Iran Crisis & the 2026 War between Iran and the United States, Gulf States, and Israel - Please focus on news and coverage, not argumentation.

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Catch The Rainbow said:
The US and Israel didn't kill Ahmadinejad, they ended up freeing him from house arrest and he's presumably gone into hiding. May have been a jailbreak operation:
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A February 28 strike hit not the residence, but the security forces nearby. (According to Al Jazeera, it also hit the school and killed two children.) In the ensuing mayhem, Ahmadinejad and his family evidently escaped their home and went underground. The government believed he had died, and his death was announced by official channels, as well as the reformist daily Sharq/
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Falcos_Commisar said:
With what money?

They were broke before the war and are going out be TURBO broke now
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This is potentially massive. Here's why the Bank Sepah data center hit matters far beyond delayed paychecks:

1/ Iran is already in the middle of a severe cash liquidity crisis. As of Jan 2026, banks were running out of physical banknotes daily, with informal withdrawal caps of just $18–$30/day. Cash in circulation surged 49% YoY due to panic hoarding. The regime simply cannot pivot to cash payments, there isn't enough physical currency in the system


2/ Bank Sepah isn't just "a bank." In 2019-2020, five IRGC/Basij-affiliated banks, Ansar Bank, Mehr Eqtesad Bank (IRGC), Ghavamin Bank (police), Hekmat Iranian Bank, and Kosar Credit Institution (defense ministry), were all merged into Bank Sepah. Their ~1,800 branches still operate nationwide. This strike cripples the IRGC's consolidated financial backbone.


3/ Bank Sepah maintains foreign branches in Paris, Rome, Frankfurt, and a wholly-owned subsidiary, Bank Sepah International plc in London. This disruption may cut access between Tehran HQ and those foreign operations, presenting a unique window for host governments to freeze operations and for staff to defect


4/ Mid and low-level IRGC and Basij forces depend on government salaries. If they don't get paid, their willingness to brutally suppress protesters, as they did in the Jan 2026 crackdown killing thousands, is seriously undermined. Unpaid security forces are unreliable security forces.
https://x.com/miadmaleki/status/2031745882287165741

5/ BUT; the senior IRGC leadership doesn't rely on salaries. The IRGC controls an estimated $30–$50 billion in annual economic turnover across oil, construction, telecom, agriculture, and smuggling. Their budget just tripled to $12.4B in direct oil revenue. IRGC-affiliated foundations account for over half of Iran's GDP


6/ So while hitting Bank Sepah disrupts the regime's ability to pay its foot soldiers, the IRGC's hands must be cut from across Iran's entire economy — their construction monopolies (Khatam al-Anbiya), their crypto operations ($3B+ in 2025), their smuggling networks, and their shadow banking. Sanctions must target the empire, not just the salary line.
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Falcos_Commisar said:
With what money?

They were broke before the war and are going out be TURBO broke now
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There currency is pretty much toast and come summer it will only get worse. There wells are pretty much dry. I stated this a while ago but I dont think the regime will survive this at all even if we didnt attack.
 
aphaln said:
Interception of Iranian missiles over Tel Aviv, one seems to have landed in the sea and another seems to be a cluster missile


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Right after the missile fire from Iran had ended, additional Hezbollah launches towards northern Israel.

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One of the Hezbollah missiles hit an Arab home in Kfar Kana

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And another Arab home in Ba'ana / Deir al-Assad, it's so over for the Zionist state






Interceptor in Ba'ana:

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Footage of the interceptors:



 

Footage showing the interceptions in northern Israel.



Additional footage of the barrage from Hezbollah.



Hezbollah launched dozens of rockets into northern Israel a few moments ago. Rocket falls have been reported.





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Hezbollah rocket impact/debris reported in several areas of northern Israel.





Crazy scenes from Hezbollah's huge rocket attack on northern Israel this evening.
 
SaidNoOneEver said:
If the regime survives
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Survives what? When are people going to get "it".

