Operation Epstein Fury — The Grind Goes on

These are the main highlights of March 6 & 7. It took a bit longer than expected because events kept on happening, and I had to add them.

It’s a bit rough, a lot of datapoints, but you’ll get the gist of it.

Four days became four weeks became eight weeks became a hundred days became six months.

Six months. CENTCOM is now planning “through September”. The goalposts haven’t moved. They’ve been loaded onto a kamikaze drone and fired through Hormuz.

Let me give you a picture first, because the individual events won’t make sense without it.

Both sides are hammering each other simultaneously, every hour, across multiple countries. Iran is absorbing thousands of airstrikes while firing back at Tel Aviv, Haifa, and every US base from Kuwait to the UAE to Baghdad to Erbil. Israel is hitting Lebanon. Hezbollah is hitting Israel. Iraqi resistance groups are hitting US positions in Baghdad and Kurdistan. Iranian navy drones are burning tankers in the Gulf. And ships are pretending to be Chinese to sail through a strait that used to be international waters.

It’s not a war. It’s seven wars being prosecuted simultaneously with one set of logistics.

And the US, eight days in, is down half their THAAD batteries, five F-15Es, multiple Reapers, and is currently on its seventh extension of the official timeline.

Tehran is burning. Not a base on its periphery, not a missile complex in the Zagros. The capital. Full of people. Devoid of missile launchers.

Mehrabad Airport took a full wave of Israeli strikes overnight. Mehrabad isn’t a military target – it’s Tehran’s domestic hub, thirteen million passengers a year. But it shares its runways with IRGC transport infrastructure. An old Boeing 747 is burning on the tarmac. One of the few aircraft Iran inherited from the Shah and kept airborne for fifty years. Irreplaceable due to the sanctions.

Fifty Israeli aircraft dropped a hundred bombs on Khamenei’s underground bunker complex. New management had already moved in, apparently trusting the concrete. Humint suggested they were there. Suggested.

Absard missile base.

Jomhuri Avenue – a major artery through central Tehran.

Multiple strikes near Tehran University. A military academy. Power outages in Parand. All residential areas. Over 3,000 targets struck since day one. 1,230 dead, 6,000 wounded. 181 children.

Then Shiraz. An ambulance station and a children’s playground struck in a suburb. Twenty dead. Thirty injured.

Then Qazvin. A boys’ school, narrowly missed.

Minab. The school with girls aged 7 to 12. The most damning civilian toll of the opening strikes. 165 dead. And the official position was silence. “Unable to confirm”. “Under review”. “Fog of war”.

In a classified briefing, Congress was told the school was on the Pentagon strike map. NBC confirmed it. The building was a deliberate target.

They went to school one morning. Never came back.

One of last night’s Khorramshahr missiles had something written on it.

“Giveth and thou shalt receive”… And oh boy, receive Israel did.

Waves 20 through 24 of True Promise 4 arrived across a sixteen-hour window. The IRGC stopped bothering with the cheap stuff. Khorramshahr-4s. Fattah hypersonics. Kheibar Shekan. Cluster submunitions over Tel Aviv – at least 80 per warhead from what the footage shows.

Tel Aviv took hit after hit. Bat Yam too. Fires across central districts. I wrote yesterday about the first missiles arriving without sirens – today that became routine. Israeli Channel 14 admitted the late warnings are caused by the destruction of US radars. The sensor network isn’t degraded anymore. It’s got holes you could drive a missile through. Which is exactly what keeps happening.

The warning time collapse I’ve been tracking since day three is now a daily reality. MIT’s Ted Postol explained it simply: with five minutes of warning you can calculate the ballistic arc and place interceptors properly. With sixty seconds you can only fire into the descending path with almost no margin for error. Iran didn’t destroy the radars as preparation for the war. It is the war.

And it didn’t slow down on Saturday morning. Multiple ballistic launches at 05:00, 05:30, 06:30 targeting central and southern Israel. Then 14:49. Then 15:33. Then 271 alerts in a single Hezbollah barrage. Geroman tracked one salvo for over thirty minutes without a single interception being reported. Thirty minutes.

