The claim arrived without a satellite in it. IRGC spokesman Hossein Mohebbi said August 23 that Iranian target-tracking "is not currently conducted through satellites they recognize," adding that American forces "may not yet be able to detect" whatever method Tehran uses instead. [1] No evidence accompanied the remark. None was meant to.

It was not the week's only doctrine talk. On August 22, Iranian Army spokesman Brig. Gen. Mohammad Akraminia said the country was shifting military doctrine from defensive to offensive — preemptive strikes included, and retaliation permitted to exceed the scale of whatever attack prompted it. [1] He added that Iran had used pauses in the fighting to rebuild damaged systems and raise combat readiness. [1] By Sunday, an IRGC spokesman was telling state media the force could "easily establish economic relations with countries" and calling Washington's threatened sanctions an implicit admission of defeat in the military arena. [2]

Read together, the remarks sketch a posture rather than a capability: unverifiable sensing, open-ended retaliation, economic indifference. JINSA's update files each statement as a discrete item; the pattern across them is the story this desk watches. [1] Whether any of it is true matters less than that it is being said now, into a sanctions deadline, by an officer corps freshly reshuffled at the top. Boasts are cheap. Their timing rarely is.

-- YOSEF STERN, Jerusalem