Free Republic

From Ceuta to Cuba to Tehran — and increasingly the American left — the same destructive ideas keep proving that reality is no match for ideological zeal. I’m looking around the world right now, and what I see isn’t all bad. In fact, there are lots of indications of positive things happening or about to happen. What strikes me, though, in seeing the hopeful signs, is the contrast between those and the, er… other things going on in the world. For example, the Moorish invasion of the Spanish town of Ceuta. Much of the reporting, particularly on social media, that...

The US military has exhausted nearly 80% of its interceptors for a key missile defense system as senior US military commanders are warning that the Pentagon’s munitions stockpile is “dangerously low,” according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. Stockpiles of key air defense systems have been particularly depleted during the war with Iran. The US military has burned through nearly four-fifths of its THAAD missile inventory compared to pre-war numbers and roughly half of its Patriot interceptors since the start of the war, according to two sources familiar with the latest inventory report. The disclosure of the low THAAD...

The lobbying group has more than doubled its spending on political campaigns, while rarely mentioning Israel. It has placed a large financial bet on today’s Michigan Senate primary. In less than five years, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has become one of the biggest spenders in American elections, flooding the airwaves in congressional races across the country. Since its first involvement in elections, the amount of money AIPAC-affiliated political action committees have spent on campaign advertising and outreach to voters has more than doubled, from $29.3 million to $67.2 million, with much of it spent in Democratic primaries. The...

President Donald Trump cast doubt in recent days on allegations that Russia is helping Iran target U.S. forces, even as members of his own administration acknowledge Moscow and Beijing are supporting Tehran in other ways. Trump dismissed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's claim that Russia supplied Iran with satellite imagery of U.S. military installations in the Gulf, saying any assistance would have been "very unimpactful" given the damage inflicted on Iran's military. "We’ll find out if that’s true. I’ll ask Putin. We’ll find out," Trump told reporters at the end of July.

Sunday saw the 10-year anniversary of the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s ruling against China’s nine-dash line. Fourteen countries reacted by reaffirming the ruling. China, predictably, reacted with saber-rattling. To recap the case: In 2012, prompted by a standoff at Scarborough Shoal, the Philippines sought international arbitration. China refused to participate in or recognize the process. It went ahead anyway, and the court ruling eviscerated China’s position, ruling its infamous nine-dash line invalid and faulting China on other points. China still refuses to recognize it and has tightened its grip over the area via salami-slicing gray-zone tactics. But the ruling stands....

• The original goal of Trump's peace plan was not to relocate Hamas's arsenal. It was to eliminate it permanently. • Weapons stored in warehouses remain weapons that function. Explosives stored today can be easily recovered tomorrow. Rocket factories that are preserved can resume production. Tunnels that are mapped rather than destroyed can be used again. • The issue has never been where Hamas keeps its weapons. The issue has always been Hamas having access them. • Transferring weapons from one Palestinian group to another is not demilitarization. • Even more disturbing is the new deal's assertion that "no weapons...

Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey denounced "ongoing Israeli violations in Gaza," in a joint statement on Monday. The statement, which was posted on X/Twitter, said that the "mediating countries" of Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey, were condemning Israeli military action in the Gaza Strip, claiming that Israel was committing a "flagrant violation of international law," through the "targeting of healthcare facilities and medical infrastructure, and the resulting civilian casualties, including women and children." It added that Israel's actions were undermining and threatening "the path toward de-escalation." On Friday US President Donald Trump announced that the Board of Peace had reached an agreement...

US President Donald Trump said Monday that talks with Iran would proceed in two phases and described the negotiations as Tehran’s “last chance” to sign an agreement. He said the first phase would focus on reopening the Strait of Hormuz, with the goal of having it “completely open” by Tuesday. “The second phase will be the denuclearization,” Trump said, adding that Iran “cannot have a nuclear weapon.”

President Donald Trump said Monday that ExxonMobiland Chevron made “too much money” on rising curde oil prices due to the Iran war.“They’re making too much money based on a shortage,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “I don’t like it.”

A Canadian nonprofit’s website that mails abortion pills to women worldwide will stay blocked in Korea after a Seoul court ruled that the government’s ban was not unlawful, according to legal sources on Saturday. The Seoul Administrative Court dismissed a lawsuit filed by Women on Web against the Korea Communications Standards Commission (KCSC), seeking to overturn the regulator’s corrective order ㅑon June 12. The block is “hard to see as unlawful because Women on Web’s provision of abortion pills that were not manufactured, imported or approved for use in Korea violated the Pharmaceutical Affairs Act,” the court said. It therefore...

Iranians have adopted a new sport in the past few years: knocking the turban from a passing cleric’s head. There are points for technique and for how high and how far you can get their headgear to go. These are small acts of revenge against a hated religious elite who came to power on a wave of arrests and torture and who, as recently as January, ordered thousands of peaceful protesters to be shot in the streets. It’s also a symptom of something larger. Political Islam is in retreat across the Middle East and the wider Muslim world. “The strange...

