**Livewire** Operation Epic Fury Day Six: The Latest News From Iran and the Middle East

The military operation against Iran entered its sixth day on Thursday. Iran has warned of retribution against the United States for sinking one of its warships in international waters, and Tehran continues to hit out at the wider region, with Azerbaijan the latest country to suffer strikes.

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**Thursday’s live updates below. All updates in Eastern time**

14:38 PM: President Donald Trump tells the Washington, DC, outlet Axios that he must be involved in the process to choose the next leader of Iran. He explicitly stated that the man anonymous reports have singled out to be the most likely successor to the eliminated “supreme leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, his son Mojtaba, was not palatable to the White House.

“Khamenei’s son is unacceptable to me. We want someone that will bring harmony and peace to Iran,” Trump reportedly said, calling the younger Khamenei a “lightweight.”

14:25 PM: Macron inserts himself into the situation

President Macron takes it extremely personally when the leaders of other countries comment on France’s problems, but he personally has never seen a global conflict he didn’t want to get involved in yet. Fresh from telling the U.S. and Israel their strikes on Iran are “outside of international law”, the French President has now announced he will be deploying armoured vehicles to Lebanon.

Le Figaro reports the President said today he wants to “put an end to the military operations” of both Hezbollah and the IDF in the country. He said:

It is to stop the war and prevent the worst that, following my discussions with President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu, I spoke today with the highest Lebanese authorities to establish a plan to put an end to the military operations that Hezbollah and Israel are currently conducting on both sides of the border… Hezbollah must immediately cease firing towards Israel. Israel must renounce any ground or large-scale intervention on Lebanese territory… Hezbollah must renounce its weapons, respect the national interest, show that it is not a militia under foreign orders and allow the Lebanese to come together to preserve their country.

Good luck with that!

 

14:15 PM: Stadium flattened

Azadi Stadium, a massive sports complex in Iran’s capital city of Tehran, was badly damaged on Thursday by U.S. and Israeli strikes. Read the full update here.

 

14:05 PM: Future war is now

Now straight from naval history to naval future: this may be one of the first, if not the first, conflicts with conspicuous use of laser weapons. Following Israel appearing to use its new Iron Beam laser to cook Hezbollah rockets as they launched from Lebanon this week, now the United States Navy appears to be getting in on the act.

A report claims a High-Energy Laser with Integrated Optical Dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) is deployed on a U.S. destroyer off the Iranian coast. Read about it here.

Several countries are developing such weapons. We’ve reported before on the British laser defence system, ‘Dragonfire’, and if it performs as claimed, it will be a very potent weapon once fielded. Showing off the device in 2024, the UK’s Ministry of Defence displayed melted drones and even a mortar round with a hole burnt through it.

 

13:50 PM: Second Iranian warship in Indian Ocean surrenders

After the dramatic sinking of an Iranian frigate on the high seas on Wednesday morning, a second ship of the Iranian Navy that had this morning ran for the comparatively safety of Sri Lankan territorial waters has allowed itself to be interned.

The Sri Lankans say they have removed 208 officers and men and have taken control of the ship, which will be removed to a Sri Lankan port.

This is the first time a warship has been interned by a neutral power since the Second World War. A fascinating and historic development that follows so quickly the first sinking of an enemy warship by a U.S. Navy submarine since the Second World War, yesterday. Read something about this history and the laws that surround it here.

 

11:00 AM: Iraqi Kurds deny they are preparing to invade Iran

We’ve already seen claims that Kurdish militants are being armed by the CIA ready to launch a ground invasion of Iran, “with the aim of fomenting a popular uprising in Iran”. Now the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq has categorically denied they are involved. This Peshmerga group is one of several Kurdish ethnic militias in the Middle East, and as our report states, the largest.

Read more, including the statement of the President of the KRG, here.

 

10:50 AM: Would-be-Shah warns attempt by Iran to appoint new Ayatollah destined to fail

We’ve heard from Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former Shah of Iran who was deposed by the Islamic Revolution in 1979. A figurehead to the Iranian diaspora, U.S.-resident Pahlavi is frequently touted as a potential figurehead for the country, post-Mullahs.

Calling for global support for the Iranian people, Pahlavi said that “victory is near” and asked: “Stand with the people of Iran. Declare the Islamic Republic illegitimate and recognize the Transition System as the representative of the nation’s will.”

Reflecting on the attempts of Tehran to re-establish itself in the wake of the decapitation strikes, Pahlavi said: “any attempt to appoint a successor for him is pre-destined to fail. Whomever is introduced—be it Mojtaba or Hassan—will lack legitimacy and will be considered an accomplice to the bloody record of this regime and its criminal leaders, Khomeini and Khamenei.”

