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MS NOW’s Stephanie Ruhle and Richard Stengel compared the Iranian regime’s “deep belief” and even its use of human shields at power plants and other vulnerable targets favorably to President Donald Trump’s worldview on Wednesday evening. Ruhle and Stengel’s comment came after The Financial Times’ Gillian Tett submitted that “President Trump comes from a background where he assumes that money can buy everything, and money drives everything, and he wants to cut a deal with everyone using money, and he assumes other people will basically fall in line on the back of that.” “So the fact that the Iranian regime...

Hide the sharp objects—at least if you take Nicolle Wallace seriously. On Friday’s edition of Deadline White House, Wallace began by painting an apocalyptic picture of the situation in Iran. Grim enough to have Trump supporters reaching for the Lexapro—if they believed her. After laying out her bleak scenario, Wallace went a step further, warning of: “A full-scale global economic crisis that might actually be even worse than those headlines, and worse than we think.”Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

A fragile ceasefire agreement in the war began with bombs continuing to explode in Lebanon and contradictory statements about whether Iran will continue to control the critical Strait of Hormuz energy choke point.But the most likely scenarios moving forward involve either Iran exerting more control over global energy markets than it did before the fighting started in March, or the current tenuous agreement merely delaying another military escalation by days or weeks, geopolitical and energy experts said.

A huge reason why there's this rift on the Right that didn't exist a year ago is because Neocons are not team players. They operate as political parasites, using our candidates and elected officials for their own ends without ever reciprocating anything in return. This isn't how stable political coalitions work. The entire point is that you join forces with people you may not agree with 100% of the time, but you still fight for their priorities so they will fight for yours. But Neocons like to pretend they're above all of that. They're a single-issue constituency. They will bounce...

There’s nothing really new in the uproar surrounding the loss of a USAF F-15E Strike Eagle over Iran this past weekend. Media hysteria over the downing of a single U.S. aircraft has become a commonplace schtick in coverage of American wars over the past three decades. During WW II, the U.S. lost over 23,000 planes in combat. I kid you not, playmates: 23,000+ – and that’s only combat losses. Overall losses, including accidents, amounted to 65,164. The media talking heads would have had to be carried out in straitjackets if they’d been active at the time. Losses dropped sharply following...

n Friday, tensions escalated between the US and Iran as Iranian forces shot down a US UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, which was reportedly involved in a rescue mission for an F-15E pilot previously downed by Iran.

The assassinations of Iran’s senior leaders by Israel and the United States have triggered unprecedented churn within Tehran’s political and military establishment, eliminating the supreme leader and some of the most powerful men in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, but have left in place a hard-line government and little hope of a diplomatic breakthrough, according to regional and Western officials. Rather than usher in what President Donald Trump has called “more reasonable” leadership, the surviving Iranian regime is newly emboldened to inflict economic pain, pushing Tehran and Washington further apart in negotiations, according to the officials who spoke on the...

A new report on the goings-on within President Donald Trump's close circle of advisors revealed that White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles has allegedly urged the group to be "more forthright with the boss" about the realities of his war with Israel against Iran. Wiles was concerned that the president's aides were offering him a rose-colored outlook on how the war was being perceived among Americans, too often telling Trump what he wanted to hear, according to TIME Magazine, which cited several White House sources and a senior administration official. According to the official, Trump has begun many recent...

U.S. President Donald Trump told aides he’s willing to end the military campaign against Iran while leaving the Strait of Hormuz largely closed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday evening. Trump and his aides assessed that a mission to reopen Hormuz would push the conflict beyond his timeline of four to six weeks, the WSJ reported, citing administration officials. Trump decided that the U.S. would wind down current hostilities with Iran after achieving its main goals of hobbling Iran’s navy and missile stocks. Washington will then pressure Tehran diplomatically to reopen the strait, failing which, it will press allies...

