🇺🇸⚡️ — NEW: Exclusive footage obtained by CNN shows extensive fire damage aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford following a March blaze during operations against Iran, raising questions about the severity of the incident and the effectiveness of the ship’s fire-suppression systems.

Sailors described the fire as significantly more serious than initially indicated by the U.S. Navy, with footage showing heavily damaged berthing areas, destroyed bunks, charred structures, and extensive smoke and fire damage.

The carrier’s fire-control system failed to function as intended, forcing crew members to manually battle the blaze.

The fire took around 30 hours to fully extinguish and affected accommodations for roughly 600 sailors. Although the Navy stated at the time that the ship remained operational, officials acknowledged that flight operations were temporarily disrupted, with the carrier requiring repairs during a port call in Greece.

The Navy said the investigation into the incident remains ongoing. The Navy also maintains that the cause of the fire was not combat-related.

Officials expect an extended maintenance period, with some estimates suggesting it could be at least a year before the ship is ready for another major deployment.

🗳 🇺🇸 🚫 The Senate just killed the SAVE Act, 48-50.

Voter ID and proof of citizenship, supported by over 80% of Americans, dead.

Four Republicans voted no: Tillis, Murkowski, McConnell, Collins.

📎 Mario Nawfal

📝 🇺🇸 🇨🇺 CSIS experts examine five possible scenarios involving the use of force against Cuba:

Scenario 1: Pressure Campaign

Scenario 2: Cuba Collapses

Scenario 3: Leadership Decapitation

Scenario 4: Limited Air Offensive

Scenario 5: Runaway Escalation

The United States has real strategic interests at play in Cuba: unwinding the island’s authoritarian partnerships that allow it to serve as an outpost for Chinese intelligence; preventing Cuba from supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine with mercenaries; opening the Cuban economy; and creating a political opening to offer a path to return for many Cubans who have fled the island for U.S. shores.

⬇️ Continued:
https://www.csis.org/analysis/next-caribbean-crisis-assessing-us-military-options-toward-cuba

🇮🇱🇦🇿 CNN: Israel sent troops to Azerbaijan during Iran war as part of secret network across region, sources say

Israel secretly deployed elite military and intelligence units to Azerbaijan during the war with Iran as part of a network of covert sites across the Middle East to facilitate operations against Iran, four sources familiar with the matter said.

The forces operated out of several locations in southern Azerbaijan, two of the sources said, adjacent to Iran’s northern border and, at its closest point, only about 60 miles from the Iranian city of Tabriz, which Israel struck during the war.

Special commando units were also deployed to the location and carried out intelligence-gathering missions and drone operations, the other two sources said, giving Israel a valuable perch from which to see into northern Iran during the war.

The secret deployment to Azerbaijan, reported by CNN for the first time, was one of several military positions Israel maintained across the Middle East that gave its military unprecedented reach, highlighting the role Iran’s neighbors played — some with permission, some likely without — in facilitating operations against Tehran and becoming entangled in the conflict.

The locations in Azerbaijan were among numerous covert military sites and bases in multiple countries, the sources told CNN, including in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, and Somaliland. The forces, initially planned as potential rescue teams in the event of an emergency, expanded in scope to become military and intelligence gathering positions.

Israel has long viewed Azerbaijan as a strategic partner in its fight against Iran, and the preparations began weeks before the opening strikes of the war. In mid-January, as Iran crushed wide-scale protests with the mass killing of demonstrators, Israel prepared a covert mission along the Azerbaijan-Iran border, two of the sources familiar with the plans told CNN. The sources described it as a preliminary operation laying the groundwork for additional steps by installing listening devices and intelligence equipment in the area.

Israel was planning to execute the operation under cover of what were to be the opening strikes of the war in mid-January. But US President Donald Trump called off the strikes at the last minute, saying that Iran had agreed to stop the killing of demonstrators.

Israel proceeded on its own.

The Israeli Air Force used stealth jets and special forces as part of the operation to install the devices, as Israel’s political leadership believed negotiations between the US and Iran were doomed to fail. The intelligence-gathering site became another means by which Israel could collect information on Iranian military movements and facilities, as well as potentially providing early warning of missile launches.

One of the key operations launched from Azerbaijan, one of the sources said, was the killing on March 4 of Rahman Moghaddam, who led the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) intelligence division and who Israel said was responsible for planning an assassination attempt against Trump in 2024. One day later, drones struck an airport in Azerbaijan’s enclave of Nakhchivan, damaging a terminal building and wounding several people. President Ilham Aliyev blamed Iran, calling it “an act of terror” that was “ugly, cowardly and shameless.” Iran denied launching the drones.

🔗 https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/05/middleeast/azerbaijan-israel-iran-war-intl

🇺🇦⚔️🇷🇺 Ukrainian UAVs struck 5 ships in various Black Sea ports last night.

As a result of the attacks, 5 Azeri crewmen were killed. One ship, a grain carrier called "Zircon" had to be abandoned by the Azeri crew.

These are the first Azeri fatalities in the Russo-Ukrainian War as a result of direct combat.

🔗 Clash Report

🇺🇸🇮🇱 As of yesterday, roughly 63 U.S. Air Force tankers (KC-135Rs & KC-46As) were spotted at Ben Gurion Airport in central Israel.

The U.S. military aircraft are occupying more than half of the airport’s parking spots, disrupting commercial operations at Israel’s main civil airport.

Despite a previous news report claiming that the USAF would remove most military aircraft from the Ben Gurion airport, such a thing did not happen

🔗 EGYOSINT