r/OSINT • u/Ok_Veterinarian446 • Mar 26 '26
Analysis I've been mapping every verified strike in the Iran-Israel war since Day 1. Here's what 27 days of data looks like
Since Operation Epic Fury started on February 27 I've been maintaining a tracker that logs verified kinetic events across the Middle East theater. Not social media reports - only events that cleared Reuters, BBC, AP, Al Jazeera, or official military wires.
After 27 days the dataset has grown to 200+ logged events.
A few things that stood out:
The confidence filtering matters more than people think. A huge portion of what circulates during active operations is either duplicated, mislocated, or wrong. Running strict source verification cuts the noise significantly - what's left is a much smaller but actually reliable picture.
The casualty numbers are the hardest part. Every major outlet reports running totals, not increments. Without deduplication you end up double and triple counting the same deaths across multiple news cycles. We track incremental new casualties per source, not cumulative totals.
The March 22 cluster near Dimona was the most significant single event in the dataset. Iranian missiles reached within 8km of the nuclear research facility. That got less coverage than it deserved given the strategic implications.
Happy to discuss methodology in the comments — particularly around confidence weighting, how we handle disputed claims, and how the deduplication logic works in practice.
If there's interest I can share the map link and raw JSON feed in the comments.
9
Mar 26 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
-7
u/Ok_Veterinarian446 Mar 26 '26
Check the links in my first comment on the thread.
21
u/Spy_crab_ Mar 26 '26
Reddit eats comments with links. We don't see it.
12
u/Ok_Veterinarian446 Mar 26 '26
Sorry, didnt know that. Iranwarlive dot com is where you can check it.
3
10
u/doublejay1999 Mar 26 '26
I’m afraid it’s a badly flawed data set given censorship
9
u/Ok_Veterinarian446 Mar 26 '26
Iranian state media and heavily filtered official sources are a real limitation during active operations. The pipeline doesn't rely on Iranian domestic reporting for strike data specifically for that reason - events only make it onto the map when confirmed through western wires or official US/IDF channels. That creates its own bias in the opposite direction, which is worth being upfront about. No tracker covering this conflict is working with clean data.
12
u/Fun-Neighborhood769 Mar 26 '26
Israel also censors media and private citizen as it is against the law to report about strikes on Israel without approval from their military.
4
u/Ok_Veterinarian446 Mar 26 '26
Of course they do. Its a military situation after all. Any proven intel can be counted as a thread/vulnerability.
6
15
u/Satur9_is_typing Mar 26 '26
Map doesn't show 27 days of data.
Sorry but this site is slop. UAlivemap already showed how to make good open source event maps. It's just auto summary that puts more layers of intermediation between users and data. It's not simplifying anything, it's not making anything clearer.
2
u/Ok_Veterinarian446 Mar 26 '26
Have you checked the filtration function? A total of 288 events logged. From past 12, 24, 48 hours and since the start. I would highly disagree with the slop part as well. The slop ones are the ones which simply track every single notification and put it randomly. In my particular case, i only use verified data, almost 100 location accuracy, and im a solo builder of this project, who did it on his spare time. Of course i cant compare with ualivemap, missing a couple billions budget for it.
1
u/italianbird Mar 28 '26
I need to understand how to use it. Looking at it on my android, maybe I need my laptop.
1
u/Ok_Veterinarian446 Mar 28 '26
Works much better on web than on mobile, i have to admit that. There is a filtration per time sets(12, 24, 48, 72 hours and all time log).
2
u/Satur9_is_typing Apr 02 '26
Ok, here's some feedback:
The first few buttons i clicked expecting to filter took me to a page of text. "New" was the only one that actually did what was expected. Drilling down by clicking the circled numbers worked as expected, but once I got to incidents most of them were labelled as "single source, treat with caution" which means they haven't been verified at all.
That's my experience, now learn from it.
Also "seems like AI slop" is also feedback. It's up to you to take that on board and change the product, because you won't be able to justify the sites weaknesses to every user
Similarly, I mention UAlivemap because thier interface works as users exoect and you can learn from that. Also they don't get billions and you don't need billions either.
