Iran continues firing missiles, drones at neighboring states, with multiple interceptions reported

Iran launched a new wave of attacks on Thursday, with explosions reported in the region and Tehran threatening that the U.S. would “bitterly regret” sinking an Iranian warship.

Iran’s strikes on Thursday targeted Israel, American bases and countries in the region. Israel announced multiple incoming missile attacks as air raid sirens blared in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Defense on Thursday said Iran used unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in an attack on Nakhchivan International Airport and other civilian infrastructure. The ministry said the details of the attack and the capabilities of the UAVs were being investigated.

“The Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Azerbaijan strongly condemns the attacks carried out by the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran against civilian infrastructure on the territory of Azerbaijan in the absence of any military necessity. The Islamic Republic of Iran bears the entire responsibility for the incident,” the ministry’s statement read.

Iran has not acknowledged targeting Azerbaijan, despite the country’s ministry of defense pointing the finger at Tehran.

Qatar evacuated residents near the U.S. Embassy in Doha on Thursday, with its Ministry of Defense confirming that the country was “subjected to a missile attack” and that its air defense systems were able to intercept it. The ministry urged the public to remain calm and avoid unofficial information.

Abu Dhabi announced that its authorities were responding to an incident involving falling debris in ICAD 2, which is part of the Industrial City of Abu Dhabi. Six people, identified by Abu Dhabi as Pakistani and Nepali nationals, suffered minor to moderate injuries.

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Iran has carried out retaliatory strikes since the launch of Operation Epic Fury, with the latest wave coming one day after the U.S. sunk an Iranian warship, killing at least 87 Iranian sailors. Sri Lankan navy spokesman Cmdr. Buddhika Sampath said 32 people were rescued from the wreck and were admitted to a hospital.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth defended the move during a news briefing at the Pentagon.

“An American submarine sunk an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters. Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo — Quiet Death. The first sinking of an enemy ship by a torpedo since World War II. Like in that war, back when we were still the War Department, we are fighting to win,” Hegseth said.

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Iranian leaders condemned the attack, with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accusing the U.S. Navy of committing “an atrocity at sea.” Meanwhile, Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi Amoli appeared on state television and called for the shedding of Israeli and “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.

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The U.S. and Israel launched the war on Saturday with strikes targeting Iran’s leadership, including the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed. Iran’s missile arsenal and nuclear facilities were also hit.

The future of war? US-Israel blitz on Iran unveils next-gen allied combat

A massive joint air campaign by the United States and Israel is dismantling Iran’s missile network in what officials and analysts describe as one of the most coordinated allied operations in modern warfare.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said the campaign is rapidly establishing dominance over Iranian skies. 

“Starting last night and to be completed in a few days … the two most powerful air forces in the world will have complete control of Iranian skies,” Hegseth said Wednesday. “Uncontested airspace.” 

“We will fly all day, all night … flying over Tehran, flying over Iran, flying over their capital… Iranian leaders are looking up and seeing only U.S. and Israeli air power every minute of every day until we decide it’s over.”

Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Brig. Gen. Effie Defrintold Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview Tuesday that “the cooperation between us and the American military is amazing. We have mutual planning and mutual executing for the plans in Iran and beyond.”

John Spencer, executive director of the Urban Warfare Institute, told Fox News Digital Israel effectively matched the U.S. military’s opening airpower surge. 

“Israel matched the United States in the number of aircraft in the air,” Spencer said. “For Israel, that represents roughly 80% of its air force capability.”

He added that the level of coordination between Washington and Jerusalem represents a new model for allied warfare. 

“This isn’t separate work,” Spencer said. “This is combined work. Integrated, synchronized operations combining powers.” 

“In the past, we’ve had coalitions of dozens of countries,” Spencer said. “But having a partner that is both willing and capable of bringing immense capabilities like this is very rare.”

Largest Israeli air operation in history

The Israeli campaign, known as Operation Roaring Lion, began with roughly 200 fighter jets launching the largest coordinated air operation in the history of the Israeli air force. 

Within the first 24 hours of the campaign, Israeli fighter jets had already opened a corridor allowing sustained operations over Tehran, according to the Israeli military.

