The IRGC said the strike destroyed a maintenance center and warehouses containing US military equipment, as well as a system used to control a US surveillance balloon, in a statement carried by Iranian state media.
It also said fuel tanks at the base were set on fire and alleged that a number of US personnel were killed.
The statement said continued disruptions to energy trade were a concern and that safe navigation through Hormuz and worldwide was essential to sustaining durable growth.
All G20 members present agreed to the statement except China, which objected to the paragraph containing the Hormuz language as well as three other sections.
Earlier, Bahrain’s Interior Ministry had issued an alert over a potential threat and urged citizens and residents to remain calm and move to the nearest safe location.
A US official said the strikes were carried out under a new “tanker for tanker” policy approved by President Donald Trump to deter Iranian attacks on tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz.
The tankers were anchored off Iran’s coast north of the US naval blockade line, and US drones launched missiles that hit their engine rooms, according to Axios.
US officials said around 100 targets were struck Tuesday, including Revolutionary Guards air defense sites, radar systems, mine-laying capabilities, communications sites, anti-ship cruise missile launchers and attack-drone launchers.
Axios said the tanker strikes marked the first time the US military had targeted Iranian tankers in retaliation for Iranian attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, rather than to stop vessels from violating the naval blockade.
On Monday, the Trump administration's top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles revealed that California's voter ID rules are so lax that nobody was checking whether voters were American citizens, with what he says is at least half a million voters on the rolls who never provided documentary proof of identification.
The prosecutor, Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, made the case in an interview with Bill Melugin on Fox News. He said the state runs voter registration on the honor system, with no one in government confirming citizenship and the state accepting an applicant's word instead. Essayli's interview came in the wake of the arrest of Darwin Rivera Flores, a Honduran national, on charges of illegally registering to vote in California.
Fox News co-anchor Bill Melugin walked through the case with Essayli. Rivera is a noncitizen born in Honduras, and prosecutors at the Department of Justice obtained the voter registration form he filed last year. On it, Rivera checked the box attesting he was a U.S. citizen born in the United States. He signed the form under penalty of perjury.
Prosecutors say Rivera never actually cast a ballot; the registration itself, and the citizenship attestation on it, are the charged crimes.
"There's no one checking this, right? It's entirely the honor system, unless the Feds check it," Melugin asked.
"This case really highlights the vulnerability in California's voter rolls," Essayli said. "They basically allow anybody to register to vote on the honor system. There's nobody in government that is checking to confirm you're a citizen, and in fact, in this case, he, on the form, [put] down a California driver's license and a Social Security [number], which he had, because he has a visa, [but] that does not prove you're a citizen. And according to the Secretary of State, they say at least half a million people don't even provide that information when they register to vote."
In a post on X, he put the exact number at 400,000 California voters who registered without providing any identifying information at all.
According to Newsweek, 36 states require some form of identification at the polls, whereas 14 states and Washington, D.C. verify voter identity by other means. The requirements range from strict rules on photo IDs to alternative methods, such as signed affidavits or election officials verifying the information. In California, no proof of citizenship is required, no passport is needed, and no birth certificate is necessary in order to register to vote. People applying for the right to vote must provide their California driver's license or state ID number, or the last four digits of their Social Security number. A unique identifier is given to anyone who provides neither of these. Immigration status is not included in the process.
The registration process leaves little room for scrutiny. An applicant can list a fake address, check a box stating they have no ID, check another stating they have no Social Security number, and the state processes the form regardless.
A driver's license or Social Security number might sound like sufficient proof. Rivera had both. He obtained them through a visa, and neither document establishes citizenship. The documentation the state accepts does not answer the question the state is supposed to be asking.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta fired back, accusing Essayli of ignoring election-interference accusations aimed at his own boss.
"While ICE Homeland Security Investigations is not able to comment on any active investigations, HSI is actively rooting out and investigating election fraud wherever it can be found," a DHS spokesperson told Newsweek. "We have repeatedly demonstrated that illegal aliens can and do vote in our elections. Under President Trump, HSI is committed to restoring integrity to our election systems and ensuring that American citizens and only American citizens are electing American leaders."
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/california-let-400000-voters-register-without-providing-any-id
by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times,
A Chinese national studying at a Canadian university has been charged with lying to American officials to conceal that he took photographs at a Chicago airport cargo facility at the direction of a suspected Chinese official, according to a federal complaint filed in Detroit on Aug. 26.
Zeng Weiheng, born in 2004, is charged with making false statements in a matter under federal jurisdiction. An undergraduate student at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, Zeng was issued a B1/B2 visitor visa in October 2022 and has entered the United States 24 times since then, according to an affidavit filed with the complaint by an FBI agent.
He was arrested on Aug. 26.
Authorities stopped Zeng for an initial screening on Aug. 23 at the Ambassador Bridge border crossing in Detroit, after linking his vehicle to a security incident at a FedEx cargo facility at Chicago O'Hare International Airport on April 21.
That day, FedEx employees saw an Asian male spending roughly 20 minutes at the facility. Surveillance footage showed the man climbing onto a construction forklift to take photographs and attempting to open a parked delivery truck and shipping trailer before driving off in a minivan bearing an Ontario license plate.
Zeng underwent three interviews with U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials during secondary screening, during which his account of his April trip changed. according to court documents.
In his first interview, Zeng claimed that he had visited tourist sites during his April trip, and the photos of planes in his phone were "pictures of model aircraft being tracked for a flight radar website," authorities said. When pressed in a second interview, Zeng allegedly admitted going to the FedEx facility to take photos of planes and revealed that he had also trespassed at a FedEx facility at Toronto Pierson Airport in 2025.
By the third interview, Zeng revealed that a contact in China had "assigned him specific planes and their tail numbers to photograph" and he was paid $20 to $30 per photograph, the court documents allege.
In his subsequent interview with the FBI, Zeng admitted that the aircraft photography was a cover story devised by his handler, and the "true task was to obtain interior photographs of the FedEx facility," according to the affidavit.
His Chinese contact "was primarily interested in information on transportation and logistics in the United States" and "asked for information of flight freight logistics, bus routes, and trains routes and schedules," the affidavit said.
Zeng also told the FBI that he suspected his Chinese contact was a Chinese regime official working for one of China's security departments, in part because the contact had provided him with "videos of scenes that only security officials would have access to."
For his communication with the Chinese contact, Zeng said he was mailed SIM cards from China's state-run China Telecom, which allowed him to "by-pass Canadian cellular network and connect directly with the Chinese provider network" to send text messages, according to the affidavit.
Zeng was instructed to use the SIM cards only in a Huawei-made phone, swapping in a new card every few months and destroying the old one. He was also told never to bring the phone with him on trips to the United States.
The United States has blacklisted Chinese tech company Huawei over security concerns and banned it from doing business with American suppliers, selling new network or consumer hardware in the country, or providing its equipment to U.S. telecom networks.
Zeng also told the FBI that the Chinese contact wanted him to travel to Orlando, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles "to obtain photographs of specific locations surrounding airports." Zeng said he declined, but completed "two taskings" and received a total of 500 yuan (about $74) for the photographs he took in Toronto Pearson International Airport and O'Hare International Airport.
As for his motivation, Zeng told the FBI that he thought it would be "cool" and wanted "to have the opportunity to work with someone like [agents] at the FBI," according to the affidavit.
The Epoch Times was unable to contact Zeng's lawyer for comment.
In a separate case, a Chinese exchange student was sentenced in 2019 to a year in federal prison after pleading guilty to photographing defense installations at the U.S. Naval Air Station Key West in Florida.
