Free Republic

The U.S.-Iran Memorandum of Understanding was “a declaration of America’s defeat,” Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said on Wednesday. Iran’s armed forces imposed “heavy costs on the United States and the so-called Israeli regime” during the 110-day war, Ghalibaf told a meeting of the Parliamentary Union of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Baku, Azerbaijan, Tehran’s IRNA news agency reported. The Islamic Republic forced Washington to “retreat both on the battlefield and at the negotiating table,” Tehran’s top negotiator claimed. Ghalibaf told attendees that Iran defined the retreat of American forces from the Middle East as a “strategic objective”...

In the first Maternity Clinic of the Vienna General Hospital, one in eight women died after giving birth. They called it childbed fever, marked by days of fever and severe pain, and explained it as miasma, bad air, or God’s will. They called it anything except what it was. Ignaz Semmelweis noticed that doctors who moved between patients and performed autopsies — and walked straight from the corpses to the delivery room — without washing their hands. He introduced mandatory handwashing with chlorinated lime. The death rate collapsed immediately. The medical establishment dismissed him and attacked his methods, his tone,...

The Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, has said that Israeli troops would not withdraw from southern Lebanon, further complicating Iran peace talks as fighting in Lebanon continues to be an obstacle to permanent peace. Speaking on stage in an interview in Tel Aviv, Katz said Israeli troops would remain in south Lebanon – echoing sentiments from the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The US and Iran signed an accord last week extending a fragile ceasefire and setting the stage for 60 days of talks meant to lead to a permanent peace. The first hiccups to the memorandum of understanding (MOU)...

Hours before the latest round of direct talks between Jerusalem and Beirut were slated to kick off in Washington, Israeli leaders vowed to maintain a presence in southern Lebanon, while the slated negotiations were sidelined to a degree by developments in US-Iran talks. Lebanese authorities, meanwhile, sought to separate their negotiations with Israel from the wider regional talks led by the United States, as Beirut continues to try to minimize the influence of the Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Trump administration is trying to maintain the legitimacy of the direct channel it created between Israel and Lebanon after...

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun points the finger at Iran and its Hezbolah but malicious Amanpour pressures him against Israel. 'Amanpour. Interview with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun; Interview with "America, U.S.A." Author Eddie Glaude Jr.; Interview with "This Vast Enterprise" Author Craig Fehrman. Aired 1-2p ET Aired June 05, 2026 - 13:00 ET [...] AMANPOUR: Well, we see this kind of pictures coming out of Gaza, coming out of the occupied West Bank. We hear the Israeli defense authorities and others saying, we are going to turn this part of Lebanon into Gaza. I mean, it's said. That is what they...

0:00: Welcome to the beach of Gaza. This video was taken last week. The genocide seems incredibly horrific and real. And of 0:099 seconds: course, we have some more heartbreaking footage coming out of the femininefested Gaza. People are literally graduating from the universities during this 0:1717: secondshorrific genocide. And of course, we all host parties during a genocide. That's just something very common. 0:2424 seconds: [music] 0:3434 seconds: So heartbreaking. It's so sad. This was actually directed by a Norwegian director. Have a look. 0:4343 seconds: How you doing? This is Sar TV and welcome to another episode of...

According to a new report from the Department of Homeland Security, members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp attempted to smuggle themselves into the United States under the guise of the Iranian World Cup team.the northern border, says Secretary Mullin. Iran reportedly attempted to smuggle members of the IRGC into the US as part of their World Cup team according to US homeland security.— WarMonitor🇺🇦🇬🇧 (@WarMonitor3) June 21, 2026🚨 Iran’s Islamist Terror Regime tried to sneak IRGC-linked operatives into the US as part of the Iranian World Cup delegation, says Homeland Security Secretary @SecMullinDHS.There has also been an influx of...

South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday that President Trump will take military control of the Strait of Hormuz if the U.S.-Iran framework agreement falls apart, escalating the administration's rhetoric on the same morning Vice President JD Vance landed in Switzerland for talks with Iranian negotiators."If this deal fails, Trump is going to take the strait over by force," Graham said on CBS's Face the Nation. "The United States will control the strait. We will charge a fee for those who go through."The comments came hours after Trump floated the same idea on Truth Social, saying that if the...

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the head of Iran’s negotiating team, called on the United States and President Donald Trump to tone down what he described as hostile rhetoric toward the regime in Tehran. “The United States should be cautious in its statements. Our forces are ready to respond," ...

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his so-called “Hamas slate’’ of local congressional candidates were interviewed last week by a terror-group sympathizer in a get-out-the-vote effort for Tuesday’s primary election. Accused hater Bartley Blakeley — who has several hundred thousand online followers across various platforms — posted her chats on Instagram with the far-left mayor and three House candidates he has endorsed: Brad Lander, Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier. “I call it the Hamas slate. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of support for the Hamas slate,” said Dov Hikind, a former Brooklyn state assemblyman who is founder of Americans Against Antisemitism. “The...