Israeli aircraft struck missile launch sites and air defense systems across western and central Iran in an opening wave targeting hundreds of sites simultaneously using intelligence gathered by Israel’s Intelligence Directorate and the CIA.

In the joint operation, Israeli aircraft dropped hundreds of munitions on approximately 500 targets, including missile launchers, command centers and air defense batteries.

The opening strike achieved a level of surprise rarely seen in modern warfare, according to Israeli intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Shlomi Binder. 

“In 40 seconds, we eliminated more than 40 of the most important people in Iran,” Binder said, referring to senior regime and military officials, including Iran Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. “We are sending a clear message to our enemies — there is no place where we will not find them.”

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Spencer said the strategy behind the opening strike represents a dramatic shift in modern warfare. 

“What Israel did in this opening campaign just wasn’t imaginable in the history of war. It never happened,” he said. “To start off by cutting off the brain… usually you target the military first. Here they targeted the political and military leadership and had the ability to wipe them out in a matter of hours.”

Spencer, a veteran of the 2003 Iraq War, said the operation reflects advances in intelligence and strike capabilities. 

“I was part of the invasion in 2003,” he said. “Something like this was unthinkable even 20 years ago.”

Massive strike campaign

An IDF spokesperson announced Wednesday what he described as a historic milestone: an Israeli air force F-35 fighter jet shot down an Iranian aircraft, marking the first time anywhere in the world that an F-35 has downed a manned aircraft and the first time in 40 years that an Israeli aircraft has shot down an enemy aircraft in combat.

Since the start of the operation, Israeli aircraft have carried out more than 1,600 sorties and deployed more than 5,000 munitions, according to figures released Wednesday.

The strikes have destroyed roughly 300 missile launchers and targeted more than 600 Iranian military infrastructure sites, according to the IDF.

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Destroying Iran’s missile threat

Israeli intelligence assessments before the operation indicated Iran was accelerating its ballistic missile production with plans to reach 8,000 missiles by 2027. At the start of the campaign, Israel estimated Iran possessed roughly 3,000 missiles.

The strikes have already prevented the production of at least 1,500 ballistic missiles while destroying hundreds already in Iran’s arsenal, according to the IDF. 

Israeli officials say the missile program represented a direct threat not only to Israel but also to American forces and allies in the region. 

“The possession of missiles by a regime that openly declares its intent to destroy the State of Israel constitutes an existential threat,” the IDF said.

Casualties

Six U.S. service members have been killed, and several others injured, during Operation Epic Fury.

In Israel, 13 civilians had been killed as of Wednesday night and more than 1,000 injured in Iranian missile and drone attacks launched in response to the operation, according to Israeli emergency services. The United Arab Emirates has reported three deaths and 68 injuries since the war started

Precise casualty figures in Iran remain difficult to verify. Media reports say dozens of senior Iranian commanders were killed in the opening phase of the campaign, along with additional military personnel and civilians following strikes on military facilities and infrastructure.

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Fighting on multiple fronts

As the conflict expands beyond Iran, Israeli forces have struck more than 160 Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon in recent days. To sustain the multifront campaign, Israel has mobilized approximately 110,000 reservists.

“Wars are contests of will,” Spencer said. “Iran’s strategy is to break the will of the United States and Israel to continue the operation. The question is whether they can endure the pressure long enough to make that happen.”

Trump is realigning world energy markets and the Iran strikes are actually helping

Iran’s tyrannical and ruthless regime is disintegrating. After yet again massacring thousands of its own citizens for voicing their dreams for liberty and better governance, the Iranian regime, meanwhile, resumed pursuing nuclear capability and its aggressive ICBM program. The regime’s overconfidence in U.S. inaction cost it its leader, and its core military capabilities are going up in smoke. Against this backdrop, the conflict has spread to the Gulf, threatening the Strait of Hormuz, a choke point for roughly one-fifth of the world’s petroleum, and forcing the rest of the world to rethink how it prices energy risk and political alignment.

