted an Israeli-linked vessel at Dubai’s Jebel Ali port.

BREAKING: Iran’s IRGC has claimed it fired a missile at an Israel-linked ship in a channel leading to Dubai’s Port of Jebel Ali, causing it to catch fire.

There was no immediate confirmation from Emirati authorities.

🔴 LIVE updates: https://t.co/ddyrxmyzUg pic.twitter.com/UcN7Oc6bPX

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) April 5, 2026

Authorities in the emirate of Sharjah said on Sunday that they were responding to an incident involving Khor Fakkan Port, one of the United Arab Emirates’ largest container hubs. No injuries were reported, and officials provided no additional details in a statement released by the Sharjah media office.

Earlier, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) reported that the captain of a container ship at the port had observed several splashes from unidentified projectiles landing close to the vessel.

A container ship at the UAE’s Khor Fakkan Port reported several projectiles were fell in the water near the ship while conducting loading operations, UKMTO reports. pic.twitter.com/HvvWGUCA7Q

— Ariel Oseran أريئل أوسيران (@ariel_oseran) April 5, 2026

An Indian-flagged, Japan-owned tanker has crossed the Strait of Hormuz. A spokeswoman for Mitsui O.S.K. Lines told AFP that the Green Asha, owned by its subsidiary, had passed through the strait and was en route to India. The vessel, a liquefied petroleum gas tanker, is the third Japan-linked ship to transit the strait. “Both the crew and the cargo are safe,” the spokeswoman said.

Two more Indian-flagged liquefied petroleum gas tankers, Green Asha and Green Sanvi, have exited the Gulf carrying the fuel for the South Asian nation, according to ship tracking data on LSEG and Kpler.https://t.co/DDCq4ZWgwh

— Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) April 6, 2026

North Korea appears to be stepping back from its longstanding ties with Iran and is carefully shaping its public messaging to keep open the possibility of improved relations with the United States after the Iran conflict, South Korean lawmakers told Reuters on Monday, citing intelligence officials.

North Korea appears to be distancing itself from longtime partner Iran and carefully managing its public messaging to preserve the possibility of a new relationship with the US after the Iran war, South Korean lawmakers said, citing the spy agency https://t.co/0Ju5su12yR

— Reuters (@Reuters) April 6, 2026

There are unconfirmed reports, based on publicly available flight-tracking data, that a U.S. Air Force F-35 fighter flying in an area in southern Iraq, close to the Kuwaiti border, has squawked 7700. This is the universal, international transponder code used by aircraft to immediately alert Air Traffic Control (ATC) of a general emergency.

A U.S. Air Force F-35A Lightning II declared an emergency while flying over Iraq about two hours ago, squawking 7700.

That code is the universal signal for a general in-flight emergency, indicating the crew is dealing with a serious situation. pic.twitter.com/qa4Dh54JTo

— Egypt’s Intel Observer (@EGYOSINT) April 6, 2026

While we had previously seen Iranian satellite imagery that purported to show the extent of the Iranian attack on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia that occurred on March 27, the destruction of an aircraft maintenance shelter now appears to have been verified by commercially available Sentinel-2L imagery. The attack also destroyed a prized E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) as well as damaging other aircraft and injuring several American service members, as you can read more about here.

Iranian satellite imagery has once again been confirmed as authentic.

Sentinel-2L imagery confirms the destruction of the Large Area Maintenance Shelter (LAMS) used by U.S. forces at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, likely as a result of an Iranian attack that occurred… https://t.co/VFQXcho2UN pic.twitter.com/B1RLeyvZom

— Egypt’s Intel Observer (@EGYOSINT) April 6, 2026

An IDF spokesperson disclosed recently that an Iranian underground complex used for storing ballistic missiles had been targeted.

Based on open-source intelligence, this appears to have been a relatively new and sizable missile base, constructed within the past two years along the Tehran–Qazvin road. It features at least five large access points designed for missile transporters and launch systems.

It also seems that the site was put into operation before construction was fully completed.

לפני מספר ימים, דובר צה”ל חושף כי הותקף מתחם אחסון תת-קרקעי לטילים בליסטיים.

מדובר בבסיס טילים חדש וגדול שנבנה ממש בשנתיים האחרונות על כביש טהראן-קזוין. המתחם כולל לא פחות מחמישה פתחים רחבים עבור מובילי טילים ומשגרים.
אין הרבה תשתיות עיליות בשטח, מה שאומר שהאיראנים פעלו בשנים… pic.twitter.com/rzZtWj6fFF

— Ben Tzion Macales (@BenTzionMacales) April 6, 2026

In recent days, imagery has emerged showing the reported aftermath of an Iranian drone strike on Camp Buehring in Kuwait, which appears to have destroyed at least one U.S. Army CH-47F Chinook helicopter.

