Free Republic

American forces destroyed five Iranian oil tankers near Kharg Island and Jask on Tuesday as the US added military might to its economic squeeze of the Islamic Republic. US Central Command said in a statement that it carried out the strikes that downed five Iranian crude oil carriers in response to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) targeting of an American warship with ballistic missiles in the last two days. That US warship evaded the Iranian attacks and no American personnel were harmed, per CENTCOM. But the IRGC lost its crude oil carriers “M/T Kaviz, M/T Charminar, M/T Horizon 1,...

US special forces spent four months conducting a secret mine-clearing mission in the Strait of Hormuz in an attempt to open up the waterway, the Financial Times reported Sunday. Iran has said it placed mines in international and Omani waters following the outbreak of the war. The International Maritime Organization estimated in June that roughly 80 mines had been deployed along important shipping routes. The covert operation was carried out amid ongoing exchanges of strikes between the US and Iran in and around the Strait, according to people familiar with the mission. Navy SEAL divers worked with unmanned vessels, robots,...

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...

President Trump called the US-Iran conflict "small potatoes," comparing the six-month long conflict to the Vietnam War. The commander-in-chief pushed back at a reporter who criticized his downplaying of the Iran war, telling her she "wouldn't be standing here very long" because the Islamic Republic would've used a nuclear weapon.

In the run-up to the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 jihad attacks, and on the day itself, the establishment media is going to inundate us with feature stories about “Islamophobia.” Here’s one: NPR on Tuesday ran an interview with Rozina Ali, who writes for the New York Times and has just published a new book of victimhood propaganda, Seasons of Fury: Four Families and the Rise of Islamophobia in America. Hawking the book and Ali’s appearance, NPR tells us: After the Sept. 11 attacks, assaults against Muslims in the U.S. surged. At the same time the U.S. government launched a...

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...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Thursday that the final major IRGC-Hezbollah facility in southern Lebanon had been cleared, with all the occupants killed, captured, or moving at a very high speed out of the area. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Thursday night that the Israeli army has cleared the strategic Ali Taher ridge in southern Lebanon, which he said Hezbollah had developed as an extension of the Beaufort (al-Shakif) position. According to Netanyahu, the ridge was used to threaten the northern Israeli settlements of Kiryat Shmona and Metula and was positioned as part of Hezbollah’s plans to potentially...

A disgraced Pro-Iran professor is vowing to go after the anti-regime activist who exposed her “with an army,” landing her under FBI investigation, The Post has learned. Former University of Arkansas professor Shirin Saiedi blames the end of her career in the US on Lawdan Bazargan, whose Alliance Against Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists (AAIRIA) helped expose alleged plagiarism in her academic work and her support for the Iranian regime. “Lawdan Bazargan, you are absolutely finished,” Saeidi says in a Persian-language post on X last month, verified as accurate by The Post. “I am coming after you with an army…...

The US recognises Britain's administration of the Falkland Islands but remains neutral over the competing sovereignty claims. US President Donald Trump has suggested Washington may not support the United Kingdom in the event of a future conflict with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. Speaking to GB News, as reported by the BBC, Trump criticised Britain over its response to the US war with Iran, saying the country had "not been there to help me". He later acknowledged that the US military had not required British assistance. Trump's comments come as Argentine President Javier Milei renews his country's longstanding claim to...

The program, codenamed C430L, began in 2023 and was arranged by Russia's state arms exporter, Rosoboronexport, in coordination with the US-sanctioned NPO Mashinostroyenia.

The West needs to take note of a growing threat that could in the long term prove to be equal to or worse than the threat of the Islamic Republic of Iran. “Pakistan Asks Muslim Nations To Join ‘Islamic NATO,’” NDTV, August 10, 2026:Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif has called for Islamic nations to set aside their differences and join Islamabad’s defence agreement with Saudi Arabia and Turkey to form a military alliance along the lines of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Talking to Geo News, Asif said the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement shouldn’t be an ‘exclusive club’ and...

The elderly grimace, hobbling on crutches, and wide-eyed children stare, cradling chickens carried from homes they were forced to leave behind. "It feels good to be in my own country," 35-year-old Nazia says, just minutes after she crosses from Pakistan, where she was born, into Afghanistan. The Torkham crossing, known as "Zero Point", is where one hard life ends and another begins. "But I've never been to Afghanistan before and many people here don't even have enough bread to eat," Nazia sighs as she heads, two of her children in tow, toward registration counters festooned with white and black Taliban...

US forces have reportedly begun launching military strikes in Iran this evening (Tuesday). According to the initial reports, the attacks were conducted on Qeshm Island and in Chabahar, Iran; explosions were heard in both areas. A senior US official said: “We struck sites in the Bandar Abbas area." All of the targets attacked are in the Strait of Hormuz area. The US Central Command issued a statement saying, "Today at 12:00 PM Eastern Time, US forces began attacking Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targets in Iran. The attacks come after recent attempted attacks by the Revolutionary Guard Corps against commercial ships...

The U.S. military hit targets in Iran on Tuesday after it said Tehran tried to attack commercial ships and American forces in the Middle East, as hostilities flare once again in an intermittent war that has lasted more than six months. The U.S. strikes, and others on Sunday, abruptly ended a month without military action and threatens to fully reprise a conflict that has spiked global oil prices and posed political problems for Republicans in November’s midterm congressional elections. The renewed fighting comes after President Donald Trump had appeared to pivot toward trying to bend Iran to his will through...

Amajor Tehran theater production has dropped a prominent actor after his support for Palestine triggered fierce backlash, exposing a rare reversal where a stance strongly backed by the Islamic Republic appears to have become a liability with the public. Navid Mohammadzadeh, one of Iran’s most prominent film and theater actors, was removed Monday from the cast of the theater-orchestral production “Arash,” according to a statement from the production team. The producers cited “multiple controversies,” unspecified personal problems and, unusually, “the lack of audience interest in him” as reasons for the decision, saying a replacement would be announced soon. The wording...

Live (now not) updates on Iran

Greece is set to sign a 3.1 billion euro defence agreement with Israel in Tel Aviv, marking the largest single defence export deal in Israeli history and equipping Athens with its first fully integrated, multi-layered air defence system. A Greek delegation will formalise the contract with the Israeli Defence Ministry, concluding three years of negotiations. The systems, known collectively in Greece as Achilles’ Shield, will be delivered in stages and are scheduled to reach full operational readiness within 35 months. Most of the funding will flow to Rafael Advanced Defence Systems for David’s Sling batteries capable of intercepting heavy rockets...

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...

The US military on Sunday struck Iran’s Larak Island, where forces were observed preparing to launch rockets with mines into the Strait of Hormuz, according to a US official, marking the first US strikes in over a month. US forces struck two Iranian launchers on the island, the official said. Residents reported hearing an explosion near Larak Island on Sunday, according to Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency. Larak Island is near the strategic Strait of Hormuz, a key global shipping route that has remained at the center of regional tensions and diplomatic efforts. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps vowed retaliation...

On September 13, 1985, Saudi oil minister Ahmed Zaki Yamani announced that his country would stop propping up the price of crude. Prices collapsed, and the Soviet Union lost roughly $20 billion a year in hard currency—“money without which the country simply could not survive,” in the estimate of Yegor Gaidar, later Russia’s acting prime minister. Gaidar dated the collapse of the Soviet Union to that announcement. Tehran is now in a weaker position than Moscow was in that autumn. The Islamic Republic is exporting almost no oil, its currency has lost nearly a third of its value since March,...