The Levant Files

Nearly every night this week, air-defense batteries over Erbil have lit up the sky intercepting drones that no one will own. On 17 July alone, Kurdish counter-terrorism forces reported downing 16 explosive-laden drones over the Kurdistan Region's capital — the fourth such swarm in three days — while a separate strike hit an ammunition depot in Sulaimaniyah province and another wave targeted a camp belonging to the exiled Iranian-Kurdish opposition party Komala, killing at least eight of its members, according to the group. Four drones were shot down near the US consulate in Erbil the same evening. In the space of 48 hours, at least six distinct attacks landed across Iraqi Kurdistan. International coverage has folded all of this into the broader US-Iran war as a single undifferentiated category: "Iran attacks Iraqi Kurdistan." That framing is not wrong, but it is incomplete in a way that obscures the story's real center of gravity. Because as Iraqi and Kurdish security...

Every night for the past week, the world's attention has followed the same script: American strikes on Iranian coastal and transport targets, Iranian missiles fired back at Gulf states, oil prices twitching, the Strait of Hormuz named again and again as the conflict's central prize. But buried inside the hourly bulletins of the past 24 hours is a story that deserves to be read on its own terms, not as a bullet point in a live blog — because it may prove more dangerous, in the long run, than any single round of missiles. Water has become a battlefield. And both sides are now fighting on it, in the open, without pretense. What happened in the last 12 hours In the early hours of Saturday, 18 July, U.S. Central Command confirmed a seventh consecutive night of strikes on Iranian territory, hitting what it described as surveillance sites, military logistics, underground weapons storage and maritime capabilities along the coast facing the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian state television rep...

The Middle East convulsed once more overnight as the United States pounded Iranian territory for a sixth consecutive night, tearing through bridges, railways, power stations and coastal radar installations in a campaign that has now killed at least 38 people and wounded more than 400 since a fragile truce collapsed. In return, Tehran unleashed a sweeping wave of retaliation across five Gulf states — a spasm of missiles and drones that has turned the Strait of Hormuz, and the wider waterways around it, into one of the most dangerous chokepoints on Earth. What began seven days ago as a rekindling of hostilities has, by Friday, hardened into something far graver: a widening war that increasingly resembles regional conflagration rather than contained confrontation. The ceasefire memorandum signed in Switzerland weeks ago now lies in tatters, its provisions abandoned amid a relentless cycle of strike and counterstrike that shows no sign of slowing. Sixth Night, Same Fury US Central Co...

As the renewed exchange of fire between Washington and Tehran enters its second week following the collapse of the Islamabad memorandum, Persian-language media — spanning hardline outlets inside Iran, reformist and pragmatic-conservative papers, state wire services, and diaspora/exile channels broadcasting from abroad — has produced a dense stream of analysis and opinion over the past 24 to 48 hours. Read together, the coverage reveals a media landscape less united behind a single narrative than fractured along the same fault lines that run through Iranian politics itself: whether to fight on or return to the table, and who is to blame for the return of war. Hardline press: defiance and a demand to escalate Unsurprisingly, the sharpest rhetoric comes from Kayhan, the standard-bearer of Iran's hardline camp. In its "Kayhan and Readers" column, the paper argued that limited retaliatory strikes on US bases in Bahrain and Kuwait carry no real cost for Washington and therefore...

  China Daily editorial The US administration has never disguised its instinct to turn geopolitics into a commercial transaction. US President Donald Trump's latest proposal — that the United States should become the "guardian angel" of the Strait of Hormuz and charge other countries for safe passage — takes that logic to a telling degree. The proposal marks a striking departure from decades of US maritime doctrine. From the Barbary Wars onward, successive US administrations argued that strategic waterways should remain open because global commerce depended on them. Transforming one of the world's busiest sea lanes into a toll booth is a reversal of principle. It is also a reversal driven by a crisis Washington has itself created as well as its disregard for the fact that the strait is not US territory. The latest US strikes on Iranian targets, followed by Iranian retaliation, have once again turned the Strait of Hormuz into the world's most dangerous maritime cho...

  RIA Novosti, David Narmania   For two months, Washington and Tehran conducted ceasefire negotiations — only for Donald Trump to tear up the effort three weeks after the memorandum was signed. Iran says the agreement has effectively collapsed and that the Americans have resumed the war. What comes next is the subject of this report. Exchange of Strikes Since 8 July, the United States has struck Iran almost daily. The official pretext was Iranian action against commercial vessels crossing the Strait of Hormuz. Overnight into Wednesday, 15 July, air strikes continued for seven hours, and by that afternoon US Central Command had announced a new wave of bombing, beginning at 13:00 Moscow time. According to CENTCOM's statement, the goal is to degrade Tehran's military capacity in the Strait of Hormuz. Most of the strikes have hit cities in the south of the country and along the Persian Gulf coast. According to Hossein Kermanpour, spokesman for Iran's Ministry of Health, the num...

The fifth consecutive night of American strikes on Iran has produced a familiar but intensifying rhythm: US Central Command hits targets tied to the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran retaliates against American allies and shipping, and both sides insist the other bears responsibility for the collapse of diplomacy. What has changed in the past twelve hours is not the pattern but its trajectory — every indicator suggests Washington is preparing to expand, not wind down, the campaign. What happened overnight CENTCOM confirmed it had completed a second wave of strikes on Wednesday, hitting Iranian command centers, air-defense sites, missile and drone facilities, and coastal surveillance installations around Bandar Abbas, with an earlier 90-minute assault on Greater Tunb Island targeting coastal-defense and cruise-missile systems. Iran's army said at least seven military personnel were killed in a separate overnight strike on a base in the southeast, while Tehran's government spokesperson pu...

Iranian academic and commentator Seyyed Mohammad Marandi has claimed that the United States is preparing a ground operation with the participation of an unnamed Arab government, warning that the country involved would face devastating consequences. Writing on social media, Marandi said Washington was preparing “a ground attack using the capabilities of an Arab regime,” adding: “If this attack is carried out, that Arab country will end.” He did not name the state, cite intelligence or provide evidence that a final decision had been taken. His warning comes amid a renewed US campaign against Iran. US Central Command has confirmed fresh strikes against Iranian military targets and the resumption of a naval blockade targeting Iranian ports, while stating that passage through the Strait of Hormuz for vessels not bound for Iran remains open.  The most plausible interpretation is not a major invasion of mainland Iran, which would require a vast and politically hazardous deployment, bu...