Further signs of an attack on Camp Buehring are provided by infrared imagery from the NASA FIRMS portal.

More evidence has emerged of the use of cluster bombs in U.S. airstrikes on Iran. Last week, photos appeared showing Israeli Air Force F-16I Sufa fighters apparently carrying cluster munitions. Now, U.S. Air Force F-16s have also been photographed with cluster bomb units underwing. The kinds of submunitions that might be inside remain unknown. However, Iranian officials previously accused the United States of employing air-dropped BLU-91/B anti-tank mines, which are delivered via cluster bomb. This seems most likely to be part of a limited-use area denial strategy to contain long-range missile launches, as you can read about in our previous reporting here.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

The rescue of the F-15E weapon systems officer (WSO) missing in Iran after his fighter was shot down was one of the most complex and dangerous missions the U.S. military can undertake. These kinds of operations can come in many forms. In this case, before the WSO was finally recovered from the mountain crevice where he was hiding, a forward arming and refueling point (FARP) deep inside enemy territory had to be rapidly set up and secured so that it could act as a staging area for the aircraft, equipment and troops taking part in the mission. This is an exact mission set U.S. special operations forces train for extensively.

To get more insights about how such a FARP would be set up and operated, we reached out to Kyle Rempfer, a former Special Tactics Squadron (STS) airman who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. STS units are an elite cadre of operators who work to control aircraft in the air, including from airfields they establish deep inside contested territory, and direct airpower onto the enemy, among other duties, including rescuing personnel trapped behind enemy lines. They are often paired with special operations units, such as SEALs, Delta Force and Rangers, to bring their unique skills to their missions.

Air Force Special Tactics – the Air Force’s ONLY Special Operations Ground Force

Rempfer, a journalist and former colleague of the author at Military Times, offered unique insights into the process as someone who trained for these missions.

Some of the questions and answers have been lightly edited for clarity.

Q: What happens in the Special Tactics Squadron level when the word comes out that there’s an aircraft down deep into enemy territory? 

A: By this point in the campaign, Air Force Special Tactics teams – which are made up of combat controllers (CCTs) and pararescue jumpers (PJs) – would have surveyed or identified scores of Iranian runways and austere airfields that can be used for landing zones or drop zones down the line. Even if CCTs hadn’t set foot on these sites, they’d have pulled imagery of the locations and started using tools like AutoCAD, a surveying and mapping software, to sketch out the dimensions of an airfield and identify what type of aircraft could land there. Is this a site that could only work for a light short take off and landing (STOL) aircraft, or could we land something bigger like a C-17? Those types of questions are on their minds. And since this event appears to have happened near the Isfahan nuclear facility, it can be assumed that Special Tactics has been scoping out landing zones in that area since at least this war started, maybe far earlier. 

For this mission, the Special Tactics team just needed someplace to land a couple of MC-130J Commando IIs. Those are designed to infiltrate and exfiltrate special operations troops into and out of the hinterlands, so an agricultural runway intended for crop-spraying planes would fit the bill in terms of dimensions. But on the ground, the soil strength might not hold up for repeat landings, or perhaps the recent weather has eroded the area or left it muddy. That can have an impact, and there are tools like dynamic cone penetrometers that Special Tactics teams use to assess soil strength. They’ve used those and a host of other tools to scout airfields all around potential conflict zones in Africa, northern Iraq, Syria, etc., but given the tight security in Iran, that probably was not feasible to do in advance here. So the soil strength might have been a known-unknown going in. 

Q: What would happen once the FARP is set up?

A: They can do these fast. Everything is prestaged, even inside the MC-130. AH-6 Little Bird helicopters were probably offloaded and taking off within minutes, not hours, and beaming toward the WSO’s beacon. At that point, the team at the FARP site is pulling security and talking to all the aircraft overhead. Those pilots and aircrews are using sensors to monitor all the roadways that plausibly lead to the site, and potentially even putting warheads on those roadways to make them unusable. We know there were some diversionary bomb drops as part of the rescue, so they could also take that time to put big potholes in the roads.

Q: Can you talk about what systems, personnel and equipment would have secured the site?

A: The people who are surveying and setting up the landing zone and FARP are probably CCTs [Combat Control Teams] from the 24th Special Tactics Squadron. They would have had imagery to look at ahead of the mission, but you might not know what level of stress the ground can take until you physically get there. CCTs are trained to inspect that, blow up obstacles on the runway if needed, scan enemy activity around the landing site, etc., and then set up the austere airfield to start accepting planes and helos. They might not have had time to do a full-on reconnaissance mission, of course. 

