Free Republic

Ed Morrisey wrote about the growing divide between the Iranian ruling council, led by the current President of Iran, and the IRGC. Those cracks are growing into a chasm, just as Trump and Netanyahu have been hoping. Regime infighting: Bridgier General Qalibaf directly contradicts President Pezeshkian, stating that Iran will continue attacking neighboring countries hosting US forces.He specifically says the mission of the armed forces is based on the guidance of the “martyred” Khamenei, implying that they are not obeying the politicians of the Islamic Republic.Earlier today, Iranian President Pezeshkian apologized for attacking non-combatant countries in the Persian Gulf, not...

More than a dozen Latin American leaders joined the U.S. president to launch a new security initiative, called ‘The Shield of the Americas’ in Miami.DORAL, Fla.—U.S. President Donald Trump on March 7 welcomed his Latin American allies to Florida for a summit focused on addressing regional issues and announced a new military coalition to combat drug cartels in the Western Hemisphere. “On this historic day, we come together to announce a brand new military coalition to eradicate the criminal cartels plaguing our region,” Trump said as he began his remarks at the summit. He said that the new partnership, called...

The history of the global trading system is a story of narrow and vulnerable waterways: the Suez and Panama Canals, the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Straits of Dover and the Skagerrak, which defends the entrance to the Baltic. But none has the power to seize up the global economy as much as the Strait of Hormuz. Barely 30 miles wide at the narrowest point and bounded on one side by the state of Iran, this passage is used for a quarter of the world’s oil supplies and a fifth of its liquified natural gas (LNG). As we have now discovered,...

An explosion rocked the US Embassy in Norway, damaging the consulate amid Iranian threats of terror retaliation as Operation Epic Fury rages on in the Middle East, according to police and reports. The blast erupted in Oslo around 1 a.m. local time Sunday, hitting the entrance to the embassy’s consular section and causing minor damage, police incident commander Michael Delmer said, NKR reported. “At around 1 a.m. we received several reports of an explosion,” he said, noting there were no casualties. “We arrived shortly afterward and confirmed that there had been an explosion that hit the US Embassy. There is...

President Donald Trump saluted the six fallen soldiers as their bodies arrived on US soil at a Delaware Air Force base to be prepared for their final resting place on Saturday. The Republican appeared somber as he held his hand to his forehead as the six caskets passed by him, his wife First Lady Melania Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, AG Pam Bondi, and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles at Dover Air Force Base. The caskets carried the bodies of Nicole Amor, 39; Cody Khork, 35; Robert Marzan, 54; Jeffrey O’Brien, 45; Noah Tietjens,...

Germany’s “social-ecological market economy” is a textbook illustration of this dynamic. The state declares hydrogen and other favored technologies to be the “future,” pours billions into subsidies, and attempts to construct markets by decree. Yet even an official body like the Federal Audit Office now describes this as a “planned economy approach” and doubts that the government will reach its own goals. In all likelihood, Germany is about to confirm once again what Mises showed in theory a century ago: planned economies do not deliver their promised outcomes. Instead, they generate rising costs, failing projects, and increasing chaos—while making society...

(Snip) The Air Force’s preparations for war were fascinating. Because the number of aircraft and pilots is fixed and known, and because it was clear a race would develop between Iran’s launch capability and the Air Force’s ability to destroy launchers and missiles, the solution devised by the Air Force was to increase the number of waves. How? Fly to Iran and back three times a day. Every pilot. And how is that done? With stimulant pills. That was the trick they planned. And it worked. When every pilot does this three times a day instead of once or twice,...

"President Donald Trump announced on Saturday, March 7 that the United States now formally and 'legally' recognizes the current Venezuelan government with Delcy Rodríguez as the leader."

"I think 47 years of western policy to Iran has been rubbish. You know why? Because they focused only on the hard power nukes, missiles, foreign mercies, never on the rights of the Iranian people. Ladies and gentlemen, as you know, John Stewart is my guilty pleasure. I know everyone on the right can't stand him, but I kind of like him. I think he's consistently funny. Yeah, he has a case of Trump derangement syndrome, but it's not as severe as someone like, I don't know, Rosie O'Donnell. I feel like people on the right treat John Stewart like...

President Donald Trump met Friday afternoon with CEOs of major defense industry companies at the White House as the war against Iran ended its first full week.After the meeting, Trump said in a social media post that “we discussed Production and Production Schedules” and “they have agreed to quadruple Production of the ‘Exquisite Class’ Weaponry in that we want to reach, as rapidly as possible, the highest levels of quantity.”Trump did not explain what he meant by “Exquisite Class Weaponry.” The term is used in the defense industry to describe one-of-a-kind technology or systems.Trump said the meeting included CEOs of...

