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President Donald Trump on Thursday told reporters, "you'll soon find out" whether the US will strike Iran as tensions between the two countries ratcheted up. This is breaking news please check back for updates.

President Donald Trump and his aides were confronting dramatically increased tensions with Iran on Thursday after the downing of a US drone near the Persian Gulf. "Iran made a very big mistake!" the President tweeted mid-morning as he and his national security officials huddled to weigh possible responses. The ominous — if vague — message came after Iran's Revolutionary Guard said it had shot down an "intruding American spy drone" after it entered into the country's territory Thursday.

Image caption: One US official identified the drone as a US Navy MQ-4C Triton A US military drone has been shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile while in international airspace over the Strait of Hormuz, US officials say. Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) said it shot down the drone over Iranian airspace, near Kuhmobarak in the southern province of Hormozgan. IRGC commander Maj-Gen Hossein Salami said the incident sent "a clear message to America", state media said. It comes at a time of escalating tension between the US and Iran. On Monday, the US defence department said it...

A U.S. high-altitude drone was shot down Thursday by an Iranian surface-to-air missile over the Strait of Hormuz amid heightened tensions in the region after last week’s attacks on two oil tankers, a source told Fox News. A commander for Iran's Revolutionary Guard said the shooting sends `a clear message' to the U.S. He said while Iran has no intention of war with anyone, it's "ready for war."... (MQ-4C drone).

The Muslim Brotherhood said on Monday that the death of former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, a member of the group, was a “full-fledged murder” and called on Egyptians to gather for a mass funeral, Reuters reported. In a statement on its website, the Brotherhood also called for crowds to gather outside Egyptian embassies around the world. Meanwhile, Amnesty International urged Egyptian authorities to investigate Morsi’s death. "We call on Egyptian authorities to conduct an impartial, thorough and transparent investigation into the circumstances of Morsi's death, including his solitary confinement and isolation from the outside world," Amnesty tweeted in Arabic, according...

Media hysterics take note. Honest commentary on the Trump administration's 2019 diplomatic, economic and military clash with Iran's vicious dictatorship requires historical context. Here's critical historical Fact One: Since 1979, the year the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his initially broad coalition toppled Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the revolutionary Islamic Iranian regime Khomeini established has been at war with the United States. My sources include Khomeini and his fanatics who commandeered dictatorial power in 1980 after marginalizing non-Islamists in the anti-Shah coalition. Contemporary sources include the disgustingly corrupt clerics and Revolutionary Guard Corps officers who mastermind regime rackets, graft, oppression, war-making...

Iran is making good on its threats. Last Thursday’s bombing of two oil tankers in the Straits of Hormuz was just the latest in a string of attacks that have taken place in the maritime choke point in the past month. Thirty percent of global petroleum exports transit the Straits of Hormuz annually. On April 22, Alireza Tangsiri, the Commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval force, announced that if the U.S. went ahead with placing a full embargo on Iranian petroleum exports, Iran would close the Straits of Hormuz. “If we are prevented from using it, we will...

President Donald Trump cannot want war with Iran. Such a war, no matter how long, would be fought in and around the Persian Gulf, through which a third of the world's seaborne oil travels. It could trigger a worldwide recession and imperil Trump's reelection. It would widen the "forever war," which Trump said he would end, to a nation of 80 million people, three times as large as Iraq. It would become the defining issue of his presidency, as the Iraq War became the defining issue of George W. Bush's presidency. And if war comes now, it would be...

The threat of war with Iran may seem distant to many in United States and Europe, but its strategic implications became all too clear only hours after two freshly loaded tankers – the Frontline and the Kokuka Courageous – were attacked in the Gulf of Oman on June 12, 2019 – just outside the "Persian" or "Arab" Gulf. These attacks came less than a month after four previous attacks on tankers near a port in the UAE, and after months of rising tensions over Iran's nuclear programs, the war in Yemen, and the growing arms race in the region. The...

In recent years, Hezbollah has stepped up its activities beyond Lebanon’s borders. This uptick has been clearest in the Middle East—in Iraq, Yemen, and especially Syria—but plots have also been thwarted in South America, Asia, Europe, and now, possibly, the United States. Reports of Hezbollah activity in North America are not new, though such reporting tends to focus on the group’s fundraising, money laundering, procurement, or other logistical activities from Vancouver to Miami. But last month, the criminal prosecution and conviction in New York of the Hezbollah operative Ali Kourani revealed disturbing new information about the extent of Hezbollah’s operations...