CCTs have dirt bikes, something like a Kawasaki KLR 250, that they can drive up and down the airstrip for quickly setting up lights and visually inspecting the terrain. The lights they’d use to create the airstrip would be set up to infrared mode so only people with night vision devices can see them. This isn’t the early days of Afghanistan, though, and night vision devices have proliferated to such a degree that infrared lights are no longer the game changer they once were. However, it still prevents civilians from seeing the operation at night, and that is important given reports that Iranian state media was mobilizing the population to look for the downed airman. 

Q: Who would be brought in for force protection?

A: The CCTs of course are not alone at the landing zone. They had DEVGRU (SEAL Team 6) for security and dozens of aircraft backing them up with an absolutely jarring amount of aerial firepower. CCTs are usually also certified JTACs so they can manage the aircraft stacks not just for landing the MC-130s and AH-6s returning from the WSO rescue, but also the dozens of aircraft overhead that can fire at targets as necessary.

Q: Reports indicate that the WSO climbed up a 7,000 foot crevice and hid out there with intermittent communications while the Iranians were looking for him. How does that complicate things? And what would the team on the ground be doing?

A: I imagine that all the communications would have been encrypted – not anything that the Iranians could listen in on. For the guys on the ground, the biggest situation is monitoring to make sure that other forces aren’t approaching the area and protecting that forward arming and refueling site, because while it’s not a base, for all intensive purposes it is the center of mass of the most U.S. forces, the safest zone you have. So basically probably just protected that site. 

Q: What would be happening in the air?

A: You would have ISR assets that would be scanning the area, and not just the immediate area, but probably any roads and highways leading up to where that FARP site was set up. They would be watching anyone who could possibly be approaching. 

That whole area would just be soaked with ISR assets, and I know the Iranians knocked out two Reaper drones during the operation. So presumably, there was plenty of ISR. 

There would be a mix of attack and surveillance aircraft. There would be dozens of aircraft available for this mission. That is great for the team on the ground, but just like an air traffic control tower at Ronald Reagan Airport in DC can be overburdened, so will the JTAC who’s on the ground controlling all these different pilots and aircrews calling in to report threats they’ve spotted, relay their fuel or munitions status, report radio chatter they’re picking up from the ground, etc. This could require multiple JTACs on the ground, and probably also pilots in A-10s or F-35s who can act as an extra layer of forward air control in the sky, handling aircraft check-ins and keeping track of specific assets so the JTACs on the ground aren’t losing their minds mind handling a massive air stack behind enemy lines. 

Most CCTs also have a JTAC certification, so they can help call in airstrikes as needed to protect the FARP site. And attack aircraft, like A-10s, or multi-role fighters, like F-35s, also have pilots who are certified as Forward Air Controller (Airborne) — or FAC(A). The E-3 can also provide a command and control function to help manage this complex battlespace. 

Q: How difficult is a mission like this? What are the dangers?

A: This would have been a hot refueling site, with engines running refueling, and you’re doing all that blacked out, and you have to probably keep the amount of radio chatter on the ground to a minimum because you don’t know if maybe Iran does have something where they can break through the encryption. 

So I would imagine that the danger is even more than just the IRGC coming in and shooting at you. The danger is  the technicalities that you’re dealing with, with the forward  arming and refueling sites and all these aircraft moving around under night vision in blacked out conditions in a tight area. It’s a small airfield, you have to keep your signature low.

Thankfully, they were able to get more aircraft in to usher everyone out. But that just shows how even what they were dealing with, the runway probably wasn’t built to handle these kinds of aircraft, or not maintained. 

Clearly this kind of operation – where you’re coming in, setting up an airfield, whether it’s for a follow-on parachute jump or even just air landing more troops and supplies – would be repeated in most of the other scenarios people are talking about. For instance, going in and digging out Iran’s enriched uranium. I think it would have to be pretty similar. You would send in a special tactics team with some Ranger recce guys, and the Ranger reconnaissance company would maybe parachute in, and check out the airfield, and they would start bringing in the MC-130s. It’s going to be a remote, austere airfield. It’s not going to be easy to land aircraft there, it’s not going to be well maintained, and you’re going to run into a lot of problems on the ground with aircraft. 

In addition to the fixed-wing planes, the U.S. also destroyed a reported four Little Birds on the way out. Imagine if you’re trying to do sustained operations bringing aircraft in, that all those aircraft are wearing down that obscure runway as you’re coming in, and you’re having more and more troops flow in. Your signature is going to be bigger and it’s going to be there for a longer time. 

So this is how you create a window into a country to conduct follow-on operations. In this case, it was just to look for one guy and pick him up. But, they’re obviously looking at runways and airfields all across the country, whether they’re actual runways that are in use by the Iranian government or municipal governments, or if they’re just like roads that they can use or dirt fields that they think they can land on. So this rescue mission was probably a snapshot into larger operational planning.