A classified report by the US National Intelligence Council concluded that the Iranian regime was unlikely to be toppled even by a large-scale assault, the Washington Post reports. Three people familiar with the report tell the newspaper that the assessment, completed around a week before Israel and the US launched their assault on the Islamic Republic, outlined small- and large-scale assaults as scenarios for potential succession. The report concluded that protocols would be followed if supreme leader Ali Khamenei were to be killed to ensure the regime’s survival, with it “unlikely” that Iran’s opposition would take control. The Post says...

The incident further inflamed tensions between Hungary and Ukraine, which are embroiled in a bitter feud over Hungary’s access to Russian oil through a pipeline that crosses Ukrainian territory. Hungarian authorities have detained seven Ukrainian citizens, including a former intelligence officer, and seized two armored cars carrying large amounts of cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said Friday. Ukraine accused Hungary of taking the Ukrainians hostage and illegally seizing millions of dollars in cash. “This is state terrorism and racketeering,” Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote on X late Thursday. The seven were employees of the Ukrainian...

A viral clip of then, Senator Marco Rubio from 2015 has resurfaced, showing him laying out exactly what he believed would happen if President Obama’s Iran nuclear deal went into effect. A decade later, much of what Rubio warned about appears to have come to pass. Now, with Rubio serving in the Trump administration, the United States is approaching Iran in a way he argued it should have all along. https://x.com/GuntherEagleman/status/2029390255661432838? "I do want to be recorded for history's purposes before I know what is going to happen in regards to this if it goes through. Iran will immediately use...

excerpt- The Pentagon on Friday posted photos showing Ford and USS Bainbridge (DDG-96) sailing through the Suez Canal on Thursday. The transit takes the Navy’s newest aircraft carrier into a part of U.S. Central Command where the Iran-backed Houthis have attacked both U.S. warships and commercial vessels over the last two-and-a-half years. excerpt Meanwhile, the next aircraft carrier expected to deploy from the United States finished its training exercise on Thursday, the Navy announced. USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77), its escorts and air wing wrapped up the composite unit training exercise

Ian Huntley, the former school caretaker who murdered two 10-year-old schoolgirls in Soham, has died following an attack in prison. The 52-year-old suffered significant head trauma after being attacked with a makeshift weapon by another inmate at HMP Frankland on 26 February and had been on life support in hospital. He had been serving a life sentence with a minimum term of 40 years for murdering best friends Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in 2002. The brutality of his crimes made him a target in prison and he had been attacked several times previously. The BBC understands that triple killer...

Argentina has issued a new arrest warrant for an Iranian official in connection with the 1994 AMIA Jewish community center bombing in Buenos Aires, at the same time that the alleged mastermind was named the new head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Ahmad Vahidi was appointed head of the IRGC on Sunday, a day after the unit’s previous leader was killed in the first wave of US-Israeli strikes. Vahidi helmed the IRGC’s Quds Force paramilitary arm responsible for attacks abroad at the time of the AMIA bombing. Argentinians see poetry in the first strikes, which killed Iran’s supreme leader,...

Amid rising tensions in the region, a second Iranian ship has sought assistance from Sri Lanka, while 208 sailors are expected to be brought to Colombo following distress calls in the Indian Ocean. Reports say another vessel is currently near Sri Lanka’s territorial waters, raising security and humanitarian concerns.

Iran's fragile regime suffered another blow today as reports emerged that Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the man briefly installed as supreme leader, has been killed... Mojtaba, long viewed as the hardline favorite to inherit power despite no formal public role, was reportedly named successor earlier this week amid chaos and Israeli warnings that any new leader would become a target,.. Circulating accounts, including from sources inside Iran, claim Mojtaba was eliminated today—his tenure lasting mere hours—after strikes hit his location. Social media erupted with claims of confirmation, including posts noting his "career" from appointment...

Everyone is focused on Iran right now and appropriately so, but we're still watching event in Cuba closely. President Trump suggested this week that Cuba's government was going to collapse and that Sec. of State Rubio had been talking to people there about a future deal. However, the president said he wanted to remain focused on Iran for a couple more weeks.“We want to finish this one first,” Trump said Thursday, referring to the current attack on Iran. It “will be just a question of time” before Cuba’s government falls, and “you and a lot of unbelievable people are going...

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has offered a striking explanation for why the United States attacked Iran: Washington, he said, “knew that there was going to be an Israeli action,” anticipated that Iran would retaliate against U.S. forces, and therefore hit first to reduce American casualties. The formulation is not only politically convenient; it is conceptually confused. It implies that the United States acted because Israel was going to act—yet also insists that the operation “needed to happen,” as Rubio put it, regardless. That is, the argument simultaneously portrays America as reluctantly reacting to an ally and decisively pursuing...