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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...

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...

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...

Join me to support Free Republic some posts from this blog are reposted on 'Free Republic' FR can now be supported via Venmo... Newsdump Update: The military government in the African nation of Niger speaking of a mutiny by soldiers overnight... Newsdump Alert: Russia Hits Back After Weeks Of Ukrainian Attacks On Russian Warehouses... Iranian President Urges "That Trump Not Create Turmoil" And "Israel Does Not Cause Insecurity And Aggresson'... Here we are again your host the winner of the Daughters of the American Revolution American History Award. It's right on my high school graduation program. Well historic events to...

On Friday, August 7, 2026, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey signed a defense agreement in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, referred to by many as a “(Sunni) Muslim NATO.” U.S. president Donald Trump praised the agreement without considering the consequences for America or its ally Israel, as well as how Greece and India would react to this deal. In a post shared on social media, Trump said he was “very happy” that the three countries had signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, adding that it showed the Middle East was “coming together” and would allow countries to defend themselves “in a more...

Many of you who read Just the Facts know my 2003 book, Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11. It reached #2 on the New York Times hardcover nonfiction list that fall. Its final chapter, “The Interrogation,” broke the story of what Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah told CIA interrogators shortly after his capture. There’s front-page news today that brought me back to it —and what the coverage is missing. A military judge, Air Force Lt. Col. Michael Schrama, has set a June 5, 2028 trial date for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and three of his Guantánamo Bay...

Iran has been invited to join the Mecca Agreement for Mutual Defense, the new security alliance established by Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan earlier this month, Al Mayadeen reported on Saturday, citing a senior Iranian official. The invitation has not yet been officially confirmed by Iran's Foreign Ministry or by any of the three countries that are parties to the agreement. Mehdi Rahimi, head of the Iranian parliament's Khaneh Mellat news agency, told the channel that "Iran has received an invitation to join the Mecca Agreement, and the matter is under review." Rahimi added that countries in the region "are...

US President Donald Trump has sent Congress a proposed agreement with Saudi Arabia on civil nuclear energy while insisting the pact will only be approved if the kingdom normalizes relations with Israel, a US administration official told Reuters on Tuesday. The agreement, which was reached in July and would allow US companies to export civilian nuclear technology to the kingdom, was sent to Congress on Monday, according to the US official, who declined to be identified. The Saudi embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Advertisement It was unclear how Trump expects sending the nuclear...

Saudi Arabia's futuristic megaproject Neom has come to a standstill, as the extraordinary costs of the planned city have collided with financial reality. After sinking more than $50 billion into Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's dreams of a sci-fi metropolis, the kingdom is now spending billions of dollars more to wind down contracts, leaving mammoth-sized partially built structures to gather sand in the desert. WSJ's Eliot Brown analyzes internal documents and satellite images to show how and why the world's largest construction project came to a halt, and what comes next for Neom. Why the World's Largest Megaproject Collapsed...

Violence across two of the world’s most important shipping corridors escalated sharply this week after an attack by Iran-backed Houthi rebels killed six people near the Red Sea and U.S. forces separately fired missiles at a commercial vessel in the Gulf of Oman. The incidents mark another dangerous turn in a conflict that is increasingly threatening global shipping and energy supplies. They also come as oil prices climb and negotiations aimed at restoring normal traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remain stalled. For investors and consumers, the stakes extend well beyond the Middle East. Continued disruption across the Red Sea,...

Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan have signed a joint defence agreement, saying an attack on one of them would be seen as an attack on all three. The pact was announced at a meeting between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in the Saudi city of Mecca. The three countries have been looking to strengthen security ties as the war between the US and Iran has drawn in Saudi Arabia and disrupted maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial oil shipping channel, and the Red Sea. Saudi...

President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu estimated the intense part of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran would last four to six weeks. It is now entering the sixth month without a decisive military victory or a diplomatic breakthrough. Now, as Mr. Trump weighs his next steps and the future of roughly 50,000 U.S. troops across the Middle East, two of Washington's closest regional partners are pressing the president with sharply different visions for how the conflict should proceed. The president received input Wednesday from his partner in this war, Netanyahu, as well as from Saudi Defense Minister Khalid bin...