This is not another regional flare-up. This is a rupture of an old equilibrium in which sanctioned oil, shadow fleets and calibrated escalation kept markets stable enough to function. That equilibrium is now breaking. A rapid political-military shift in the Middle East is unfolding alongside a restructuring of the global energy order.

When I was in Afghanistan during the surge, Tehran’s active support for the insurgency fighting the United States and Afghan forces fomented instability and amplified violence for which civilians paid the biggest price, a dynamic that so many across several nations have tragically encountered for decades. But Iran was never a contained regional problem.

While its terrorism was widely perceived as a Middle East issue, its cyber and intelligence operations spanned continents, with assassination plots that included the American president. As to global effects, Iran’s energy has always made its regime globally significant.

At this stage of the conflict, the most economically significant and immediate geography is the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran is working to choke off. Roughly one-fifth of global petroleum and a substantial portion of liquefied natural gas move through that narrow corridor. As strikes intensified, vessels paused transit, insurers reassessed exposure and operators rerouted cargoes. Markets adjusted immediately. Energy security and geopolitical stability are now inseparable; maritime risk has become the pressure valve through which regional conflict spills into global consequence. 

This realignment did not begin in the Gulf this weekend. It started with U.S. actions in Venezuela. Caracas holds the world’s largest proven crude reserves — about 303 billion barrels — and even marginal normalization under a more U.S.-cooperative government alters the supply calculus for Washington and its allies.

The new U.S.–Venezuela arrangement has already generated roughly $2 billion in transactions in just weeks, pulling Venezuelan barrels back into wider circulation and altering the discount ecosystem Moscow had grown accustomed to. Stack that with a post-crisis Iran re-entering markets on different terms, and the shadow ecosystem of discounted, sanctioned crude — Russia, Iran, Venezuela — begins to fracture and reprice simultaneously.

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But the most consequential energy recalibration runs through Beijing. China is essentially Iran’s oil export market. In 2025, China bought more than 80% of Iran’s shipped oil, averaging ~1.38 million barrels per day (bpd), about 13.4% of China’s seaborne crude imports — meaning Beijing is simultaneously Tehran’s economic lifeline and its strategic choke chain.

By turning a sanctioned producer into a quasi-captive supply relationship — sustained through gray-market routing, reflagging and intermediary hubs — Beijing secured discounted barrels in normal times and leverage in crisis. Any sustained disruption of Iranian flows forces China into replacement buying that tightens global markets and exposes China’s own energy security; Iran exports about 1.6 million bpd mainly to China and such disruptions pushes Beijing to pivot to alternatives.

The relationship is therefore best understood as a dependency loop: Iran needs China for revenue and sanctions relief-by-proxy; China uses Iran as a discount supplier and as a pressure valve in the sanctioned crude system — one that can be tightened or loosened depending on Beijing’s broader negotiation posture with Washington and its appetite for risk in the Gulf. That Iran-China dependency is no longer stable. With Iranian oil flows disrupted, China faces a choice between turning to alternative suppliers at higher cost or even tapping strategic reserves. Tightening global crude markets resulting from U.S. actions in Venezuela and now Iran give Washington leverage in energy pricing.

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Beyond the tanker decks, this shift underscores the larger theme of reconfiguration: resources once bundled to manage sanctions are now subject to heightened geopolitical risk, forcing China to rethink dependencies while the U.S. and its partners are positioning to shape the post-conflict energy order. Energy supply patterns will restructure global power relations. And where China is recalibrating exposure, Russia is recalculating opportunity.

The same forces reshaping China’s calculations are altering Moscow’s. As India trims Russian purchases, Moscow has been pushing more barrels into China, and Reuters reports China’s Russian crude imports hitting new records in February while Russian sellers widened discounts to keep demand — Urals trading roughly $9–$11 below Brent for China deliveries, and other Russian grades also cutting hard as sellers chase Chinese refiners.

The new U.S.–Venezuela arrangement has already generated roughly $2 billion in transactions in just weeks, pulling Venezuelan barrels back into wider circulation and altering the discount ecosystem Moscow had grown accustomed to. 

