Operation Saeqeh

Iran's regular Army (Artesh) claimed drone strikes on Kuwait's Ali Al Salem Air Base and Bahrain's Sheikh Isa air base on 16 July 2026 and named the campaign the tenth phase of Operation Saeqeh, Persian for Lightning. Kuwait's armed forces independently confirmed intercepting the drones.

Every earlier Gulf reprisal in the war had carried the IRGC's name, from the 9 July strikes on Jordan and three Gulf states to the Gulf-wide retaliation that answered the naval blockade . On 16 July the IRGC claimed only a separate hit on Jordan's Azraq base, while the Artesh took Kuwait and Bahrain under its own banner.

A named, numbered, multi-phase operation signals sustained institutional planning rather than the IRGC's improvised strike-and-claim pattern, marking Iran's conventional army stepping out from under the Guard Corps' wartime shadow to assert its own claim on the conflict.

On 17 July a Saeqeh strike on Jordan's Muwaffaq Salti (Azraq) air base killed two American service members, the war's first US combat deaths; CENTCOM said a third is missing and four were medically evacuated. By 18 July Iranian state media, principally Press TV, put the campaign at its 14th and 15th phases, widening its declared scope from Kuwait and Bahrain to include Jordan. Iran's own phase count has moved from the tenth phase to the 14th and 15th inside two days; the figures are unverified and come only from Iranian state broadcasters, but the Jordan strike is the campaign's first confirmed lethal hit.