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.