This matters because China is also the anchor buyer for sanctioned Iranian crude; the “discount market” is not infinite, so Russia and Iran are now competing for the same limited pool of Chinese buyers, driving deeper concessions and leaving cargoes idling — exactly the kind of sanctions-economy dynamic.

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Add the West’s tightening focus on Russia’s “shadow fleet” and the risk of seizures or insurance denial, and you get an energy chessboard where coercion moves from rhetoric to logistics: who can ship, insure and clear payments reliably becomes as strategic as who can produce.

In that context, Russia’s loud warnings about Hormuz disruption are not just diplomacy, they are a reminder that Moscow profits from volatility, but also needs a functioning gray-market channel to China, and Iran’s crisis threatens to scramble the very discount ecosystem Russia has used to finance its war in Ukraine. Structural realignment threatens the very gray-market architecture on which Moscow has relied.

Energy is only one layer of a global shift. Strategic minerals remain critical. The Trump administration has increased economic and maritime pressure on Cuba, tightening an effective oil blockade that choked off fuel imports. President Donald Trump has authorized tariffs targeting countries supplying oil to Havana.

This is not simply punitive policy. It reflects a broader strategic doctrine: deny adversarial regimes energy lifelines while repositioning the Western Hemisphere’s resource base toward U.S. leverage. Oil is only one domain. Rare earth elements are a strategic asset. Cuba’s nickel and cobalt output, combined with China’s tightening grip through rare-earth export controls indicates that leverage is not just oil fields but also supply chains. America achieving rare earth elements sovereignty will remain a strategic goal and such a global realignment on this front is much needed.

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By the close of the first weekend, Iran appeared intent on accelerating its own collapse by compounding strategic error with strategic error. Iran felt it wise to respond to U.S. and Israeli strikes by pushing a half dozen other nations against it. On Saturday afternoon, Feb. 28, Iran launched attacks on seven sovereign nations – Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan and Israel. It added Oman shortly after.

These nations now have a legal and political basis to deepen security ties with the U.S. and Israel that they could never have justified domestically before today. Iran has arguably done more to consolidate the anti-Iran regional architecture in one afternoon than a decade of American diplomacy. Watch for accelerated Abraham Accords-adjacent normalization with Saudi Arabia in the coming weeks.

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Any sustained disruption of Iranian flows forces China into replacement buying that tightens global markets and exposes China’s own energy security…

After massacring thousands of its own citizens for demanding better governance, the regime’s long-standing presumption of U.S. inaction cost the 1979 Revolution its dream of ruling over Iranians perpetually. After 47 years, its leader is gone, and its core military capabilities are being dismantled.

The lesson is not simply that the Iranian regime is falling. It is that when it falls amid energy choke points and great-power competition, supply chains, alliances and leverage structures shift simultaneously. Iran’s collapse is not the end of the story; it is the catalyst for a broader redistribution of power across energy, alliances, and great-power leverage. America should exploit these shifting dynamics fully. 

Stealth bombers landing at UK bases ‘in days’ after Trump pressures Starmer: report

American stealth bombers are expected to land at U.K. military bases within days to join the U.S.-Israel campaign against Iran, according to reports.

Citing unnamed senior Western officials, The Telegraph reported Wednesday that air bases at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire are being readied for the arrival of B-2 Spirit stealth bombers — the $2 billion strategic bomber is also known as the world’s most expensive aircraft.

The bombers are understood to be landing at the U.K. bases “in a matter of days” as Washington intensifies operations in the region, the outlet reported.

As previously reported by Fox News Digital, the U.S. military used stealth B-2 bombers to strike Iranian ballistic missile facilities Feb. 28 as part of the launch of Operation Epic Fury.

U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) confirmed that B-2 stealth bombers, which were equipped with 2,000-pound bombs, struck Iranian “hardened” ballistic missile sites.

The U.S. was cleared to use British bases for limited strikes on Iran’s missile capabilities on March 1 after Prime Minister Keir Starmer signed off on the plan, and while U.K. Defense Secretary John Healey stated Britain had “stepped up alongside the Americans.”

