Free Republic

In the days before the latest flare-ups of violence in the Middle East, President Trump’s aides were negotiating with Tehran on four major elements of a nuclear agreement that U.S. officials contend would grind the program to a halt for 15 years or so. The negotiations, according to U.S. officials and diplomats who have been briefed on the confidential talks, have gone considerably beyond discussion about reopening the Strait of Hormuz, which the Iranians have all but shut down for 101 days. The result is what American officials describe as the hazy outlines of an accord — assuming the Islamic...

A baby girl, born at 22 weeks and 5 days on World Prematurity Day, defies odds as the youngest ever surviving baby to be born at a hospital in the UAE. Baby Talia was born weighing only 400g in November. Her birth was so sudden that Talia was still in her amniotic sac when she was born, and her skin was very thin and transparent. Despite her incredibly small size, the medical team immediately started life-saving care, including advanced breathing support and intubation. As is common with extremely premature babies, it was not smooth sailing once baby Talia was out...

President Trump vowed to respond after a US Army helicopter was downed last night, confirming that the Iranians executed the attack. President Trump initially told reporters while departing Queens, New York, after attending Game 3 of the NBA Finals, “The pilots are fine.” “Nobody injured. We are going to issue a report tomorrow, but the pilots are fine,” he added. WATCH: VIDEO AT LINK............ President Trump says “pilots are fine” after Apache Helicopter downed near the coast of Oman Trump on Tuesday revealed that the Apache helicopter was “shot down” by Iranians and that the US “must, of necessity, respond...

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump I have just been informed by our Great Military that last night the Iranians shot down one of our highly sophisticated Apache Helicopters while patrolling over the Strait of Hormuz. There were two pilots involved, both are safe and uninjured. Nevertheless, the United States must, of necessity, respond to this attack. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP Jun 09, 2026, 12:38 PM

JD Vance suggested Israel may not be on board with a US-Iran peace deal as he was grilled over bombshell intelligence reports claiming Benjamin Netanyahu's spy agencies have been eavesdropping on American negotiators. US intelligence officials are alarmed by Israel's eavesdropping on American diplomats negotiating with Iran. The Pentagon now ranks Israel as a bigger counterintelligence threat than some of America's enemies, according to The New York Times.The report details concerns that Israel has been spying on senior Trump officials, including the President's top negotiator Steve Witkoff and Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby, along with other American military and government...

A US drone boat conducted a first-of-its-kind rescue mission to save the crew of an American Apache helicopter that crashed near the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, the military said. The unmanned vessel, powered by artificial intelligence, located the crew who had been stuck for two hours in the waters off the coast of Oman, bringing them to shore, the Wall Street Journal reported. The operation marks the first time a high-tech US Navy drone deployed to the Middle East was used to conduct a rescue mission. The Navy previous deployed a Seahawk medium unmanned surface vessel (MUSV) with an...

US Vice President JD Vance says the United States and Israel “have a lot of shared interests, but we also have some situations where our interests diverge,” as Fox News host Jesse Waters begins an interview by asking him how “concerned are you about Israel spying on the United States and freelancing in Lebanon?” “I think where the president has been very clear here is that while Israel obviously has some objectives that it has, the United States’ main objective in Iran is to ensure that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon,” Vance says, without actually addressing the questions...

US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the pilots of a United States Army Apache helicopter gunship that went down near the Strait of Hormuz "are fine." Speaking on the runway at John F. Kennedy International Airport before returning to Washington, D.C., Trump said there was "nobody injured," adding that the US will release an incident report later on Tuesday. It was not immediately clear whether the Apache was shot down by Iranian fire, experienced mechanical failure, or encountered some other problem. The New York Times reported earlier on Tuesday, citing two people briefed on the incident. According to...

Chatham House research fellow Farea al-Muslimi told the leftist outlet New York Times (NYT) that the Houthis could effectively blockade the Bab el-Mandeb with only a few terrorist strikes against vulnerable tankers and cargo ships. “They can just send a signal and only one attack has to happen – and that will send a shock across insurance companies,” he said. “I won’t be surprised now if you have a joint lockdown of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab,” he predicted. The Iran-backed Houthi insurgents of Yemen declared “a complete and total ban on Israeli maritime navigation” through the Red Sea on Monday....

Link Gaetz allegedly punched driver in face, broke windshield and fled last September Police in British Columbia say a former NHL player remains at large a day after authorities announced charges against him in the alleged attack on a taxi driver in Metro Vancouver. Link Gaetz, 57, is facing charges of assault and mischief under $5,000 in the unprovoked attack of a Maple Ridge, B.C., taxi driver on Sept. 17, 2025. Mounties say Gaetz is accused of abruptly telling the taxi driver to stop after being picked up, then punching the driver repeatedly in the face and trying to break...