I can barely find video of any of this. That’s not an accident.

The BBC’s own reporter said it: the censorship right now is unprecedented. Not my word. Theirs. Journalists are banned from broadcasting live during strikes. Banned from showing footage of the city. So I’m piecing this together from secondary effects, from people on the ground who still have a signal. Hearsay and inference, basically – because the alternative is nothing at all.

And it’s not just Israel. The UAE filed a takedown request with X to scrub low-resolution satellite images of damage inflicted. Planet Labs quietly delayed all Gulf imagery by 96 hours. They called it “operational security”.

Iran has Chinese reconnaissance satellites. They know exactly what’s down there. The damage isn’t being hidden from the enemy. It’s being hidden from us.

Now let’s go through what’s burning.

Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait. Hit again. Still burning from last time. All radomes and satellite communications at Camp Arifjan confirmed destroyed by satellite imagery. The Kuwaiti Air Force quietly moved its KC-130J tankers to a Saudi base rather than park them next to American aircraft. Hard to blame them.

Al Dhafra in the UAE: hit twice in twenty-four hours. The IRGC Navy drone unit struck it again this morning – air warfare centre, satellite communications, early warning radars, fire control radars. The IRGC also stated, publicly, that the Minab school bombing “was carried out from this base”. The UAE hasn’t commented.

Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia took a ballistic missile on video. Flash, impact, soldiers nearby. Multiple US personnel reportedly injured. Hours before, an F-35 had flown there from an Israeli base with its transponder on. Visible on Flightradar24. Broadcasting the exact route Riyadh had publicly promised Tehran it would never allow. Smooth move.

Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan: Shahed-101 kamikaze drone. The IRGC claims eleven US soldiers killed. CENTCOM hasn’t confirmed this. Given their track record on casualty counts, that’s not especially reassuring either way.

Victory Base complex, Baghdad: Arash rockets and drones. Fires.

Five US bases in three countries hit in one day. The US State Department, bypassing Congress, authorised emergency delivery of 12,000 aerial bombs to Israel. $151.8 million. Because everything is going so swimmingly.

Half the THAAD batteries America has on earth are confirmed dead.

Eight worldwide. Four gone. Prince Sultan in Saudi Arabia. Abu Dhabi and Al Ruwais in the UAE. Muwaffaq Salti in Jordan. Ground-level photographs of the Jordan site show a shattered radar array, housing torn open. I’ve been reporting IRGC claims on these since day one. All confirmed now. By CNN. By satellite imagery. By photographs. More reliable than CENTCOM…

Foreign Policy quietly confirmed that Qatar’s radar (killed on day 1) will take 5~8 years to rebuild. The Bahrain one: 1~2 years. And that assumes the raw materials exist. China banned rare earth exports. Yttrium – which goes into every radar and sonar the US manufactures – is up 140 times in price. China holds 98% of global production. You can’t rebuild what you can’t source. The radar network being dismantled is, in practical terms, permanent.

And in case you thought it was only radar: Iran has shot down another MQ-9 Reaper today, this time over Hormozgan Province. Roughly 50 surveillance drones claimed downed. Without persistent ISR you can’t tell real missile launchers from decoy trucks. Which explains why CENTCOM keeps releasing footage of destroyed trucks.

The CIA station in Saudi Arabia is confirmed “inoperable” after a direct drone hit.

A Patriot battery in the UAE was photographed post-impact, the hangar gutted. Both runways at Ali Al Salem reportedly cratered.

The US infrastructure in the Gulf isn’t just being degraded. It’s being dismantled. Piece by piece, base by base, radar by radar.

And somewhere in the middle of all this, Trump went on Truth Social.

“UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” All caps. No context.

He would work to rebuild Iran and give it a great future. MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN (MIGA!).

MIGA.

He actually wrote MIGA.

The oil market, processing this faster than the State Department, sent Brent straight through $90 the moment the post landed. Crude is apparently a more attentive reader of US foreign policy than the people conducting it.