Q: After the rescue of the pilot, the search for the WSO seemed to turn fairly quickly from a traditional PJ mission to a Tier One rescue operation. Can you talk about that transition and how those two fit together?

A: That’s right. From my understanding, there were two missions. The first was a traditional CSAR mission that was launched in daylight immediately after the F-15E went down. This likely involved the PJs from a rescue squadron that was on standby. They were aboard HH-60W Jolly Greens and had refueling support from an HC-130J. That mission is obviously very risky and time sensitive. They’re flying low and slow, in daylight, and vulnerable to ground fire. We saw people shooting at them with small arms, which probably won’t do much barring really lucky shots, but the crews are still exposed to man portable air defense systems (MANPADS).

You can see Iranians firing small arms at the CSAR aircraft in the following video.

This initial CSAR package successfully recovered the F-15E pilot, who would have had a beacon and survival radio. But obviously the WSO was still at large. Perhaps they knew his location but couldn’t get to him before the region came alive like a bees’ nest – with everyone from locals to actual security forces scouring the scene. At that point, it appears the mission shifted from a more traditional CSAR operation conducted by a rescue squadron to something we’re actually more familiar with from Afghanistan and Iraq – Tier One raids into denied territory. This makes sense to me because this was the single most important mission going on, and it makes sense to flood this with assets to successfully pull off a second pick up. In a bigger war, I doubt downed aircrew can expect JSOC rescue parties every time one of them goes down. 

A lot of people were surprised that MC-130s and AH-6s were used for this, but it actually reminds me a lot of the early Afghanistan missions Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) conducted in fall 2001, before the Taliban fell. At least one of these involved Air Force Special Tactics CCTs parachuting into a remote part of Afghanistan, setting up a dirt airstrip, landing two MC-130s, off-loading a couple of Little Birds and then flying those around all night striking Taliban targets.

This rescue raid isn’t too different. It sounds like Air Force Special Tactics CCTs surveyed the airfield in advance – maybe in person, maybe just using satellite imagery – and then brought in the MC-130s that held the AH-6s to actually conduct the rescue that grabbed the WSO. This sort of scheme makes sense given the distance inside Iran. The MC-130s can bring extra fuel and ammunition to set up a mini-special ops refueling and re-arming site.

One thing to note here is why the commandos reportedly blew up the MC-130s on the way out. If the government’s version of events is accurate, this might have been because the runway was not suitable for the MC-130s and those planes got stuck or damaged landing there. The CCTs may have known this was a possibility but determined it was the least bad option. There’s also the possibility the aircraft were more damaged by enemy fire than we’ve been told. We may never know. 

Q: What would be the biggest danger from the Iranians? Indirect fire like artillery? Drones?

A: Hard for me to say. If the team had the element of surprise, which it seemed to, then the Iranians would have been caught off guard enough that they didn’t have time to stage artillery or have drones already scanning the area. In that case, I could see the biggest threat being local police or civilians stumbling upon the site early in the mission. As the operation gets underway, the noise signature would probably attract more and more attention. And then you have IRGC teams speeding to the scene. If they’re moving fast, they might only have small arms, maybe some belt-fed machine guns, small caliber mortars, and potentially MANPADs. The longer the U.S. team was on the ground, the more time Iran had to rush forces to the scene and that’s when things appeared to get dicey, the Army’s Delta Force reportedly had to blow in place the MC-130s and call in a quick reaction force (QRF) for pickup. 

Because people keep asking, the WSO was extracted on little birds flying STS and DEVGRU. Smoke checked 9 EKIA on tgt. The QRF that got called in for the FARP was from Delta. https://t.co/mmCbzrRjys

— Jack Murphy (@JackMurphyRGR) April 5, 2026

This is also why having so many aircraft overhead would be useful. Not only are those planes there to strike targets, they can listen to enemy communications and local civilian radio chatter, they can use their sensors to scan all the routes leading up to the airfield, and they can use jamming and spoofing to befuddle the Iranian response. All that helps buy time. 

Q: What kinds of geospatial tools would have been used to find and prep the site and carry out the mission?

A: I imagine in advance of this mission the airfields and runways in this area were pre-scouted using satellite imagery. I’m probably too out of date to go into specifics even if I wanted to, but we have very high resolution satellite imagery that’s available in the commercial space and is very impressive. Additionally, aircraft can fly over sites and scan the terrain using LIDAR to build 3D maps of the environment. Suffice to say, the CCTs would have a great picture of the environment before going in, but being physically on the ground shows new problems — can the soil hold up to landing an MC-130? How fine is the sand? When the AH-6s take off, are they creating a brown-out environment? 

