Iran Moves to Major Escalation

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard plans to increase drone attacks by 20 percent and double strategic missile operations amid escalating regional conflict.

Key Developments

  • Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) plans to increase drone operations by 20 percent and missile operations by 100 percent.
  • The escalation comes as part of Iran’s ongoing military response to US-Israeli attacks on Iranian territory.
  • Iranian forces launched the 28th wave of “Operation True Promise 4,” deploying new-generation missiles against Israeli targets.
  • Israeli media reported a missile carrying cluster munitions that dispersed over multiple locations in Tel Aviv.
  • Iranian commanders say military operations will expand further in the coming hours and days.

Planned Escalation

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is preparing to significantly expand its offensive operations, including a major increase in ballistic missile launches and drone deployments, according to informed sources cited by Iran’s Fars News Agency.

The sources said the escalation will begin overnight and is intended to intensify Iran’s military response to the ongoing US-Israeli war on the country.

According to the report, Iran will increase the scale of its drone operations by up to 20 percent while doubling the use of strategic missiles.

Iranian officials frame the move as part of what they describe as a broader confrontation with the administration of US President Donald Trump and the White House.

Sources quoted by Fars said the decision was taken in order to strengthen deterrence and ensure what they described as a decisive response to any military aggression targeting Iran’s interests or population.

The announcement comes as the Israeli-US agression on Iran continues to escalate, with repeated missile exchanges and attacks reported across several fronts in the region.

Iranian authorities say that since the start of the joint US-Israeli campaign on February 28, more than 1,200 people have been killed in Iran, including around 200 children and approximately 200 women, while more than 10,000 civilians have been injured.

Missile Operations

Iranian state television also confirmed that the country’s armed forces launched the 28th wave of missile strikes as part of the ongoing military campaign known as Operation True Promise 4.

According to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the latest wave involved the deployment of new-generation missiles and targeted sites in the cities of Beersheba and Tel Aviv.

The IRGC said four heavy-warhead Kheibar missiles were used during the operation.

Iranian military officials stated that the strikes were part of continuing attacks against Israeli targets as well as sites connected to US forces in the region.

In addition to the missile strikes, Iranian forces reportedly targeted the infrastructure of Al-Azraq Air Base, which Iranian officials described as one of the largest offensive bases used by US-aligned forces.

The IRGC said the scale and depth of Iranian attacks would expand in the coming hours and days.

Iranian state media also reported that two waves of missiles were launched within minutes of each other during the latest round of attacks.

Tel Aviv Impact

Israeli media reported that one of the Iranian missiles carried a warhead containing more than 16 cluster munitions.

According to those reports, the missile fragmented into multiple explosive sub-munitions over the skies of Tel Aviv.

Fragments reportedly fell across at least sixteen different locations in the city.

Israeli reports said six people were injured after debris from the missile fell across the affected areas.

The missile strike triggered powerful explosions in Tel Aviv and activated air-raid sirens in multiple areas, including Jerusalem and northern regions near the Lebanese border.

Sirens were also reported in the towns of Dovev and Baram amid concerns that drones might infiltrate Israeli airspace.

The incidents were reported within minutes of each other as part of what Israeli media described as concentrated Iranian missile barrages.

Military Statements

Iranian military commanders have continued to signal that the country intends to sustain and expand its military operations.

Major General Ali Abdollahi, commander of Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, said Iran would continue the war until its enemies were forced to retreat.

“Our weapons today are more advanced than before and have high precision and flexibility,” Abdollahi said.

He dismissed claims that foreign governments know the size of Iran’s missile arsenal.

“The enemies said they know the number of our missiles,” Abdollahi stated. “We tell them that they should count the missiles on the battlefield.”

The commander also said Iran had repaired vulnerabilities identified after earlier attacks.

“The armed forces have restored the gaps after the recent aggression,” he said, adding that Iranian forces are deployed across the battlefield with what he described as high morale.

Abdollahi accused US and Israeli forces of targeting civilians inside Iran.

“The malicious enemy targets innocent Iranians in their homes and students in their schools,” he said.

He added that Iran would focus its attacks on military centers and equipment.

Iran’s armed forces also reported targeting specific locations in Haifa and Tel Aviv as well as US military sites, including facilities at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait.

Iranian officials said the strikes were carried out using suicide drones as part of what they described as the country’s response to the ongoing US-Israeli aggression.

The war, which erupted after the US-Israeli attacks on Iran at the end of February, continues to expand across multiple fronts as both sides intensify military operations.

Palestine Chronicle

CrossFireArabia

CrossFireArabia

Dr. Marwan Asmar holds a PhD from Leeds University and is a freelance writer specializing on the Middle East. He has worked as a journalist since the early 1990s in Jordan and the Gulf countries, and been widely published, including at Albawaba, Gulf News, Al Ghad, World Press Review and others.

