Free Republic

The United States has offered several million dollars to the captain of the Iranian oil tanker Adrian Darya 1 to steer it to a port in a country that would detain the ship on behalf of the United States, the Financial Times reported, citing emails that the top U.S. envoy for Iran had sent to the vessel’s captain. “With this money you can have any life you wish and be well-off in old age,” the U.S. Special Representative for Iran, Brian Hook, wrote in an email to Adrian Darya’s captain Akhilesh Kumar, FT reports. The email also contained a warning...

New reporting has revealed that last fall Russian officials offered a nuclear power plant to North Korea as part of a secretive proposal. The offer was proposed in exchange for North Korea dismantling its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles with the intention of circumventing the stalled negotiations between Kim Jong Un and the Trump administration, which had reached an impasse. This information was sourced from United States officials who were made privy to the clandestine discussions between Russian and North Korean leaders.

The U.S. needs to acknowledge and understand the religious motivation grounding the aggression of adversaries like the Taliban, ISIS, and Putin against U.S. interests. This is not only because certain kinds of conflict will not be ultimately won with tanks and airplanes alone, but also because a lack of understanding promotes dangerous policy mistakes. The plight of Christians in the Middle East gives but one example: Putin and Assad have maneuvered to become the explicit protectors of Eastern Christianity in situ. Moscow is back as their shield and Orthodoxy’s patron. He didn’t sidle up to the Russian church in recent...

Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani said on Monday that the country will continue to export oil despite fresh U.S. sanctions, which he described as “psychological war doomed to failure.” “We will not yield to this pressure which is part of the psychological war launched against Iran,” he said on state TV. “They have failed to stop our oil exports. We will keep exporting it ... Your regional policies have failed and you blame Iran for that failure from Afghanistan to Yemen and Syria,” he added, to chants of “Death to America!”. Rouhani also said that the U.S. lacked international support for...

In “Hunter Killer,” ordinary alliances are suddenly upended and the United States Navy must do whatever it can to protect the interests of the Russian president. No, it’s not a documentary; it’s a submarine movie. Sent to find an American sub that appears to have sunk in Russian waters, Joe Glass (Gerard Butler), the captain of another American sub, quickly realizes that this was no ordinary sinking. A Russian vessel that plummeted alongside the missing American one was sabotaged, not torpedoed. Above ground, the Russian defense minister (Michael Gor) is staging a coup. He’s taken the Russian president (Alexander Diachenko)...

A Chinese space force in Argentina, Russian control of Venezuelan gas and South American armies equipped with the latest Chinese and Russian hardware. Until recently, it might have sounded like the plot of a geopolitical thriller in a region once considered America’s backyard. But this is what Defense Secretary James N. Mattis faced on his visit this week to several South American nations, where economic and military posturing by Beijing and Moscow has been on the rise for the past decade. Analysts say Chinese loans in recent years have allowed authoritarian leaders to consolidate power in Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua,...

Russia has used a closely guarded communications channel with America's top general to propose the two former Cold War foes cooperate to rebuild Syria and repatriate refugees to the war-torn country, according to a U.S. government memo. The proposal was sent in a July 19 letter by Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the Russian military's General Staff, to U.S. Marine General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Russian plan, which has not been previously reported, has received an icy reception in Washington. The memo said the U.S. policy was only to support such efforts if there...

Despite the “rise and fall of the unipolar concert,” China and Russia’s balancing strategies have backfired: they are not leading to multipolarity, but are actually reinforcing unipolarity. The reason is that China and Russia’s balancing strategies have focused on regional “revisionism,” which has provoked powerful responses in East Asia and Europe to contain them. Russia’s balancing strategy has to a large extent proven to be counter-productive. Instead of preventing the expansion of NATO through a “divide and conquer” strategy, or driving a diplomatic wedge between the United States and Europe, Russian revisionism has united NATO...Perhaps most illustrative of all, a...

Cryptocurrency may be one of the biggest threats to governments, security and the entire financial system that we’ve ever seen. It can help fund terrorism and its anonymity makes it almost impossible to track. Most importantly, it is poised to revolutionize global finance and banking. But our new Enemy No. 1 can’t be fought; it can perhaps be controlled. Banks have figured that out and are bringing crypto currency into the fold. The superpowers—U.S., China and Russia--will have to face the new reality. They love to hate it and hate to love it. Regardless, if they don’t embrace it, they...

As we noted shortly after the Crown Prince’s purge of potential rivals within Saudi Arabia’s sprawling ruling family, while the dozens of arrests were made under the pretext of an "anti-corruption crackdown", Mohammed bin Salman’s ulterior motive was something else entirely: Replenishing the Kingdom’s depleted foreign reserves, which have been hammered for the past three years by low oil prices, with some estimating that the current purge could potentially bring in up to $800 billion in proceeds. And, in the latest confirmation that the crackdown was all about cash, the Financial Times reports today that the Saudi government has offered...

