I - On Defense Podcast

For review:
1. Italy, Spain, France and the Netherlands will send naval assets to protect Cyprus in the coming days, Rome’s Defense Minister Guido Crosetto told parliament on Thursday. Crosetto said the deployment would occur in the coming days.
2. The Washington Post reported Friday that Russia has been assisting Iran in its war with the US and Israel by providing intelligence on the locations of American military assets in the Middle East. The report cited US officials familiar with the details.
3. A massive Israeli strike Friday morning destroyed the underground Tehran bunker of Iran’s late supreme leader Ali Khamenei, which was being used by senior regime officials.
4. US President Donald Trump said Thursday that he needs to be “involved” in selecting Iran’s next leader, days after Israeli strikes killed the country’s longtime supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
5. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set the goal of assassinating Iran’s late supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, back in November, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Thursday night.
6. According to the IDF, more than 550 aerial refuelings have been carried out over the skies of the Middle East since the war began, allowing hundreds of IAF fighter jets to operate in Iran, located over 1,500 kilometers (nearly 1,000 miles) from Israel.
7. Iran will target the Israeli nuclear site of Dimona if Israel and the US seek regime change in the Islamic Republic, semi-official ISNA news agency reported Wednesday, citing an Iranian military official.
8. Iran said Thursday it had attacked Kurdish forces in Iraqi Kurdistan to prevent them from launching an assault on its western borders, amid reports that such an attack was coming or had even begun.
The Iranian claim came as Kurdish officials told The Associated Press and The Washington Post that US President Donald Trump had personally spoken to their leaders in recent days and requested their assistance in the campaign. 
9. Israel has been holding its own talks with Iranian Kurdish insurgent groups based in the semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan for around a year, two Iranian Kurdish sources said, while an Israeli source said talks had been “long-term.”
10. The Israel Defense Forces has advanced further into southern Lebanon in recent days.
The developments came as Israel appeared to expand its offensive into Beirut’s southern suburbs Thursday night, launching a series of strikes on the Hezbollah stronghold, of the densely populated area known as the Dahiyeh, after ordering all residents  to evacuate.
11. Hezbollah spent months restocking its arsenal of rockets and drones, using support from Iran and its own weapons factories to prepare for a new war with Israel, six sources familiar with the Lebanese terror group’s preparations said.
12. Saudi Arabia has intensified direct engagement with Iran to help contain a war in the Middle East, Bloomberg News reported Friday, citing several European officials
Saudi officials in recent days have used their diplomatic backchannel to Iran with increased urgency to ease tensions and keep the conflict from worsening, the report said.  It added that several regional and European nations are backing the Saudi efforts, the officials quoted in the report said.
13. The Trump administration plans to meet executives from the biggest US defense contractors at the White House on Friday to discuss accelerating weapons production, as the Pentagon works to replenish supplies drawn down by US strikes on Iran and other recent military operations, sources said.
Companies including Lockheed Martin and Raytheon and parent RTX, along with key suppliers, have been invited to attend the meeting.

