Free Republic

A senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps general has threatened to close the Straits of Gibraltar to traffic if the US continues to support Israel's crusade to root out the terrorists in Gaza.“They shall soon await the closure of the Mediterranean Sea, [the Strait of] Gibraltar and other waterways,” Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi, a senior member of the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said today.The general did not explain how Iran, which does not border the Mediterranean, intended to make good on its threat.This threat should not come as a shock to anyone after the flaccid US and EU response...

New report says Israel has conducted initial tests and begun to fill Hamas's underground tunnels with water from the Mediterranean Sea. The Israeli military has begun pumping water from the Mediterranean Sea into Hamas' tunnel network, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, quoting US officials familiar with the operations. The move, still in its early stages, is one of several techniques Israel is using in its operation to eliminate the Hamas terror group. A spokesperson for Israel's Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (Likud) declined to comment to WSJ, telling the news outlet that "tunnel operations are classified." The Wall Street Journal...

As tensions heighten in the Middle East amid the escalating Israel-Hamas war, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced late Saturday that the U.S. will redeploy one of its strike groups to the Persian Gulf, as well as send additional air defense systems to the region. Austin also said that he has placed additional U.S. forces on "prepare to deploy orders," but did not detail how many. Austin earlier this week ordered 2,000 troops to be prepared to deploy to the Middle East. The latest decision followed "detailed discussions with President Biden on recent escalations by Iran and its proxy forces across...

The sword, recovered off the coast of Israel, most likely belonged to a knight who fell into the sea or lost the weapon in battle, experts said. Shlomi Katzin attached a GoPro camera to his forehead, slipped on his diving fins and jumped into the waters off the Carmel coast of Israel, eager to go exploring. On the sandy floor of the Mediterranean Sea, he found a sword. Archaeologists would later determine that it was about 900 years old. It weighed four pounds, measured about four feet long and originated from the Third Crusade, experts said. “Oh yes, he was...

A search vessel looking for the remains of victims of the EgyptAir plane that crashed into the Mediterranean in May has recovered all of the mapped bodies from the sea floor, investigators say. The Mauritian-based ship John Lethbridge is now sailing to Alexandria in Egypt. It will later return to the crash site to look for more bodies. ... It said Egyptian and French forensic doctors on board the vessel oversaw the body recovery process. The remains are due to be examined by prosecutors and forensic specialists in Alexandria before going to Cairo for DNA analysis.

<p>Egypt says it has spotted the wreckage of the EgyptAir plane that crashed into the Mediterranean last month, killing all 66 people on board.</p> <p>An investigation committee said in a statement late Wednesday that a vessel "the vessel contracted by the Egyptian government to join the search efforts for the data recorders and the wreckage of the doomed A320; had identified several main locations of the wreckage, accordingly the first images of the wreckage were provided to the investigation committee."</p>

Norway's minister of migration and integration has sparked outrage after floating in the Mediterranean Sea in an orange survival suit to experience being rescued from a refugee's "perspective." Sylvi Listhaug, a Progress Party member known for her hard-line stance on immigration, travelled to the Greek island of Lesbos to familiarise herself with the rescue work carried out by Norwegian vessel Peter Henry von Koss.

Remember “peak oil”? We were solemnly lectured that the world was running out of hydrocarbon energy sources, so we must immediately lower our standard of living and reduce energy consumption. But as with all Malthusian predictions of shortage, that forecast failed to reckon with human ingenuity and the wonder of the price system stimulating new supply. The sky-is-falling faction turned to equally fallacious predictions of global warming as a means to bludgeon others into reducing their standard of living (while the warriors like Robert Kennedy and President Obama keep their private jets). Meanwhile, in the real world, energy supplies, in...

A 12-METRE monolith, hacked out of limestone by stone-age humans some nine thousand years ago, has been found at the bottom of the Mediterranean. The enormous stone totem, now split in two and sitting in the Sicilian Channel between Tunisia and Sicily, was hewed from a rocky outcrop some 300m away when the Mediterranean Sea was still a dry basin. It’s now under 40m of water. The new study, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, says the area was submerged about 9350 years ago (give or take 200 years) when the last Ice Age retreated. Before that time the...

A French crew has begun to repair two undersea cables in the Mediterranean that were severed on Friday, disrupting internet and phone communications. A robot submarine will locate the ends of the cables on the sea bed and bring them to the surface to be re-connected. They were cut somewhere between Sicily and Tunisia, probably by an anchor. Egypt says it has been able to restore most of its communications by re-routing services, but other parts of the Middle East remain badly affected. Experts have warned that it may be days before the fault is fixed and that the knock-on...

