Free Republic

Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Iraq reported drone attacks in their territory Monday amid a lull in US air strikes against Iran, after nearly two weeks of fighting between both sides. The Israel Defense Forces said Monday morning that it shot down two drones over the Jordan border, near the Dead Sea, adding that the drones did not cross into Israeli territory. Their origin was under investigation, the army said. Saudi Arabia’s defense ministry, meanwhile, said it shot down drones aimed at petroleum targets, some in its eastern province and others in the capital Riyadh. It said the drones had...

The Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen targeted Saudi Arabia’s Aramco oil company on Saturday with missiles and drones, marking a significant escalation in the second front of the ongoing Iran conflict. President Trump issued new warnings against Iran this week, threatening to hit one power plant or bridge for every ship they hit in the Strait of Hormuz after Iran attacked another tanker near the coast of Oman on Tuesday. The President has further said that he is weighing a “massive” attack on Iran, which would be “bigger than ever before,” he said. “They haven’t received enough pain yet,” Trump said...

Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused Iran on Wednesday of flying members of its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps into Yemen, saying Tehran’s actions helped ignite a renewed confrontation between Saudi Arabia and the Iran-backed Houthi rebels. "They decided to send direct flights from Tehran into Yemen, carrying IRGC elements and others into the country," Rubio told reporters. "And the Saudis responded to it." Rubio did not identify the flights, specify how many IRGC personnel were allegedly transported or provide evidence supporting the allegation. He made the remarks while attending an annual gathering of Association of Southeast Asian Nations foreign ministers...

Saudi Arabia launched airstrikes on Houthi targets in the Yemeni port city of Hodeida and a nearby island on Friday, after the Iran-backed group announced a maritime blockade and attacked Saudi ships. Saudi authorities later issued emergency alerts for the province of Jizan as the Houthis claimed responsibility for a missile attack on the city of Jizan. Early on Saturday, the Houthis' Ansarollah media said on Telegram that a "Yemeni missile strike" had caused fires in the Saudi city of Jizan.

Riyadh strikes Yemeni airport (Sana’a) after Trump backs military action against Houthis The strike on Monday (13 July) damaged the runway and prevented an Iranian airliner from landing in the Yemeni capital, which is controlled by the Houthis, a pro-Tehran proxy militia... ...Two US officials told Axios that Donald Trump gave Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia his support for the military action... ...The incident breaks a four-year truce between Riyadh and the Shia militia, which followed a decade-long war that killed approximately 377,000 people, according to United Nations estimates, most of which were caused by starvation and...

US-Saudi relations have significantly deteriorated in recent months amid anger in Riyadh over Washington’s decision to launch a war against Iran that has caused massive blowback for the rest of the region, a Middle Eastern intelligence official tells The Times of Israel, confirming a Wall Street Journal report. Saudi Arabia refused to allow the US to use its bases in order to conduct Project Freedom, which was aimed at breaking Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz by escorting stuck ships out of the channel. Saudi bases and airspace were critical to the operation and Riyadh’s refusal to cooperate forced...

Chatham House research fellow Farea al-Muslimi told the leftist outlet New York Times (NYT) that the Houthis could effectively blockade the Bab el-Mandeb with only a few terrorist strikes against vulnerable tankers and cargo ships. “They can just send a signal and only one attack has to happen – and that will send a shock across insurance companies,” he said. “I won’t be surprised now if you have a joint lockdown of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab,” he predicted. The Iran-backed Houthi insurgents of Yemen declared “a complete and total ban on Israeli maritime navigation” through the Red Sea on Monday....

Will they disarm? The Racist, Genocidal Gaza Government (GGG) Regime in Gaza — whose sole raison d’être is the destruction of the Jews [in Israel] and detroying its people along the way. Hamas is not a legitimate “government” but a jihadist terrorist organization rooted in explicit antisemitic hatred and genocidal intent. Its 1988 founding charter openly declares that “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it,” framing the conflict not as territorial but as a religious war to eradicate the non-Arab, non-Muslim “Zionist entity” from the river to the sea. This ideology is inherently racist...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iranian-backed Houthi rebels entered the month-old war in the Middle East on Saturday, claiming two missile launches at Israel. About 2,500 U.S. Marines arrived in the region. And Pakistan’s government said that regional powers plan to meet Sunday to discuss how to end the fighting.

This wasn't exactly unexpected; as Operation Epic Fury continues the systemic destruction of Iran's theocratic regime, one of Iran's proxy terror groups has entered the chat. In Yemen, the Shiite, Iran-backed Houthis are now putting out the same kind of gaseous emissions we're accustomed to hearing from groups like this. Iran is apparently trying to talk them back a little. We'll see how that works out.The Iran-backed Houthi terrorist movement has yet to enter the conflict on Iran's side but in recent days has been ratcheting up its rhetoric in support of Tehran, with its leader, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, declaring...