In an ideal scenario, the CCTs could parachute in before the main mission, conducting a high-altitude, high-opening (HAHO) jump and then confirming on the ground that the site will work to land an MC-130. We don’t know if that’s what happened, but if the reporting is accurate that an MC-130 got stuck and had to be blown up in place, then perhaps they made a mistake or – my bet – they knew the runway was rough and accepted the risk.

Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com

WASHINGTON — President Trump said Monday that the United States and Iran are at a “critical point” in negotiating a potential ceasefire agreement, but the chances of reaching a deal by a Trump-imposed deadline on Tuesday evening appeared uncertain.

In a lengthy news briefing at the White House, the president echoed an expletive-laden Easter Sunday warning to strike Iran’s vital infrastructure if Tehran does not agree to open the Strait of Hormuz by 5 p.m. PDT on Tuesday.

“The entire country can be taken out in one night and that night might be tomorrow night,” Trump told reporters.

Mediators from Egypt, Pakistan and Turkey sent the United States and Iran a draft proposal of the 45-day ceasefire on Friday, the Associated Press reported. Its prospects seemed dim amid the president’s threats and a lukewarm response from Iranian leaders, who dismissed the president’s diplomatic overtures as “unrealistic” and denying direct talks with the United States.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei rejected the latest ceasefire proposal, saying Monday that the American demands were “both highly excessive and unusual, as well as illogical.”

Still, Trump continued to assert that Iranian leadership has been negotiating in good faith. He characterized newly installed leaders as an improvement over their predecessors.

“The people that we are negotiating with now on behalf of Iran are much more reasonable,” he said Monday.

Trump declined to comment further on the ceasefire proposal at the news conference, but told reporters that Iran is negotiating ahead of his Tuesday deadline.

“I can tell you they’re negotiating, we think in good faith,” Trump said. “We are going to find out.”

The president did not say whom the United States is negotiating with, but said the most difficult challenge so far has been establishing a reliable channel of communicating with Iranian officials who he said have “no method of communicating.”

Trump also declined to say whether he was prepared to offer Iran assurances to wind down the conflict, or whether he would escalate by following through with his threats to bomb critical Iranian infrastructure, leaving the door open to both diplomacy and military action.

“I can’t tell you — it depends on what they do. This is a critical period,” he said,

Central to the negotiations is Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz, a choke point that, if left blockaded, could continue driving oil prices higher and further destabilizing global energy markets.

Trump, in characteristically unorthodox fashion, floated the possibility of the United States seizing operational control of the waterway and charging tolls for passage, a proposal that he provided without much detail.

“Why shouldn’t we?” Trump said. “We have a concept where we’ll charge tolls.”

He also mused openly about seizing Iranian oil, as he has in recent social media posts in which he floated the idea of using the war to claim Iranian energy resources. He acknowledged public pressure was holding him back from that course.

“Unfortunately the American people would like to see us come home,” he said. “If it were up to me, I’d take the oil, keep the oil and make plenty of money.”

In addition to reopening the Strait of Hormuz, Washington is also demanding the permanent decommissioning of Iranian nuclear sites and an end to its uranium enrichment programs. The proposal also requires Iran to halt support for regional proxies and accept strict ballistic missile limits.

In exchange, the United States says it will provide sanctions relief and assistance with civilian energy production, according to media reports.

Speaking at the White House Easter Egg Roll earlier Monday, Trump showed no signs of softening his posture to bring “hell” to Iran if a deal doesn’t materialize.

“We are obliterating their country. And I hate to do it, but we are obliterating. And they just don’t want to say uncle. … And if they don’t, then they’ll have no bridges, they’ll have no power plants, they’ll have nothing,” he said, adding ominously that “there are other things that are worse than those two.”

Iran has warned of “more severe and expansive” retaliations if Trump follows through on the threats.

Also at Monday’s briefing, Trump celebrated the dramatic rescue of the American officer whose fighter jet was downed by Iran last week. He told reporters the operation to retrieve the wounded officer from “one of the toughest areas in Iran” was possible with a mix of “talent” and “luck.”

The president, however, was angered that a news outlet, which he did not name, reported that the weapons system officer had gone missing and was stranded behind enemy lines. Trump vowed to root out the source of that information, including by threatening to jail the journalist who broke the story.

“We have to find that leaker because that is a sick person,” Trump said. “We are going to find out, it is national security. The person who did the story will go to jail if he doesn’t say.”

Also Monday, Israel struck Iran’s largest petrochemical facility in Asaluyeh and killed Gen. Majid Khademi, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ intelligence organization.

The Israeli military also hit three Iranian airports, purportedly targeting dozens of helicopters and aircraft it said belonged to the Iranian air force.