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Gaza’s Kites Return — and Israel Katz Threatens Revenge

CROSSFIREARABIA — A handful of balloons and homemade kites drifting out of the Gaza Strip have managed to provoke an extraordinary response from Israel’s defence establishment, with Defence Minister Israel Katz threatening assassinations, forced evacuations and military strikes if the launches continue.

The objects at the centre of the latest confrontation are remarkably primitive.

Israeli media reported that several kites crossed from Gaza into Israeli communities surrounding the Strip in recent days. At least five have reportedly been detected, including one found in Kibbutz Kfar Aza over the weekend.

Significantly, the kites discovered so far were reported not to have been carrying explosives or incendiary material. Israeli reports said they did not pose a danger to residents according to the Jerusalem Post.

That has not stopped Katz from treating them as a major security threat. He announced Sunday he had instructed the army to respond “immediately and forcefully” to balloons, kites or drones crossing from Gaza.

Katz said Israel would regard every such launch as an act of war and made clear that, as far as the Israeli military response was concerned, there would be little distinction between a balloon, a kite and an unmanned aircraft.

“A balloon is treated like a kite, and a kite is treated like a drone, with or without explosives,” Katz said, according to Israeli media, the Israeli daily reported.  

He went considerably further.

Katz threatened action against those Israel believes are responsible for launching the objects, including assassinations. He also raised the possibility of ordering Palestinians to evacuate residential neighbourhoods and of attacking areas Israel claims are being used as launching sites Anadolu Ajansı reported him as saying.

The threat potentially turns an object made from little more than plastic, sticks and string into justification for a much broader military response.

Gaza Disputes the Israeli Account

But there is another side to the story.

Gaza’s Government Media Office, Sunday, rejected the Israeli portrayal of the kites and balloons as organized hostile operations.

Ismail Al-Thawabta, director-general of the office, told the Palestinian Sanad News Agency that the Israeli allegations were unfounded and accused Katz of using them to prepare public opinion for another escalation against Gaza.

According to Al-Thawabta, what Israel is describing as acts of war are, in some cases, simply homemade kites constructed by Gaza’s children from nylon bags and pieces of wood.

Children fly them as one of the few forms of recreation still available amid the devastation and shortages inside Gaza, he said.

The Government Media Office argued that the crude kites largely follow the direction of the wind and cannot be precisely controlled over long distances as another local news agency pointed out.

That distinction is crucial.

Israel is alleging that objects are deliberately being dispatched across the boundary. Gaza officials are saying that children’s kites can simply be caught by the wind and carried beyond the Strip.

Neither claim should automatically be accepted without independent evidence establishing who launched each object and with what intention.

What is established from Israeli reporting, however, is that the kites discovered in recent days were not carrying explosives or incendiary devices as per the Shorouk Arabic website.

An Echo of 2018

The sight of kites crossing the Gaza boundary nevertheless carries powerful memories for Israelis.

During the Great March of Return protests beginning in 2018, Palestinians developed incendiary kites and balloons into an improvised form of protest and resistance. Some carried burning material across the boundary, starting fires in agricultural fields and nature reserves in southern Israel.

The devices were technologically simple but became a surprisingly persistent problem for the Israeli military.

Today’s situation is different in one important respect: The objects reported in the latest incidents have not been found carrying the incendiary or explosive payloads associated with some of the 2018 launches.

Yet the political and military reaction has been immediate.

Katz has effectively established a doctrine under which the distinction between a kite and a drone can disappear once either crosses from Gaza.

A Kite Becomes an “Act of War”

There is a striking imbalance in the language surrounding the episode.

Gaza remains devastated by years of warfare, displacement and destruction. Children there improvise toys from whatever materials can still be found.

Against that background, an object consisting of nylon, wood and string can cross the boundary on the wind and suddenly enter an entirely different world of military terminology: drone, launch site, operator, assassination, evacuation and act of war.

The Gaza Government Media Office says that is precisely the danger.

It argues that depicting children’s homemade kites as a significant military threat could provide Israel with a new justification for attacking civilians and residential areas according to Alray⁠.

Israel, by contrast, says it cannot afford to wait for a kite or balloon to prove dangerous before responding. Katz’s position is that anything deliberately launched from Gaza toward Israeli communities must be treated as a hostile act.

That leaves one central question hanging over the latest confrontation:

Are these deliberate launches from Gaza, as Israel alleges, or are at least some simply children’s kites escaping into the wind, as Gaza officials maintain?

For the moment, publicly available evidence does not settle that question. What it does show is how little is now required to threaten another escalation around Gaza. No missile. No rocket. Not even an explosive.

Just a kite crossing the sky — followed by a defence minister promising assassinations, evacuations and force.

This article is based on information from AI and is reproduced in Crossfirearabia.com

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