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Securing workable energy, economic and security relations with Turkey has even greater urgency for Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government as the KRG says it can no longer afford to pay its employees’ salaries due to the closure since late March of the vital crude oil export pipeline.

A Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF) F-15 SA fighter jet crashed, and its crew was killed, on 26 July, while taking part in a training mission around the city of Khamis Mushait. It is the second serious incident involving an RSAF F-15 jet, after an F-15 S crashed last November, during a routine training mission in the King Abdelaziz Air Base training area in Eastern province.

Former senior Parastin intelligence agency officer Brigadier General Mohammed Mirza Sindi was killed in Zakho, Iraq's Dohuk governorate, when the car he was travelling in exploded. Parastin has close links to the Kurdistan Democratic Party.

The United States has stepped up its military presence in the region, with additional aircraft, naval vessels and personnel being deployed to the Gulf. This has led analysts to suggest that Washington was preparing to deal with a wider range of threats, perhaps in anticipation of a formal collapse in negotiations with Iran to revive the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal.

The Islamic Republic of Iran Navy (Nedaja) has begun the process of converting two 30-year-old oil tankers into naval logistic support ships. The tankers, the Tabukan and Mannan, are currently in dry dock at the Iran Shipbuilding and Offshore Industries Complex at Bandar Abbas.

Saudi Prince Abdulrahman Bin Mohammed Bin Abdelaziz Bin Ayyaf Al-Muqrin was appointed deputy defence minister in June. He had previously been cabinet secretary-general from spring 2017 to July 2022, when he was appointed an advisor at the Royal Court.

An Iranian naval commander has claimed GCC states are interested in joining a new coalition to patrol regional waters. Given the concerns in many capitals about recent Iranian seizures of oil tankers that seems unlikely to progress, but the UAE has recently pulled out of the US-led Combined Maritime Forces – seemingly due to unhappiness about the amount of support Washington is willing to give to its regional partners.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has begun to deploy its new class of drone carriers beyond its territorial waters, giving Tehran the potential to launch drone and missile strikes from a wider range of locations.

The United States has claimed Iran is working with Russia to develop a drone manufacturing facility in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone (SEZ) on the Volga river in Tatarstan, some 900km east of Moscow.

At least three border guards were killed late May, in clashes on the frontier between Iran’s Sistan and Baluchistan province and Afghanistan’s Nimroz province, amid rising tensions over water flows.

Iran appears to have test-fired an updated version of its Khorramshahr ballistic missile, called the Khorramshahr-4. Officials said the missile had a range of 2,000km with a warhead of 1,500kg, which suggests it has been optimised to target Israel.

Colonel Jassim Mohammed Abdullah Al-Khayal was named commander-in-chief of the Emiri Guard in Sharjah and prompted to the rank of major general. Al-Khayal had previously served as director general of the General Administration of the Emiri Guard.

Iranian officials said they had conducted a successful test flight for the domestically-produced Simorgh aircraft. A modified version of the Ukrainian-produced Antonov An-140 cargo aircraft, it has been developed as a light military transport plane.

Ali Akbar Ahmadian was appointed Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) secretary in Iran, replacing Ali Shamkhani who had held the influential post since September 2013. Since his resignation as SNSC secretary, Shamkhani has been appointed a political adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Iran could soon extend its burgeoning defence ties with Russia by providing fast attack craft for Russian naval forces to use in the Black Sea.