Here’s an interesting one… Last week, a source within the U.S. State Department leaked information to the press, revealing that the U.S. and Iran were engaged in back-channel talks to facilitate a limited retaliatory strike by Israel against Iran, which would go unanswered—an effort aimed at de-escalating tensions. In response, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated that Iran would cut off all indirect communications with the U.S. One theory is that the U.S. may have done this to undermine ongoing discussions regarding a security pact between Russia and Iran, just ahead of the meeting between Putin and Pezeshkian in Moscow last week. The signing of the mutual security agreement between the two nations has been postponed until after the BRICS summit, which is scheduled to take place in Kazan next week.
Now, it appears that a classified (yet unverified) report from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) has made its way into Iranian hands and has been shared online. This report allegedly details some of Israel’s planned retaliatory strikes and military exercises. We won’t share the specifics here in case the documents are genuine—see last week’s discussion on this topic.
What we can confirm is that the report primarily focuses on surface-to-surface strikes originating from Ramot David and Ramon airbases in Israel.
