US Suffered Major Strategic Defeat in Failed Isfahan Operation

Information obtained by Press TV regarding the recent operation by the US-Israeli coalition in the central Isfahan province reveals a major strategic defeat for the enemy.

 

Press TV
April 7, 2026 

US President Donald Trump’s frantic threats in the past few days to target Iran’s civilian infrastructure, including power plants and bridges, are a direct consequence of the heavy defeat suffered by the US forces in the Isfahan operation.

The failed raid was carried out after the enemy conducted extensive aerial reconnaissance operations in the days leading up to the attack, according to the exclusive information.

During those initial infiltration and reconnaissance missions, the US and possibly the Zionist regime lost a significant number of aircraft, including at least one A-10 Thunderbolt II and two Black Hawk helicopters.

The information obtained by Press TV reveals that “zero hour” for the failed Isfahan operation was set during a secret meeting at the White House under the direct supervision of the US president himself.

It has now become clear that this operation had no connection to the claimed rescue of a downed F-15 fighter pilot, a narrative initially pushed by American officials. Instead, evidence examined and confirmed by Press TV  indicates that the real objective was to infiltrate and attack one of Iran’s nuclear facilities in Isfahan.

The landing site for C-130 transport aircraft, chosen based on previous reconnaissance, was an abandoned airstrip located dangerously close to one of these nuclear sites.

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WATCH: Press TV has obtained information about recent US-Israeli operation in Isfahan which reveals the failure of the operation.

According to evidence, the FAILED OPERATION has NOTHING to do with the so-called rescue operation for an American airman

Watch for more! pic.twitter.com/9CFWDBoS0r

— Press TV 🔻 (@PressTV) April 7, 2026

 

The Americans miscalculated, believing that Iran’s air defense would be unable to confront the aircraft involved in the operation. However, Press TV learned that the deployment of numerous US aircraft occurred while the Iranian Armed Forces were in full alert, waiting for them. In fact, American special forces fell directly into a trap set by Iranian forces.

The Iranian Armed Forces, including the Army, Law Enforcement (Faraja), the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), and local popular forces, initially did not show a serious reaction to the landing of the first C-130, which was carrying dozens of special forces commandos. Evidence shows this aircraft veered somewhat off the runway while landing at the abandoned dirt airstrip.

Minutes later, a second C-130 aircraft approached, carrying specialized vehicles, several MH-6 Little Bird helicopters, and other support equipment. At that moment, Iranian forces on the scene targeted the second aircraft before it could land, turning its normal landing into an emergency one. Two Black Hawk helicopters also arrived shortly after.

It was at this moment that the aircraft, helicopters, and commandos who had disembarked from the first plane became perfect targets for the Iranian Armed Forces.

After the special forces realized they had fallen into the trap, the White House situation room made a critical decision: the main operation to infiltrate the nuclear site was changed into a desperate rescue operation for the dozens of US commandos trapped under Iranian fire.

The Americans immediately sent several smaller aircraft to extract their forces, barely managing to gather the individuals and withdraw them from the deadly situation.

The rescue operation was conducted so hastily that some soldiers and officers abandoned their equipment, including, according to the evidence possessed by Press TV, the identification document of an American officer left behind in the area, to save their lives.

After the commandos were evacuated, American fighter jets established a line of fire with a 5-kilometer radius to prevent Iranian forces from approaching the abandoned C-130s at the airstrip. The jets also carried out heavy bombing of their own equipment to prevent it from falling into Iranian hands.

In this failed operation, US special forces did not even have the chance to fly the special Little Bird helicopters; some were destroyed on the ground, while others were destroyed inside the second C-130 aircraft.

Following this disgraceful and heavy defeat, Trump hastily and chaotically held multiple press conferences to cover up the failure and falsely portray it as a pilot rescue operation.

The information obtained by Press TV describes these propaganda shows, led by Trump and his Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, as reminiscent of Hollywood films – lies that have not even been accepted by many American audiences.

The information available notes that Trump will continue to fabricate other “Hollywood-style” operations to falsely claim achievements and appease public opinion in the US.

However, his and Hegseth’s repeated storytelling and lying, which have reduced public confidence in him both in the US and across the world to the lowest possible level, have made his “Goebbels-style lies” very difficult to believe.

People in the US and across the world are asking a pointed question: “How is it that a country which supposedly has neither air defense left nor an army or armed forces has managed to shoot down and destroy so many fighter jets and various aircraft, and continues to add to its album of different types of destroyed fighter jets, planes, helicopters, and drones,” a highly-placed source in Tehran told Press TV.

