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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 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.
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.
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.
Islamic Republic of Iran Navy (Nedaja) forces took control of the Marshall Islands-registered tanker Advantage Sweet in the Gulf of Oman late April, while it was sailing from Kuwait to Houston, Texas.
A Yemen Coast Guard officer was killed in an exchange of fire with private security guards on the luxury yacht Kalizma off the coast of Al-Mahra governorate late April. A guard on the Cook Islands-flagged Kalizma was also wounded.
An unnamed Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) air defence commander has been sentenced by a Tehran military court to 13 years in prison for their role in the shooting down of Ukraine International Airlines flight PS 752 shortly after it took off from Tehran in January 2018.
The Meraj-532 is the first Iranian drone known to be launched from a speeding vehicle, which means it does not need a rocket booster system for take-off. The weight saved appears to have been traded in for a larger warhead.
Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani reshuffled the country’s security establishment in a series of decrees and orders, naming his brother and interior minister Sheikh Khalifa Bin Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani as commander of the Internal Security Force (Lekhwiya).