22JUL

Artesh claims Kuwait and Bahrain strikes

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12:09UTC

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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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

Jordan

Jordan's armed forces downed three Iranian missiles on Tuesday with no casualties, a second successful interception since the 19 July strike on Muwaffaq Salti that killed three US service members. Amman has neither confirmed nor denied ISW's assessment that its intelligence sharing is a Russia-China cover story.

Operation Aspides

Operation Aspides has not needed to intervene against the Houthi Bab al-Mandab embargo: six vessels, including the Chinese VLCC Xin Long Yang, reversed course after radio hailing alone, with no vessel boarded, fired on or stopped by force.

Pete Hegseth, US Secretary of War

Hegseth told the Senate Appropriations Committee the campaign has cost $37.5 billion so far, without saying whether the figure is obligated, appropriated or incremental. It is the first cost Washington has put on the war, arriving as OMB seeks $87.6 billion for the wider supplemental.

Iran's IRGC and Artesh

Iran's IRGC and Artesh reported destroying radar and Patriot installations at four Gulf bases on Tuesday night, the fifth dated iteration of the same claim against the same sites since 13 July. Neither Kuwait nor Bahrain has named or confirmed a single base as destroyed.

Saudi Arabia

Riyadh has pressed Washington to end the Hormuz blockade specifically to remove Tehran's incentive for the Houthis to escalate Bab al-Mandab beyond radio warnings. It treats the embargo as coordinated pressure on Saudi shipping tied to the Hormuz campaign, not an independent Yemeni action.

Kuwait's Ministry of Electricity, Water and Renewable Energy and defence ministry

Kuwait reported power and desalination stations struck for a fourth consecutive day and four cruise missiles plus 21 drones intercepted since dawn Wednesday, while its defence ministry statement used only the word interception, never destruction. Kuwait has confirmed no Iranian claim of a destroyed base.