Free Republic

Ever since the start of the Iran war, the Democrats and their media allies have been rooting against America and President Trump. This was particularly true regarding the Strait of Hormuz, a major global economic shipping channel through which much of the world's oil (and other commerce) flows. Late last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio laid out what the Strait, and its control, means for not just the United States, but the world, saying that allowing Iran — especially a nuclear Iran — to control the Strait would allow the Islamic nation to control energy for countless nations. But...

Sal covers the reports of 8 marines wounded in an attack on a "non-US Navy" ship. W*T*H: Did the U.S. Military Turn a Civilian Freighter into an Armed Escort?

Everyone is watching the wrong thing this morning. The headline is that President Trump rejected Iran’s proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend. Oil jumped. Brent is back above $106. The pundits are calling it another setback for peace. They’re missing what actually happened. Iran offered to reopen the Strait within seven days if the U.S. lifted its naval blockade, released frozen assets, and eased sanctions. Six months ago, that offer would have been taken seriously. Hormuz was the single most valuable card Tehran held. Twenty percent of the world’s oil ran through it, and Iran could...

Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has moved back toward pre-war levels ... [Iranian] Oil exports have also collapsed ... Inflation is nearing 70%, food prices have more than doubled, and unemployment is above 9% ... youth unemployment at 20.1%

Eight US Marines were injured in an Iranian attack on a ship in the Strait of Hormuz on September 14, NBC reported Sunday evening, citing three US sources. The Marines were not seriously injured by the Iranian cruise missile hit on the vessel, but they sustained smoke inhalation and showed symptoms of concussions, including headaches, according to the report. The Marines were not on a US Navy ship, but the officials did not share what type of ship it was. All eight service members returned to duty soon after the attack.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has asked for another ceasefire, and President Donald Trump has said no. While Trump has actively sought ceasefires in the past, this time he had no patience for the Iranian demands, and that’s all to the good, as nothing good could possibly come from giving the Islamic Republic more time to regroup and strengthen its forces. The New York Post reported Friday that Trump has “rejected a seven-day cease-fire proposed by Iran and expects to resume bombing the country after the midterm elections.” Trump apparently doesn’t think that the conflict with Iran will cost the...

UNITED NATIONS, Sept 22 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that Washington and Tehran were moving toward a settlement, while a senior Iranian official said Tehran could reopen the Strait of Hormuz within days if the US eased military pressure and lifted its blockade on Iranian ports.Trump's remarks came just hours after ‌he repeated a threat at the UN General Assembly to annihilate Iran if it failed to strike a deal.Speaking after a meeting with British Prime Minister Andy Burnham at the United Nations ‌in New York, Trump said: "They want to talk to us. They have been...

A senior Iranian official told Reuters on Tuesday that Iran could reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days if the United States reduces military pressure and ends its blockade of Iranian ports. The official said Tehran is seeking a formal indication from Washington that it intends to pursue a diplomatic solution, together with an agreed timetable for moving the process forward. The comments come after Iran's military central command said Sunday that it had received information indicating that the US was preparing to resume military operations with assistance from countries in the region. The Iranian military warned that such...

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.

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...

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...

Saudi Arabia will run out of oil stocks for exports if it doesn't restart its major pipeline to the Red Sea within days, leading to a loss of up to 4% of global supply, Saudi oil buyers and traders said. A further decline in Saudi flows will worsen the global supply crunch, which has already pushed global fuel prices to record highs, spurred inflation around the world and sent U.S. bond yields to the highest levels since the 2008 financial crisis. Since drone attacks forced Saudi Arabia to shut its huge east-west oil pipeline on Friday, Riyadh has not given...

ADEN/DUBAI, Sept 12 - Saudi Arabia has shut down its East-West pipeline after the vital oil conduit came under aerial attack in the widening Middle East war. The world’s largest crude oil exporter temporarily closed the pipeline after a drone attack that both Baghdad and Riyadh said had originated in Iraq, where Iranian-backed militias operate. Iraq dismissed a military commander on Saturday in response to the attack. The 1,200-kilometre (745-mile) pipeline running across the Arabian Peninsula had helped Saudi Arabia to bypass a shipping logjam in the Strait of Hormuz, where tanker traffic has slowed to a trickle due to...

Iran announced Monday it will establish a new “restricted zone” near the Strait of Hormuz within the coming days — as the flailing nation desperately tries to expand its control over the critical chokepoint. The exclusion zone will span from where the US blockade of Iran begins to other areas of the Gulf, Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said on Sunday in an interview with state TV. Rezaei said that any ship that sails into the restricted zone will be placed on a sanctions list. “Any ship that enters this area with the intention of...

Strategic patience for the win? Iran's regime leaders thought they could force the US to buckle by strangling the global economy at the Strait of Hormuz. The US, however, has an actual blue-water navy, and that tends to matter in blockades involving a country entirely reliant on sea trade for its only valuable export economy. As the Wall Street Journal concedes, Donald Trump's Hormuz blockade is a lot less "leaky" than the IRGC's. And as Trump himself pointed out yesterday, the Strait may not matter for very much longer anyway:By squeezing the Strait of Hormuz, both the U.S. and Iran...

The United States military destroyed three Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps crude oil tankers in the Persian Gulf Saturday – after Iran launched ballistic missiles at two US Navy vessels. Footage shows large tankers blown up in flames, as a thick plume of black smoke rise off the sea. A US military aircraft crew can be heard over radio warning an oil tanker near Kharg Island, before unleashing a barrage of missiles that lit the vessel in flames. “I’m preparing to fire. …You have three minutes to clear the crew,” the US is heard in a video filmed aboard a nearby...

If you've looked at gas prices lately you already know the conflict with Iran is still having a big impact on prices at the pump. However, there's a genuine disagreement over how much oil is currently making it through the Strait of Hormuz. This week the Trump administration has claimed that the total amount of oil passing through the strait is approaching pre-war levels. Here's a CNN report from yesterday.The US military escorted 40 commercial vessels carrying 18 million barrels of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, marking a wartime high as Iran and the US exchanged a new round...

WASHINGTON — Oman has quietly rejected Iran’s request to jointly charge service fees on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz, The Post has learned — averting a clash with President Trump, who has threatened to rain down bombs on the US ally. A high-ranking regional official said that Muscat declined to consent to charging fees — even on a voluntary basis — for environmental and security services, contrary to a statement last week from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The terms of a proposed revenue-sharing deal had not been finalized, even by Tehran, a US official told The Post...

U.S. forces attacked two Iranian launchers on Larak Island on Sunday, carrying out the first publicly known American strikes inside Iran since late July, Reuters reported. A U.S. official said Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps personnel appeared to be preparing the launchers to fire rockets carrying sea mines into the Strait of Hormuz. The official said U.S. forces targeted both launchers before they could be used. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said the attack killed and wounded several military personnel and civilians, according to state media. Tehran threatened retaliation. The semi-official Tasnim news agency described the operation as a U.S. drone strike. For...

🚨 Recent satellite imagery suggests that the Department of War has conducted a covert dredging operation to open up a never-before-used shipping corridor through the Omani side of the Strait of Hormuz.The corridor in question is an approximately 1,600-foot-wide waterway with a natural depth of about 93 feet, meaning that only a small amount of dredging would have been necessary to make it safe for VLCCs (Very Large Crude Carriers). Worth noting, ships navigating this corridor remain completely outside the Iranian regime’s line of sight due to the Omani island of Jazirat Musandam and the curvature of the Earth. Follow:...