I - On Defense Podcast

For review:
1. The Israeli Air Force struck Iranian gas infrastructure in the country’s south on Wednesday. The strikes targeted Iran’s massive offshore South Pars natural gas field. The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strikes on the gas facility, but an Israeli official confirmed the strike was carried out by the IAF.
2. US President Donald Trump said early Thursday that he would not allow another Israeli attack on Iran’s South Pars natural gas field.
3. US War Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday said the US would again launch “the largest strike package yet” in the ongoing US-Israeli campaign in Iran, and said Israel’s recent strike on an Iranian gas field was a “warning.”
“To date, we’ve struck over 7,000 targets across Iran and its military infrastructure,” Secretary Hegseth said at a Pentagon briefing. “ 
4. Iran can no longer enrich uranium or manufacture ballistic missiles, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday.
“After 20 days, I can tell you — Iran today has no ability to enrich uranium, and no ability to produce ballistic missiles,” said PM Netanyahu.
5. The Israel Defense Forces said it struck Hezbollah targets in response to the Iran-backed terror group’s rocker barrage on northern Israel overnight.
The IDF also renewed its call for residents of Hezbollah’s southern Lebanon heartland to flee northward, and said it would bomb crossings used by Hezbollah to move troops and equipment south over the Litani River, which runs some 30 kilometers (18 miles) north of the Israeli border.
6. Israel reopened the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt on Thursday, allowing a group of Palestinians wounded in the Israel-Hamas war to leave for treatment after a nearly three-week closure due to the war with Iran.
7. The Pentagon plans to ask lawmakers for some $200 billion in supplemental funds to pay for operations in Iran and refill American munition stockpiles, War Secretary Pete Hegseth said today. 
8. The U.S. Army has confirmed that its first operational Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon battery is only weeks from full fielding.

For review:
1. Top Iranian official Ali Larijani was killed in an Israeli airstrike overnight Monday-Tuesday, Israel’s military and top leaders announced on Tuesday.
The Israel Defense Forces said that the commander of Iran’s oppressive Basij force had been killed in a separate overnight strike as well.
2. US President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the US would not be fighting Iran for “much longer,” but declined to give a clear timeline, as he disparaged NATO for not doing more to help.
President Trump reiterated his disappointment with NATO over its members’ refusal to heed the US request to help secure the Iran-blocked Strait of Hormuz.
3. European NATO allies pushed back against demand from President Trump to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz by force.
4. The Israel Defense Forces said Tuesday that it has pushed even more forces deeper into southern Lebanon to create an expanded buffer zone, as Hezbollah attacked towns in northern Israel with rockets and drones.
5. Gulf Arab states did not ask the US to go to war with Iran, but many are now urging it not to stop short by leaving the Islamic Republic still able to threaten the Gulf’s oil lifeline and the economies that depend on it.
6. The US aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford, deployed in operations against Iran, is expected to temporarily pull into port after a fire on board, US officials said on Tuesday, the 18th day of the war with Tehran.
The carrier, America’s newest and the world’s largest, is currently located in the Red Sea. It is expected to temporarily go to Souda Bay on the Greek island of Crete, the two officials said.
7. US President Donald Trump mused over whether he would have the “honor of taking Cuba” on Monday.

For review:
1. A missile strike on a house in Baghdad on Tuesday killed two people, with initial reports suggesting they are “Iranian advisers” to Tehran-backed groups, a security official tells AFP.
2. Rockets and at least five drones were launched at the US embassy in Baghdad early Tuesday from areas around the city, Iraqi security sources say, describing the attack as the most intense since the start of the US-Israel war with Iran.
3. Amid the latest Iranian missile attack on Israel, the military announces that it has launched “extensive” strikes against targets in both Tehran and Beirut.
In the Iranian capital, the IDF says it’s striking “infrastructure of the terror regime,” while in Beirut it’s attacking Hezbollah targets.
4. US President Donald Trump’s administration is urging US diplomats abroad to push allies to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Lebanon-based Hezbollah as terrorist groups, according to an internal State Department cable seen by Reuters.
5. US efforts to open Strait of Hormuz:
Both The Wall Street Journal and Axios reported that President Trump was planning to announce the formation of such a multinational coalition as early as this week. 
Axios added, citing unnamed US officials, that President Trump was also mulling the option of seizing Iran’s key oil depot on Kharg Island -- if Tehran continues to deny oil tankers passage through the strait, a move that would require American boots on the ground.
US Energy Secretary Chris Wright told NBC earlier Sunday that he has been “in dialogue” with some of the countries Trump had mentioned previously, and said he expected China “will be a constructive partner” in reopening the strait.
“It is in our interest to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, and that’s why we are also discussing what we can do in this regard from the European side,” Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said Monday ahead of a meeting of the 27-nation bloc’s foreign ministers in Brussels.
6. Iran’s military apparatus is “in distress” and incapable of launching many missiles at Israel, while members of the country’s security forces stay inside for fear of Israeli and US warplanes, according to an assessment reportedly delivered by the IDF intelligence chief to political leaders.
7. Iraq’s powerful armed group Kataeb Hezbollah said Monday that its senior security commander, Abu Ali al-Askari, had been killed, without providing details on the circumstances of his death.
8. A “significant Israeli ground offensive” in Lebanon must be averted since it could have devastating humanitarian consequences, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Britain say in a joint statement.
9. US Navy mine warfare capabilities.
10. Lockheed Martin has announced it carried out the first flight test for the Army’s Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) Increment 2 program, the service’s initiative at developing a multimode seeker capable of hitting maritime targets on the move. 
Lockheed’s announcement comes shortly after the Army announced its PrSM Increment 1 capabilities, also developed by Lockheed Martin, were used for the first time in combat during the ongoing conflict in Iran.

