July 23, 2026 |
By Sam Sifton | |
Good morning. As the war between the United States and Iran continues, I want to look at how The Times uses photographs and video to better understand what’s happening on the ground.
| A photograph, circulating online and verified by The Times, shows the aftermath of the most recent strike on the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan. MenchOsint, via X |
Photographic evidence
Here are two sentences that jumped out at me yesterday from our live coverage of the war:
The Iranian military said in statements carried by the country’s state news media early Wednesday that it had targeted U.S. military facilities in Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain. There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties from the U.S. military or the authorities in any of the three countries.
What struck me was how familiar that sounded. We heard this week about the deaths of four U.S. service members, soldiers assigned to missile defense work. But we haven’t heard very much at all about the extent of damage Iranian strikes have caused to American military bases in the region.
And it’s hard to find. The Pentagon hasn’t held a major news briefing since early May. There’s not a lot of high-resolution satellite imagery. The Trump administration asked major U.S. satellite providers to withhold visual images of the region.
Our visual investigations team, however, was able to assess the damage to two U.S. sites in Jordan by comparing images from disparate sources. Iran, for instance, often releases satellite imagery of strikes as part of its propaganda campaign. The Times journalists corroborated those images using videos captured from inside and outside the sites, along with photography and lower-resolution satellite imagery they were able to gather.
Here are some key findings from their investigation — the Pentagon, by the way, declined to comment:
Three of the soldiers killed last week were stationed at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan.
After the attacks there on Friday night, a video appeared on social media showing a projectile exploding near several buildings. The original source of the footage is unknown, but The Times was able to verify it, and reports that it was likely filmed by personnel on the base.
Iran later released several satellite images that showed significant damage to the station, and The Times assessed it using a range of visual evidence, including satellite imagery from the European Space Agency. At least 20 structures appeared completely or partially destroyed.
| High-resolution satellite imagery released by Iran, which was distributed along with the annotation seen in red, shows damage to a structure at the Tower 22 outpost. The Times has verified that the image provides an accurate depiction of the damage. Fars News Agency, via Telegram |
Iran also struck Tower 22, a U.S. military outpost on Jordan’s border with Syria. The destruction there first appeared in low-resolution European satellite imagery that my colleagues corroborated, and then in a higher-resolution satellite image published by Iranian state media showing that one of the base’s buildings had been badly damaged. The Times corroborated that, too.
| The New York Times |
A video that was shared on Telegram, and which was verified by The Times, also showed a building reduced to rubble at Tower 22. It is unclear if the strike caused casualties.
Cartographic evidence
You can learn a lot looking at those kinds of pictures. At maps, too.
Check out the ones my colleagues made to show how the threat of a Houthi blockade in the Red Sea could again upend global oil markets by compromising a crucial fallback for the Strait of Hormuz.
| The New York Times |
More on the war: Oil prices surged after the Houthis said they had attacked two Saudi tankers in the Red Sea. Read the latest news.
A PERSONAL RECKONING |
| Thomas Gibbons-Neff, center, while serving as a Marine in Afghanistan in 2010. Bryan Denton for The New York Times |
One more war story. Back in 2010, Thomas Gibbons-Neff was in the Marine Corps, the 22-year-old leader of a scout sniper team in one of the largest operations of the war against the Taliban: the battle of Marja. He’s spent the past decade as a reporter covering wars and gun culture in the United States, first for The Washington Post and, since 2017, here at The Times. Now he is going back to school to become an English teacher.
As he prepared to leave The Times, Gibbons-Neff returned to Afghanistan to speak with the people he fought against, in search of answers and maybe closure. “I’ve had a hand in killing around six people,” he writes. “Maybe seven. I don’t know if one man bled out on the side of the road or was taken to a doctor. I think about him often.”
His is a searing, difficult, somehow beautiful story. I urge you to read it closely, all the way through.