Starmer said the authorization was granted to protect U.K. and U.S. allies as the conflict escalated. He had previously said he would not allow American forces to use U.K. bases for offensive operations in the region.

Tensions have since been heightened in the U.K. by security incidents in Cyprus. RAF Akrotiri, a key British military base on the island, was struck by a suspected drone on March 2, causing minor damage.

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The unmanned aircraft was reported to resemble an Iranian-made Shahed drone, similar to models used by Russia in Ukraine and by Tehran’s regional proxies.

The Ministry of Defense said force-protection measures were at the “highest level” and that the base had taken steps to defend personnel. About 4,000 service members and their families are based at RAF Akrotiri.

The U.S. State Department raised its travel advisory for Cyprus to Level 3, urging Americans to reconsider travel because of the threat of armed conflict and limited consular assistance in parts of the country.

Non-emergency embassy staff and family members were authorized to leave. Officials said the advisory change reflected adjustments in embassy operations rather than a direct change in underlying risk.

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Trump had called Britain “uncooperative” and slammed Starmer as “not Winston Churchill” after Starmer initially rebuffed a U.S. request to use U.K. bases to attack Iran, according to The Associated Press.

Trump has also condemned Britain’s agreement to hand over the Chagos Islands, home to the Diego Garcia base, to Mauritius.

British Iranian actress asks ‘where are the college campuses’ protesting the Iranian regime

British Iranian actress Nazanin Boniadi called out progressive activists for their lack of outrage over the regime’s human rights violations before President Donald Trump conducted military strikes against the nation.

The “Rings of Power” actress appeared on CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper” Wednesday to discuss the ongoing war against Iran and concerns over the vacuum of leadership in the nation after the U.S. eliminated its leaders.

She agreed with concerns that an ISIS-level threat could take over the country but noted that several human rights activists and organizations did not acknowledge civilian deaths until after the U.S. targeted Iran.

“For people who care about international law as I do, I’m getting plenty of messages from colleagues in entertainment and saying, ‘I’m so sorry in this moment, what’s happening to your people.’ Thank you, but where were you a few weeks ago, when tens of thousands of Iranians were being killed by their own regime?” Boniadi asked. “This is a regime that has been violating international law for decades.”

Tapper remarked that he also hadn’t “really heard a ton” from international progressive activists regarding Iran’s human rights violations, even after the nation launched hundreds of missile and drone strikes against other Muslim-majority countries in retaliation.

“I mean, if any other country did that, I think there’d be a huge hue and cry and huge marches in the streets. Iran does it, and there really isn’t that result in the progressive community. What do you make of that?” Tapper asked.

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“Look, in 1979, progressives world over, including in Iran, were all too willing to sacrifice women‘s rights, LGBTQ+ rights and every other basic human rights at the altar of anti-imperialism. Are we going to do the same in this moment? Are we really caring more about whose hands are on the trigger, or are we going to care about human lives, civilian lives?” Boniadi answered.

“This is a regime that has violated human rights,” she continued. “International law has wreaked havoc on the region, domestic oppression, transnational repression, hostage diplomacy, destabilizing the region. And now, it’s killing fellow Muslims in neighboring countries. Where is your outrage? Where are the college campuses?”

Boniadi, whose family fled Tehran for England following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, has been a longtime supporter of Iranian protesters and has previously used her career to highlight atrocities conducted by the Iranian regime.

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During the Academy Women’s Luncheon in 2022, she appealed to several Oscar-winning Hollywood figures to show support for female protesters in Iran following the death of a 22-year-old after she was arrested for wearing her hijab too loosely.

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“We owe it to our counterparts in Iran to stand with them as they fight for their most basic human rights,” Boniadi said.

Held at gunpoint at 9, Iranian refugee turned pastor now prays for Iran’s hour of freedom

An Iranian refugee held at gunpoint at school before fleeing Iran during the 1979 revolution is calling for hope, democracy and prayers for his homeland as the U.S. joins Israel in targeting Iran’s ruling clerical regime.

David Nasser, now an American pastor, spoke to Fox News Digital six days after Operation Epic Fury was launched in Iran, which reignited haunting memories for him and of the time when he was 9 years old.

