THREAD: How the U.S. (& Israel) Have Dismantled Iran's Airpower — One Strike at a Time

Iran once boasted the largest air force in the Persian Gulf. Today, satellite imagery tells a different story.
Since Feb 28, 2026, the U.S. and Israel have systematically hunted down Iranian aircraft — on runways, in revetments, and on aprons.

Here's what's been lost. 👇 SATELLITE IMAGERY CONFIRMS: Two Iranian Su-22 fighter jets destroyed at Shiraz Shahid Dastgheib International Airport in Fars Province, southern Iran — as of March 6, 2026.

The images reveal significant damage to the Soviet-era strike aircraft at one of Iran's key air bases in the south.

🧵 THREAD: The Strait of Hormuz Crisis — The 21-mile bottleneck that could break the world economy. Here's everything you need to know. A stretch of water just 21 miles wide between Iran and Oman moves more global wealth per day than almost any road, rail, or pipeline on Earth.
Right now, it's on the brink of closure.

Here's why the world should be paying close attention. 🧵

The $35,000 Drone That's Rewriting the Rules of War

Man in suit presenting LUCAS and Shahed-136 drones with flags in hangar

America just fired Iran's own weapon back at them — and it cost less than a Honda Accord.

It started as a copycat experiment. In 2024, the U.S. military reverse-engineered Iran's notorious Shahed drone — not to admire it, but to shoot it down. Then someone in the Pentagon asked a smarter question: if it's this cheap and this effective, why not just build our own?

Eighteen months later, LUCAS (Low-Cost Unmanned Combat Attack System) was born — and last week, it flew into combat for the first time over Iran. The Numbers Are Jaw-Dropping

$35,000 per drone vs. $2.5 million for a Tomahawk cruise missile

~10 feet long, 8-foot wingspan, explosive nose payload

Travels hundreds of miles autonomously after target coordinates are entered

Built by SpektreWorks, a small Arizona startup — not Lockheed, not Raytheon

Bombardments that once required expensive missile salvos can now be carried out "for the cost of a car lot full of Honda Accords," as one expert put it.

BREAKING

1/ The U.S. Army’s Typhon Missile System has been deployed to Japan for the first time.

Unveiled at Iwakuni base, Typhon can launch Tomahawk cruise missiles (range ~1,600 km) — enough to strike across the East China Sea and into parts of China.

This marks a major shift in U.S. deterrence posture in East Asia. 2/ Typhon, run by the Army’s Multi-Domain Task Force, can fire both Tomahawk cruise missiles and SM-6 interceptors.

It arrived in Japan during large-scale U.S.–Japan joint drills starting Sept 11, simulating defense of Kyushu, Okinawa, and remote islands.

This is the first-ever deployment of U.S. ground-launched mid-range missiles to a Japanese base since the end of the INF Treaty.

1/ Hu Shisheng, Deputy Secretary-General at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR) has made a series of comments about India-Pakistan tensions.

What did Hu Shisheng say:

"India’s use of ‘hydrological deterrence’ this time is testing not only Pakistan’s response threshold, but also serves as a stress test for the risk resilience of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. When the floodwaters swept across the Karakorum Highway built with Chinese participation, Beijing effectively received an unexpected strategic assessment report — that compared to border conflicts, it is precisely these non-traditional security threats that constitute the true Achilles’ heel of the Belt and Road Initiative projects.” 2/ Hu Shisheng's comments about India-Pakistan tensions:

“India only controls 20% of the Indus River’s water flow and has limited water storage capacity; Pakistan’s downstream hydropower stations are still able to cope; and climate change further weakens the effectiveness of ‘water control.’ Ultimately, this is more like a ‘political performance’ by India aimed at its domestic audience.”

A graph that tells the story of India-China relations that no expert can capture.

Only 8% of Chinese consider India a favourable country, even lower than the US, which stands at 12.2% and Japan, which scored 13%.

From a new survey by Tsinghua University. I have argued, and some others have, the India-China military stand-off has left a profound impact on Chinese public views about India.

You can't make this up! The official account of the Ministry of Public Security (Chinese police) has used the video of blackfaced Chinese performers who make videos while dancing to Bollywood tunes to teach people about road safety.

https://twitter.com/aadilbrar/status/1654706129392513029

These videos of Chinese performers performing with a blackface have gone viral in China!

Bhutan: China has equal say in resolving Doklam issue - Times of India m.timesofindia.com/world/south-as… One wonders what has brought about this change of stance by the Bhutanese PM.

"The border issue should be placed in an appropriate place in bilateral relations, and the border situation should be brought under normal control as soon as possible" -- China's read out of the meeting between Qin Gang and Jaishankar. "China is willing to work with India to speed up the resumption of exchanges and cooperation in various fields, resume direct flights as soon as possible, and facilitate personnel exchanges" said Qin.