Iran responded with missile strikes targeting Haifa, Israel, and energy infrastructure in Kuwait and Bahrain.

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said Monday will be the “largest volume of strikes” on Iran since the US-Israeli war began, adding that tomorrow could be even worse if Iran does not reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Seoul says Pyongyang has not been supplying Iran with weapons in the hopes of being able to reopen diplomatic dialogue with the US.

North Korea appears to be distancing itself from longtime partner Iran in the hopes of forming a new relationship with the United States, South Korean intelligence believes.

Seoul’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) sees no signs that North Korea has sent weapons or supplies to Tehran since the US-Israel war on Iran began at the end of February, lawmaker Park Sun-won, who attended a closed-door briefing held by the NIS, said on Sunday.

While Iran’s other allies China and Russia have frequently issued statements on the US-Israel war on Iran, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry has only issued two toned-down statements so far, said the NIS.

While Pyongyang did condemn the US and Israeli attacks on Iran as illegal, it did not issue public condolences after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death or send a congratulatory message when Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, succeeded him.

The spy agency said Pyongyang is likely adopting this cautious approach to position it for a new diplomatic chapter with the US once the Middle East conflict subsides, said Park.

The NIS also told lawmakers that it now believes Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un is grooming his teenage daughter as his successor, citing a recent public display of her driving a tank.

The NIS said the imagery was intended to highlight the supposed military aptitude of the youngster, who is believed to be around 13 and named Ju Ae.

Such scenes are intended to pay “homage” to Kim’s own public military appearances during the early 2010s, when he was being prepared to succeed his father, Park said.

Kim’s powerful sister, Kim Yo Jong, was earlier thought to be a leading candidate to succeed her brother.

On Monday, she was in North Korean headlines as she welcomed an apology issued by South Korean President Lee Jae Myung on Sunday over a January drone incursion.

“The ROK [Republic of Korea] president personally expressed regret and talked about a measure for preventing recurrence. Our government appreciated it as very fortunate and wise behaviour for its own sake,” Kim Yo Jong said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

Seoul initially denied any official role in the January drone incursion, with authorities suggesting it was the work of civilians, but Lee said a probe had revealed government officials had been involved.

“We express regret to the North over the unnecessary military tensions caused by the irresponsible and reckless actions of some individuals,” Lee said.

Lee has sought to repair ties with North Korea since taking office last year, criticising his predecessor for allegedly sending drones to scatter propaganda over Pyongyang.

His repeated overtures, however, have gone unanswered by the North until now.

Lee’s expression of regret follows Kim’s labelling of Seoul as the “most hostile state” in a policy address in March in which he vowed to “thoroughly reject and disregard it”.

The killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the opening phase of the US-Israeli war against Iran has generated a striking argument in strategic and theological circles alike: that the killing may have removed not merely a political leader but a normative brake on Iran’s possible march toward nuclear weapons. Reports indicate that Iranian decision-making has since hardened under intense military pressure and an increasingly securitised internal environment.

What gives Khamenei’s death a particular doctrinal significance is that he had, over more than two decades, publicly framed weapons of mass destruction—including nuclear and chemical weapons—as contrary to Islam. If that position represented a genuine religious constraint rather than mere diplomatic rhetoric, then his death may have removed more than a leader: it may have weakened the doctrinal restraint that helped keep Iran a threshold nuclear state.

What gives Khamenei’s death a particular doctrinal significance is that he had, over more than two decades, publicly framed weapons of mass destruction—including nuclear and chemical weapons—as contrary to Islam.

Islamic just war theory places moral constraints on indiscriminate violence, constraints that Khamenei appeared to project onto state policy. With that authority now gone, the central question is whether a moral tradition can discipline a state that increasingly experiences its insecurity as existential. Whether the next supreme leader can impose doctrinal restraint on a system drifting toward hard security logic.

The Islamic just war theory

The Islamic conception of war begins from a premise different from the caricatures often projected onto it. Classical Islamic thought does not treat war as an unbounded field of religious violence. Rather, it regulates warfare through a moral-legal framework derived from the Qur’an, the practice of the Prophet, and the juristic traditions that developed in subsequent centuries. The foundational Qur’anic injunction is taken from verse 2:190: “Fight in the way of God those who fight you, but do not transgress. Indeed, God does not love transgressors.” The verse both permits fighting and limits it: war is accepted as a political reality, but not treated as morally autonomous.

The Islamic conception of war begins from a premise different from the caricatures often projected onto it. Classical Islamic thought does not treat war as an unbounded field of religious violence.

The duality of permission and restraint thus runs through the Islamic just war tradition. War may be legitimate in cases of defence, resistance to aggression, or protection of the community. But even a just cause does not license unlimited means. Islamic jurists emphasised proportionality, legitimate authority, fidelity to agreements, and the protection of non-combatants—including women, children, the elderly, monks, and peasants— developing a norm of discrimination that restricted violence to active combatants.