“As a child, my family and I were forced to escape Iran and run for our lives,” Nasser, President and CEO of David Nasser Outreach recalled.

“We found safe harbor as refugees granted political asylum here in the United States,” Nasser said, describing how his father had been a high-ranking officer in Iran’s military, meaning “his family became targets as the government collapsed.”

“One of my most vivid memories of realizing that nothing was ever going to be the same again was at a school assembly on a military base — a soldier called out three names and mine was called first,” he said.

“When I got to the front, the soldier dropped a piece of paper, took a gun out of his holster and put it to my head and quoted the Quran. He told me that he was sent to make an example out of me,” Nasser added.

The principal intervened, but the message he relayed was unmistakable. Nasser recalled.

“They’re killing everybody who’s anybody. They’re trying to make an example out of people like our family, and they’re using fear,” he remembered hearing at the time.

“That’s one of my first memories of the revolution, but really just being completely scared for my life.”

Soon after, Nasser’s family devised an escape plan. They would pretend Nasser’s mother needed emergency heart surgery in Switzerland and buy round-trip tickets to avoid raising suspicion.

“We bought round-trip airline tickets like we were going and coming back, but we weren’t coming back. We were running for our lives,” he said.

KHAMENEI IS DEAD — AND IRANIANS DARE TO HOPE FOR FREEDOM AGAIN AFTER DECADES OF TYRANNY

At the airport, Nasser remembers gripping his father’s hand tightly and hearing words he will never forget.

“‘If they find out we’re escaping, they’re going to kill us right here on the spot,’ my father said as his hands shook, holding mine. The last time I was in Iran, I was a 9-year-old little boy running for my life,” he said.

Now, watching events unfold in Iran from the safety of the U.S., Nasser said his heart remains with millions of desperate Iranians facing uncertainty.

“We see them — I see them, I hear them. My heart is beating really fast for them right now with hope and with prayers for their protection and their provision,” Nasser said.

“Protection. I’m praying for protection for them. I want to be a part of the provision for them. If Iran transitions from a theocracy to a democracy, I want to help rebuild.”

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“If this moment actually comes, and they go from a theocracy to a democracy, I want to be a part of the solution — for that 9-year-old little boy that I once was. I want to do this for him.”

Beyond political change, Nasser, who is also teaching pastor at New Vision Baptist Church, said he takes solace in what he describes as spiritual transformation already underway, calling it “the fastest-growing church in the world right now or the underground church in Iran.”

“We know there’s at minimum 4 million, at maximum 8 million Christians right now in Iran,” he said.

“In Iran, if you convert from Islam to Christianity, that can be a death sentence. If they come into your home, and you’re gathering for Christian worship, they will take your home title, you will lose your home.

“They’re in prison. They’re being tortured. They’re being ridiculed. They’re being mocked.

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“Above all, I came to America, and it was a land of opportunity. And I was given the gift of democracy. So, I would love to see democracy in Iran, where all the boys and girls are afforded what I was afforded when I managed to escape.”

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calls on Trump admin to ‘take care’ of Iran for good

Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described the Trump administration’s Operation Epic Fury as an attempt to “neuter” Iran’s military power inside and beyond its borders, including its apparent ties to Hezbollah.

Joining “Special Report” Wednesday, Rice praised U.S.-Israeli joint strikes against Iran that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, while emphasizing the operation does not mark the beginning of a new war.

“Iran has been at war with us for at least 47 years,” she explained. “If you ask people about Iraq, what was the source of many of our casualties in Iraq, you’ll get estimates as high as 75 or 80% of them were due to Iranian-made roadside bombs.”

Rice, who served as national security advisor and secretary of state under former President George W. Bush during 9/11 and the Iraq War, said Iran has expanded military capability through its reach to international terrorist groups.

“They also have developed the military capability to reach outside the boundaries of Iran, including Hezbollah and Hamas, which they both arm and equip,” Rice said.

Six American service members have been killed, and 20 Iranian ships have been struck or sunk during Operation Epic Fury, which has utilized more than 50,000 troops, 200 fighters and two aircraft carriers, according to CENTCOM.

