Free Republic

The Trump administration will allow an Iranian delegation to attend the United Nations General Assembly next week, albeit with some restrictions, a State Department spokesperson said Thursday. The decision to grant Iranian top officials visas to travel to New York City for the annual meeting of global leaders comes seven months into the U.S. war with Iran. “Consistent with our host country obligations, the core delegation from the Iranian regime will be able to attend U.N. General Assembly High Level Week,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “The delegation will be under travel restrictions and will face prohibitions on the...

Footage verified by the BBC shows the wreckage of a Saudi F-15 fighter jet which the Iran-backed Houthi group says it shot down over Yemen. BBC Verify was able to pinpoint the crash site to an isolated location in the hills west of the Yemeni city of Marib. The long-running conflict between a Saudi-led military coalition and the Houthis has escalated in the last week after the armed group launched an offensive against pro-government forces. This led to the Houthis seizing key territory near the south-west coast, close to vital international shipping channels in the Bab al-Mandab strait. In one...

An Italian Air Force F-2000 Eurofighter was hit during overnight attacks on King Fahd Air Base at Taif, Saudi Arabia, where Italy has deployed a Task Force Air supporting regional air defence and surveillance. No Italian personnel were involved, but Defence Minister Guido Crosetto has ordered a further assessment of the situation and of the possible operational options. The incident is significant because Taif hosts a relatively small but capable Italian air component. The deployment includes four F-2000A Eurofighters and an E-550A CAEW, alongside C-130J/KC-130J transport capabilities. The Eurofighters provide the fighter component, while the CAEW contributes airborne early warning,...

The Trump administration is reportedly considering business deals with Russia before the war in Ukraine ends, marking a potential shift from Washington’s previous position that economic ties with Moscow should follow a peace agreement. The administration is weighing whether to conclude separate economic agreements with Moscow even without a broader settlement of the war, according to two people familiar with the talks cited by The New York Times. A US official told the newspaper that such deals could move forward because they would “show that the United States is serious about a reset relationship with Russia.” The administration also wants...

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the era of “unconditional” ties between the US and Europe built since World War II are over, at least for now, the latest pronouncement of a breakdown in relations under US President Donald Trump’s presidency. “This era of unconditional transatlantic friendship is probably over for the foreseeable future,” Merz told party members in Berlin on Sept 17. “On the other side of the Atlantic, we are seeing a change in political attitudes, a change in the assessment of the transatlantic alliance, which we might not have thought possible.” Merz, giving a stump speech at his...

North Korea has been found to be dispatching workers to a drone factory in Russia to produce military drones for the country. The Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT), comprising 11 countries including South Korea, the United States, and Japan, released a report today (September 16) titled "DPRK Sanctions Evasion and Violations of UN Security Council Resolutions: Overseas Labor." The MSMT was launched to fill the gap in monitoring sanctions against North Korea following the dissolution of the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee on North Korea Panel of Experts in 2024, and this marks its third report. According to the report,...

U.S. Coast Guard and FBI are probing cyber incidents impacting foreign-flagged ships en route to the U.S., raising concerns about maritime cybersecurity amidst geopolitical tensions. On September 17, U.S. authorities confirmed that the Coast Guard and FBI conducted investigations aboard two foreign-flagged vessels headed for the United States, indicating compromised computer networks. This unusual operation took place on August 21 and August 24, amidst growing concerns over cyber vulnerabilities in the maritime sector. The Incident The joint Coast Guard and FBI operation was prompted by signs of cyber breaches on the vessels, with the Coast Guard confirming involvement of “foreign...

It’s easy to see why Abdul El-Sayed wants to separate himself from left-wing streamer Hasan Piker. In an interview with Axios, Piker said that he believes the Middle East would be more stable if Iran had a nuclear weapon. .@AlexThomp: "Do you think the Middle East would be more stable if Iran had a nuclear weapon?"Hasan Piker: "I believe yes."(the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism) pic.twitter.com/S8uaLJEBMC— Sarah Gallagher (@sgallz_) September 17, 2026Piker said that America conducts more terror than Al-Qaeda. "You once said that America is the top dog in terrorism," Axios' Alex Thompson said. "Do you think America...

Two days ago, the global media rushed to declare that the Iranians had outplayed Donald Trump and his blockade of Iran in the Strait of Hormuz. The IRGC's proxies in Yemen seized strategic turf in the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, damaging Saudi Arabia's pipeline and sending oil prices higher. The Telegraph reported that the IRGC was "hitting [Trump] where it hurts," while insisting that the Red Sea action effectively countered – or at least paralleled – the US Navy's total blockade of Iranian sea traffic:Iran's leaders were never going to passively submit to slow strangulation. Facing Donald Trump's blockade of their ports...

