Free Republic

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi on Tuesday claimed that Iran’s ballistic missile attack on Israel was self-defense. In a post on social media site X, Araqchi also said Iran would not attack Israel again, unless Israel “invites further retaliation”. “Earlier this evening, we exercised self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter, targeting solely military and security sites in charge of genocide in Gaza and Lebanon,” claimed the Iranian Foreign Minister. “We did so after exercising tremendous restraint for almost two months, to give space for a ceasefire in Gaza,” he continued. Araqchi then warned, “Our action is concluded unless...

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has said that he prevented a Ukrainian attack on a Russian Navy base last year by declining Kyiv's request to activate internet access in the Black Sea near Moscow-annexed Crimea. Satellite internet service Starlink, operated by Musk-owned company SpaceX, has been deployed in Ukraine since shortly after it was invaded by Russia in February 2022. "There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol. The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor," Musk posted Thursday on X, formerly named Twitter. "If I had agreed...

On Saturday, astronomers discovered a new asteroid, just a few hours before it almost hit us. The asteroid is called 2016 QA2, and it missed the Earth by less than a quarter of the distance to the moon. That puts it about three times as far away from Earth as our farthest satellites. And we never saw it coming. So how did 2016 QA2 sneak up on us like that? For this particular asteroid, the answer seems to be that it has a very peculiar orbit. It's highly elliptical, which means it can usually be found hanging out by either...