The continued threat of economic boycotts targeting Israel hasn’t deterred China from forging ahead with a new freight rail link through Israel. The planned link could provide an alternative to the Suez Canal. The project would connect the 300-plus kilometers between Eilat on the Red Sea and Ashdod Port on the Mediterranean. And it could be the chance for China to gain a foothold in the region. …

Well, well, well, so Obama has embarked on his third war in little more than two years. You've got to admit that "flexibility" is his middle name. Or at least one of his middle names: Barack Barry Hussein "Flexibility" Soetoro Obama, Jr. Those are the names we know so far, but The Donald thinks there might be more. Whodda thunk? Here we are barely into the first week of what started out as a "No-Fly Zone" and it is now turning out to be Air Al Qaida. Ten years ago, AQ had a mere four civilian airplanes to crash into...

The US is sending a special radar-equipped warship to the Mediterranean Sea next week, in the first step to develop a broad anti-ballistic missile system to protect Europe against a potential Iranian nuclear threat, the Pentagon said. The move marks the first of the Obama administration's four-phase plan to put land and sea-based radars and interceptors in several European locations during the next decade. Endorsed by Nato during a summit in Lisbon last year, the missile shield has triggered opposition from Russia and set off lengthy negotiations over the future expanded ability to shoot down ballistic missiles in the region....

Italian navy says it is monitoring a Libyan "naval asset" in the Mediterranean, but is not clear about its intention. The Italian navy has told Al Jazeera it is monitoring a Libyan "naval asset" that has stalled off the coast of Malta. Malta is the closest European Union member to Libya and is located just 340km north of Libyan shores in the Mediterranean Sea. Al Jazeera's Cal Perry, reporting from Malta on Tuesday, said: "We're talking to a very senior source inside the Italian army and what he's telling us basically is that this ship has been spotted off the...

Turkey's National Security Council document, the 2010 “Red Book,” which maps the expected threats to Turkey in the coming years, includes a number of sections that are highly problematic for Israel. The document itself is classified, and therefore there are different versions regarding its content. Nevertheless, according to published information, Israel’s precedent-setting inclusion in the Red Book, and especially the claim that Israel’s policy is undermining the stability of the region, are additional evidence of the difficult state of Israel-Turkey relations. The document does not claim there will be a direct clash between the two countries, but the very fact...

Israel is ready to defend with force the recently discovered natural gas fields off its Mediterranean coast, said Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau (Israel Beiteinu) in an interview with Bloomberg News on Thursday. “We will not hesitate to use our force and strength to protect not only the rule of law but the international maritime law,” Landau was quoted as saying. Landau made his comments in reaction to the declaration of Lebanon's Speaker of Parliament, Nabih Berri, that the part of the gas field lies within Lebanon's territorial waters. He continued, “Whatever we find, they will have something to say. That’s...

The Israeli navy made its first contact with a flotilla carrying hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists and thousands of tons of supplies for Gaza shortly before midnight on Sunday, surprising the boats in international waters, according to activists on one vessel. Israel has vowed not to let the flotilla reach the shores of Gaza, where the Islamic militant group Hamas holds sway, putting the activists and the Israelis on a high-profile public relations collision course. Named the Freedom Flotilla and led by the pro-Palestinian Free Gaza Movement and a Turkish organization, Insani Yardim Vakfi, the convoy of six cargo and passenger...

The Israel Navy has been training to block a Western-organized flotilla of ships from reaching the Gaza Strip over the next few days.Sources did not rule out the prospect that the flotilla would contain military or dual-use components sought by Hamas. Israel's military has determined that the Hamas regime has intensified weapons smuggling efforts to the Gaza Strip. Military sources said Hamas and its Palestinian allies were employing a range of routes to bring weapons, fuel and cash to the Gaza Strip. The sources said Hamas was being hampered by increasing efforts by Egypt and Israel. "Hamas uses all means...

debkafile's military sources report a decision by the Obama administration to boost US military strength in the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf regions in the short term with an extra air and naval strike forces and 6,000 Marine and sea combatants. Carrier Strike Group 10, headed by the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier, sails out of the US Navy base at Norfolk, Virginia Friday, May 21. On arrival, it will raise the number of US carriers off Iranian shores to two. Up until now, President Barack Obama kept just one aircraft carrier stationed off the coast of Iran, the USS...

Turkey and Russia signed 17 agreements on Wednesday to enhance cooperation in energy and other fields, including pacts to build Turkey’s first nuclear power plant and furthering plans for an oil pipeline from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. The pipeline would allow Russia to expand its oil exports from the Black Sea, bypassing the Bosporus, whose shipping lines are already at capacity. The deal follows several rounds of agreements between Russia and Turkey in recent years that have helped Russia maintain its dominance of Eurasian energy routes. On his first official visit to Turkey, the Russian president, Dmitri A....