How Events Are Counted

Sources

• Event counts: Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP), UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset (GED) Global version 26.1, covering 2023 to 2025, and the UCDP Candidate Events Dataset, monthly releases 26.0.1, 26.0.2, 26.0.3, 26.0.4, 26.0.5, 26.0.6, 26.0.7, 26.0.8, covering 2026. Candidate data are preliminary and UCDP revises them; GED is the final annual record. Data as loaded October 1, 2026.
• Incidents: press releases of U.S. Central Command. Each row links the release and an archived copy at the Internet Archive.
• Ceasefires: the announcing text from the White House, the Department of State, the Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents (GovInfo), the foreign ministries of Oman and Qatar, the Israel Defense Forces, and United Nations statements and meeting records.
• Missile systems: Defense Intelligence Agency, Iran Military Power: Ensuring Regime Survival and Securing Regional Dominance (2019), a U.S. government publication. Basemap: Natural Earth (public domain).

Definitions

UCDP-recorded event: an incident where an organized actor used armed force against another organized actor or against civilians, resulting in at least one direct death at a specific location and date (UCDP definition). A dyad enters UCDP data once it crosses 25 battle-related deaths in a calendar year. Events are counted here when one side is an axis actor as UCDP names it (Government of Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, PIJ, Kataib Hezbollah, or Government of Yemen (North Yemen)) and the other side includes the Government of Israel, the Government of the United States of America or the Government of United Kingdom. Each event counts once regardless of which side initiated it. Absence of an event in UCDP is not evidence that no violence occurred.

Houthis in UCDP: UCDP codes the Sanaa-based authority as "Government of Yemen (North Yemen)." Reading that side as the Houthi (Ansarallah) movement is MEF's inference from UCDP's dyads (for example, the Government of Israel and the U.S. and U.K. governments against this side in 2024).

Country: the country where UCDP places the event, not the nationality of the target.

Candidate handling: an event carried in several monthly Candidate releases counts once, in its newest release; Candidate events dated in a year that the loaded GED version covers are left to GED.

Incident: an attack on commercial shipping or on U.S. forces described in an official statement, entered once with the date the source gives. The attribution column quotes the issuing body; where a source names no attacker, the column says so.

Ceasefire and violation: a ceasefire, truce or cessation of hostilities announced in official text since November 2024. A violation entry is a dated statement by a party or a UN office that the ceasefire was breached, attributed to the body that made it.

Range ring: a circle of the stated range around a reference point (Tehran, Bandar Abbas, or Sanaa for Houthi-launched variants), for scale only.

Coverage and Updates

Counts: January 2023 to the latest Candidate release. Incidents: November 2024 onward (11 records). Ceasefires: November 2024 onward (7 records). Systems: 16 profiles. Figures and entries were checked at the primary source on October 13, 2026. The UCDP counts reload daily; new official releases are reviewed before they enter the incident list.

Citation

Middle East Forum, Axis Attacks and Ceasefires, accessed October 13, 2026, https://attacks.meforum.org/

UCDP citation: Sundberg, Ralph, and Erik Melander, 2013, "Introducing the UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset," Journal of Peace Research 50(4); Hegre, Håvard, Mihai Croicu, Kristine Eck, and Stina Högbladh, 2020, "Introducing the UCDP Candidate Events Dataset," Research & Politics 7(3).