Free Republic

Some Iranian leadership is being surprisingly honest about the dire state of the country’s economy, with one of the most senior security officials in Tehran warning that the Islamic Republic is going through one of the most difficult periods in its history.Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, delivered the assessment during a high-level government meeting on Saturday, October 3, attended by President Masoud Pezeshkian and senior ministers.Iranian state media did not publish Rezaei’s comments in full, but said the security chief described the country’s current economic circumstances as among the most difficult it has ever faced.

George W. Bush got the world's attention by drawing a line after 9/11. "You're either with us or against us," Bush warned when it came to radical Islamic terrorism. It provided a clarifying moment in American foreign policy, and carried enough of a military and economic threat that forced cooperation from unlikely sources.This morning, Donald Trump played the same card Bush did, and against the same type of threat. Trump didn't use precisely the same formulation, but the point comes through clearly. Anyone doing business with Iran will have to choose between the IRGC and having access to Western financial...

President Donald Trump has been compared to many historical figures, by opponents (who claim he’s another Adolf Hitler) and by boosters (who cite Andrew Jackson or Teddy Roosevelt). With his blockade of Iran, though, maybe we should start comparing him to Gen. Winfield Scott. In the mid-19th century, Scott was America’s preeminent military mind, the architect of victory in the Mexican War and the “Grand Old Man of the Army.” As the Civil War loomed, he developed a plan to defeat the Confederacy with the smallest number of casualties possible. He called it the Anaconda Plan — and like its...