A small village in Oxford has voted to secede from the UK in protest of Government plans to house more than 1,000 asylum seekers at a disused military site nearby. Residents in Piddington cast their ballots in a symbolic independence referendum held by Piddington Parish Council on Tuesday (September 15) after the Government announced plans to house up to 1,256 (Illegal Immigrant) male asylum seekers at an MoD (Ministry of Defense) site between Piddington and Upper and Lower Arncott. The result of the vote was announced on Wednesday morning, with locals voting overwhelmingly in favour. Susannah Parden, vice chair of...

"The new Russian strategy, and ...specifically jet powered drones, are leading to much greater losses on the Ukrainian side. My Ukrainian partners inform me that lately, the monthly death toll has reached 27000... With this trend, winter in Ukraine could indeed turn out to be catastrophic."

The war with Iran revealed just how much influence the world’s biggest oil importer has over prices and other countries’ supplies of jet fuel, gasoline and diesel. One of the most important lessons from the war with Iran is one that few saw coming. The conflict has made clear that China, which has long been highly vulnerable to oil supply shocks, has managed to transform that weakness into a surprising source of geopolitical power. The country made that big shift by stockpiling huge amounts of oil, building extra oil refining capacity and investing in coal and other alternatives. And in...

In early March, U.S. President Donald Trump said that the United States had already “won” the war against Iran but still had to “finish the job.” Months later, as fighting escalates across the region and diplomacy is stalled, the “job” remains unfinished with no end in sight. Trump on Wednesday said that “hopefully we are toward the end of the war” and suggested that Iran wants to make a deal. But that optimism is belied by what’s happening on the ground—and there’s little evidence that Tehran is eager for an agreement. The United States has had military successes in the...

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is scheduled to address the annual gathering of world leaders on Wednesday. The Trump administration has agreed to let Iran’s leaders attend next week’s high-level United Nations meetings in New York, even as the two countries remain at war. “Consistent with our host country obligations, the core delegation from the Iranian regime will be able to attend UN General Assembly High Level Week,” the State Department said in a statement. The granting of travel documents to the Iranian delegation means that its members will be able to attend the United Nations General Assembly, which begins Tuesday....

Coalition wins 54 seats in survey, opposition Zionist bloc just 52, but neither side has clear path to coalition; Herzog says he’ll do everything he can to prevent a second round of voting. In a turnaround, a new poll projects that parties supporting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would make up the largest bloc in the Knesset if elections were held today.The Channel 13 survey was the first among the major news networks to indicate a result of this sort since the start of the election campaign. At the same time, Netanyahu did not have a clear path to a Knesset...

The White House came out swinging against a United Nations-sponsored investigation that found “reasonable grounds” to conclude the US committed war crimes in Iran and should pay “full reparations to victims.”“The UN Human Rights Council has accomplished nothing for human rights while spouting unserious nonsense for decades,” said White House principal deputy press secretary Anna Kelly. “The only party in this conflict that has committed war crimes is the Iranian regime, which has murdered thousands of its own people, killed Americans overseas, executed acts of terrorism in the Strait of Hormuz, and launched indiscriminate attacks against its neighbors in the...

Swedish pop star Zara Larsdotter lashed out at the White House this week, calling officials “FOXTROT losers” after the administration used her song “Midnight Sun” in a TikTok video showing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detaining and restraining a group of men. The clip, posted to the White House’s official TikTok account, carried the caption “Never ending deportations” — an apparent play on the song’s lyric “never ending midnight sun” — and showed roughly a dozen men in handcuffs and leg restraints. Ms. Larsdotter responded in her own TikTok video, saying the footage left her “really sad” and accusing...

The Iran war could reshape the midterms as Democrats, Iran’s regime, dissidents, and Kurdish rebels weigh the political and military stakes of the next 50 days. Many narratives swirl around the U.S. war with Iran as the November 3 midterm elections loom. The Left is giddy with confidence that Democrats may take control of Congress. It is therefore planning a circus of impeachments, lawfare, and investigations to neuter the last two years of the Trump administration. High gas prices and the current unpopularity of the Iran conflict, coupled with the historical reality that the president’s party has lost seats in...

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has suggested that churches and family members of refugees could sponsor and fund people's relocations, as he calls for an end to federal welfare benefits for refugees, some of whom remain on benefits long-term.Paul appeared on Fox News’ “The Will Cain Show” Tuesday to discuss separate lawsuits filed by major American cities and 22 states over a pending rule that seeks to prevent immigrants who would be dependent on government assistance from entering the U.S. “We actually have laws on the books that [say] if you come here illegally, you’re not supposed to be eligible for...

The government announced a major tax reform at the Canada Investment Summit that will allow businesses to write off investments. The productivity mega-deduction will allow companies to expense the total cost of new investments across a number of sectors, including machinery, equipment, clean energy, zero-emission vehicles and more. "Our goal is simple — to make Canada the most attractive place in the G7 to invest," Prime Minister Mark Carney said at the summit. The program is an expansion of the government's earlier productivity super-deduction outlined in last year's budget, which initially extended to a limited selection of investments in things...