Roosevelt used that phrase in 1943 too. Took two more years, a land invasion, two nuclear bombs, and about twenty million additional corpses.

Iran’s response was to fire more missiles.

Pezeshkian announced that the Temporary Leadership Council approved ceasing attacks on neighbouring Arab states. Sounds peaceful. Unless you read the subordinate clause: unless attacks on Iran originate from their territory.

Every Gulf state hosting a US base now has to decide whether it’s “neighbouring” or “complicit”. Kick out the Americans: you’re a neighbour. Keep hosting them: you’re a target. Iran isn’t stopping the war. They’re franchising it.

Trump immediately posted that Iran had “apologised and surrendered to its Middle East neighbours”.

Sirens in Bahrain, hours later.

Kuwait declared Force Majeure on oil production. Dubai’s billionaire Khalaf Al Habtoor went public: “Who gave you the right to drag our region into war with Iran?”

Nobody answered.

The Washington Post, in its infinite editorial objectivity, reported that anonymous US officials confirmed Russia is providing Iran with targeting intelligence on American ships and aircraft.

China is posting satellite imagery of US bases on social media for anyone to see. But the WaPo decided it needed framing as a Russian scandal specifically. The framing tells you more about the newspaper than the intelligence. Or the intelligence of the newspaper.

CNN added that US intelligence believes China is preparing financial assistance, spare parts and missile components. China denied it. Duh?!

Intelligence is – like interceptors – in short supply in the US.

Now on the Iranian side, we see daily plumes above Tehran, but I have this nagging feeling that this war feels choreographed. Not in the conspiracy kind of sense. But in the sense that every phase has followed a logical sequence and once it has been achieved, the next one begins.

Day one: blind the radars. Day two through four: drain the interceptors. Day five through six: hunt the airborne ISR. Day six onwards: bring the heavy stuff.

More and more of the advanced missiles are showing up now. Fewer launches, but more precise strikes. The number of hits getting through hasn’t declined at all. Same pattern as in June last year.

This war was gamed out. Every unit got its playbook, every phase had its trigger, and the execution continues regardless of what happens to the command structure above. Either major leadership survived everything USrael has thrown at it, or the plan was distributed and trained before the first bomb fell.

Probably both.

The CNN reporter in Abu Dhabi could tell you. Five detonations outside her studio while she was explaining Iran’s capabilities were “nearly destroyed”. From a country that’s nearly out of missiles. Nearly.

A week before the first bomb fell, the National Intelligence Council finalised a classified assessment. Conclusion: even an extensive military campaign would “probably fail to overthrow the Iranian regime”.

They knew. They did it anyway. Minab and all.

Ritter keeps saying the Sunday punch hasn’t arrived yet. That what we’re watching is an intelligence collection operation. Iran fires ballistic missiles to force radars to illuminate. Radars light up. Then the slow, cheap drones arrive at those exact coordinates and kill them. Exactly as I wrote on day five with the Hezbollah coordination – rockets from Lebanon at the exact moment Iranian missiles were inbound. Forcing every battery to reveal its position while recon drones took notes.

Last night the IDF sent four helicopters into the Bekaa Valley from Syrian airspace. Dropped infantry near the town of Nabi Chit.

The soldiers got as far as a cemetery. Some of them stayed. Others were captured by Hezbollah’s Al-Radwan.

At least one helicopter got hit. To extract whatever was left, Israel threw 40 airstrikes at the area and slapped a censorship order on the whole thing. Hezbollah’s statement read like a NATO after-action review. Precise enough to embarrass.

Eight more IDF casualties in separate clashes along the border. Smotrich’s son – the finance minister’s kid – severely wounded.

And because Israel nearly ran out of enemies, it struck a UNIFIL post in southern Lebanon and critically wounded Ghanaian peacekeepers.

The UN will have things to say about this. Whether anyone listens is a separate question.

We’re back in Iraq.

I know, I know. We never left. US troops have been there since 2003. Longer than most of the soldiers stationed there have been alive. But today it went from “advising” to firefight.