Egyptian officials have officially confirmed that an Iranian drone strike was responsible for damaging two US energy tankers at the port of Damietta. Following the strike, the United States carried out limited conventional air raids, opting against a broader military escalation despite warnings of a much harsher response. Egyptian authorities officially confirmed Thursday that an explosion damaging two American energy tankers at Damietta Port was caused by an Iranian drone strike. Egyptian officials emphasized that an investigation into the incident remains underway, noting that no group has formally claimed responsibility for the operation. The official confirmation from Cairo follows statements...

The US military says it’s launching strikes on Iranian targets in response to Tehran’s attack on American forces a day earlier. US Central Command said the strikes are “a powerful response to yesterday’s attempted Iranian attack” and that they began Wednesday evening, in a post on social media. It’s a further escalation after a period of calm, with the U.S. saying it had intercepted strikes from Iran a day earlier and carried out separate strikes alongside Saudi Arabia on Tehran-backed militias in neighboring Iraq.

“. . .there is no saving the Left. There is only saving America from them.” — Sasha Stone. The polycrisis of 2026 whirls like a demon-infested storm overcoming this human project of ours like a medieval panorama of the world’s end. Everything is fraught, tilting toward hazard, menace, ruin. Even under a summer sun, the mind sees only darkness everywhere it looks. Apocalypse now, it seems like. You almost can’t blame the doomers, the black pill-ers, lost in their transports of dread. But I tell you, we will get through this. Is it a surprise that the IRGC has a...

Airstrikes in Jordan show Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is willing to risk Trump’s retaliationIran’s surprise missile attack on U.S. forces in Jordan shows Tehran’s military leaders would rather risk ramping up the war than play defense or accept a peace deal that would expose them to greater domestic political pressures.Iran fired ballistic missiles on U.S. troops early Wednesday local time, demonstrating a willingness by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which exerts more power than ever in Tehran, to escalate during a relative lull in the conflict and attempt to seize the initiative after weeks in which Iran has mostly reacted to...

President Donald Trump vowed to hit back hard at Iran after it attacked US bases in Jordan on Wednesday, as the Middle East war reignited and once again drew in the Islamic republic's proxies.The warning came after a short lull in the fighting that had spurred hopes of a return to negotiations appeared to draw to an end, sending oil prices jumping five percent over fears of disruptions to global supplies.On Wednesday, Saudi Arabia and the United States announced strikes on militant bases in Iraq, while US ally Israel accused Iran-backed Hezbollah of a truce violation.- 'War by other means'...

US-Saudi airstrikes targeting the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq killed 20 people, including several Iranian military advisers, according to sources within the Iran-aligned alliance and Iranian media. Two sources within the Popular Mobilization Forces, or PMF, told AFP that five Iranian advisers were among those killed in a strike in the central province of Diyala. AFP journalists reported seeing coffins draped in Iranian flags during funerals organized by the PMF in Baghdad. Iran’s Hamshahri newspaper separately reported that four military advisers from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were killed in the overnight strikes. Iranian authorities had not officially confirmed the...

President Donald Trump raged to Fox News’s Trey Yingst about Tuesday night’s surprise attack by Iran on U.S. troops in Jordan, telling him “we are going to beat the ------- ---- out of them.” Yingst, Fox’s chief foreign correspondent, reported on Trump’s comments while joining Fox & Friends on Wednesday morning and noted that Trump added, “We’ll be hitting them hard.” “Yeah, guys, good morning. President Trump reacting to that Iranian attack on U.S. forces overnight in Jordan. President Trump tells Fox News about Iran: ‘We are going to beat the ------- ---- out of them.’ He went on to...

The U.S. and Saudi militaries launched airstrikes late Tuesday on Iranian-backed groups in Iraq, U.S. Central Command said, after Iran and its proxies allegedly targeted American forces over the last few days. The strikes could pose a challenge to a five-day lull in U.S. attacks on Iran, as President Trump says he wants to give diplomacy a chance. It's unclear when — or whether — strikes on Iran could resume. The U.S. also said Tuesday it prevented an Iranian "surprise attack." The U.S.-Saudi operation was aimed at "terrorist logistics and weapons sites across eastern Iraq," CENTCOM said in a statement...