Operation Epic Fury & Roaring Lion for review:
1. Concerning Iran's New Supreme Leader: Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz warned Wednesday that Israel would target whoever leads the Islamic Republic. “
Any leader appointed by the Iranian terror regime to continue leading the plan to destroy Israel, threaten the US and the free world and the countries of the region, and oppress the Iranian people, will be an unequivocal target for elimination,” Katz said in a statement.
 “It does not matter what his name is or where he hides,” he said.
2. An American submarine sank an Iranian warship off the coast of Sri Lanka, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed Wednesday, the first US sinking of an enemy ship by torpedo since World War II.
3. Within a week, the US and Israel “will have complete control over Iranian skies,” US War Secretary Pete Hegseth asserted on Wednesday during a press conference at the Pentagon alongside Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, exclaiming that Iran was “toast.”
4. An Israeli Air Force F-35I fighter jet shot down a Russian-made Iranian Yak-130 jet over Tehran on Wednesday, the IDF said, in the first-ever downing of a manned aircraft by an F-35.
5. The Israeli Air Force carried out “extensive” strikes against regime targets across Iran overnight and into Wednesday, as the Islamic Republic continued to fire salvos of ballistic missiles at Israeli population centers.
6. The US and Israel, in their ongoing airstrikes throughout Iran, are targeting members of the regime’s forces that took part in the crackdown on anti-government protesters earlier this year, hoping to make it easier for demonstrators to return to the streets once the bombing subsides, a US official and an Israeli official told The Times of Israel on Wednesday.
7. In a televised address, Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem on Wednesday said his terror group’s resumption of rocket attacks on Israel this week is a response to Israel’s continued presence and airstrikes in Lebanon since the November 2024 Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire deal.
8. Hezbollah fired on central Israel on Tuesday, the terror group’s first long-range attack since the start of the Iran war, as Israeli airstrikes hammered the organization and Israel threatened Iranian officials in Lebanon.
Hezbollah fired three rockets toward Tel Aviv and the Haifa area, setting off sirens across central Israel and parts of the north.
9. NATO air and missile defense systems stationed in the eastern Mediterranean destroyed a ballistic missile fired from Iran as it headed into Turkish airspace after passing Syria and Iraq, the Turkish Defense Ministry said on Wednesday.
10. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has told his country’s neighbors in the region that he respects their sovereignty after Iran launched a number of airstrikes at Gulf nations in recent days.
11. Iranian Kurdish militias have consulted with the United States in recent days about whether, and how, to attack Iran’s security forces in the western part of the country, three sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
The groups have requested US military support, and Iraqi leaders in Erbil and Baghdad have also been in touch with the Trump administration in recent days, they said.

Operation Epic Fury / Roaring Lion for review:
1. France plans to send anti-missile and anti-drone systems to Cyprus after a British air base on the island was attacked by drones, the semi-official Cyprus News Agency (CNA) said on Tuesday.
2. US President Donald Trump threatened Tuesday to sever all trade with Spain after it refused to let US planes use its bases to attack Iran, while also lashing out at Britain for not cooperating more.
3. An Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps senior official said on Monday that the Strait of Hormuz is closed, threatening that if any vessels pass through it, Iran “will set those ships ablaze,” state media reported.
4. US Navy ships could start accompanying tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz in an attempt to safeguard maritime trade in the region, according to President Donald Trump.  
5. The U.S. operation against Iran has hit nearly 2,000 targets over the last 100 hours, according to Adm. Brad Cooper, the commander of U.S. Central Command.
6. Israeli Air Force jets on Tuesday destroyed a secret underground site on the outskirts of Tehran where Iran transferred much of its nuclear program after the war with Israel in June, the IDF said.
7. Overnight, the Israeli Air Force struck Iran’s “leadership complex” in Tehran, the military said Tuesday, saying that around 100 fighter jets dropped over 250 bombs on the complex.
8. Israel hacked into Tehran’s extensive traffic camera network in order to track the bodyguards of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top Iranian officials ahead of Saturday’s assassination of the supreme leader, the Financial Times reported on Monday.
9. An Israeli airstrike on Tuesday hit the building of a body tasked with electing Iran’s new supreme leader, the IDF’s spokesman said, after former leader Ali Khamenei was killed by Israel on Saturday.
10. The son of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is the front-runner to succeed his father as the Islamic Republic’s next head, according to a NYT report that says the senior clerics tasked with choosing the next supreme leader could announce their choice as early as Wednesday morning.
11. The Israel Defense Forces said Tuesday it had deployed troops deeper into southern Lebanon, beyond the five posts it currently holds.
The expanded deployment came after Iran-backed Hezbollah began launching rockets and drones at northern Israel early Monday in response to Israel’s killing of the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader.
12. Syria has reinforced its border with Lebanon with rocket units and thousands of troops, eight Syrian and Lebanese sources said Tuesday.
13. Russia, China and Turkey on Tuesday called for an immediate end to the war launched by the US and Israel on Saturday against Iran.

