Free Republic

Dramatic recent advances by the Iran-backed Houthis, including the seizure of a strategically important island in the Red Sea, have dealt another blow to a region reeling from the US war with Iran and exacerbated an already severe global energy crisis. But neither the US nor its key ally Saudi Arabia has a clear plan to beat back the group, multiple sources told CNN, leading many in the region to ask where the counteroffensive will come from.Although US officials acknowledge the Yemeni rebel group is advancing with the goal of ultimately asserting control over the critical Bab al Mandeb Strait,...

Administration prepares sweeping sanctions that would cut the court off from much of the global financial system The Trump administration is preparing to impose sweeping sanctions on the International Criminal Court, according to officials, a sharp escalation in Washington’s efforts to dismantle the institution after it issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.The sanctions would forbid most transactions with the ICC after a grace period of six to seven months, according to documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal and U.S. officials. That could potentially cripple the court by prohibiting it from conducting transactions in U.S. dollars,...

Defying Iran and heading through the Strait of Hormuz is a gamble. But like all the best gambles, it is a lucrative one, so crews are inclined to fancy their odds. To counter the high insurance costs for buyers, countries such as Iraq and Qatar have been offering crude oil at steep discounts. “People just assume one ship in 12 or one ship in 15 is going to get hit by an Iranian drone, but you make enough money on the rest of them,” said Rory Johnston, founder of the market research firm Commodity Context.

The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) continues to greatly exaggerate the extent of Russian advances across the frontline to construct a false narrative of Russian battlefield progress for domestic and international audiences... The Russian MoD claimed on September 19 that Russian forces have seized over 5,300 square kilometers and more than 220 settlements in Ukraine since the start of 2026, including over 670 square kilometers and 27 settlements so far in September 2026. ISW has observed evidence to assess that Russian forces have seized only 147.7 square kilometers and 40 settlements, but have lost a net of 20 settlements in...

Embattled German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has vowed to stay on despite exit polls in two local elections suggesting damaging defeats for his centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party. In the north-eastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the party was projected to only just scrape into parliament, while the AfD was on track to win the most votes. Merz called the result "a disaster" for his party. In Berlin, the ruling CDU was also expected to be beaten by Die Linke (The Left). Merz is under mounting pressure, with poor approval ratings and rumours he could even be replaced mid-term in a so-called...

Iran’s central military command said in a statement on Sunday that it had received information that the United States, with the backing of some regional countries, was preparing to resume military actions against it, state media reported. The statement said that any US attack would trigger sustained strikes on US bases and interests in the region, warning that regional countries supporting US aggression against Iran would be considered parties to the conflict. On Saturday, Al Jazeera cited Iran’s security chief Mohsen Rezaei as saying in an interview that Iran had conveyed to mediators its conditions for re-engaging in negotiations aimed...

Trafalgar Square isn’t some random patch of concrete where London needed something colorful to fill an empty corner. This is one of the most famous historic spaces in Britain. Nelson’s Column towers over the square. Statues of King George IV, Sir Henry Havelock, and Sir Charles James Napier have stood there for generations. Whatever anybody thinks of those men today, they represent actual pieces of British history. And now, into the middle of all that comes Lady in Blue… She’s an overweight black woman in a bright, skin-tight blue dress, striding forward on the Fourth Plinth. The idea is that...

Crooner Ed Sheeran called Israel’s actions in Gaza “unjustifiable” as he wept and broke his silence during his first concert since booting rapper Macklemore from his tour for tirades against the Jewish state. “I’ve never wanted to be an activist musician, but this put me in the middle of an important and passionate argument about freedom of speech and the most complex political issue on the planet,” Sheeran told the Philly crowd of concertgoers Saturday night. Sheeran spoke multiple times about the controversy during Saturday night’s show at Lincoln Financial Field, growing progressively more upset as the night wore on...

This is the first time since Yemen's civil war resumed that strikes have threatened Riyadh.The United States warned on Saturday (Sep 19) that hostilities between Saudi Arabia and Iran-backed Houthis could "escalate rapidly" after a missile attack targeted Riyadh for the first time since the Yemen conflict resumed. US President Donald Trump cut short a weekend at Camp David, a secluded presidential complex in rural Maryland, to return unexpectedly to the White House on Saturday. The White House gave no explanation for the early return, which comes as a new threshold was crossed in the conflict between Saudi Arabia and...