Iranian officials reportedly abandoned peace talks in the wake of President Donald Trump's threat to 'blow the s*** out of them,' just hours after Vice President JD Vance arrived in Switzerland for negotiations with Tehran. The president threatened Iran to restart his bombing campaigns on the country through profanity filled phone calls and posts on social media while Vance began negotiations. Iranian officials back out of the talks after having filed a formal complaint with Pakistani and Qatari mediators and also refused to pose for photographs, according to the Telegraph. Tehran's Chief negotiator Mohammed Ghalibaf warned that the US should...

US President Donald Trump warned Iran to stop supporting proxies in Lebanon, warning that he could resume strikes on the country should they fail to do so in a Sunday Truth Social post. "Iran must immediately stop their highly paid PROXIES in Lebanon from causing trouble," Trump wrote, implying Hezbollah. "If they don’t, we’ll hit Iran very hard again," he added. Additionally, Trump warned Iran not to close the Strait of Hormuz in an overnight conversation, Fox News reported Sunday. "You close it, and you won't have a country," Trump said he told Iranian officials, according to the Fox News...

MAJDAL ZOUN, Lebanon — Buried beneath a hilltop village in southern Lebanon, just kilometers from the Israeli border, the Hezbollah terror group built an underground drone “airbase” from which it launched Iranian-made unmanned aerial vehicles at Israel. The subterranean facility, guarded by massive steel blast doors, was built in the past decade with direct Iranian assistance, including planning and funding, Israeli military officials told The Times of Israel during an organized media tour of the site last week. Journalists were brought into Lebanon at dusk, so that the visit to the tunnel would take place under the cover of darkness...

The era of total victory died when the communists made inroads into the Democrat party, so Trump must think outside the box. As regular readers know, I’ve been completely off from work for almost three weeks so that I could travel to the Far East to help with my new (and first) grandchild. Helping with a newborn tends to put everything in perspective because that fragile little being’s survival is the single most important thing on the agenda. Paying attention to the news took second place to offering whatever practical help I could. Those of us who saw Iran as...

Tens of thousands of Iranian dissidents gathered Saturday in Paris for a demonstration that was supposed to be filled with historic symbolism: a city synonymous with revolution and resistance hosting a massive call for the oppressive regime in Iran to be toppled. Instead, French authorities banned the march. The result was a confrontation that transformed the annual gathering of the world’s largest Iranian dissident group into a debate about France and whether the government of President Emmanuel Macron yielded to security fears or pressure from Tehran. Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, one of the central speakers at the rally...

The Islamic Republic of Iran has announced that they have closed the Strait of Hormuz. The reality on the ground shows that ships continue to travel through the waterway unimpeded, with U.S. naval assets in the region confirming that the Strait is completely open.Despite the announced closure of the Strait of Hormuz by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Navy (IRGC-N), vessel traffic appears to be continuing, with several vessels using both the Iranian and U.S. announced traffic separation schemes. pic.twitter.com/05fjVSSaYE— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) June 20, 2026🚨 JUST NOW: Iran caught LYING that they "closed" the Strait of Hormuz againCENTCOM: "Commercial ship...

US Vice President JD Vance pushes back on what he calls an Israeli “freakout” over the recently signed US-Iranian memorandum of understanding in an interview with The New York Times, suggesting Israel relies too much on military force to address its problems, that it should give more “credit” to the US as an ally, and that concerns that the agreement emboldens Iran or its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, are misplaced. “I find this whole freakout in Israel a little bit odd because I think that it comes from a place of mistrust, and I think that America has earned the trust...

The memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran leaves untouched key military capabilities that President Donald Trump cited when launching the conflict Feb. 28, raising concerns among Gulf Arab allies and security analysts about Tehran's ability to project power across the Middle East.The MOU signed Wednesday ends hostilities between the U.S. and Iran but imposes no restrictions on Tehran's ballistic missile arsenal, drone stockpiles, or its network of allied militias operating throughout the region, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday."The MOU doesn't address any of Iran's core power-projection capabilities," Hasan Alhasan, a senior fellow at the International Institute...

It would seem that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accomplished what his predecessors could only have dreamed of: U.S. and Israeli fighter jets flying tandem over Tehran, Israeli officers ensconced in U.S. Central Command’s Florida headquarters. Since the days of David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s leaders have sought backing from the world’s preeminent superpower, which they hoped would guarantee their state’s survival into perpetuity. None could have imagined the level of cooperation currently on display. If one were to wake up the Old Man, as Ben-Gurion was known, from his otherworldly slumber in the sands of Sde Boker, he would surely...

Recognizing Iran’s ability to influence Hezbollah in ways that Lebanon can’t, US and Qatar broker truce through Tehran, rather than Beirut, after 47 Lebanese killed in response to killing of 4 troops Israel and Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire on Friday afternoon, a US official said, after another flare-up in southern Lebanon that saw four Israeli soldiers and dozens of Lebanese casualties. The renewed truce appeared as fragile as ever, as it didn’t see Israel pull out of the large buffer zone it established in southern Lebanon — one that Hezbollah has used to justify continued attacks on troops stationed...