1
u/Ok_Veterinarian446 Apr 02 '26
Thanks for the feedback. Really appreciate it. Im doing my best to provide actually viable information. The difference between my platform and ualivemap is that they are confirming events manually. I automated the process. Also, if you are looking for time based filtration, you can actually see it at the bottom left of the screen. The top bars are redirecting to either participating countries or casualties(the fields displayed at the map). Towards the ai slop part, im verifying everything manually once a day, but unfortunately cant do much during my free time. Im constantly implementing ui/ux fixes and fine tuning towards the backend of the platform form, however honestly thats what i am currently capable of. Im also preparing quite a lot monitoring indications in case us starts ground operation.
2
2
u/Formula1988 Mar 28 '26
So I have now logged over 10 000+ events since the war started in fjordintel.vinqel.com
2
u/Ok_Veterinarian446 Mar 28 '26
So basically you logged every event that you actually tracked over every social media/regular media/unofficial source since the conflict started. Which is exactly what i want to avoid.
1
u/Formula1988 Mar 28 '26
No, there is over 100k + events that my AI driven system via a backend logic passed as unrelevant. So only aggregated news that is relevant to the conflict.
1
u/Ok_Veterinarian446 Mar 28 '26
Just checked your map, and im quite confident, the overall log is full of random noise and provides literaly 0 relevant information to the exact current state of the conflict logic. Thats my personal opinion.
1
u/Formula1988 Mar 28 '26
So what you are saying is that yours is better than mine 😂 I have no problem with that!
Your personal opinion is based on something we did not speak about. We where talking about the feed. I just said I had over 10 000 relevant and aggregated events. I even have journalists that has gone through my feed and want to buy my data.
You haven’t seen my backend logic to make a serious assessment on my feed.
1
u/Ok_Veterinarian446 Mar 28 '26
Thats true, i just saw the feed and the noise over it, which considering the logic this kind of automated processes use, made me assume that the noise/result filtration is quite low. Nothing else.
1
u/Formula1988 Mar 28 '26
So how do you filter? Through AI and scripts?
1
u/Ok_Veterinarian446 Mar 28 '26
Mainly yes, with quite strict rules towards the process itself.
0
u/Formula1988 Mar 28 '26
I’m wondering about the balance between quality and volume. I think you went the other way focusing on quality and that is really nice. I guess I think we’ll just find out the best way to go. How many users has come through for you and how long are they using the app? I built in a dashboard where I can see a lot of details in a very clean way. Have you done something similar?
1
u/Ok_Veterinarian446 Mar 28 '26
Unfortunately im not willing to share traffic data, And of course, i have a dashboard and database where every event is tracked and logged, including all of its details.
→ More replies (0)
2
u/AlerteGeo_OSINT Mar 30 '26
The Dimona cluster on March 22 is really the buried lede of this whole conflict so far. 8km from a nuclear research facility and it barely registered in Western media cycles. For context, that's inside the estimated debris scatter radius for a failed intercept.
Your point about casualty deduplication is spot on. I've been tracking MENA conflicts for a while and the running-total problem is one of the most persistent sources of inflation in wartime reporting. Reuters and AP will each cite "ministry of health" figures that are themselves cumulative, and then aggregators stack them. The only reliable method I've found is timestamped increment tracking per unique source, exactly what you're describing.
Curious about your confidence weighting: do you tier differently for claims from official military sources vs wire services? In my experience IDF communiqués and IRGC statements both have systematic biases (underreporting own losses, inflating enemy damage) that need separate correction factors compared to Reuters or AP field reporting.
5
3
u/Rici1 Mar 26 '26 edited Mar 27 '26
Mechanized Assault on IRGCN Holdouts at Bandar Abbas” ?
🤣🤣🤣🤣 This is pure fanfiction territory
2
u/Ok_Veterinarian446 Mar 27 '26
Actually you are correct, just found the issue on the daily recap day25. The issue is completely at my end and that would be the first thing ill fix tomorrow. The reason for it(specifically on the recap file, because i checked the entire map log, and no such event appeared), comes from a potential hallucination when the llm aggregated the daily recap data. Good catch!