The month-long closure of a crucial waterway for the global energy supply has sparked warnings the world is heading for problems worse than those caused by the 1970s oil crisis. Lars Jensen, a shipping expert and former director at Maersk, told the BBC the impact of the US-Israeli war on Iran could be "substantially larger" than the economic chaos seen in the 1970s. His comments follow a warning from the director of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, earlier this month that the world is "facing the greatest global energy security threat in history". "It is much bigger than what...

Not an entertainer or talk show celebrity, Postol has banks of lecture slides showing nuke-war damage, missiles & drones in eye-glazing technical detail. Take-away: if a cheap but accurate drone hits your apartment even with a reinforced safe-room, the building will collapse, so you'd better huddle in a shelter. But the destruction of radars means you have no warning. Your life is completely disrupted. While U.S. Defense Industries (Lockheed-Martin, General Dynamics,TRW, etc.) have been getting fat pedalling us decades of useless, expensive whiz-bang systems that never worked but make fantastic Congressional pork: lean-mean Ukrainians, Russians, Chinese & Iranians have been...

The Pentagon is sending ground forces to Iran. Trump administration officials gave a story to the Washington Post that is being repeated everywhere: The Pentagon is preparing for weeks of boots on the ground operations in Iran, a major escalation in President Trump’s goal to dismantle the remaining faction of the murderous Iranian regime, according to a report. Thousands of US Marines would be sent to the Middle East to conduct raids that include Special Operations forces and conventional infantry troops, the Washington Post reported, citing sources. Officials have been discussing plans for sending troops into Iran for weeks. ***...

EVEN BY HIS chaotic standards, Donald Trump has just presided over an unusually wild week in his misguided war on Iran. The president had threatened imminent, punitive bombing of Iran’s civilian energy infrastructure. Though Iran didn’t quail, markets did. So a U-turn followed. Mr Trump said he had become aware of secret proposals for peace talks, and held off.

IRGC: US, Israel, UAE, etc.: Nuts! All: Have it your way. 82nd AB and USMC steady as you go (2Kharg?). Iranian people: Keep hitting IRGC. We want them dead. "Compassion" junkies: STFU and go away.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump announced that Iran has agreed to permanently abandon its nuclear weapons program as a central condition for ending U.S. military strikes on Tehran. “They’ve agreed,” he said. “They will never have a nuclear weapon. They’ve agreed to that.” Trump added, “We’re actually talking to the right people, and they want to make a deal so badly, you have no idea how badly they want to make a deal.” There is, however, a catch. Iran is still denying talking to the United States.Tehran has not stated that publicly — and denied even talking to the US....

But what it is, is entirely unclear. President Trump has announced a breakthrough in negotiations with Iran: President Trump said Iran has agreed to his biggest demand in order to stop the war: no nuclear weapons. “They’ve agreed,” he said. “They will never have a nuclear weapon. They’ve agreed to that.” Tehran has not stated that publicly — and denied even talking to the US. But Trump has made clear that the no-nukes demand is necessary for the US to stop its military campaign. *** “We’re actually talking to the right people and they want to make a deal so...

Don't count on the TACO trade this time around.President Donald Trump reignited investors' hopes that there's a simple off-ramp for the US from the conflict in the Middle East, sending stocks surging and oil prices tumbling on Monday.TACO, shorthand for Trump Always Chickens Out, proved to be a reliable way to navigate the president's trade-war threats, but real war is different.Here's why market pros think that Trump's cooler Iran rhetoric on Monday isn't a TACO moment.

Conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly said Monday that it was becoming increasingly clear that the Trump administration will not be able to change the Iranian regime as a result of its war. “It is becoming apparent to the Trump administration that they are not going to be able to change the regime, unless you throw 10,000 ground troops into Iran, which is never going to happen,” O’Reilly told NewsNation’s Leland Vittert on “On Balance.” “So, the thinking is, we’ll make a deal, the deal will encompass inspectors going in to see that they aren’t enriching uranium, no ballistic missiles and bunch...