The US can just drop a missile on everything. There's no clear upper limit to how many times they can do this.
Israel can infiltrate every electronic communication device, and spend all its time and money watching every Iranian citizen and feed it into their AI servers for analysis.

What the fuck are people smoking seriously? What imaginary past model of warfare are they thinking exists? This is like late stage RTS gameplay where one faction has the tech tree completed and is fielding its wonder which is a floating death cannon, and the other team is like "well if I survive this, I'll just rebuild all the buildings currently being destroyed in my base with the engineer units that automatically spawn in when I'm out of units."
 
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Hezbollah has announced the start of Operation “Al-Asf al-Ma’kul” (The Devouring Wind) against Israel, coinciding with this evening's rocket barrage, which contained over 100 rockets.



The moment a rocket fell on the house in the Arab town of Bi'ina, northern Israel.
 
SaidNoOneEver said:
If the regime survives the average person in the region will see them to be equal or even stronger than the US. In that "weakened" state Iran will then be more powerful than they have ever been.
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Yes yes, and Saddam was also at his strongest & most respected 1991-2003 when he had proven his might & virility by staying in power after winning the Gulf War with his masterful 'my face to your bombs, tanks, missiles, etc.' strategy.

Drones reported in Tehran this evening (some of which may have been responsible for striking those Islamist checkpoints), #1:



#2:



#3:



American jet spotted flying without opposition over Chabahar, a port in SE Iran (pop'n 106k):

 
I have been watching Al Jazeera since the war started. The Qataris have clearly cracked the whip. Yesterday, the Qatari Foreign Minister went to Al Jizz's headquarters for an "interview" which was not an interview but the Vizier arriving to tell the idiot courtiers what the Sultan has decreed.


All the English Communists have been disappeared in less then 24 hours, with the one survivor clearly giving the headlines at gunpoint. Iran is no longer the brave resistance. Its clearly attacking all its neighbors without provocation. Iran is "Le Bad". America is hecking wholesome, and the UN has to totally stop Iran from attacking its neighbors.
 
mindlessobserver said:
Our King has a tendency to fire off at the mouth.
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I was with you until you said King. Like Rome of old, Americans harbor no love for kings nor their courts. The Tarquins learned this the hard way and anyone who aspires to kinghood in the US will suffer the same steep learning curve.

mindlessobserver said:
Iran is "Le Bad". America is hecking wholesome,
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Minus your redditor-weeb talk, you reeled me back in. Good jorb.
 
pooterino said:
I was with you until you said King. Like Rome of old, Americans harbor no love for kings nor their courts. The Tarquins learned this hard way and anyone who aspires to kinghood in the US will suffer the same steep learning curve.
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All nations have a crown and a King. It is the nature of human existence. Democracies only pretend they have no crown and throne. The problem with monarchy is that the Crown is put on a man not worthy to be a King. The problem with democracy is a King is elected not worthy of the Crown.

pooterino said:
Minus your redditor-weeb talk, you reeled me back in. Good jorb.
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The redittor talk was tongue in cheek.
 
mindlessobserver said:
All the English Communists have been disappeared in less then 24 hours, with the one survivor clearly giving the headlines at gunpoint. Iran is no longer the brave resistance. Its clearly attacking all its neighbors without provocation. Iran is "Le Bad". America is hecking wholesome, and the UN has to totally stop Iran from attacking its neighbors.
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It could be interesting to know who was mainly these English communists.
 

Debris fell on a building in Arab town of Kafr Kanna, northern Israel.



A single Iranian ballistic missile was intercepted over southern Israel.



Smoke is rising from the two impact sites in Beirut's southern suburb (Dahieh). Steve is currently showing a live cam of Beirut.



CCTV footage shows a Hezbollah rocket launch directed toward northern Israel.
 