The heavy defeat of the Isfahan operation, he noted, could be recorded in history as the worst and most disgraceful failure of the US military, even worse than the failed Tabas operation of 1980, which saw a botched rescue attempt end in disaster for Washington.

The information obtained by Press TV notes that the heavy aftershocks of this “great debacle” for Trump will affect not only the fate of the ongoing war against the Islamic Republic of Iran but also the political future of “America’s gambling and ignorant president,” his Republican party, and the American political scene for years to come.

How Iran defeated the Isfahan operation:  

Source: https://libya360.wordpress.com/2026/04/07/us-suffered-major-strategic-defeat-in-failed-isfahan-operation/

What actually is ‘civilisation’? The dark and loaded history behind Trump’s threat against Iran

 

Bruce Buchan
April 10th, 2026 

In the midst of a war of his own choosing, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, recently tried to threaten his way out of it. On April 7, he posted on Truth Social that unless Iran buckled to his will, “a whole civilization will die tonight”.

He presumably meant to amplify his earlier claim that he intended to bomb Iran back to “the stone age”.

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Trump’s words are rarely to be taken at face value. Yet his recent incitement to war crimes proved shocking, even by his standards.

But what actually is “civilisation”? And why has Trump’s threat struck a nerve in even his most ardent loyalists?

Coined in an age of conquest and enslavement

The word “civilisation” is a creation of the age of Enlightenment in the 18th century. It was coined to describe a social order that European philosophers and writers then believed was coming into being in parts of Western Europe.

The word derived from older terms in Europe’s lexicon. To be “civil” denoted politeness, and “civility” a code of peaceful conduct essential to city life.

One of the first people to use the word was French political economist Victor de Riqueti, Marquis de Mirabeau (1715–89). In his work L'ami des Hommes, ou, Traité de la Population (The Friend of Man, or Treatise on Population) (1756), civilisation implied three things.

Mirabeau described the historical role of Christianity as the “primary driving force of civilisation”. What he meant was Christianity curbed human violence and turned Europeans by slow degrees over time toward amity and friendship. In other words, the civilised knew God and acted with divine purpose – or at the very least, were less violent and cruel than the “uncivilised”.

Mirabeau also employed the word to describe the “natural cycle of barbarism and […] civilisation”. Here, he implied all peoples were located somewhere along a pathway in time between the condition of mere barbarians, and the exalted heights occupied by the civilised. Not all may scale the heights, but those who do must take care to avoid falling.

The civilised could see more, know more and have more. That “more”, Mirabeau suggested, was the evidence of their civilisation. The barbarian by contrast, simply lacks.

Finally, Mirabeau used the word to warn of a “return of barbarism and oppression” that would destroy “civilisation and liberty”, endangering “humanity in general”. Civilisation needed defence, especially from the so-called “barbarians”, who he warned may be among us, rather than threatening hordes beyond the city gates.

Here then, at the very origin of the word, lies a deep-laid curse.

Civilisation’s curse is the monumental presumption of separation, of imagining oneself as different from all others, and privileged by that difference. That privilege has so often been expressed in the disdain for, or fear of, “the barbarians” who must be “civilised” – turned away from their presumed savagery, heathenism or mere animality.

A term wrapped up in identity

These connotations still reverberate in contemporary use of the term. It echoes in plural references to particular civilisations in time, such as the Romans, Babylonians, Inca or Mexica.

Although different in language and laws, these civilisations were capable of providing a reasonably refined way of life in flourishing cities, such as with running water, sanitation, roads and bridges. Useful as a teaching aid, this “bricks and mortar” approach reduced civilisation to something like a checklist.

In 1996 the American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington invoked this “bricks and mortar” view in The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order. In the post-Cold War era, he argued, global order would be riven not by ideological division so much as by conflicts between distinct civilisations. Huntington’s thesis has been widely discredited, but the idea of plural civilisations remains.

Today, however, the most potent meaning of the word is what we might call the civilisation of capital letters. Western Civilisation, for example, is still regularly invoked to convey a certain history that links Britain and Western Europe with their far-flung colonial offshoots (such as Australia).

Much more than just history, Western Civilisation also implies identity; as if the appellation encompasses who we are as a nation. In this identification lies that deeper curse.

Rarely is Western Civilisation invoked except in warnings that it is in imminent peril, careening toward the end.

