About twenty people in an office in Tampa, Florida. That's the newest front in Washington's pressure campaign on Iran. It's not a carrier group and it's not a strike package. It's a Central Command task force pointed at Iran's land borders and the Caspian Sea. I'm Sarah, Rich is with me, and this is Iran War Daily for Sunday, November 8. Coming up: the blockade moves ashore, the Revolutionary Guard scraps its own cap on missile range, and Houthi missiles fly toward Riyadh once more.
Anwar Iqbal, writing in Dawn from Washington:
Centcom commander Admiral Brad Cooper directed the creation of Task Force Iron Gate, an internal team of about 20 civilian and military personnel based in Tampa, Florida.
Central Command announced it on Saturday. The team will work with other US agencies against weapons, dual-use technology, sanctioned materials and illicit revenue moving across Iran's land borders and the Caspian Sea. Central Command calls it an internal team, not a new deployment. Admiral Cooper says the sea blockade has kept more than twenty-five billion dollars of Iranian crude off the market, a figure Gulf News notes hasn't been independently verified. And the push on land goes beyond Tampa. Iraq's foreign minister, Fuad Hussein, told Al Jazeera on Saturday that Washington formally asked Baghdad to close all but two of its border crossings with Iran. He didn't say which two, or whether Baghdad agreed. At sea, Central Command says its forces disabled the St Kitts-flagged cargo ship M/V Huda in the Gulf of Oman on Saturday after it ignored repeated warnings. The ship had visited an Iranian port. And on Sunday the Revolutionary Guard claimed two more tankers hit mines in Hormuz, naming neither ship. Insurers have to price that in, confirmed or not.
Stephen N R, writing in Gulf News from Dubai:
Revolutionary Guards spokesman Brigadier General Hossein Mohebbi said Iran’s previously self-imposed limit of 2,000km on ballistic missile ranges had been lifted.
He did not say whether Iran actually has operational missiles that reach beyond two thousand kilometres. That range already covers the whole Arabian Peninsula and the Levant. Then there's March. The Wall Street Journal, as cited by Reuters, reported that Iran fired two missiles toward Diego Garcia, about four thousand kilometres away. Neither hit, and Iran denies the launch. So the cap may have been more of a talking point than a ceiling. That's a question, not a finding. On the record: army spokesman Mohammad Akraminia told IRNA that any response would be "without geographical limitations," and Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei said the US midterm results won't change Iran's stance. Washington is watching a clock too. NBC News, citing two US officials, reports that some advisers want any major new operation launched before the Democratic-controlled Congress arrives in January. NBC says Trump hasn't decided. And the mediators keep working. Trump called Qatar's emir on Friday. Qatar's prime minister, speaking in Oxford that day, put it this way: "We cannot wait to reach a perfect agreement; we hope to reach a good agreement."
Al Jazeera reports:
The Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemen’s Houthis says its air defences have destroyed three ballistic missiles launched by the Iran-aligned armed group towards the kingdom.
Coalition spokesman Turki al-Maliki said on Sunday that two of them were aimed at Riyadh and one at the Eastern province. Witnesses told AFP, in reporting carried by Gulf News, that the Aramco tower in Riyadh's King Abdullah Financial District was hit and damaged. The coalition hasn't confirmed any damage, and Saudi authorities warned that sharing images of impact sites could bring legal liability. If those witnesses are right, every oil desk will notice that Aramco's tower got hit. Inside Yemen, the death toll keeps climbing. The Houthi-run health ministry says coalition air attacks on the village of al-Shariyah, near Sanaa, killed thirty-three people on Saturday, thirteen of them children. The Associated Press, citing the same ministry, reported at least twenty-seven killed in airstrikes near the capital. The coalition hasn't commented, and Al Jazeera couldn't verify the figures. And on Friday an attack on a market in Taiz killed thirty people, with each side blaming the other. Whoever fired it, thirty people died shopping. The UN counts more than sixteen hundred killed since the 2022 ceasefire collapsed in July. Late last month we covered Houthi claims against Ras Tanura, Rabigh and Abqaiq. This weekend the reported damage was to a landmark in the capital.
One small favour before we go. If this show helps you keep track of a war with this many moving parts, a rating or a couple of lines of review in your podcast app is the easiest way for someone else to find it.
Twenty people in Tampa, three missiles over Saudi Arabia, and a missile cap that no longer applies. Quite a weekend. We'll pick it up tomorrow, Monday, and see whether the mediators gained any ground. The sources for everything you heard are in the episode notes. This has been Iran War Daily, a Lantern Podcast. Take care.