I always liked Ahmadinejad, yeah he was an Islamic stooge but he was more vocal about the issues against the regime post-presidency. IIRC he was under house arrest because he was accused of undermining the official talks which were just a stalling tactic. The man wrote some funny tweets too. Heres an Atlantic piece about him:

Why Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Is Still Useful ​

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For more than a decade, he has been known more as a regime opponent than as a supporter.
By Graeme Wood
On the first day of the Iran war, the assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei overshadowed news of a strike near the home of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president from 2005 to 2013. Many who remembered his term in office—marked by Holocaust denial, atom-bomb fetishism, and shoving Islamic revolutionary ideology down the throats of a country already weary of it—celebrated his reported assassination. As president, he was the symbol of a smarmy kind of theocratic fascism. “All my friends have got nuclear weapons—even Ahmadinejad,” Sacha Baron Cohen’s character complained in the 2012 movie The Dictator. “And he looks like a snitch on Miami Vice!”

Among those who have followed Ahmadinejad’s post-presidential career, however, his targeting was more of an enigma. Since leaving office, Ahmadinejad has harshly criticized the Iranian government, and as a result, Iran’s Guardian Council has formally excluded him from running for president. For more than a decade, he has been known more as a regime opponent than as a supporter. Why would the United States or Israel assassinate him? “I don’t understand why Israel would want to kill him in the first place,” Meir Javedanfar, who co-wrote a biography of Ahmadinejad, told me. “Perhaps to settle scores? It makes no sense.”

The resolution to this puzzle may be that what appeared at first to be an assassination was no such thing. Contrary to early reports, Ahmadinejad is alive, his associates say. (They requested anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation.) The circumstances of his survival may prove significant as the war drags on. Whatever the intent, Ahmadinejad’s associates say the strike was in effect a jailbreak operation that freed the former president from regime control. Their description of the chaotic sequence of events that began before the war suggests that Ahmadinejad has friends on the outside.

Long before the war, the government had posted a small number of bodyguards near Ahmadinejad, nominally to protect a prominent citizen but also to keep tabs on him. The regime has never been sure what to do with him. He remains popular in Iran, and as an ex-president once close to the regime’s insiders (the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, allegedly rigged his election and reelection to the presidency), he is dangerously well informed about how the state works. In 2018, former Defense Minister Hussein Dehghan likened Ahmadinejad to “the door of the mosque, which can’t be burned or thrown away” without torching the mosque itself. “Arresting Ahmadinejad could unsettle the regime,” Javedanfar said. “He knows a hell of a lot about it.”

About a month ago, after the January protests, his freedom of movement was further reduced, his phones confiscated, and the contingent of bodyguards increased from single digits to about 50. The bodyguards were based a few hundred meters from Ahmadinejad’s residence itself, at the entrance to a cul-de-sac in Narmak, in northeast Tehran. They established a checkpoint to monitor the houses and high school on that street.

A February 28 strike hit not the residence, but the security forces nearby. (According to Al Jazeera, it also hit the school and killed two children.) In the ensuing mayhem, Ahmadinejad and his family evidently escaped their home and went underground. The government believed he had died, and his death was announced by official channels, as well as the reformist daily Sharq.

When rumors arose that Ahmadinejad had escaped, regime elements immediately suspected that he had been spirited away to take part in a coup. Ahmadinejad’s only public statement since the attack has been a brief eulogy for the supreme leader, calculated to show that Ahmadinejad was alive and to dispel speculation that he had declared himself an enemy of the state. His location is unknown to the government.

It is possible that Israel or the United States wanted to kill Ahmadinejad, but aimed poorly. That would be peculiar, because it would mean that the United States and Israel placed near the top of its kill list a politician who was no longer a friend to the regime. The alternative possibility, that Narmak was bombed to free Ahmadinejad, raises other questions. Why free Ahmadinejad only for him to go into hiding after? Why free him at all, given how long he has been out of power?

Ahmadinejad’s fans say that he has popular support, and that any postwar government will want him around to lend that support. If the current regime survives, it will need all the legitimacy it can get. If it does not, the United States might need someone with intimate (if outdated) knowledge of the Iranian state to be involved with what comes next. Ahmadinejad could still be useful.
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