Last week, I was invited to join a program hosted by an independent Iranian media platform called Azad, which specializes in facilitating debates between policy experts in Iran and further abroad. My debate was with Majid Shakeri, who gained prominence as a foreign policy advisor to Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf (the current speaker of the country’s parliament) during Ghalibaf’s most recent presidential campaign. Shakeri was also part of the negotiating team that went to Islamabad earlier this year to hammer out the (now-moribund) MOU with the United States. These days, when you listen to Shakeri’s interviews, you will hear him insist...

President Trump on Monday blasted Iran’s leadership as “unbelievably duplicitous,” accusing Tehran of privately pursuing peace talks with the US while publicly denying any negotiations were taking place days after he called off a massive military campaign planned for the weekend.In a Truth Social post, Trump claimed Iranian officials had sought a meeting with the US before turning around and insisting they were only in talks with Oman over plans for the Strait of Hormuz. “They ask for a meeting, some would say ‘beg,’ talks begin, with more scheduled in the immediate future, and they say, openly and proudly, that...

US President Donald Trump criticized Iran’s leadership for being “unbelievably duplicitous” and accused them of being dishonest regarding the status of US-Iran negotiations in a post on Truth Social on Monday. “They ask for a meeting… talks begin, with more scheduled in the immediate future, and they say, openly and proudly, that they’re not having any discussions, that nothing is being talked about,” Trump lamented. He added that “nothing gets through to Iran, unless we want it to, and nothing will get through, unless a deal, or total surrender, is accomplished.” Trump also disputed Iranian claims of controlling the Strait...

An Afghan man has been arrested in Athens in connection with the death of a Scottish woman whose body was found in a suitcase. Elisabeth-Jane Ross, 38, from Edinburgh, was discovered on July 18 stuffed inside the suitcase and hidden in an abandoned building in the Kypseli district of the Greek capital. Her body was discovered by a homeless man after a "bad smell" emerged from an empty building and he saw "what looked like a human limb" coming out of a suitcase. Greek police said a 26-year-old foreign national from Afghanistan had been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter, robbery...

The Iranian government flat-out rejected President Trump’s claim that new negotiations were due to get underway later Monday, with officials stating that no talks were taking place or scheduled.Trump, 80, told reporters en route to Washington Sunday night that he had called off a planned “massive attack” on Iran at the request of US partners in the region — including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.“They thought that a deal is imminent,” said the president, later adding: “Now what we’re doing is talking to them [Iran], in the form of a ​negotiation. It begins tomorrow afternoon.” Iran Foreign...

Iran has denied Donald Trump's claim that new talks on ending the conflict would begin on Monday, after the US president called off what he said would have been "massive" strikes on the country.Speaking on board Air Force One on Sunday, he said Iran "knew the extent of the attack because they saw it forming", adding: "We're talking to them in the form of a negotiation. It begins tomorrow afternoon."In an earlier post on Truth Social, Trump said he had been asked by Iran and US allies in the Middle East to "hold off" as the "perimeters" of a deal...

A Mexican drug lord ordered a hitman to kill a beauty influencer because she had broken up with his son, authorities have claimed. Valeria Marquez was live streaming to her followers from inside her beauty salon, Blossom the Beauty Lounge, in Zapopan, the western Mexican state of Jalisco, when a motorbike-riding gunman opened fire last May. Prosecutors are now accusing Ramon Angel Alvarez Ayala, a senior figure in the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG) - considered to be one of Mexico's most powerful criminal organisations, of ordering her murder, as well as a local mayor's. Ayala - more commonly known...

Last year, a bipartisan group of members of Congress introduced H.Res.776: a resolution expressing concern about the persecution of Coptic Christians under Egypt’s Islamic regime. The resolution has only picked up 8 cosponsors and has yet to make it out of committee. By contrast, 103 House Democrats voted to cut aid to Israel out of H. R. 8595 which also apportions $1.4 billion to Egypt and $1.6 billion to Jordan. Meanwhile an amendment to zero out the $1.4 billion in military aid to Egypt never even made it out of the House Rules Committee while none of the Democrats who...

JERUSALEM—In Jerusalem’s Old City, a group of Israeli teenagers recently banged on the door of the headquarters of the Armenian Apostolic Church and asked if there were Christians inside it. They wanted to spit at them.The boys said it was a religious duty, or mitzvah, to humiliate Christians, or, as they called them, idol worshipers. “We are supposed to hate them,” explained one teen, wrapped in an Israeli flag. They were among the thousands of mostly young Israelis who on that May afternoon marched through the historic Old City for a national celebration that marks the capture of East Jerusalem...