Apaches attacked PMF positions in Mosul. The PMF shot back with small arms. At Apaches. Then kamikaze drones hit the Burjesia oil complex in Basra and the Rumaila field where BP operates. A new Syrian faction – Jund al-Karrar – struck Tower 22 at the Jordan-Iraq-Syria junction. First day on the job.

Five alleged Israeli spies with Polish passports arrested in Iraq. Polish Mossad. Sure.

Iraq. Lebanon. Yemen. Syria. Bahrain. Kurdish fighters reportedly crossing into western Iran, but the political leadership publicly declining. They remember ‘91. They remember 2019. The proxy playbook needs willing proxies.

The 82nd Airborne’s training exercise got cancelled. NBC says Trump is “privately showing interest in ground troops”. Iran says it’s ready. Cuba, apparently, is next – should be done with Iran by the weekend, right?

The Strait of Hormuz is not closed. It’s selectively open.

Container ships are broadcasting “CHINA OWNER & CREW” on their AIS transponders. MarineTraffic confirms Chinese-flagged vessels transiting while everything else sits at anchor. Over a thousand ships trapped. China-Iran safe passage has now been confirmed. Iran’s military clarified: the strait is open, but vessels linked to the US, Israel or Europe “cannot pass”.

The Houthi Red Sea model.

Fifteen ships attacked now. A tug called the Mussafah 2 was hit while trying to rescue a distressed container ship. All eight crew lost. Trump’s $20 billion reinsurance scheme covers less than six per cent of the total exposure. Zero countries accepted his offer to be cannon fodder.

The USS Abraham Lincoln was spotted by Sentinel-2 satellite imagery this morning – 350 kilometres from the Iranian coast. Getting closer.

The Ford is in the Red Sea.

Twenty-five per cent of America’s operational fleet converging on Iran. Fox News reported a third carrier – USS George H.W. Bush – is preparing to deploy from Norfolk.

Iran officially announced it is “awaiting the US naval escorts” through Hormuz. An official statement. They’re ready to receive them.

The trolling has reached diplomatic altitude.

On day 5 I reported that Putin wanted to help Europe reach net-zero faster. So in order to do that, he will now redirect LNG to Asia instead. Three tankers diverted mid-voyage.

Meanwhile, China halted all diesel and gasoline exports. They only have ten days of buffer before domestic operations get constrained. And when China starts rationing fuel, every supply chain on the planet feels it within a few months.

China also hasn’t sent a single warplane near Taiwan in seven days.

Never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake, right?

The CEO of Kuehne+Nagel told Swiss television that Dubai has ten days of fresh food left. Eighty to ninety per cent imported. Seventy per cent via Hormuz.

Iran still hasn’t hit a single desalination plant. I wrote about this yesterday. They’ve hit everything else. Refineries, bases, embassies, airports, data centres in the same countries, with the same weapons that can reach those plants. And they’ve chosen not to. Every day they don’t is a message delivered in restraint. The absence of a strike is the threat.

Iran warned that the EU would become a “legitimate target” if it joins the war. Condoleezza Rice was spotted walking into the White House. The architects of Iraq, consulting on Iran. Poetry.

Brent topped $91.98. WTI past $89.65. Largest weekly gain since records began in 1982. Murban crude ripped through to $103. Dow down 1,500 on the week. Airlines in bear market territory. Deutsche Bank called the jet fuel crack spread “existential”. Trump, asked about rising gas prices: “If they rise, they rise.”

Gold at $5,172. Shanghai silver at $98, COMEX at $84. 17% premium. Registered silver lost 5.9 million ounces overnight. Down 58% since October. COMEX cut margins 22% in response. Chinese banks have run out of investment gold bars. Dubai is selling physical gold at a $30 discount to London because it can’t move.

Five years of Tomahawks in three days. Half the THAAD fleet gone. Most radars gone. Bases burning across six countries. Three carriers racing to the theatre. A ground invasion being whispered about for a country three times the size of Iraq that spent twenty years preparing for exactly this moment.

And Trump wants an unconditional surrender…

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2026/03/07/march-6-7-the-grind-goes-on