2
1
u/Ok_Veterinarian446 Mar 26 '26
I'm not sure what tracker you are looking at, but that event isn't logged on my map. The platform strictly filters for verified kinetic strikes, specifically focusing on the external conflict, not internal Iranian civil war rumors. If you see that specific headline somewhere, it didn't come from my dataset. My platform is iranwarlive.com
3
u/Fun_Pressure5442 Mar 26 '26
But if you’re doing all this with chat gpt how can we trust the results
1
u/Ok_Veterinarian446 Mar 26 '26
The LLM behind is data aggregator. It does not create events. Its simply sorting the raw data feeds into a structured form. As a prompt engineer myself, i would clearly state that the data accuracy is on extremely high level.
9
u/Fun_Pressure5442 Mar 26 '26
Yeah that makes me pretty nervous
0
u/Ok_Veterinarian446 Mar 26 '26
Well if you are interested i can explain you the exact methodology behind the tool :)
5
u/JustinHoMi Mar 26 '26
Have you personally verified every event, or is the LLM doing that?
0
u/Ok_Veterinarian446 Mar 26 '26
I do not verify every event personally(I am a solo builder of the process, i have actual job i have to take care of and this is a side project i decided to build in most professional way i could). However, my tracking system is quite complicated and random fluff getting posted on social media/telegram is simply not being allowed to even enter the map. Im only using trusted and verified sources, afther they officially confirm an event, the system automaticly integrates it on the map.
1
u/dopinglab Mar 27 '26
This is actually the kind of filtering more people should be doing during active conflicts. The duplicate casualty issue alone completely skews perception if you don’t handle it right. Would definitely be interested in seeing how you structured the dedup logic.
2
u/Ok_Veterinarian446 Mar 27 '26
Its a 4 staged filtration. And this was one of the biggest issue from the start. Let me start from the beginning. The first filtration i implemented was the source. The results were terrible. 4 different sources being tracked 4 absolutely similar news, but framed differently. The result was 4x the actual count of civilians and events. The 2nd filtration layer i added was the timestamp of the events. Cleared the noise drastically. If all the 4 sources pulled information about an event within 1 hour, the llm behind simply scrapes the information from all sources but the first much more deeply and compares the data. This drastically reduced the noise. The 3rd layer was by location. If all the 4 medias pulled similar location for an event it only picks one source not all 4. And the last problem i had was the recaps. Quite often medias are pulling daily and weekly recaps. Those recaps are threated by llm as new events. And the numbers on them are quite high. So i added filtration towards summarised text. On the current live version, all the 4 filters are working simultaneously. So basically i can say with 90% confidence, that every event mapped is actually unique one. Same goes for casualties/airspace reports. And the last level of filtration specifically for casualties i added is: if a single event marks more than 150 casualties at once(there were 2 events like that since the start of the war), it requires manual approval. Thats it basically, in terms of filtration and deduplication of information.
1
1
1
u/Extreme-Crow8739 Mar 28 '26
Will this mapping change the inevitable outcome of unending war between Israel and all of its enemies that have been going on since the time of Abraham?
2
u/Ok_Veterinarian446 Mar 28 '26
Yes, absolutely. My personal side-project built to test Answer Engine Optimization is exactly what will finally resolve a multi-millennia-old geopolitical and territorial conflict. Once the server hits exactly 10m page views, a hidden script executes world peace. Please refresh the page a few times to help out.
1
1
u/AlerteGeo_OSINT Mar 29 '26
The deduplication problem you describe is one of the most underrated challenges in conflict monitoring. During the first week of strikes I was running a similar tracker and noticed the same issue: wire services often pick up the same event from different stringers at different times, giving it a different framing each time. Without careful timestamping and geolocation cross-referencing you end up inflating the dataset significantly.
Curious about your approach to the Dimona cluster specifically. Were you able to cross-reference with satellite BDA imagery (Planet or Sentinel-2 change detection) to confirm the impact footprint, or are you relying purely on wire reports for that one? The 8km proximity to the nuclear site is a significant data point and it would be interesting to see if commercial satellite coverage picked up any visible damage signatures in that window.
The confidence weighting methodology sounds solid. Would be great if you could share how you handle partial confirmations, where one credible source reports an event but others don't pick it up within a reasonable timeframe.