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The Trump administration’s coordinated strikes with Israel follow failed diplomatic efforts to negotiate Iran’s nuclear program, which Iran refused to abandon.

“To say that this regime was not a threat … it’s ahistorical,” Rice said. “They have been a threat for a long time.”

One goal of Operation Epic Fury, she said, is to strip Iran of its military capabilities and ability to coordinate with proxy groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.

“If you can render Iran essentially incapable of military action against us and against our allies, that’s worthy,” Rice told Fox News chief political anchor Bret Baier. “And I think what they’re trying to do is to neuter Iran as a military power in the region.”

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The former Bush cabinet member said Iran now faces a “complicated” future and urged the Trump administration to capitalize on what she described as a moment of vulnerability.

“They are essentially, at this moment, defenseless,” Rice asserted. “They won’t always be defenseless, and so the decision is to really, at this point, take care of it and render them incapable of those activities.”

FBI spox unleashes on media’s ‘transparent spin job’ that recent firings were ‘devastating’ to Iran work

An FBI spokesman tore into the media on Wednesday for claiming recent firings at the bureau were detrimental to its work on Iran, alleging the reports were poorly sourced and “total BS.”

Ben Williamson, FBI assistant director of public affairs, excoriated CBS News and MS Now on social media after their reporting raised alarm about FBI Director Kash Patel’s recent decision to fire about a dozen employees for allegedly violating their ethics and the bureau’s mission. 

The spokesman accused the media of attempting to stir up worries that the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency was ill-prepared to combat threats Iran posed to the United States in the wake of President Donald Trump launching a war against the country on Saturday.

“I can play the ‘sources’ game too – the difference is mine know what they’re talking about,” Williamson wrote, saying he spoke with several FBI executives and supervisors who confirmed that “only 3” of those fired worked on Iran matters.

His remark came in response to a CBS News report that a source called the firings “‘devastating’ to the FBI’s Iran program and said that these agents have confidential informants in the U.S.-Iranian community who are not replaceable.”

Williamson said that characterization was “total BS,” adding the FBI “surges resources and personnel from all over the country to prepare for these things.”

The firings occurred last week after Patel revealed that his and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles’ phone records were subpoenaed as part of the Biden Department of Justice’s sweeping investigations into Trump and his allies. While the subpoenaed documents have not been made public, Patel and Wiles were private citizens at the time and known witnesses in the DOJ’s investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents.

The Biden FBI also allegedly recorded a phone call between Wiles and her lawyer in 2023 with her lawyer’s permission, unbeknownst to Wiles, two law enforcement sources said. A lawyer representing Wiles at the time disputed that claim, telling Axios he was unaware of a call with his client being recorded.

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Most of those Patel fired worked on the classified documents probe and the majority worked in counterintelligence, a source familiar with the firings told Fox News Digital.

Williamson wrote on X that ahead of the terminations, the FBI had a “record year” in counterintelligence in 2025, notching 35% more arrests than the prior year and capturing six fugitives on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” list. The spokesman said the operations were “not something run by three people out of one unit” and that the media reports were a “transparent spin job by people mad about firings.”

Asked for comment, Williamson pointed to his public remarks.

Fox News Digital reached out to MS Now and CBS News for comment on Wednesday but did not immediately receive replies.

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Patel’s firings have drawn praise from some in Trump’s base who say the Biden DOJ and FBI abused their authority to target Trump while he was running for president and that the terminations represent overdue accountability. 

The firings, however, have also drawn condemnation from critics, including the FBI Agents Association (FBIAA), which represents thousands of employees and has maintained that agents’ actions are typically the result of following orders within a chain of command.

“The FBIAA condemns [the Feb. 25] unlawful termination of FBI Special Agents, which—like other firings by Director Patel—violates the due process rights of those who risk their lives to protect our country,” the FBIAA said. “These actions weaken the Bureau by stripping away critical expertise and destabilizing the workforce, undermining trust in leadership and jeopardizing the Bureau’s ability to meet its recruitment goals—ultimately putting the nation at greater risk.”