18JUL

Artesh claims Kuwait and Bahrain strikes

2 min read

13:17UTC

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

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Different Perspectives

Hengaw and Iranian protest detainees

Hengaw documented three secret executions of protest-linked detainees at Isfahan and Karaj on 15 and 16 July, including Mohammad Amini Dehaghani, hanged over a January arson charge with no public trial record. Tehran is carrying out capital punishment against 2026 protesters while global attention stays fixed on the war with the US.

Russia

OFAC named Moscow aviation firm Avratek OOO and its principals Mariya Selina and Vadim Druzhbin directly for the first time in this war's Iran arms track, under an Executive Order 13382 designation issued 15 July. The designation converts years of rhetorical claims about Russian arms supply to Iran into named, sanctionable individuals and a documented company.

Bahrain

Bahrain sounded air-raid sirens during Iran's 14 July Gulf-wide barrage and was struck again in the 16 July Artesh claim against Sheikh Isa air base, home to the US Fifth Fleet. Manama's air-defence stocks were already reported near-exhausted before this second strike claim against the same base in a week.

Kuwait

Kuwait's armed forces intercepted the drones Iran's Army claimed against Ali Al Salem air base on 16 July and separately reported intercepting missiles and drones in Iran's Gulf-wide barrage on 14 July. Kuwait now absorbs strikes from two rival Iranian commands while hosting Camp Arifjan, the US logistics base Iran also claims to have destroyed.

Iran (Artesh and IRGC)

Iran's regular Army claimed the 16 July drone strikes on Kuwait's Ali Al Salem and Bahrain's Sheikh Isa air bases under its own banner, Operation Saeqeh phase ten, while the IRGC separately claimed a mine strike closing Hormuz on 18 July. Two Iranian institutions are now claiming parallel operations, with neither claim confirmed by Kuwait, Bahrain or CENTCOM.

United States

CENTCOM bombed the interior cities of Ahvaz and Yazd for the first time overnight into 17 July, Marines began boarding vessels including the tanker Wen Yao, and Treasury let General License X1 lapse at 12:01am the same day. Washington closed every remaining channel for de-escalation without a new executive action, a posture of attrition rather than a wind-down.