Malazan Empire: Werthead - Viewing Profile - Malazan Empire

US Intelligence now seems to be confident that Khamenei is dead. According to US sources, they tracked 10 senior Iranian leaders to a meeting with Khamenei in or under his compound, and agreed with Israeli claims that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take them all out at once. The strikes had actually been pencilled in for several days from now and the whole timetable was moved up.

Some Iranian celebrations on the streets, with footage purportedly showing large crowds cheering in Bame Karaj, Kazerun and Isfahan. No IRGC or Basij units can be seen. Some reports that IRGC units have been ordered to disperse and stay away from their bases.

Some reports that Iranian missiles have hit Prince Sultan Airbase in Riyadh and been intercepted over Qatar. Israeli and US strikes are continuing, with a focus on Bandar Abbas.

Multiple Iranian missiles managed to penetrate the defences over Tel Aviv, possibly the alleged newer models seen earlier. 21 people wounded, 1 in critical condition. Astonishing nobody was killed.

The tower block in Bahrain hit earlier on has been evacuated. The whole building is now ablaze.

ETA: The intelligence showing Khamenei is dead reportedly comes from photographs taken by Iranian personnel on the scene and intercepted by Israeli and US intelligence sources. It's pretty clear that Iranian government circles have been compromised for some time. AI misinformation is possible, but I'd assume that would have been looked for.

ETA2: Video showing the Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai, literally the most famous hotel in the country and possibly the second-most-famous building, burning after a drone strike. Some claims it's AI, but there are multiple videos from different angles that seem to show the same incident. Keeping an eye on this one in case it turns to be BS.

Begun, the Epstein Wars have.

Venezuela was the prelude, Iran is the first part, Cuba probably next.

Netanyahu has gone on television and claimed that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been killed. Waiting for confirmation on that. Khamenei was supposed to issue an address some hours ago which never happened, but it would not be surprising if the situation did not allow that. Any speech would likely be pre-recorded in a neutral studio setting.

Trump apparently gave Iran 48 hours to come to the table or face military action a couple of days ago. That new deadline runs out tonight, despite talks being planned for Thursday. The insider talk is that many of the senior US military commanders are telling Trump that they cannot guarantee a successful decapitation strike on Iran and the danger of regional escalation is very real. Economic forecasts are saying that in the event of a strike and Iran closing the Straits of Hormuz, oil prices will jump from their already-inflated current price of ~$70 a barrel to around $110 or higher, with a systemic shock on the world economy possible.

At the same time, the Lebanese government is apparently trying to restrain Hezbollah from attacking Israel with rockets. Israeli insider chatter is that they will not join in a first strike on Iran but a retaliation strike against Israel will trigger a full-scale intervention by Israel in the conflict, with the goal of destroying Iran militarily.

The USS Gerald R. Ford has reached Crete and should be sailing east soon, but not fast enough to reach the Gulf in less than a day. That suggests its goal is not to reach the Arabian Sea to reinforce the Abraham Lincoln but to reach the coast of Israel and run intercept for incoming ordinance, and possibly hitting targets in Lebanon and Yemen.

Eleven US F-22 Raptors have arrived in Israel, probably the same ones that left Lakenheath last week.

Very unconfirmed for the time being, but several OSINT sources (not the more usual rock-solid ones) are reporting that Russian lines in the SW Zaporizhzhia front have collapsed and Ukrainian forces have broken through to Kamianske. Pushing the Russians back south of the river and further away from Zaporizhzhia city is Ukraine's long-term strategic goal in this sector and this takes them quite close to achieving it.

Slovakia and Hungary have threatened to cut off electricity supplies to Ukraine if Ukraine does not reopen the Duzhba pipeline, so Poland and Romania have already expanded their connectors to replace them and Ukraine has blown up the Kaleykino oil pumping and heating station. That could just freeze the pipes solid in this weather.

A Russian drone flew towards the French Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier in Malmö harbour and Sweden responded by using EW to knock it out of the sky.

This comes after apparent confirmation that Russian assets carried out sabotage on the Dutch rail network in June 2025, damaging 30 overhead cables. Some of these fell and caused sparks and damage to the roof of a train carrying General Ben Hodges.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has carried out another big hit on Belgorod's energy network. According to some residents, the sewage system has completely failed in parts of the oblast, and the governor has repeated his warning that some areas may not have services restored for ~6 months or more.

Ukraine launched multiple Flamingo missiles to strike targets in Kazan, Perm and Yekaterinburg, in Russia. The missiles hugged the surface of the River Don until very close to the targets and then peeled off. The longest-ranged missile travelled over 1,800 kilometres. Quite impressive.

Rishi Sunak has been appointed special advisor to Ukraine on reconstruction and investment attraction. Apparently he is to use his UK and Indian connections to look at raising investment in Ukraine's economy from both the UK and India.

Reddit has crowdfunded an anti-drone battery for Ukraine.

A confused response to a Russian drone heading straight towards the Romanian village of Chilia Veche. Two F-16s were scrambled and requested engagement permission, but this was withheld was the drone was in Ukrainian airspace. The village is literally on the border, there is no engagement window between the drone entering Romanian airspace and hitting the village. After some frantic communications, it appears the Romanians contacted the Ukrainians, who promptly shot the drone down whilst it was still on the Ukrainian side of the border (the automated defence target selector may have let the drone go because it wasn't going to hit a target in Ukraine).

NATO needs to really get their engagement protocols straight here, that could have caused civilian casualties.

Once the Ford is on station, the USA will have over a third of its totally deployable combat air power on the planet in-theatre. Add in bombers flying from the US mainland direct, and the US will be able to bring to bear roughly 40% of its total military airpower against Iran.

The US has only deployed this much aerial firepower previously against Iraq in 1990 and 2003, and far more than they did against Afghanistan in 2001. The US has never deployed this amount of firepower or even close to it, and not used it.

There's also reporting that Iran's offer has been to lower enrichment and only conduct it at low-grade locations around the country. Trump likely would see this as insufficient.

There has also been a rising number of protests again. After several low-key weeks, there were over twenty protests in cities around the country, possibly as anticipation of a strike rises.

Six F-22s transitioned through RAF Lakenheath in the UK today, likely headed for the region.

A key difference here is that in previous military engagements, even Iraq which was launched under highly dubious circumstances, the United States and its allies had a pretty open public debate about what was going on. Maybe the US would ignore everyone and attack anyway (as they did, ultimately disastrously, in 2003), but at least there was talk going on.

Right now the US is about to hit Iran (a country almost four times the size of Iraq with over twice the population with a vastly larger and more capable military) with everything it has, at least in the air, sparking possible regional chaos and the deaths of hundreds of US servicemen and Israeli civilians, and there's barely been any discussion of the military, political or economic objectives or how to impose them on Iran without a full-scale land invasion, which at least is not on the cards at the moment.