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is meeting tomorrow with a pair of senior military commanders as tensions with Iran show no sign of abating. Pompeo is heading to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus told reporters Monday. "There, he will meet with Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, commander of Central Command, and Gen. Richard Clarke, commander of Special Operations Command, to discuss regional security concerns and ongoing operations," she said. McKenzie is the Marine Corps general responsible for U.S. military operations in the Middle East, and Clarke is the Army general in charge of U.S. special...

Iran's intelligence minister has admitted publicly for the first time that Christianity is spreading throughout Iran. Iranwire.com reports Mahmoud Alavi, the Islamic Republic's intelligence minister, was giving a speech in front of several Shia Muslim clerics when he announced "Christianity is spreading in "parts" of Iran." In an apparent attempt to make light of the people are converting, Alavi said: "These converts are ordinary people whose jobs are selling sandwiches or similar things." The intelligence minister also told the clerics to quit bickering among themselves. "We had no choice but to summon them to ask them why they were converting,"...

Terrorists linked to Iranian-backed Hezbollah were stockpiling bomb-making ingredients, including three tons of ammonium nitrate, in London in 2015 in what was described as a “secret British bomb factory,” the Daily Telegraph reported this week. The 2015 case was kept “hidden from the public” until now. The discovery of the explosives cache in 2015, and the subsequent decision to keep that information from the public, occurred during a period of intense public debate over the nuclear deal between the Obama administration and Iran. The Iran Nuclear Deal On July 14, 2015, the United States, Russia, China, the UK, France, and...

U.S. Vows To Guarantee Passage Through Strait of Hormuz June 16, 2019 The United States and its ally Saudi Arabia have said they don't want to go to war with Iran, but insisted they were ready to take all necessary actions to deal with any Iranian threat. It is "unmistakable" that Iran was responsible for last week's attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in an interview on June 16. "We don't want war," Pompeo told Fox News, but he added that Washington would "take all the actions necessary, diplomatic and...

Bolton: America Willing to Talk to Iran But Ready to Retaliate Iran standoff 'very precarious situation' amid new covert attacks on tankers BY: Bill Gertz June 17, 2019 5:00 am White House National Security Adviser John Bolton said the United States is willing to talk to Iranian leaders to ease tensions but also is set for retaliatory action against Iranian military provocations. Bolton revealed in an interview with the Washington Free Beacon that intelligence reports over the past month warned of covert attacks in the Middle East and South Asia by Iranian proxies, including the Quds Force, Iranian intelligence operatives,...

China and Russia declare “solidarity” with Iran after Gulf tanker attacks “Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed solidarity with Iran…even as the U.S. Navy revealed evidence the Iranians were behind the terrorist attack on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman.” The two oil tankers were Japanese and Norwegian. The U.S. military released a video it says “shows Iran’s Revolutionary Guard taking an unexploded mine from the hull of one of two oil tankers attacked in the Gulf of Oman.” Tehran’s usual response was denial, and it also accused the U.S. of “waging...

On May 31, the cry went out from Times Square, New York City, to annihilate Israel and extend the terror war against the Jewish state to America. As they did in Beirut, Berlin, London, Tehran, and Dearborn, Michigan, Israel-haters gathered at Times Square to call for Israel’s dissolution on the day the Iranian regime has determined to be “Al Quds Day,” that is, Jerusalem Day. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) posted a video of the event. In it, a series of speakers called over and over again for Israel’s annihilation, voiced support for terrorists and terrorism and called...

Details of the attack by Iran on the two ships carrying oil. An attack by the Iran-supported Houthi rebels in Yemen on Saudi Arabia that has resulted in a portion of Saudi Arabia actually being conquered by the Houthis. The continuing failure of the economies of Iran, Russia, and Turkey, which is driving the three countries toward war with Israel.

Former Navy SEAL hero and Texas Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw verbally backhanded former Obama adviser Ben Rhodes after he seemed to question the Trump administration’s claims that Iran was responsible for attacking two tankers in the Gulf of Oman this week. Rhodes, who had the title of deputy national security adviser but who’s forte is as a writer and commentator, retweeted a video clip of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in which he discusses U.S. Navy video showing Iranian involvement in the attacks, with this comment: “This definitely feels like the kind of incident where you’d want an international investigation...

Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas slammed former top Obama adviser Ben Rhodes for questioning U.S. claims that Iran attacked oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz and downplayed the threat from the regime. Rhodes, a leading figure within the Obama administration who pushed for the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, suggested the U.S. official assessment of the tanker attacks shouldn’t be taken for granted, saying only an international investigation can get to the bottom of the incident. “This definitely feels like the kind of incident where you'd want an international investigation to establish what happened. Huge risk of escalation,” Rhodes...