Free Republic

Ayear after a U.S. military operation rid this world of the Iranian terrorist-general Qasem Soleimani, the same tired voices are repeating the same tired message, even on the eve of their return to power: “The Trump administration is on the brink of war with Iran!” “Trump is a very wounded and very cornered animal in an end-game scenario. He’s got a few weeks left, and we know that he is capable of extremely erratic behavior,” says Professor Danny Postel of Northwestern University. After the events of last Wednesday, it’s hard to argue with Postel’s assessment of the president’s psyche. But...

It is nigh impossible to look away from the chaos in Washington, but U.S.-Iran relations in the waning days of the Trump administration deserve a wary glance. Two U.S. bombers flew a “deterrence mission” in the Gulf region this past Thursday. U.S. Central Command has yet to release a statement on the flight, but an official described the last such mission in December as a means of ensuring “that if the Iranians do think they have a plan that’s executable, that they think twice before executing it, because they do see that we have a robust posture and presence still...

At least 23 members of Iranian and Syrian-regime forces were killed in Israeli air strikes in eastern Syria early Wednesday, and more than 28 militiamen wounded, some seriously, according to a U.K.-based war monitor. The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported that Israel had struck targets in Deir ez-Zor Governorate, quoting a military source as saying that the strike occurred just after 1 a.m. but providing no further details. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported that the area between the city of Deir ez-Zor and the Syria-Iraq border, in the al-Mayadin and al-Bukamal districts, had been hit no...

Iran wasted no time setting a terrible tone for its 2021 foreign policy this week, making it clear that Tehran remains firmly committed to expanding its nuclear program and defeating U.S. sanctions. First, its paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps navy seized a South Korean-flagged chemical tanker sailing the Persian Gulf near the Strait of Hormuz, reportedly for maritime pollution violations, according to Tehran. The tanker and crew are being held in Iran. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards repeatedly have seized ships in international waters off Iran’s coast as a means of taking hostages to use as bargaining leverage in disputes with foreign...

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has abruptly sent the aircraft carrier Nimitz home from the Middle East and Africa over the objections of top military advisers, marking a reversal of a weekslong muscle-flexing strategy aimed at deterring Iran from attacking American troops and diplomats in the Persian Gulf. Officials said on Friday that the acting defense secretary, Christopher C. Miller, had ordered the redeployment of the ship in part as a “de-escalatory” signal to Tehran to avoid stumbling into a crisis in President Trump’s waning days in office. American intelligence reports indicate that Iran and its proxies may be preparing a...

ONE YEAR AGO, in a column headlined "What was so great about the 2010s," I remarked that the first decade of the 21st century, "for all its sorrows, has been the best time to be alive." Despite the media's relentless focus on bad news, I argued, humankind was living in the most fortunate era our species had ever known.Then came 2020.The past 12 months have brought misery, turmoil, and distress on a scale that most Americans couldn't have imagined last New Year's Eve: the emergence of the coronavirus, a torrent of sickness and death, economic and social lockdowns, a tidal...

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel could be open to future cooperation on missile defence with Gulf Arab states that share its concerns about Iran, a senior Israeli official said on Tuesday... ...Jitters about Iran were a driver of a U.S.-brokered pact on Sept. 15 formalising relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain for the first time. Saudi Arabia has encouraged the rapprochement, while holding off on having its own bilateral ties with Israel for now. Prior to those deals, a senior Israeli official had told Reuters there would be no coordination on missile defence with Gulf countries.

Federal prosecutors are expected to unseal new charges against a bomb-maker linked to the 1988 attack on Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, according to a report. Abu Agila Mohammad Masud, a top bomb-maker for the late Libyan dictator Moammar Khadafy, is accused of constructing the explosive that downed the airliner and killed 270 people on board, the Wall Street Journal said. Masud is being held by Libyan authorities.

It was hard to help but notice – and be somewhat sad about – all those happy faces Thursday afternoon when President Trump announced that Morocco had become the fourth Arab country, after Bahrain, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates to formally recognize Israel. These four agreements – all achieved in the last four months – establish Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and leader of his negotiating team on this, as one of the preeminent diplomats of our generation. These accomplishments, along with the president’s withdrawal of U.S. forces from former hot spots around the region, have dramatically remade America’s...

WASHINGTON - President-elect Joe Biden’s promise to end U.S. fossil fuel subsidies worth billions of dollars a year for drillers and miners could be hard to keep due to resistance from lawmakers in a narrowly divided Congress, including from within his own party. The challenge reflects just one of the obstacles that Biden will need to overcome as he seeks to usher in sweeping measures to combat climate change and transform the nation’s economy to net-zero emissions within three decades. Biden has said axing fossil fuel subsidies will generate money to help pay for his broader $2 trillion climate plan....

