July 9, 2018
By Rao Komar
The spread of social media and smartphones throughout the Middle East has created a truly enormous amount of publicly available documentation of conflicts in the region. Whether in the form of videos or photos, from combat footage to potential war crimes — a lot of things are routinely documented and uploaded to various sites like…
March 13, 2018
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
This article was originally published on Offiziere.ch Iran continues to upgrade the UAV airfield on the island of Qeshm which sits near the Strait of Hormuz, an important maritime choke-point. Satellite imagery acquired in late 2017 and early 2018 by Planet shows workers widening and lengthening the airfield’s runway. The clearing and leveling activity suggests Iran will…
February 13, 2018
The complexity of the Syrian conflict reached a new point with renewed attacks on Syrian and alleged Iranian military targets in Syria, the shooting down of an Israeli F-16 by the Syrian Arab Army, and the downing of Iranian drone crossing into Israeli airspace. The latter showed a particularly interesting new detail regarding Iran’s military…
January 6, 2018
The Islamic Republic of Iran is witnessing the largest anti-government demonstrations since the 2009 presidential elections protests. Via social media, it is possible to get a sense what’s going on, for example by searching on Twitter for the most ubiquitous hashtags in English and Farsi: #IranProtests and #اعتراض_سراسری. Social media footage is a way to get…
April 27, 2017
Satellite imagery shows Iran’s high speed catamaran, Shahid Nazeri, at Bandar Abbas, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp Navy (IRGCN) First Region naval base. The IRGCN deployed the Shahid Nazeri to an operational naval base and what could be the vessel’s home port, a review of imagery suggests. The vessel has been berthed at the naval…
September 28, 2016
Some of the latest commercial satellite imagery confirms that the USNS Invincible is currently operating from Manama, Bahrain—home of the U.S. Navy’s fifth Fleet. Subordinate to the naval arm’s Military Sealift Command (or MSC), the ship functions as a “missile range instrumentation ship” capable of collecting ballistic missile launch data over 2000 km away. The vessel…
September 21, 2016
An update for Iran’s southern shipyards couldn’t come at a better time. Last week, Iran unveiled the Shahid Nazeri, a high-speed catamaran helicopter carrier. Space photography available in Google Earth (28°58’33,96″N 50°51’22,68″E) shows the first signs of the new vessel’s construction back in November 2014. At the time, imagery captured the boat’s hulls protruding from…
August 23, 2016
The latest commercial satellite imagery shows some new developments at Iran’s ISOICO shipyard near Bostanu. In June, the Kilo-class attack submarine and the Kharg (431) replenishment ship departed the shipyard and relocated back to Bander Abbas naval base. The vessels have been located at the shipyard since October 2015 and November 2014, respectively. While the…
January 29, 2016
The latest commercial satellite imagery shows some new developments at Iran’s ISOICO shipyard near Bostanu. In December, the extension on the yard’s smaller syncrolift appeared complete with new winches and a larger platform visible in imagery. Workers in the eastern part of the yard should now be able to handle heavier vessels. This may be…
January 28, 2016
Iran has sent another model of drone to northern Syria, according to imagery posted on social media in the latter half of 2015. Pictures of wreckage taken inside Syria indicate that Turkey shot down the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in a May border incident in which Turkish officials claimed the aircraft violated Turkish airspace. The drone also…
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