Free Republic

President Donald Trump and his aides were confronting dramatically increased tensions with Iran on Thursday after the downing of a US drone near the Persian Gulf. "Iran made a very big mistake!" the President tweeted mid-morning as he and his national security officials huddled to weigh possible responses. The ominous — if vague — message came after Iran's Revolutionary Guard said it had shot down an "intruding American spy drone" after it entered into the country's territory Thursday.

Occupied Jerusalem: Israel's deputy foreign minister said a planned meeting between Switzerland's president and his Iranian counterpart is "pathetic." Hans-Rudolf Merz is to meet Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday ahead of a UN conference on racism in Geneva. Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said the meeting "caught us by surprise." He told Army Radio that Merz's meeting "hurts him and Switzerland more than anything else." Ahmadinejad has suggested the Holocaust never happened and called for Israel to be "wiped off the map." Israel sees Iran's nuclear program as an existential threat. Swiss government officials had no immediate comment. The United...

...The argument for postponement, of course, is that the insurgency in Iraq will make holding elections difficult.... But Iraq's anti-democratic forces already seem to be operating at maximum capacity, and recent coalition operations are reducing their ranks as they've lost safe havens. The last thing these terrorists should see now is that their resort to violence can force postponement of the vote. That could lead to even more violence and another delay, and then another.... The danger is that any significant postponement will shift Shiite sentiment in the direction of more radical voices -- Moqtada al-Sadr's or others'. Moreover, if...