Free Republic

Don't count on the TACO trade this time around.President Donald Trump reignited investors' hopes that there's a simple off-ramp for the US from the conflict in the Middle East, sending stocks surging and oil prices tumbling on Monday.TACO, shorthand for Trump Always Chickens Out, proved to be a reliable way to navigate the president's trade-war threats, but real war is different.Here's why market pros think that Trump's cooler Iran rhetoric on Monday isn't a TACO moment.

Iran has appointed Mohammad-Bagher Zolghadr, a senior former Revolutionary Guards commander, as secretary of its Supreme National Security Council, a deputy to the president said.Mehdi Tabatabaei, a deputy to President Masoud Pezeshkian, said in a post on X that the appointment was approved by the supreme leader and made by the president.Zolghadr has held senior security roles, including deputy interior minister for security affairs and positions within Iran’s armed forces command structure.He replaces Ali Larijani, who was killed earlier in the conflict, prompting the leadership change at one of Iran’s top security bodies.

It’s now crystal clear what President Trump thinks of Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain. Over the weekend, Mr. Trump shared on social media a brutal skit from Britain’s new version of the “Saturday Night Live” show, portraying the prime minister as overly eager to please the president and terrified of him. “Golly,” the actor portraying Mr. Starmer says, “what if Donald shouts at me?” Mr. Trump’s decision to distribute the skit to millions of his followers is the latest presidential disparagement of his British counterpart. In recent weeks, the president has mercilessly mocked Mr. Starmer as cowardly and spineless...

Gulf states are moving closer to direct involvement in the war against Iran as continuous attacks on their territory and energy infrastructure push regional allies of the United States toward a more assertive stance, the Wall Street Journal reported. Officials and sources familiar with the matter cited in the report said that recent steps by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have strengthened US operational capabilities while stopping short of full military participation. According to the report, these measures include allowing expanded access to military bases and targeting Iranian financial networks, signaling a shift as pressure mounts on Gulf...

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth was “the first” person in the Trump administration to push for war with Iran, the president claimed Monday. Trump revealed during a public safety roundtable in Memphis, Tenn. that he had surveyed his top military brass about how he should handle the situation, and Hegseth quickly advocated for military action to stop the theocratic regime from obtaining a nuclear weapon. “I called a lot of our great people. We have great people, and I said, ‘Let’s talk. We got a problem in the Middle East. We have a country known as Iran that, for 47...

It was a regional election palooza in France and Germany this weekend. In France, it was Round Two of the march toward the national presidential elections, with a lame-duck Emmanuel Macron's presidency up for grabs. In Germany, it's waffling and wounded German Chancellor Friedrich Merz's desperate bid to avoid losing more Christian Democrat (CDU) seats in regional parliaments to either Alice Weidel's populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party or, even more inexplicably, a resurgent Green party.In France, Marine Le Pen's National Rally (RN) went into the second round of elections hoping to win major cities' mayoral races, but, much as...

Democrats are furious that President Donald Trump took action against Iran with Operation Epic Fury. But one of the things that you wouldn't hear from them is how his action puts paid to one of their favorite fictions about Trump - the Russia collusion fiction, that Trump is somehow in the pocket of Russia. Well, he's pounding one of their principal allies, which he would not do if he were in Putin's pocket. So once again, the Democrat narrative gets blown up. Trump said he was in talks with an Iranian leader that were productive, and for that reason, he...

Silicon Valley was energized by legal immigrants from all over the world who founded eBay, Google, Nvidia, SpaceX, Stripe, Sun Microsystems, Tesla, Yahoo and a host of others. The Greek-American Elia Kazan’s 1963 film “America America” is based on the Herculean struggle of the director’s uncle to immigrate to the United States. It summed up Americans’ traditional view of immigrants: They had risked everything for the chance to reach America, and once there, became hyperpatriotic in their gratitude for the magnanimity of their new hosts. I grew up in rural California surrounded by hard-working immigrant farm families from Armenia, India,...

President Donald Trump said Monday that the United States will delay planned strikes on Iran’s power plants and broader energy infrastructure for five days, signaling at least a temporary shift away from immediate military escalation and toward a possible diplomatic opening. The move came after Trump said Washington had held productive conversations with Tehran and remained focused on trying to reach a deal. In comments to CNBC’s Joe Kernen, Trump said the U.S. is “very intent on making a deal” with Iran, a notable statement given how quickly the conflict had been moving toward a potentially wider regional energy war....