The Iranian regime has no legitimacy, he said, while calling on its current officials  to “Hand over power immediately and without violence; declare your allegiance to the nation’s Lion and Sun Revolution, and contribute to Iran’s stable and secure transition to a democratically elected national government.”

It was reported earlier this year that U.S. President Trump’s influential Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff had held meetings with Pahlavi to discuss the future of the situation in Iran.

 

10:00 AM: Britain withdraws diplomats

The British government of Sir Keir Starmer has been as careful as possible to say as loudly and as often as possible that he’s not involved in the strikes and is opposed to them. Something to do with how precarious the political future for his left-wing Labour party is as it haemorrhages the Muslim-faith voters they once relied on, it has been suggested.

While the government has directed the Royal Air Force to forward-deploy more jet fighters, these are only for strictly defensive patrols, it is emphasised. Meanwhile, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is withdrawing diplomats from Manama, Bahrain, one of the cities that has weathered Iranian drone strikes, reports Le Figaro.

 

07:55 AM: Fake News?

You may have seen posts from ‘OSINT’ (Open Source Intelligence) accounts on social media this morning claiming a U,S, F-15E Strike Eagle was shot down over Iran overnight. Very serious business if true, but U.S. CENTCOM moved fast to dismiss it this morning, stating the claims are “baseless and NOT TRUE”.

The F-15E is the same aircraft that saw three fall to friendly fire over Kuwait on Monday. All pilots and crew ejected and were recovered unharmed. We are now led to understand they were shot down by a single Kuwaiti F/A-18 Hornet, according to the Wall Street Journal, anyway.

 

07:40 AM: Iran continues to hit Israel

As expressed, Iran is throwing ordinance all over the Middle East and even into the Eastern Mediterranean, but the bulk of its attacks remain focussed on Israel. We’ve heard claims that the Iranians are slowly running out of missiles, and per The Times of Israel the fifth consecutive air raid on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem today involved only a “small number of missiles” and no injuries.

U.S. military sites through the Middle East are also a key target and the Iranian military said it had launched drones against a U.S. base in Kuwait this morning.

07:30 AM: Iran denies attack Azerbaijan

Several drones hit an exclave of Azerbaijan this morning including an airport, leading to condemnation by the Azerbaijani government and threats of retaliation. Now the Associated Press notes both that Iran is denying being the author of the attack of its northern neighbour, and that Tehran has already “repeatedly denied” other strikes on civilian targets after they happened.

 

07:15 AM: Double helpings

Losing one ship in the Indian Ocean simply wasn’t enough: Iran says it’s going to send another. After the destruction of the IRIS DENA by submarine-launched Torpedo in international waters off the south coast of Sri Lanka, Columbo says a second Iranian warship is headed their way.

It looks like since we first heard of it this morning the ship has already arrived in Sri Lankan territorial waters, which may provide it some respite from being hunted by the U.S., given territorial waters are a very different matter to the high seas, where the last strike took place. Read more here.

 

05:45 AM: Iran calls for Trump’s blood

Tehran is attempting to make a fulcrum out of the sinking by submarine-launched torpedo of their warship in international waters on Wednesday morning, by framing it as some sort of war crime. If you’ve been on social media at all in the past 24 hours, you’ve probably seen some of these arguments aired.

As reported by Simon Kent this morning, the message from Iran is clear, that President Trump will pay for this insult:

yatollah Abdollah Javadi Amoli, in one of the few clerical statements so far from Iran, added the country was “on the verge of a great test” and called on state television for “the shedding of Zionist blood, the shedding of Trump’s blood.”

“Fight the oppressive America, his blood is on my shoulders,’” he said in a rare call for violence from an ayatollah, one of the highest ranks within the clergy of Shiite Islam.

Read more here.

 

05:15 AM: Iran strikes Azerbaijan

The Iranian strategy of attacking, essentially, absolutely everyone within range with no regard to whether they had any part in America & Israel’s decapitation strikes over the weekend continues unabated with a drone hit the passenger terminal of the airport in Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan exclave. Two people were reportedly injured.

According to a statement from the Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a second drone landed “near a school building”. They demanded Iran apologise for the strike and said they “reserves the right to take appropriate response measures.”

The Azerbaijan Ministry of Defence was less coy, and threatened retaliation. They said in their statement that the military was “preparing the necessary response measures to protect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of our country, ensure the safety of civilians and civilian infrastructure, and these attacks will not go unanswered.”

 

05:00 AM: Israel shows off guncam footage

We reported yesterday that the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) were celebrating their first ever manned air to air kill with their U.S.-made F-35 against a Yakolev-130, a jet trainer Iran had pressed into frontline service. Now Israel has published FLIR footage of the kill, showing the perspective from an aircraft with a clear height advantage looking down on the passing small jet before it explodes, soaring through the air with a streak of fire.

For earlier livewire updates from Wednesday please click here