For review:
1. On Sunday, citing “a senior source close to the new Iranian leader,” Kuwait’s Al-Jarida news outlet reported that Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei had been smuggled out of Iran in a secretive Russian operation on Thursday to receive medical treatment in Moscow for injuries sustained in the same airstrikes that killed his father and wife on the first day of the ongoing US-Israeli offensive.
2. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Sunday that Tehran had neither requested a ceasefire nor sought negotiations with Washington.
3. Iran’s relations with Arab Gulf states will require a “serious review” in light of the US-Israeli war on Iran, limiting the power of external actors so the region can become prosperous, Tehran’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia told Reuters on Sunday.
Asked if he was concerned that relations would be harmed by the war, Ambassador Alireza Enayati said: “It’s a valid question, and the answer may be simple. 
4. The Israel Defense Forces’ campaign in the joint war with the United States against Iran is proceeding according to plan, and at a faster pace than initially expected, military officials said on Sunday.
Despite being apparently ahead of schedule, the military has said it is preparing for at least three more weeks of operations in Iran, as it still has thousands more targets to hit, both in Tehran and in other parts of the country.
The IDF is now focusing its efforts on destroying Iran’s military industry, according to the officials. 
5. US President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer speak today about the “importance” of reopening the Strait of Hormuz, currently blocked by Iran, the UK leader’s office says.
6. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar denied reports on Sunday that Israel and Lebanon are set to hold direct talks in the coming days amid the fighting with Hezbollah, and demanded that Beirut first act against the terror group on its soil.
7. As the United Arab Emirates confronts a large number of attacks from Iran, the small Gulf nation just to Iran’s south appears to be sharing less information about how successful its air defenses have been in recent days.
8. The Australian government announced on March 10 it would send an E-7A Wedgetail early-warning aircraft to the Middle East and help replenish United Arab Emirates stocks of AIM-120 air-to-air missiles.
9. Ukraine's Foreign Ministry issued a response on March 14 after Iranian politician Ebrahim Azizi called Ukrainian territory "a legitimate target for Iran" in a social media post.
Ukraine's Foreign Ministry called the threat "absurd" in a statement from a Spokesperson to the media.
"The Iranian regime has been supporting the murder of Ukrainians for years, by directly sharing drones and technology for Russian aggression against Ukraine,"

For review:
1. US President Donald Trump’s administration has rebuffed efforts by Middle Eastern allies to start diplomatic negotiations aimed at ending the Iran war. Iran, for its part, has rejected talk of a ceasefire until US and Israeli strikes end, two senior Iranian sources told Reuters, 
2. US President Donald Trump says that the United States may carry out more strikes on Iran’s Kharg Island oil export hub, saying that while Tehran appears ready to make a deal to end the conflict, “the terms aren’t good enough yet.”
3. President Trump on the Strait of Hormuz: Tthe US “will be bombing the hell out of the shoreline” and “one way or the other, we will soon get the Hormuz Strait open, safe and free.”
Later on Saturday Trump said that “countries of the world that receive oil through the Hormuz Strait must take care of that passage, and we will help — a lot! 
The US will also coordinate with those countries so that everything goes quickly, smoothly, and well.
4. Hamas on Saturday called on its benefactor Iran to refrain from striking neighboring nations, including Qatar and Turkey, two of the terror group’s other leading state sponsors.
5. Lebanon was said Saturday to be seeking talks with Israel on ending the renewed flareup between the Jewish state and the Hezbollah terror group, with landmark direct negotiations reportedly expected to be held within days.
6. Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem said on Friday his terror group was ready for a long confrontation with Israel, as the latter threatened to make Lebanon pay an “increasing price” in damage to infrastructure.
7. Israel is planning to launch a “massive” ground invasion of southern Lebanon in order to push the Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group away from the border and destroy its weapons stores and positions, US and Israeli officials told the Axios news site on Saturday.
8. Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel on March 13 confirmed his government is holding talks with the Trump administration, in the latest sign that the communist-run nation is open to signing a historic economic deal with the United States.
9. The US Navy has prolonged the service life of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN-68) to March 2027.