As Western forces launched strikes against Iran, most expected tensions to rise in the Middle East. Few expected a different kind of shockwave--one rippling through the streets, communities, and polling data of Britain itself. Yet that is exactly what has emerged: not just disagreement, but a deep and widening divide over who the enemy is--and who deserves support.New polling conducted between March 2nd and 13th--during the opening phase of the American-Israeli military operation against Iran--reveals something far more serious than policy disagreement. It suggests that a significant portion of Britain's Muslim population did not simply question the West's actions. They...

Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio Dominguez on Friday sought to convince Canada to prop up the fading Communist regime in Havana, arguing that Canadian companies could lose billions from nullified contracts if the regime falls. De Cossio praised Cuba’s “important trade relations” with Canada and the hefty investments Canadian companies have made in Cuba. “Despite the fact that we do not have a coincidence in all the political and international positions, we have always known how to solve our problems, our differences, and work with them based on dialogue and based on mutual respect,” he said. The...

Socialists from the US and Europe put on a concert in Cuba — just as the country was plunged into third blackout this month Saturday. A convoy of socialists — including streamer Hasan Piker, the daughter of Rep. Ilhan Omar, members of Code Pink and lefty Irish hip-hop group Kneecap — is in Cuba with the goal of supporting Cuba’s oppressive communist regime. But Piker and others have been dogged by criticism for staying in a 5-star hotel in Havana, and Kneecap played a concert in the capital city as the rest of the nation of 11 million people faced...

The United States’ largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, on Monday reached Crete, Greece for repairs after leaving the Middle East due to a fire onboard. Photos from AFP show the aircraft carrier arrived at Souda Bay naval base, where it had last stopped in February for food, fuel and ammunition. The ship was damaged due to a fire in the laundry room on March 12 amid the ongoing U.S.-Israeli war in Iran. With the Ford now in Greece, the U.S. military only has one aircraft carrier in the war against Iran unless Washington sends another such vessel...

Judging by Donald Trump’s outbursts of late, he can’t seem to decide whether reopening the Strait of Hormuz is easy or hard. He also can’t seem to decide whether he needs international allies to help with this urgent task or not. Iran’s blockade on oil shipments exiting the strait—done in response to Trump’s attack—is causing worsening global consequences daily. So it would be useful for Trump to settle these arguments in his own mind already. But Trump’s incoherence on the Strait of Hormuz actually reveals something else, as well: a massive political weakness. .....

Iran has launched missiles at Israel after it ominously warned Donald Trump that it has 'special plans' for him and the US's allies in the Gulf, following the American president's threat to attack the nation's power plants. A source told the state-run Fars News Agency: 'Tonight, special events are planned for Tel Aviv and some regional allies of the US and Israel that will completely remove the hope of negotiations from the minds of the aggressors.' Iran appears to have made good on the threat, firing missiles at Eilat area in southern Israel, as well as the cities of Dimona...

When an Irish Republican Army bomber came within a few feet of assassinating Margaret Thatcher in a hotel room in Brighton, England, in 1984, the terrorist group acknowledged the attempt with an official statement.“Today we were unlucky,” it said in a declaration addressed directly to the British prime minister. “But, remember, we only have to be lucky once. You have to be lucky every time.”Blood-chilling and callous as its language was (the bomb killed five members of the governing Conservative Party), the boast was a brutally accurate meditation on the nature of asymmetric warfare. In conflicts between two sides that...

An Iranian ballistic missile strike on a joint US-UK military base in the Chagos Islands has been condemned as 'reckless' by Britain's defence chiefs. Iran fired two intermediate-range ballistic missiles targeting Diego Garcia in what is thought to be the first strike ever made against the base.

The Catholic right is pro-Israel. America’s online converts are the exception. From Budapest to Santiago, conservative Catholics stand with Israel. The cosplay converts pushing anti-Zionism don’t represent them — and didn’t get their cues from Rome.

On Friday night, Donald Trump announced that America was “very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great military efforts in the Middle East.” He even pinned the announcement to the top of his Truth Social account to make sure everyone realized he meant it. That did little to settle the markets over the weekend, however, so this morning he took to Truth Social again to go further in ALL CAPS: I AM PLEASED TO REPORT THAT THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND THE COUNTRY OF IRAN, HAVE HAD, OVER THE LAST TWO DAYS, VERY GOOD...

On Monday morning, President DonaldTrump posted on Truth Social saying the U.S. and Iran had “very good and productive conversations” about resolving the war in the Middle East. However, before Trump revealed this information publicly, a few accounts on the prediction-market platform Polymarket were making big bets that the war would end as soon as this week. A group of 10 recently opened accounts had bet thousands of dollars on Polymarket’s “US x Iran cease-fire” market, betting that a cease-fire would happen by March 31 or April 15. Together, these accounts had bet around $160,000 on the cease-fire, and stand...