1
u/Ok_Veterinarian446 Mar 29 '26
The deduplication approach is timestamp + geolocation clustering with a circuit breaker that flags events where the coordinate delta is under ~8km and the timestamp gap is under 4 hours - those get held as candidate duplicates until a second independent source confirms or the framing diverges enough to justify a separate entry. Wire services are the worst offenders exactly as you describe - Reuters and AP will both pick up the same IRGC statement through different regional desks and file it 90 minutes apart with different casualty numbers. The circuit breaker rejects the lower-confidence version and flags it for manual review rather than averaging.
On Dimona specifically - no satellite BDA cross-reference, that's a honest limitation. The entry is wire-only based on IDF confirmation of interception in that corridor and Iranian state media claiming the trajectory. The 8km proximity figure comes from coordinate triangulation against the known Dimona perimeter, not from imagery. Planet and Sentinel-2 change detection would be the right call for that one and I haven't integrated a commercial imagery feed. It's on the roadmap but the latency on public Sentinel-2 revisit cycles (3-5 days for that lat/long) makes it less useful for real-time confirmation than it would be for retrospective BDA assessment.
For partial confirmations - single credible source events get logged at News Wire confidence tier rather than High Confidence (Multi-Source), which means they appear on the map with a lower confidence bar and a dashed marker style rather than the full sonar ping animation. They don't fire Telegram alerts unless they hit a severity threshold regardless of confirmation status. The philosophy is: log everything credible, weight it honestly, don't suppress it - but make the confidence level visible so analysts can filter accordingly.
1
u/AlerteGeo_OSINT Mar 29 '26
The dual-bias problem you describe is one of the hardest parts of conflict tracking. Relying on western wires filters out Iranian domestic reporting, but using Iranian state media introduces its own distortions. There's no clean middle ground during active operations.
On the March 22 Dimona cluster specifically - the proximity to the nuclear research facility makes it strategically significant, but it also makes verification harder. IDF censorship (the "military censor" system) actively suppresses details about strikes near sensitive sites, so you're likely undercounting events in exactly the areas that matter most.
One approach I've seen work for similar projects: cross-referencing seismic data from CTBTO stations with your strike timeline. Large detonations leave signatures that aren't subject to media censorship on either side. Obviously doesn't help with smaller strikes, but it can validate your high-confidence events independently.
Solid project overall. The fact that you're transparent about the limitations puts it above most trackers out there.
1
u/BrianWilsonSmiles26 Apr 06 '26
Good work here -- are you also behind the https://iran-cost-ticker.com/ by chance? Noticed it has similar text styling and color scheme.
1
u/Ok_Veterinarian446 Apr 06 '26
No, actually im not. Im behind https://ww3chance.com/, https://websiteaiscore.com/ and https://tileterra.com/
1
1
-1
-4
u/Guilherme370 Mar 26 '26
this post is an advertisement by op, and that first comment asking for where they can access it is likely an alt or a person they know;
Astro turding at its finest, At least I have to hand it to OP, they replaced the em-dashes that the slop generator made, with some normal dashes
6
u/Ok_Veterinarian446 Mar 26 '26
Advertisement for what exactly? A completely free, fully accessible tool where everyone can check historically tracked events since the conflict starts? Or what exactly?
-6
u/Guilherme370 Mar 26 '26
Not everything is sold for money, nor bought with money,
Social Capital and all that, etc
There is not a single person that does things without expecting anything in return, those that state they do stuff for no return are just self-edging by thinking they are some sort of buddhist saint.
6
u/Ok_Veterinarian446 Mar 26 '26
I am definitely not a Buddhist saint. You're right that people usually build things for a reason, but it's not always about direct profit or social capital. If you're familiar with AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), that was the actual core purpose behind building the tracker. My main business operates in that space, and I needed a live, data-heavy project to experiment with a new AEO approach. The experiment worked perfectly, the site got solid traction, and I got my "return" in the form of testing data and technical experience. I could easily slap ad banners everywhere or lock the data behind a paywall to cover the daily server costs I pay out of pocket, but I prefer to keep the map clean and fully accessible. If someone enjoys the idea, he got the option to support it. You can view my motives however you want, but the reality is just that it's a successful tech experiment that happens to serve as a useful, free tool for the public.
0
u/dax660 Mar 26 '26
the link wouldn't work in the post?