It is from this perspective that nuclear weapons become especially difficult to reconcile with Islamic ethics. A weapon whose essence is mass, uncontrolled devastation, sits uneasily with any tradition that treats non-combatant immunity as morally central. In Islamic terms, the problem is not simply the scale of destruction, but the very structure of the act: the means themselves are transgressive.

 The fatwa: Genuine constraint or strategic cover?

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s reputed opposition to chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War established an early precedent for this kind of doctrinal restraint. Iraq used chemical agents extensively, and Iran suffered enormously—some 20,000 Iranians were killed and over 100,000 severely injured. Yet the Islamic Republic did not respond in kind on a comparable scale. Whether that restraint was entirely theological or also strategic remains debated. Recent evidence suggests limited Iranian chemical weapons development during the war. Still, the episode reinforced the notion that certain weapons lay beyond the moral threshold that Iran’s clerical leadership was prepared to cross openly.

Khamenei extended this logic to the nuclear realm. He first issued an oral fatwa in October 2003 declaring nuclear weapons as forbidden (haram) in Islam, and repeated this position in an official statement at the emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency in August 2005. Over subsequent years, Iranian officials repeatedly invoked his religious decree as evidence of the Islamic Republic’s peaceful nuclear intentions.

Khamenei extended this logic to the nuclear realm. He first issued an oral fatwa in October 2003 declaring nuclear weapons as forbidden (haram) in Islam, and repeated this position in an official statement at the emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency in August 2005.

But the fatwa’s authenticity and legal weight have always been contested. Some have argued that no formal written fatwa was ever issued and that what Iran marketed as a religious ruling was, in origin, merely the closing paragraph of a message to a 2010 nuclear disarmament conference, later retroactively framed by Iranian diplomats as a fatwa. Others have documented that Khamenei’s pronouncements on nuclear weapons were inconsistent: at times he categorically forbade development, stockpiling, and use; at other times he appeared to permit development and stockpiling while forbidding use.

None of this entirely strips the fatwa of significance. In political systems where legitimacy is partly theological, a public prohibition articulated by the supreme jurist, even if ambiguous in its legal form, raises the political and doctrinal cost of reversal. As one scholar observes, such declarations make it costly for the Islamic Republic to overturn the publicly stated position even if they do not constitute binding juridical rulings in the formal sense.

Succession and the question of doctrinal inheritance

The critical question of whether Khamenei’s successor would inherit his political and moral authority looms large. On March 9, 2026, the Assembly of Experts named Mojtaba Khamenei, the 56-year-old son of Ali Khamenei as Iran’s third supreme leader. Whether he would inherit his father’s doctrinal commitments, especially on nuclear weapons, is far from clear. Not known as a jurist of comparable standing to his father, Mojtaba’s authority derives primarily from his revolutionary and security credentials rather than from the depth of his theological learning, a fact noted critically within Iran’s clerical establishment, which has historically resisted father-to-son succession as uncomfortably monarchical.

Khamenei’s nuclear prohibition carried weight because it came from the state’s highest religious authority. Mojtaba’s standing is far more contested, which means that any comparable prohibition would likely carry less doctrinal force—while any tacit relaxation would accelerate the erosion of the barrier his father maintained. The IRGC commanders who manoeuvred his appointment to power have long been among those pressing for a reassessment of Iran’s nuclear posture.

Islamic restraint vs strategic realism

This leads to the final and perhaps hardest question: would Iran, if acting as a pure realist state, pursue nuclear weapons regardless of the Islamic just war tradition? The realist answer is straightforward. States seek survival in an anarchic international system. When a state faces stronger adversaries, recurring coercion, and the credible prospect of regime-change violence, it has every incentive to pursue the ultimate deterrent. From this perspective, the logic of nuclear acquisition is not theological but strategic: a bomb would promise not battlefield utility but regime survival, deterrence, and insulation from future attack.

And yet Iran is not a pure realist state in the abstract. It is a political order where ideology, clerical authority, national security, and regime survival have long coexisted in uneasy combination. The more interesting possibility, therefore, is not that realism simply replaces theology, but that realism gradually colonises it. In that scenario, doctrine is not openly discarded; it is reinterpreted and subordinated to necessity, allowing the state to retain Islamic language while moving toward a posture that the older Khamenei publicly resisted.

The greater danger is that the Islamic Republic’s language of restraint may cease to anchor policy and instead begin to trail behind it. If so, Iran’s nuclear future will be decided not only in centrifuge halls or command bunkers, but in the struggle between theological limits and strategic fear.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

US President Donald Trump has issued a direct ultimatum to Iran: reopen the Strait of Hormuz by 8pm Eastern Time in the United States on Tuesday, April 7 (midnight GMT on April 8), or face the destruction of national power plants and bridges.