Arrogant assumptions

Too frequently has the curse of civilisation inspired this recurrent nightmare. In his 1899 novel, Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad presented civilisation as a kind of madness – a derangement of humanity expressed in a nightmarish will to “exterminate all the brutes”.

Thanks to Trump’s threats, this is where we find ourselves now: on the cusp of that persistent curse. As long ago as 1767, one of the earliest adopters of the word, Scots philosopher Adam Ferguson (1723–1816), sought to trace humanity’s path “from rudeness to civilisation”.

Yet Ferguson also questioned the obtuse presumption spawned by the word, that “we are ourselves the supposed standards of politeness and civilisation”. From there it was but a short step to the arrogant assumption that “where our own features do not appear […] that there is nothing which deserves to be known”.

When President Trump says that Iran’s “civilisation” will be “taken out in one night”, we hear echoes of that presumption. His words have made barbarians of us all, equally at the mercy of a madman’s curse.

 

Source: https://theconversation.com/what-actually-is-civilisation-the-dark-and-loaded-history-behind-trumps-threat-against-iran-280268?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-gb

Israeli Army Takes Heaviest Tank Losses in Over 40 Years as Hezbollah Ambushes Destroy 21 Merkavas in One Day

 

 

Military Watch Magazine Editorial Staff

March-26th-2026 

The Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah has reported on the results of multiple ambushes launched against Israeli forces in southern Lebanon, with 21 Israeli Merkava main battle tanks reported on March 26 to have been destroyed within a 24 hour period. Other consequences of engagements have included the firing of over 60 rockets at targets in the Galilee region that day, complementing much longer range strikes against Israeli targets launched by Hezbollah’s close strategic partner Iran. Hezbollah artillery units also targeted Israeli command positions in the Taybeh region, Rab Thalathin and Oudaiseh, while also firing on Israeli reinforcements that were dispatched to evacuate casualties. The paramilitary group reports regarding further strikes: “the headquarters of the Israeli Ministry of War (Kyria) in the center of Tel Aviv, and the Dolphin barracks belonging to the Military Intelligence Division north of Tel Aviv, with a number of special missiles.” 

 

Israeli Army Merkava IV Tank Near the Lebanese Border

The bulk of Israeli armour losses occurred in a single engagement between the towns of Taybeh and Qantara, after Israeli units reportedly “advanced to carry out a manoeuvre aiming to seize control of the area.” Hezbollah’s official statement observed that its personnel “monitored them and prepared to lure the enemy into a well-planned ambush,” with the result that its forces “succeeded in thwarting the enemy’s manoeuvre, inflicting losses including 10 Merkava tanks and D9 bulldozers.” The results of the successes reported to have been achieved by Hezbollah units represent the most extreme losses Israeli armour has suffered in over 40 years since the early stages of the Lebanon War when Merkavas and older U.S.-supplied tanks engaged newly operationalised Syrian Army T-72 tanks and anti-tank guided weapons. 

 

Hezbollah Radwan Force Personnel

After Israel and the United States initiated a full scale military assault against Iran on February 28, Hezbollah the following day opened a second front against Israel, to which Israel responded by launching a ground invasion of Southern Lebanon on March 2. Footage has from early March shown multiple strikes on Israeli tanks by Hezbollah units. While Israel armour has taken significant losses during engagements with Hezbollah in the past, most notably during a failed attempt to invade Southern Lebanon and forcefully disarm the paramilitary group in 2006, the intensity of current hostilities and losses remains wholly unprecedented. The fact that this is the first time Israel has launched an invasion while being at war with Iran, which raises the stakes for Hezbollah as it relies on Iranian support, may have been a factor ensuring it does not hold back from full counter-escalation. 

 

Destruction of Merkava Tank By Palestinian Paramilitary Groups in the Gaza Strip

The latest setbacks to Israeli operations follow reports that Hezbollah had deployed its Radwan special forces for counteroffensives against Israeli units. These forces were not previously deployed for engagements with Israeli forces, but observations of their counterinsurgency operations in Syria have led analysts to conclude that they are very considerably more capable than Hezbollah’s regular units. The presence of Radwan forces on the frontlines may be a primary contributor to the more intensive losses which Israeli armour has taken from mid-March. Merkava tanks notably previously took a number of losses during Israeli Army operations against Palestinian paramiltiary groups in the Gaza Strip from late 2023, although the much lower quantities of equipment, poorer fortifications, and inferior training standards in the theatre meant that losses were negligible by comparison to those seen during engagements with Hezbollah. 

 

Source: https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/israel-largest-tank-losses-40yrs-ambushes-21-merkava