A former Army Colonel from Florida was sentenced to two years in prison Tuesday for trying to woo a woman he met online by sending her secret classified battle plans. Retired combat vet Kevin Charles Luke, 62, was working as a high-level civilian contractor with “top secret” clearance at US military headquarters in Tampa in October 2024, when he texted a photo of plans for a Middle East attack to his new fling, according to court documents. “Sent to my boss earlier,” he wrote in the text, which included a photo of an email on his work computer at Central...

Iran is stirring the pot, muddying the waters, and somehow has enough IRGC to do that, while being short-handed in Iran. Per Mahyar, once the water is muddy, they can crack down on the uprising in their own boarders, and be very ungentle about it.

Former prime minister Naftali Bennett called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to resign on Monday, accusing him of engaging in the cover-up of the Qatargate affair, which Bennett called “the most serious act of treason in Israeli history.” The statement from Bennett, who is running against Netanyahu in next year’s election, follows new revelations about the scandal. The affair involves allegations that top aides to the prime minister were acting as paid lobbyists for Qatar, where Hamas’s leadership is based, while simultaneously working for Netanyahu. On Sunday, i24 News reported that communication between the suspects showed they had fabricated information,...

President Trump’s meeting with Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) was a success before the Saudi crown prince set foot in the White House. Despite calls for the Saudis to join the Abraham Accords in exchange for selling them F-35 stealth fighters, Trump wisely saw that pressuring the Saudi prince into a deal whose time passed with the successful U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would be harmful to both Israel and the Saudis. But by pocketing what will be the first in a series of large checks for advanced American military equipment, Trump cut directly to the heart of the pact...

“Can I ask a question? How many of you are visiting Israel for the first time? How many have been here before? Wow, two.Well, welcome to all of you. It’s very good to see you here with Foreign Minister Saar and Deputy Minister Sharren Haskel and our Ambassador to Washington, Yechiel. Stand up. Look at this man. Look at this man. Look at him. He, Yechiel, represents the greatest military comeback in recent history.On October 7th, we were attacked with no provocation by the Hamas monsters. They murdered 1,200 of our citizens. They burnt babies alive. They raped and then...

Shortly after October 7, 2023, Israeli forces sorting through the remains of the 1,200 people killed during the deadliest attack on Israel since the 1973 Yom Kippur war recovered drones that Hamas and other Iranian proxies had used to target Israeli civilians. Officials found that the unmanned aerial vehicles contained multiple U.S.-origin electronic components, and further investigation showed that these parts had been procured by Chinese firms then transferred to Iranian front companies, which in turn passed them on to Hamas. The Iranians distributed U.S.-made technology bought by the Chinese to other proxies as well, including the Houthi rebels, who...

Tucker Carlson’s shift from provocative media personality to a figure openly giving platforms to Holocaust revisionism and coded antisemitic tropes shows a disturbing trajectory. His kind of criticisms of Israel, invocation of classic antisemitic cliches (such as Jewish conspiracies and collective guilt), and lack of theological credibility undermine any claim to being a genuine Christian defender of Judeo-Christian values. Most Christians support Israel, and many conservative thinkers have long resisted Carlson’s frameworks of victim-blaming, replacement theory, and false equivalencies. His recent actions show how hidden antisemitism can suddenly reveal itself -- and with influential amplifiers. [SNIP] On October 13, 2025,...

Late night comedy’s all-out effort to drag Zohran Mamdani across the finish line in New York City’s upcoming mayoral election continued on Monday on Comedy Central with its most direct bit of campaigning. The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart welcomed Mamdani to tell him how much “I love hearing” about his campaign and to claim that he has been surprised establishment Democrats have not fallen in line behind him. Stewart insisted that he is not “blowing smoke,” but he clearly was, “And what I love hearing about this is, one of the things that has been so frustrating in our politics...

This may offer some insight into why the UK government is inviting in so many Muslims, and doing everything it can to appease and accommodate them, even to the extent of letting Muslim rape gangs run wild for years, with British authorities too afraid of being called “racist” and “Islamophobic” to do anything about: key members of the British political elite, including Prince Charles, don’t find the Islamic supremacist world view, particularly in its hatred of and paranoia toward Jews, all that different from its own.“Prince Charles blames ‘foreign Jews’ for Middle East turmoil in 1986 letter,” by Chantal Da...

Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF), a German public-service television broadcaster, published a clarification on Monday regarding claims that the IDF struck an employee of a Palestinian Arab production company that worked in collaboration with the network A week ago, ZDF reported that an employee of the Arab company and the son of another employee were killed as a result of an IDF strike on Deir al-Balah in the Gaza Strip. The network wrote in a statement that it reached out to the IDF to demand answers regarding the circumstances of the deaths, and that the IDF provided unequivocal proof that the...