Operation Epic Fury & Roaring Lion update for review:
1. US CJCS: “Our military objectives are clear,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine told reporters. “Our mission is to protect and defend ourselves, and together with our regional partners, prevent Iran from the ability to project power outside of its borders and be ready for follow on actions as appropriate.”
2. Three US F-15 fighter jets crashed over Kuwait on Monday after they were mistakenly shot down by Kuwaiti air defenses in a so-called friendly fire incident, the American military confirmed.
3. On Monday, President Trump laid out more specific goals for the operation — targeting Iran’s ballistic missiles, nuclear program, navy, and support for proxy groups — and said that the largest wave of strikes was still to come. He declined to rule out using ground troops and said that the campaign could last about four weeks.
“We haven’t even started hitting them hard. The big wave hasn’t even happened. The big one is coming soon,” President Trump told CNN.
4. Israel said Monday that the head of Hezbollah’s intelligence arm was killed in an overnight strike and Beirut said it would ban the terror group’s military activities, hours after the Iran-backed organization fired rockets and drones at Israel, leading to major retaliatory strikes overnight and throughout Monday.
5. Saudi Arabia’s state oil giant Aramco shut its Ras Tanura refinery after a drone strike caused a blaze, an industry source said on Monday, after Tehran launched strikes across the region in response to the US-Israeli attack on Iran.
A source familiar with the incident told AFP the blaze had already been extinguished.
6. An attack using at least two drones on the US embassy in Riyadh sparked a small fire, a Saudi defense ministry spokesman says in a statement, as Iran presses on with its campaign of retaliatory strikes across the Gulf.
“The US Embassy in Riyadh was attacked by two drones, according to initial assessments. 
7. Britain’s Royal Air Force base  in Cyprus was hit by a drone strike overnight, causing limited damage and no casualties, Cypriot authorities and the UK’s Ministry of Defense said early Monday.
8. France is “ready” to defend Gulf countries and Jordan against Iran if necessary, Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said Monday.
His remarks came as key European ally Germany also spoke of readiness to defend its interests against Iranian assaults.

For review:
Operation Epic Fury / Roaring Lion Continues.
1. Three American soldiers have been killed, and five have been seriously wounded in the ongoing conflict with Iran, the US Central Command said Sunday, announcing the first US casualties in the conflict.
2. The United States and Israel clashed with Iran at an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on Saturday as the United Nations chief led calls for a halt to attacks by either side and a return to negotiations to prevent the conflict from spreading further.
3. China, Russia and North Korea condemned the news that Iran’s notorious strongman Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had been killed an Israeli airstrike, as did Iranian proxies Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
4. As outlined in its constitution, Iran on Sunday formed a council to assume leadership duties and govern the country, while the process to select a new Supreme Leader begins.
The council is made up of Iran’s sitting president, the head of the country’s judiciary, and a member of the Guardian Council chosen by Iran’s Expediency Council, which advises the supreme leader and settles disputes with parliament.
5. Israeli and American authorities spent weeks tracking the movements of senior Iranian leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sharing information that allowed the strikes to be carried out in a surprise daylight attack, according to an Israeli military official and a person familiar with the operation.
6. US President Donald Trump threatened early Sunday morning to hit Iran with unprecedented force after Tehran warned it would step up attacks in retaliation for the killing of its supreme leader and fired successive volleys of rockets at Israel for a second consecutive day Sunday.
7. Israeli Air Force fighter jets have dropped over 2,000 bombs in strikes against hundreds of Iranian regime targets and military sites since the start of the conflict with the Islamic Republic on Saturday morning, the Israel Defense Forces said Sunday.
The amount of munitions dropped on targets in Iran over the first 30 hours of the conflict was around half of what the IAF said it used over the entire course of the 12-day war in June 2025.
8. The warhead of an Iranian missile hit a site just several dozen meters from the Old City of Jerusalem, and just several hundred meters from the Western Wall and the Temple Mount, during the course of Saturday, police announced on Sunday.
9. Lebanon’s Hezbollah terror group claims responsibility for firing rockets at northern Israel tonight for the first time since the November 2024 Israel-Lebanon ceasefire.
10. Lebanese and Arabic news outlets report Israeli strikes in Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, after several rockets were fired at northern Israel earlier tonight.
Lebanese security sources tell Reuters that at least one target in Beirut’s southern suburbs was hit in the strikes.
There is no immediate comment from the IDF.
11. US President Donald Trump on Sunday said he would “be talking” with Iran’s leaders at their request, even as he continued to call on “Iranian patriots” to seize the moment created by the killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei the previous day and topple the regime.
12. Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran’s National Security Council, is seeking to return to the negotiating table with the United States, less than two days after the start of a coordinated assault on Iran by the US and Israel, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing US and Arab officials familiar with the matter.
According to the report, Larijani reached out to the US through Omani mediators to see about resuming negotiations.