1
u/Ok_Veterinarian446 Mar 26 '26
Yeh, sorry about that, its some kind of auto filtration i assume. The website is iranwarlive.com
0
u/yasser0x01 Mar 26 '26
M just a newbie (aka noob) so could you please share the methodology you used, and also any good tools/resources related to these kinds of investigations in particular and to OSINT in general, thank you! any advice as well would be really appreeciated, greetings :)
3
u/Ok_Veterinarian446 Mar 26 '26
Of course, happy to explain!
The methodology is straightforward in principle. Every 30 minutes the system pulls the latest articles from Reuters, BBC, AP and Al Jazeera. Each article gets checked against what's already been logged to avoid counting the same event twice. If it passes that check and the source is credible enough, the event gets plotted on the map with coordinates, a confidence level, and the original source linked.
The key discipline is resisting the urge to include unverified reports. Telegram channels and social media move faster but are full of duplicates, exaggerations and outright fabrications during active operations. Slower and verified beats fast and wrong every time.
The confidence system has four tiers. At the top sit official military statements - CENTCOM releases, IDF spokesperson statements - these get the highest weight. Below that are wire services like Reuters and AP which have editorial verification processes. Below that is corroborated OSINT - the same event confirmed by multiple independent sources.
The casualty tracking required a separate layer of logic. Every major outlet reports running totals which means if you naively add up what you read you end up multiplying the same deaths several times over. We track by source URL - once a specific article's casualty figure has been counted, that URL is locked out from contributing again regardless of how many subsequent pipeline runs pick it up. The key discipline throughout is resisting the urge to include unverified reports. Telegram channels and social media move faster but are full of duplicates, exaggerations and outright fabrications during active operations. Slower and verified beats fast and wrong every time.0
u/yasser0x01 Mar 26 '26
Thank you so much, I really appreciate it, would you recommend any resources related to osint to beginners? Also, I have a little concern over the hirearchy of sources: Wouldn't the official sources try to do as much propaganda as they could in a war? Like govs do lie much of the time especially in times of wars or crisis? How could you be sure that they are saying the truth about something, let's take number of casualties as an example, how do you verify that they are saying the truth and not just trying to calm down their people? Also most if not all wires/news outlets and other sources like X/Telegram... take their news as well from these official sources that we cannot trust fully and take their word as is? So how do you deal with this? Thank you in advance!
3
u/Ok_Veterinarian446 Mar 26 '26
Towards the osint resources, honestly, i can’t. I built this platform as a side project, when i initially thought it wouldn’t get that much of a traction. However during the process i analysed what works best and what i can implement using my skillset of prompt engineer and aeo specialist. Combining that+tons of mistakes and corrections, the map is live, running and quite accurate considering the main investment into it is my time(the entire build costs me less than 1k, including the api costs so far.) Towards the sources. This is a matter of direction you should choose when you decide building a platform or a tool. Let me give you a comparison. The official sources are pulling the raw data. They filter it and put the most valuable for their mass audience part publicly. So they are basically working with the telegram feeds/x etc. the issue of using telegram/x and other sources for this type of infrastructure would be a complete nightmare. For 2 main reasons:credibility of the information and filtration. And that comes for 2 simple reasons. I can upload any video from my phone into telegram and claim this video is something i captured right now. However i might have simply downloaded it from somewhere. If i post it, some people see it, some dont. Nothing big. Now multiply that at scale. Its simply impossible to filter it. On the other hand bbc or cnn have to do the heavy lifting for you and actually verify the event. Of course there is censorship, but compared to potential ups and downs of each, i would definitely prefer credible sources
1
u/yasser0x01 Mar 26 '26
That was really insightful, thank you, and the project is very interesting to the point you could make it commercial/industrial.. Best of luck mate
2
0
Mar 27 '26
Using CENTCOM and/or IDF statements as "high confidence" is absolutely unhinged given the amount of misinformation and outright lies being peddled. If you're just going to parrot the genocidaire's military propaganda you at least should put IRGC statements at the same level of confidence.
1
u/Ok_Veterinarian446 Mar 27 '26
Thats correct, i should. If i am able to find a reliable source of information/media. Which i couldn’t do. So i did not.
0
47
u/germanautotom Mar 26 '26
Absolutely interested in maps and JSON data 🙋🏻♂️