This echoes an earlier March 21 ultimatum in which he threatened to attack Iran’s power plants – “the biggest one first” – if the strait was not fully reopened within 48 hours.

President Trump has since extended that deadline several times, citing progress in negotiations he claims the US is having with Iran to end the ongoing war. Iran denies it is holding direct talks with the US.

While Trump has made grand statements such as “they’re going to lose every power plant and every other plant they have in the whole country”, he has not mentioned specific targets.

The US president has also threatened to destroy the country’s bridges. Over the weekend, a US-Israeli strike hit the B1 bridge in the city of Karaj, west of Tehran. The major highway link, described as the tallest bridge in the Middle East, had been scheduled to be inaugurated soon. It sustained significant damage in the strike.

Legal experts say that targeting civilian sites amounts to “collective punishment”, which is prohibited under the laws of war.

Where are Iran’s power plants?

Iran operates hundreds of power plants which, together, form one of the largest electricity systems in the Middle East, supplying energy to 92 million people.

Most of the country’s power plants are close to major population centres and industrial hubs. The majority of Iran’s population lives in the western half of the country, with Tehran, Mashhad and Isfahan the three largest cities.

Iran has a mixture of gas, coal, hydro, nuclear and oil-fired power plants, but most are gas-fired. In the north and centre of the country, clusters of gas-fired plants supply electricity to the country’s largest population centres, including Tehran, Karaj, Isfahan and Mashhad.

Another major concentration of power plants lies along the Gulf coast. These plants sit close to major gasfields and ports, allowing large thermal stations to run on abundant natural gas.

The coast is also home to the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, Iran’s only nuclear power facility, which has a capacity of 1,000MW. The US and Israel have repeatedly hit this nuclear power plant, raising risks of radioactive contamination far beyond Iran’s borders, the state-run Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI) has warned.

Iran also operates a handful of hydropower dams concentrated along the Karun River, the country’s most important source of hydroelectric generation.

Electricity generated from all these plants is fed into a national transmission network operated by Iran Grid Management Company, which distributes power to cities, industries and homes across the country.

The map below shows all of Iran’s power stations with a capacity of 100MW or more.

A 100MW power plant can typically supply electricity to roughly 75,000 to 100,000 homes, depending on consumption patterns.

Iran’s largest power plant by capacity is the Damavand Power Plant located in the Pakdasht area, roughly 50km (31 miles) southeast of Tehran, with a capacity of some 2,900MW, enough to power more than two million homes.

Which are Iran’s most important power plants?

Iran’s largest power plants include:

• Damavand (Pakdasht) Power Plant – Near Tehran.
  Fuel: Natural gas (combined-cycle).
  Capacity: 2,868MW.
• Shahid Salimi Power Plant – Neka, along the Caspian Sea coast.
  Fuel: Natural gas.
  Capacity: 2,215MW.
• Shahid Rajaee Power Plant – Near Qazvin.
  Fuel: Natural gas.
  Capacity: 2,043MW.
• Karun-3 Dam – Khuzestan Province.
  Fuel: Hydropower.
  Capacity: 2,000MW.
• Kerman Power Plant – Kerman.
  Fuel: Natural gas.
  Capacity: 1,912MW.

Other smaller but strategically important power plants include:

• Ramin Power Plant – Ahvaz, Khuzestan.
  Fuel: Gas.
  Capacity: 1,903MW.
• Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant – On the Gulf.
  Fuel: Nuclear.
  Capacity: 1,000MW.
• Bandar Abbas Power Plant – Near the Strait of Hormuz.
  Fuel: Oil.
  Capacity: 1,330MW.

How does Iran generate its electricity?

Iran’s electricity system relies heavily on large thermal power plants fuelled by natural gas. The country has one of the world’s largest natural gas reserves, and this fuel forms the backbone of its power system.

In 2025, 86 percent of Iran’s electricity came from natural gas.

Oil-fired plants provide a smaller share, generating roughly seven percent of electricity. Some power stations switch to diesel or fuel oil when natural gas supplies are tight, especially during winter demand peaks.

Hydropower accounts for about five percent of electricity. Large dams on rivers such as the Karun River generate power by using flowing water to spin turbines.

Nuclear energy contributes around two percent of the country’s electricity, mainly from the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, Iran’s only operational nuclear reactor.

Renewables such as solar and wind play a very small role, together accounting for less than one percent of electricity generation.

Overall, more than 90 percent of Iran’s electricity comes from fossil fuels, making it one of the most gas-dependent power systems in the world.