26JUL

Artesh claims Kuwait and Bahrain strikes

2 min read

10:21UTC

Iran's regular army, not the IRGC, claimed the 16 July drone strikes on Kuwait and Bahrain and named them phase ten of Operation Saeqeh.

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Key takeaway

Iran's regular army claimed the Kuwait and Bahrain strikes under its own named operation, stepping out of the IRGC's shadow.

The regular Army of the Islamic Republic of Iran (Artesh), not the IRGC, claimed the 16 July drone strikes on Kuwait's Ali Al Salem Air Base and Bahrain's Sheikh Isa air base, and gave the campaign a name: the tenth phase of Operation Saeqeh (Lightning). ¹

Every prior Gulf reprisal in this war had carried the IRGC's name. The IRGC fired on Jordan's Azraq base and struck three Gulf states on 9 July , and ran the Gulf-wide retaliation that answered the blockade . This time the IRGC claimed only the separate hit on Jordan's Azraq base, while the Artesh took Kuwait and Bahrain under its own banner.

A named, numbered, multi-phase operation implies sustained institutional planning, distinct from the corps' improvised strike-and-claim pattern. The Artesh has spent this war in the IRGC's shadow as the conventional-defence force; a numbered army operation is a bureaucratic claim on the war's prestige, and such claims outlast the strikes that prompt them. Mojtaba Khamenei was installed through IRGC channels, so an army asserting its own operational brand under a Supreme Leader it did not choose is a fault line worth watching.

Kuwait's armed forces said their air defences intercepted hostile drones on 16 July, independent, non-Iranian confirmation that the attack was real. ² A quieter reading also fits: the two forces may simply be dividing targets, with no rivalry implied. Even so, no earlier Iranian strike this war has carried a numbered army operation's name.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Iran has two separate armed forces that don't answer to a single military command: the regular Army, called Artesh, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, which is the more ideological force that has led most of the war's retaliatory strikes. This time it was Artesh, not the IRGC, that claimed credit for drone strikes on air bases in Kuwait and Bahrain, giving its campaign the name Operation Saeqeh and calling this attack its tenth phase.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

Iran's constitution establishes Artesh and the IRGC as parallel, formally equal armed forces answering separately to the Supreme Leader, with neither holding overall operational primacy over the other.

That dual-track structure gives each branch an incentive to publicise its own named, numbered campaign, Artesh's Operation Saeqeh among them, rather than issue a single joint claim.

What could happen next?

Meaning
Artesh's willingness to publicise its own named campaign suggests the regular Army wants independent credit for retaliation, rather than letting the IRGC's messaging define the war's narrative.

Sources:Tech Times

Mentions:Iranian Army →Operation Saeqeh →Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) →Kuwait →Bahrain →Jordan →Ali Al Salem Air Base →Sheikh Isa airbase →Iran-Iraq War →Iraq →Iran →Mojtaba Khamenei →Tehran →

First Reported In

Update #155 · US bombing moves inland as blockade hardens

Tech Times· 18 Jul 2026

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Causes and effects

This Event

Artesh claims Kuwait and Bahrain strikes

A second Iranian force is now claiming strikes under its own banner, a sign of institutional jockeying inside Tehran's war effort.

Led to

Iran fires back across the Gulf again

The Army's named Operation Saeqeh phase 10 followed the 14 July Gulf-wide retaliation.

Occurred 14 Jul 2026

Read story →

Iran's army widens Saeqeh to three states

The 16 July Artesh claim on Kuwait and Bahrain preceded and matches the widened 18 July phase-14/15 claim.

Occurred 18 Jul 2026

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Different Perspectives

China's Ministry of Commerce

Spokesperson He Yadong said on 16 July that Beijing and the Netherlands should let firms settle the Nexperia dispute through consultation, after a Dutch ministerial visit to Beijing. The conciliatory tone contrasts with the confrontational US trade response to the same fortnight's DMA enforcement.

Samsung Electronics

Samsung entered talks reported 22 July to invest up to €1 billion in Mistral AI, part of a round valuing the French lab at roughly €20 billion alongside EQT, Novo Holdings and Santander. The Korean conglomerate, not an EU financing instrument, is positioned to anchor Europe's flagship AI lab.

Poland (Tusk government)

Donald Tusk's government proposed a mandatory sovereignty test on 21 July for state technology contracts above 5 million zloty, scoring bids on AI model-weight rights and vendor lock-in rather than waiting for an EU-wide procurement rule. The threshold targets a 20-30 per cent domestic-alternative share.

United States administration

Donald Trump ordered a Section 301 investigation into EU digital-enforcement practices on 24 July, a day after USTR's Jamieson Greer said the Google fine created massive uncertainty for US exports, noting Google's cumulative EU fines already exceed 2 per cent of the bloc's budget.

Ecosia

Ecosia said the 16 July FRAND ranking-data order would take it from answering two-thirds of queries to all of them once the obligation activates in January 2027. The Berlin-based challenger has not called the enforcement package adequate, only workable if Google complies rather than appeals.

European Commission

Teresa Ribera and Henna Virkkunen announced the €890m fine on 23 July, saying products should succeed on merit, not platform ownership; four days earlier a separate Article 6(7) order compelled Android interoperability. The Commission expects both to hold on appeal after the Court of Justice upheld its earlier €4.1bn Android fine on 2 July.