Joe Biden made clear he wants to put the old gang back together when he announced his prospective national security team this past week including the likes of John Kerry, Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan. They represent the worst instincts and outcomes of the Obama Administration’s foreign policy of promoting endless wars while undermining allies and placating adversaries that the Trump Administration had to clean up. How do I know? I served as the Senior White House Advisor at the U.S. Department of State in the Trump administration, cleaning up the mess that the Obama-Biden administration left behind. While the...

If Israel, as is universally believed and has not been denied, was behind the assassination of Iran's leading nuclear scientist, questions arise:Why would the Israelis kill him? And why would they do it now?The scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, it is conceded, was a leader in Iran's nuclear bomb program, but that program was disbanded in 2003.Under George W. Bush, in 2007, all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies declared with "high confidence" that Iran no longer had a bomb program.Four years later, the same intel agencies affirmed that finding.Since 2015, Iran's nuclear facilities, under the Iran nuclear deal, have been subject to U.N....

Two self-described supporters of the anti-government 'Boogaloo' movement have been arrested and charged with attempting to provide material support to Hamas in a bizarre alleged plot to bomb a county courthouse and assassinate white supremacists and national politicians. Michael Robert Solomon, 30, and Benjamin Ryan Teeter, 22, were arrested on Thursday in Minnesota on federal charges of attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization. The Boogaloo movement is a loosely organized network of anti-government extremists who advocate the violent overthrow of the U.S. government, and predict and hope for an impending civil war, which they refer...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - White House senior adviser Jared Kushner and his team are headed to Saudi Arabia and Qatar this week for talks ... Kushner’s trip comes after the killing on Friday of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in Tehran... Days before the killing, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu travelled to Saudi Arabia and met with bin Salman, an Israeli official said, in what was the first publicly confirmed visit by an Israeli leader. Israeli media said they were joined by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The historic meeting underlined how opposition to Tehran is bringing about a strategic realignment of countries...

How permanent an impact a Joe Biden presidency will have comes down almost entirely to what happens in the state of Georgia on Jan. 5, 2021.There’s no doubt a Joe Biden administration is going to have a massive impact on the United States. How permanent an impact it will have, however, comes down almost entirely to what happens in the state of Georgia on Jan. 5, 2021. Like all modern presidents, President Barack Obama used the power of the executive to his benefit, signing orders that ranged from granting amnesty to illegal immigrants to joining the Paris climate agreement. President...

In threat to Iran, US sends heavy B-52H Stratofortress Bombers to Middle East via Israel FROM TIMES OF ISRAEL: In a highly irregular move, the B-52H Stratofortress planes were seen flying toward Israeli airspace on Saturday en route to the base where they will be stationed, likely in Qatar. The aircraft were spotted on civilian tracking software approaching Israel before they apparently turned off their transponders, rendering them invisible on those applications. It was the third time in the past year and a half that B-52 bombers, which are capable of carrying nuclear weapons and other powerful munitions, have been...

American B-52s, the massive strategic bombers, arrived in the Middle East on Saturday. They are part of the Fifth Bomb Wing at Minot AFB in North Dakota. These veteran, giant aircraft were last deployed in the region in May 2019 and the US Central Command says they are here to “deter aggression and reassure US partners and allies.” The B-52s have been sent to the region as the US appears to be drawing down forces in Iraq. The Pentagon has said that hundreds of troops are leaving Iraq and Afghanistan. As the US seeks to end twenty years of involvement...

The U.S. military deployed B-52 bombers to the Middle East Saturday, just days after the Trump administration announced a partial withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan and Iraq. U.S. Central Command said the U.S. Air Force B-52H “Stratofortress” aircrews conducted the mission on "short notice" to "deter aggression and reassure U.S. partners and allies."“The ability to quickly move forces into, out of and around the theater to seize, retain and exploit the initiative is key to deterring potential aggression," said Lt. Gen. Greg Guillot, 9th Air Force commander."These missions help bomber aircrews gain familiarity with the region’s airspace and command,...

A reprioritization of America’s strategic interests would cement the legacy of the first president in the era of great-power rivalry.n a recent memo advocating a swift U.S. drawdown from Afghanistan, Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller gave shape to the fundamental political stand of the Trump administration—realism and restraint. “We are not a people of perpetual war — it is the antithesis of everything for which we stand and for which our ancestors fought. All wars must end,” the memo read. This comes after a rapid purge in the last couple of weeks, in which President Trump dismissed Defense Secretary Mark...

Former National Security Advisor Gen. H.R. McMaster for the Trump administration said in an interview with Fox News Thursday that President-elect Joe Biden should not rejoin the 2015 Iran nuclear deal upon taking office in on January 20. McMaster said to Fox host Bret Baier that then-Secretary of State John Kerry was wrong and did not consider the "hostile ideology" of the Iranian regime, in addition to its involvement in regional proxy wars and aggression against the United States. "These big payoffs to Iran when the deal was signed, as well as the relief of sanctions ... what did they...