North Korea is the world’s most unlikely growth story. Its economy is flourishing in ways not seen in years, aided by arms sales and troop deployments to Russia, supplies and financing from China, and the ability to flout international sanctions to import more energy, components and materials. Chinese leader Xi Jinping traveled to North Korea this week for his first foreign trip of the year. The Kim regime slammed its borders shut during the Covid-19 pandemic. It has since reopened to only a select few outsiders, including Russian and Western travelers and diplomats. Those visitors describe a North Korea unrecognizable...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday he had a "positive" conversation with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and praised what he called their readiness to work on a settlement of the Ukraine war in the coming weeks. "A very positive conversation," Zelensky said on the Telegram messaging app about the conversation during a stopover in the Moldovan capital, Chisinau. "Grateful for the readiness to work as actively as possible already in the weeks to come to give a boost to diplomacy for ending Russia's war against Ukraine," he wrote.

U.S. President Donald Trump is considering the possibility of purchasing the strategically important Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean directly from Mauritius. This scenario has gained momentum due to delays in the UK’s plans to transfer sovereignty over these islands. The new U.S. administration seeks to gain full control over the archipelago to secure its military positions in the region. Washington’s main goal is to preserve and protect the strategic Diego Garcia military base, which is currently jointly used by the U.S. and the UK. To finalize the deal, the islands must first officially gain sovereign status under Mauritian control....

This applies to tankers described by Brussels as "shadow fleet"NICOSIA, June 8. /TASS/. EU member states have authorized their warships operating in the Mediterranean as part of Operation IRINI to detain foreign tankers suspected of transporting Russian oil as part of what Brussels describes as the "shadow fleet," EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said. TASS has summed up what is known to this moment. Kallas’ statementEU member countries have authorized their warships to detain foreign tankers suspected of shipping Russian oil, Kallas said. This applies to tankers described by Brussels as "shadow fleet." According to Kallas, the main objective...

Israel said on Monday it hit a petrochemical plant in Iran's southwest, along with strikes elsewhere on military targets, after U.S. President Donald Trump ​reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to refrain from further attacks. The escalation complicates U.S.-led efforts to broker a broader deal with Iran, driving oil prices up by nearly 5%, with benchmark Brent ‌futures back above $97 a barrel. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps blamed the U.S. for the latest exchange of fire with Israel and said further attacks on non-military and energy targets would have consequences for the global economy. The IRGC said that...

One hundred days after they went to war together to thwart Iran’s rogue nuclear weapons program, radically degrade its ballistic missile industry, end its support for the Hezbollah and Hamas terror armies, and create the conditions for the fall of the regime, the US-Israel alliance against the Islamic Republic on Sunday reached its nadir. With its north battered relentlessly by Hezbollah in recent weeks, Israel resorted to a largely symbolic strike on the terror group’s Dahiyeh stronghold in Beirut, reportedly without telling the disapproving Trump administration ahead of time that it was doing so. And, as it had warned it...

Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has claimed it has launched a missile attack on a petrochemical plant in Haifa, northern Israel, according to a statement reported by Iranian Tasnim news agency. Tasnim quotes the IRGC as saying the attacks were in response to an earlier attack by Israel on an Iranian petrochemical facility in Mahshahr, in the south-west of the country. It warned Israel has started a "dangerous game" and further attacks on non-military and energy targets in the region would have consequences for the global economy.

US President Donald Trump reportedly fumed at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a Monday call, calling the premier “fucking crazy” and telling him that everyone “hates Israel” as he demanded Israel agree to a ceasefire with the Hezbollah terror group. Axios’s Barak Ravid cited a US official who summarized Trump’s message to Netanyahu as follows: “You’re fucking crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.” A second source briefed on the call told the outlet that the US president was “pissed” at the prime...

Israel conducted strikes on military targets in western and central Iran early Monday local time, the Israeli military announced, escalating a conflict that had already broken through the ceasefire just hours earlier when Iran fired multiple waves of missiles at Israel on Sunday. The strikes came despite a direct phone call from President Trump to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, urging him not to retaliate immediately for the Iranian missile attack. A senior U.S. official told the Associated Press, on condition of anonymity to describe a private call, that Trump believed he had convinced Netanyahu to wait. Israel struck anyway....

Tsunami warnings were issued after an earthquake of magnitude 7.8 struck off Mindanao in the southern Philippines on Monday, the German Research Centre for Geosciences said. The quake struck at a depth of 10 km (6.2 miles), GFZ said. The geophysics ⁠agencies ​of the Philippines and neighbouring Indonesia issued tsunami warnings. There were no immediate reports of major damage in either country.GFZ had earlier pegged the ​earthquake at ​8.2. The US Tsunami Warning ⁠System issued a tsunami threat to the earthquake.