19JUL

Iran's army widens Saeqeh to three states

3 min read

14:05UTC

Press TV put the Artesh's Operation Saeqeh at its 14th and 15th phases on 18 July, hitting US-linked sites in Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain. The campaign has widened through eight nights of American bombing meant to degrade it.

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Key takeaway

Iranian state media claims Saeqeh reached phases 14 and 15 across Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain.

Iranian state broadcaster Press TV put Operation Saeqeh, the campaign run by the Artesh, at its 14th and 15th phases on 18 July, striking US-linked facilities in Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain ¹. The Artesh is Iran's regular army, constitutionally confined to territorial defence and institutionally separate from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which runs its own strikes and its own claims.

Two days earlier the Artesh had claimed the tenth phase against Kuwait's Ali Al Salem Air Base and Bahrain's Sheikh Isa airbase, while the IRGC separately claimed a Jordan strike the same day . That doubling of claimants on one target set is not a bookkeeping curiosity. It tracks which Iranian institution wants credit for hitting Americans, and the base where the Americans died on Friday sits on the handover between them.

The phase numbers come from Iranian state media and may be inflated for effect. Tehran's domestic outlets have gone considerably further on casualties: Fars and Tabnak put the cumulative American toll since February at 16 killed and more than 430 wounded ². No source outside Iranian media supports those figures. Strip the numbering and the claim that survives is narrower: the campaign kept running and widened across three countries while US aircraft were flying nightly against the systems that fire it, and the 14 July Gulf-wide retaliation against the same three states shows the target list was set before the bombing began. Tehran's stated rationale is that bases flying strikes into Iran are lawful military targets wherever they sit.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Iran actually has two separate armed forces: the regular army, called the Artesh, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, which is a more ideological force loyal directly to Iran's Supreme Leader. Iranian state television said on 18 July that the Artesh's own campaign against American military bases, called Operation Saeqeh (Persian for Lightning), had reached its 14th and 15th stages and now covered bases in three countries: Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain. That the regular army is running its own numbered campaign, separate from the IRGC's strikes, shows Iran is fighting this war through two different military organisations rather than one unified command.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

Iran's constitution confines the Artesh to territorial defence, while the IRGC answers directly to the Supreme Leader and has no such limit; Operation Saeqeh's targeting of US basing in Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain, states outside Iran's borders, is the Artesh operating past its constitutional remit under a wartime footing that has not been formally declared.

That gap between the Artesh's legal mandate and its actual conduct is what makes its own phase numbering worth tracking: each new phase is a data point on how far the regular army's leadership judges it can stretch that mandate without a Supreme Leader override.

What could happen next?

Meaning
A named, numbered campaign that survives eight nights of US bombing without pausing its own numbering suggests the Artesh's targeting list and pace were set independently of what CENTCOM has been able to degrade.
Risk
Two Iranian forces claiming strikes on the same host states raises the chance a single incident gets contradictory Iranian attribution, complicating any US or Gulf response calculus.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, Iran's regular army (Artesh) and the IRGC frequently ran separate, uncoordinated offensives against the same Iraqi positions, a rivalry historians of the war attribute to the postrevolutionary leadership's deliberate policy of keeping the two forces institutionally distinct so neither could stage a coup.

The pattern of Saeqeh being an Artesh-only operation, distinct from IRGC strikes on the same countries the same week, is the same structural rivalry forty years on.

Counter-parallel: the two forces did unify command for the 1988 Operation Mersad against MEK incursions, when an external threat to the state itself briefly overrode inter-service rivalry. No equivalent unification has been reported in Operation Saeqeh; the two campaigns remain formally separate eight nights into the current escalation.

Consensus view: Press TV, the Artesh's own broadcaster, attributes the widening to "Iran's Army" alone and does not mention IRGC coordination at all, consistent with the constitutional separation between the two forces and with the Artesh treating third-country US basing as a standing, self-directed target list rather than a response coordinated strike by strike with the IRGC.

Counter-view: the IRGC's own separate claim on Jordan's Azraq base the same week shows the two forces hitting overlapping target sets without a joint statement, which cuts against reading Saeqeh as evidence of a unified Iranian command structure and toward reading it as two institutions competing for the same credit.

Key tension: whether Saeqeh's spread to Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain reflects a single Iranian war effort presenting two faces for domestic and foreign audiences, or two institutions genuinely running independent campaigns against overlapping targets.

Sources:Press TV

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

First Reported In

Update #156 · First US combat deaths, at a base in Jordan

Press TV· 19 Jul 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

Artesh claims Kuwait and Bahrain strikes

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

Occurred 15 Jul 2026

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This Event

Iran's army widens Saeqeh to three states

A campaign aimed at American basing in third countries has kept its numbering and added targets while under sustained attack.

Different Perspectives

Shipping and war-risk insurers

War-risk premiums for Hormuz transits reached 3 to 10 per cent of hull value on 17 July, against 0.25 per cent before the war, as Brent cleared $87 and daily transits fell to eight vessels. Underwriters are pricing the confirmed UKMTO mine near the Traffic Separation Scheme, not the IRGC's unconfirmed 18 July mining claim, which CENTCOM called false.

Oman

Abbas Araghchi led an Iranian delegation to Oman-hosted talks in Muscat on 18 July, an agenda confined to reopening the Strait of Hormuz and nothing else. Oman's decades of studied neutrality make it the one channel neither Washington nor Tehran needs to be seen initiating, and that narrowness is what lets it survive the bombing.

Kuwait

Kuwait's electricity ministry asked residents to ration water and power after the IRGC set Shuaiba's generating units alight on 17 July, the second Kuwaiti site struck in two days. The country draws 90 per cent of its drinking water from plants sharing power infrastructure, so one strike reaches every tap in the hottest weeks of the year.

Jordan

Amman still reports no casualties or damage of its own from the 17 July attack even as CENTCOM confirmed two American dead on the same runway, a line it has not amended since. Hosting the base that produced the war's first US fatalities puts Jordan's decades-old defence arrangement with Washington under a domestic scrutiny it has not faced before.

Tehran / Artesh and AEOI

Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation called the alleged Darkhovin strike a violation of international law, while the Artesh put Operation Saeqeh, its campaign against Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain, at phases 14 and 15 by 18 July. Domestic outlets Fars and Tabnak claim 16 Americans dead since February, a toll no source outside Iran supports.

CENTCOM / Washington

CENTCOM confirmed two dead and one missing at Muwaffaq Salti on 17 July, when Jordan says its air defences intercepted eight of ten incoming missiles, against five of five stopped on 10 June. Its own strikes stay aimed at Iran's coast, interior and navy, not the Artesh campaign that killed them.