The Houthi militia in Yemen said on Saturday that it had attacked Saudi Arabia’s capital and oil facilities with a barrage of missiles and drones, a significant escalation in the renewed war between the kingdom and the Iranian-backed group. The Saudis intercepted a Houthi missile launched toward Riyadh, the capital, according to Maj. Gen. Turki Al-Maliki, the spokesman for the Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen. He added in a statement that air defenses had fended off assaults on “civilians and civilian infrastructure” in several other cities in the kingdom, including coastal Yanbu, where the Houthis said they attacked oil facilities....

The Iran and Ukraine wars have exposed the world’s reliance on the Middle East and Russia for diesel Persian Gulf states and Russia have invested tens of billions of dollars in refineries over the past decade to grab a bigger share of the global diesel market. Now, war in both regions has sent exports plunging, squeezing supplies of a fuel that powers much of the global economy. Diesel prices are soaring—they eclipsed $6 a gallon in the U.S. for the first time last week and have kept climbing, hitting $6.45 on Friday. The surge has rattled governments and markets around...

Iran has conveyed seven conditions to Washington for the start of any negotiations, Supreme National Security Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei said Saturday, as President Donald Trump weighs whether to resume major attacks on Iran.“The United States, if it wants to extricate itself from the predicament it has created, must accept Iran’s rights and conditions,” Rezaei wrote on X, saying the seven demands had been communicated to Washington.He did not spell out all seven in the post. Earlier Saturday, however, Rezaei told Al Jazeera that Tehran was demanding an end to the war “on all fronts,” the release of frozen Iranian...

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday criticized the US decision to deny Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas a visa for the second year in a row, preventing him from attending next week's UN General Assembly in person. Guterres “deeply regrets" Washington's decision, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. “The Secretary-General is concerned about the impact of this decision on the ability of the State of Palestine to participate fully in the work of the United Nations," Dujarric said in a statement. The State Department announced Wednesday that visa sanctions against Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) members and PA officials would be...

This is a short operational update posted by U.S. Central Command. Hi, I’m Admiral Brad Cooper, Commander of U.S. Central Command, here with a message to all Americans and an operational update on missions in the Middle East. CENTCOM forces have supported more than one billion barrels of crude oil leaving the Gulf. That’s one billion barrels of crude oil out through the Strait of Hormuz in the last couple of months. We’ve reached this significant milestone while assisting over 2,000 commercial ship transits through the Strait by providing coordinated protection. Clearly, momentum is building. Primary transit lanes in the...

Hundreds of thousands of Iranians flooded the streets of Tehran on Friday for a government-organized rally calling on civilians to join the military and prepare to “sacrifice their lives.” > It was the largest demonstration in the country since the United States and Israel attacked Iran in February.

Cuba experienced a total power failure Friday, according to the U.S. Embassy in Havana. The embassy said the failure was due to the "collapse of Cuba’s electrical grid." According to Cuban regime media, the reason for the collapse is under investigation and the timeline to restore power is unknown." "All U.S. citizens in Cuba or planning to travel to Cuba should be aware and plan accordingly. There are reports of cellphone and internet outages," the embassy added, noting that Cuba’s electrical grid is "increasingly unstable," which has led to "multiple" nationwide power outages in the last few months.

Seventy-seven percent of Israelis, including 86% of Jewish Israelis, believe a large-scale terrorist attack modeled on the October 7 Hamas massacre could originate from Judea and Samaria, according to new polling data released by the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA). The number has climbed steadily for over two years, and it now sits alongside a defense establishment warning that the threat is not theoretical. The JCFA survey, conducted September 2-4 among 703 Jewish and Arab Israelis by Dr. Menachem Lazar’s Lazar Research Institute, found that 75% of Jewish Israelis and 67% of all Israelis oppose establishing a...

President Donald Trump on Friday announced an agreement with Greenland and Denmark that gives the U.S. what he described as “permanent control over security, and all other needs” in the Danish island territory.

A drone hit the cooling tower of Russia's Kursk nuclear power plant, near the border with Ukraine, but caused no fire, the UN nuclear watchdog said on Friday, calling for "maximum military restraint to prevent the risk of a nuclear accident". The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) "has been informed that the cooling tower of a reactor unit of the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant in the Russian Federation was hit by a drone early on Thursday". "It was reported that the unit was operating at the time, but its operating mode did not change and there was no fire," the...

China’s spy chief warned that runaway AI capabilities could threaten Communist Party control.President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to begin talks on artificial intelligence safety during Trump’s visit to Beijing in the spring. WASHINGTON — A growing sense of urgency over the risks posed by artificial intelligence is adding pressure on the Trump administration to secure a diplomatic breakthrough with China when Chinese President Xi Jinping travels to the White House for a state visit next week. Expectations for a deal that establishes guardrails on AI are low on both sides, which continue to drive a headlong race...