Despite the oil industry being arguably the most vital and influential sector in the world, the average member of the public knows relatively little about its inner workings. Oil prices are possibly the most obvious example of this, with constant discussions over whether they will drop below $40 or if they are set to rise. What many investors are unaware of, however, is that there are over a thousand types of crude oil. This means that Western Canadian Select, currently trading at 37.27, is already below that much-hyped $40 mark, and while Brent oil prices fell nearly 50 cents on...

::Tonight:: Wallace Bruschweiler at the Met Club! - When? Thursday, June 22, 2017! Doors: 6:30pm - Where? The Metropolitan Republican Club – 122 E. 83rd Street, New York, NY 10028 Another day another Attack in Europe...yet again.This time a failed terrorist attack in Brussels. And Now the New York City Council wants to require the NYPD to issue reports on what kinds of spy equipment police use — such as license-plate readers, cellphone trackers and X-ray vans used to peer through walls — as well how the department stores and protects private information collected. Mr. Bruschweiler will be joining us...

Venezuela. Syria. Russia. Iran. Libya. Iraq. Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia. Israel. All of these countries have one thing in common. They're all a part of a global war being waged by the United States. To some, the war is one of nation building and global dominance, to others it's a life or death battle for the greater good. On the global chessboard, there are three major players. The United States, Russia and China. All of the other players are nothing more than pawns. This game has been playing out for decades, but it can only have one winner. To better understand...

The US establishment's geopolitical strategy to reform and neutralize the Middle East has been ongoing since the first Bush Administration. If you thought they would let Donald Trump throw a wrench into their gears, you were wrong. It serves America's national security and global interests to disarm the unfriendly Islamic powers in the Middle East, and the arguments in favour of keeping the status quo intact are convincing. There's also a lot more to it than that, which is why the foreign policies of both Democrats and Republicans have been essentially identical over the past forty years. Under the Obama...

The outgoing U.S. Barack Obama Administration and its supporters embarked on a campaign to traduce and challenge the incoming Administration of Pres. Donald J. Trump in the hope that it would find it difficult to govern effectively. This may be unprecedented in U.S. history, and could, to the degree that it succeeds, have an impact on U.S. strategic capabilities, actions, and alliances going forward. No departing U.S. president had gone to such lengths to use the pulpit of the Presidency to discredit an incoming President or presidential candidate as the lengths to which went Obama with Trump. The result was,...

Just when western oil majors started resuming investments in Iran’s oil and gas after the lifting of the sanctions, the election victory of Donald Trump – who has spoken against the nuclear deal that led to lifting of said sanctions – may make international oil companies rethink their enthusiasm in bidding in Iran’s new oil and gas contract tenders. Last month, Iran invited international E&P companies to start pre-qualifying for bidding under the new petroleum contract models approved in September. But in March of this year, Trump said in a speech addressing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee: “My number-one...

Saudi Arabia Is Buying Up America's Oil Assets Saudi Arabia is quietly amassing quite a portfolio of American energy assets. State-owned Saudi Aramco is already co-owner, with Royal Dutch Shell , of Motiva, the largest U.S. refinery. Under an already signed agreement, in April 2017, Aramco will take full ownership of the most valuable Motiva assets. Now comes news that Motiva is the leading candidate to purchase the Lyondell Basell Refinery in Houston. This would give Saudi Arabia control of two major Texas refineries proving, once again, that American energy independence is impossible. Qatar Petroleum, along with ExxonMobil and...

New Mexico and Texas oil companies and communities say they will warn Saudi Arabia and Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to stop overproduction of oil and lowering prices as a strategy to slow or shut them down, or face import quotas. Independent oil companies with the Panhandle Initiative to Reduce Imports (PIRI) will hold an industry and public rally from 11:30 a.m. – 2 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 27, at the Pecos River Village Convention Center, 711 Muscatel Ave., Carlsbad. Lunch and admission are free. Southwest and Rocky Mountain oil producers say they feel they are under OPEC and...

A cargo of 650,000 barrels of crude left the Libyan port of Hariga yesterday, in the eastern part of the conflict-torn country, sparking what promises to be another phase in the conflict as the Islamic-leaning government in Tripoli vows to block the maneuver. This premature attempt at crude oil exports could have huge implications for international efforts to unite the country under the new Government of National Accord (GNA), which was formed with UN support, because eastern Libya is controlled by a government based in Tobruk, which has not yet recognized the GNA of Fayez Serraj.

Leaked documents purport to show that the Islamic State (ISIS) is cutting the salaries of its foreign fighters as low oil prices and continued air strikes on terrorist-controlled oil targets hit back with a monetary jihad. The documents—which are said to have been leaked by the ISIS ‘treasury department’, or the Bayt Mal al-Muslimeen—state that foreign-fighter salaries in Syria have been reduced 50 percent due to “exceptional circumstances,” including continued air strikes of Syria-based ISIS oil operations and low oil prices.