Tehran releases footage of waves 10 through 16 of Operation Nasr 2, framing a US strike narrative on its own terms
Iranian state-aligned outlets have published footage of what they call waves 10 through 16 of an IRGC missile-and-drone campaign against US positions, the first detailed visual release of the operation since its name became public.
At 12:04 UTC on 17 July 2026, Iran's Tasnim News Agency pushed a roughly one-minute video compilation through its Telegram channel, billed as coverage of waves 10 through 16 of what it calls Operation Nasr 2, a continuing campaign of missile and drone strikes against US positions in the region. The release, picked up almost immediately by the Beirut-based outlet The Cradle and by independent open-source accounts on X, is the first detailed visual record of the operation to circulate under that name since Iranian media began referencing it in late June.
The footage matters less for what it proves than for what it allows Tehran to claim. By packaging seven consecutive waves of strikes as a single named campaign, and by releasing the imagery through a state-aligned agency with a global Telegram distribution, Iran is doing the work that militaries usually leave to after-action reports: it is fixing the timeline, naming the tactics, and pre-empting the framing that Western wires will eventually impose.
What the footage actually shows
The Tasnim clip, mirrored by The Cradle's Telegram channel at the same 12:04 UTC timestamp, is a sequence of night-time launch tubes firing, drone swarms lifting from dispersed pads, and impact frames overlaid with Persian-language graphics identifying each wave. Open-source analyst @Osint61, whose post appeared on X at 11:10 UTC, summarised the release as footage of the IRGC's "combined missile and drone assault on U.S. positions" across waves 10 to 16.
Iranian outlets describe the strikes as "combined" and as relying on "unconventional tactics," a phrase Tasnim has used in earlier dispatches to denote saturation attacks that mix ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and one-way attack drones launched in staggered salvos rather than single volleys. The clips are short, edited, and deliberately atmospheric: most of the run-time is launch footage, not impact verification. There is no third-party geolocation of any strike site in the material published on 17 July, and no US acknowledgement of incoming fire was visible in the thread material reviewed.
That is the point worth holding onto. The release is a narrative product, not a battle-damage assessment. Western military analysts will scrutinise the launch pads, the silhouettes of the missiles and the typography of the graphics; Iranian communicators will count the views, the re-posts and the pickup by outlets like The Cradle, which has spent three years positioning itself as the English-language relay for precisely this kind of footage.
Why Tasnim, and why now
The decision to release through Tasnim rather than IRNA or Press TV is itself a signal. Tasnim is the IRGC's preferred outlet: a semi-official agency close to the Guards' public-relations apparatus, run for years by figures with documented ties to the force's media wing. Releasing through Tasnim is how the IRGC tells the domestic audience that this operation belongs to it, not to the regular army or to a political office. IRNA, the state news agency, covers what the foreign ministry wants foreign readers to see. Tasnim covers what the IRGC wants its own base to feel.
The timing, mid-morning Tehran time on a Friday, lines up with the weekly editorial rhythm of Iranian weekend coverage and with the news cycle in Washington, where 17 July 2026 falls inside a working week. By releasing the footage at 12:04 UTC, the agency puts material in front of the global wire desks at the start of their afternoon planning meeting, well before any Pentagon briefing window.
The counter-narrative this footage is built to beat
The release has the shape of a counter-narrative because there is a dominant Western framing it is built to displace. From the first reporting on Operation Nasr 2, Western outlets and the US military have emphasised two things: that Iranian missile and drone production, while vast, is being attritted by Israeli and US strikes on launch and storage sites; and that the campaign's effect on US force posture is being managed through layered air defence rather than tit-for-tat escalation. Under that frame, waves 10 through 16 would read as confirmation of a long-tail campaign with diminishing strategic return.
Tasnim's edit argues the opposite: that the strikes are sustained, that they escalate in tactical sophistication, and that the visual record now exists for anyone who wants to verify them. The "unconventional tactics" language is a hedge against outside sceptics: it invites the analyst to read the footage as showing something new, even if the analyst concludes that what is new is only the packaging.
A reasonable structural read sits between those poles. Iran does have the largest arsenal of ballistic and one-way attack munitions in the Middle East after Israel and the United States. Production lines have, in past reporting, demonstrated the capacity to sustain prolonged salvos, and the geography of southern Iran gives the IRGC dispersed launch infrastructure that is genuinely hard to neutralise. At the same time, the absence of independent verification of any specific impact in the released footage is a reminder that the gap between launch and effect is the part of the story neither side has yet put on the record.
Stakes and what to watch next
If waves 10 through 16 represent what Tasnim says they represent, then the operation has crossed the boundary from a coercive signal into something closer to a sustained pressure campaign, with all the risks of miscalculation that implies. If they do not, then 17 July 2026 will read as a media event with limited operational content, useful for domestic mobilisation but not a strategic shift.
Three things will settle the question in the coming days. First, any independent geolocation of the launch sites in the footage, which OSINT researchers are likely to attempt within 48 hours. Second, a US or CENTCOM acknowledgement of incoming fire during the named wave window, which would either corroborate or undercut the Iranian account. Third, the trajectory of the next wave: whether Tasnim releases a wave-17 compilation, and on what cadence, will tell observers whether the operation is being run for effect or for record.
For now, the footage sits where it does what footage of this kind usually does in Middle Eastern conflicts: it gives one side the first draft of history and forces every other side to rebut on its own timeline.
Desk note: Monexus carries Tasnim's release as the originating source for the footage and The Cradle's Telegram relay as the immediate pickup; both are state-aligned or state-adjacent outlets, and the article treats their descriptions accordingly rather than as stand-alone verification.
Wire provenance
This editorial synthesis draws on the following public wire/social posts:
- https://t.me/thecradlemedia
- https://t.me/osintlive
- https://t.me/TheCradleMedia