Victor Davis Hanson shared insights on Newsmax about President Donald Trump’s bold strategy that he claims has significantly weakened Tehran’s influence. Trump’s strategic strikes on key Iranian nuclear sites and his stern warning to Iran about targeting U.S. forces have reportedly cornered the regime. These developments signal a notable shift in the Middle East’s balance of power that once seemed unshakeable.
During his appearance on “Rob Schmitt Tonight,” Hanson remarked on Iran’s muted response, contrasting it with its former reputation as a formidable “terrorist colossus.” He likened Trump’s approach to placing Iran in a pot, turning up the heat, and sealing it with a lid, forcing the regime to confront its failures. Hanson emphasized that Iran now faces the daunting task of justifying its squandering of resources on groups like Hezbollah and Hamas.
Trump’s peace efforts have boxed Iran into a corner, Hanson argued, leaving the regime to stew in its own missteps. He highlighted how Iran’s diminished military and strategic options are a direct result of Trump’s policies. The regime’s previous investments in defense and nuclear projects now seem futile, according to Hanson.
Hanson believes the peace deal has severely restricted Iran’s maneuverability. He described the regime as being left with no choice but to accept its current predicament. The only leverage Iran has left, he stated, is its existence, which is precariously balanced against pressures from the U.S. and Israel.
Israel’s recent strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities have further complicated the situation for Tehran. In response, Iran launched a retaliatory attack, targeting the Al Udeid U.S. Air Base in Qatar. However, this move prompted a swift and decisive reaction from the United States.
President Trump made it clear that any aggression from Iran would be met with additional military action. His administration’s firm stance has served as a deterrent to further escalation. Meanwhile, the announcement of a ceasefire between Israel and Iran offers a temporary pause in hostilities.
The ceasefire, announced shortly after the U.S. strikes, is scheduled to take effect imminently. This development underscores the delicate balance of power in the region. Trump’s administration remains vigilant, ready to act if Iran breaches the agreement.
Hanson’s commentary reflects a broader conservative perspective on the situation, celebrating the perceived successes of Trump’s foreign policy. His views align with those of other conservative commentators who attribute the weakening of Iran’s influence to Trump’s leadership. This narrative is echoed by right-leaning media outlets, which highlight the strategic gains made under Trump’s presidency.
For many conservatives, Trump’s approach is seen as a necessary counterbalance to previous administrations’ perceived leniency towards Iran. The focus is on maintaining a strong U.S. presence in the Middle East to deter threats. This stance is supported by the belief that peace through strength is the most effective strategy.
The current state of affairs presents a complex picture of geopolitical dynamics. With Trump’s policies in place, the hope among conservatives is that stability can be achieved. The ongoing situation will require careful monitoring and strategic foresight.
As the ceasefire takes hold, the world watches to see how Iran will navigate its new reality. The regime’s future actions will be closely scrutinized by both allies and adversaries. For now, the focus remains on maintaining the fragile peace that has been brokered.
The broader implications of these events on global politics are yet to be fully realized. However, the immediate outcome is a testament to the power of decisive leadership. The Trump administration’s handling of the situation continues to be a topic of discussion and analysis.
Observers will continue to assess the impact of these developments on regional stability. The coming weeks and months will be critical in determining the long-term success of the current strategies. The international community remains attentive to the evolving dynamics.
The situation remains fluid, with potential for further changes on the horizon. Experts and policymakers alike are tasked with navigating the complexities of Middle Eastern geopolitics. As always, the goal is to ensure a peaceful and secure future for all involved.
Darnell Thompkins is a Canadian-born American and conservative opinion writer who brings a unique perspective to political and cultural discussions. Passionate about traditional values and individual freedoms, Darnell’s commentary reflects his commitment to fostering meaningful dialogue. When he’s not writing, he enjoys watching hockey and celebrating the sport that connects his Canadian roots with his American journey.
Yesterday, I wrote a column in the Hill discussing how Trump is unlikely to go to Congress in launching an attack on Iran and how he has history on his side in acting unilaterally. The column noted that many Democratic politicians and pundits who were supportive of such unilateral actions by Democratic presidents such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are suddenly opposed to Trump using the same power. It is the Claude Rains School of Constitutional Law where politicians are “shocked, shocked” that Trump is using the authority that they accepted in Democratic predecessors.
Democratic members are calling for impeachment, while others are declaring the attacks unconstitutional. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is particularly shocked that Trump took the action and is calling for a vote under the War Powers Act.
Schumer insisted that “no president should be allowed to unilaterally march this nation into something as consequential as war with erratic threats and no strategy.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has issued a similar statement.
Schumer is the same politician who was silent or supportive in earlier unilateral attacks by Democratic presidents. In 2011, Obama approved a massive military campaign against Libya. I represented a bipartisan group of members of Congress challenging that action. We were unsuccessful, as were such prior challenges.
I have long criticized the abandonment of the clear language of the Constitution on the declaration of wars. Only eleven such declarations have been made in our history. That has not happened since World War II in 1942. Over 125 military campaigns have spanned from Korea to Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. It is not a rule honored solely in the breach.
Democrats were supportive when Clinton launched cruise missile attacks under Operation Infinite Reach on two continents on August 20, 1998. He ordered attacks in locations in Khartoum, Sudan, and Khost Province, Afghanistan.
The War Powers Act has always been controversial and largely ineffectual. Presidents have long asserted the inherent powers to conduct such attacks under their Article II authority as the designated Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. The WPA requires the President to inform Congress within 48 hours in a written notice to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate of the action.
The WPA further bars the use of armed forces in such a conflict for more than 60 days without congressional authorization for use of military force (AUMF) or a declaration of war by the United States. There is a further 30-day withdrawal period.
President Trump reportedly did immediately notify Congress after the attack under the WPA .
Presidents have routinely ignored the WPA when it limited their ability to conduct foreign military operations. In 1999, Clinton ignored the 60-day deadline and continued to bomb forces in Kosovo. His actions were also challenged, but the court in Campbell v. Clinton just shrugged off the violation and said it was a non-justiciable political question.
In responding to the current demands, Trump could look to a curious ally: Hillary Clinton.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pushed for unilateral attacks during the Obama Administration. She dismissed the need to consult, let alone secure authorization, from Congress. In March 2011, Clinton testified that there was no need for such consultation and declared that the Administration would ignore a 60-day limit on unauthorized military actions.
Obama also defied the War Powers resolution on Syria. He actually did ask for congressional authorization to take military action in that country in 2013, but Congress refused to approve it. He did it anyway. Despite Congress expressly denying, ” authorization for the introduction of United States Armed Forces,” both Obama and Trump did precisely that.
Trump was wise to notify Congress. However, what occurs after that is anyone’s guess. The WPA and the AUMF have been paper tigers for decades and most in Congress wanted it that way. Politicians long ago abandoned their responsibilities to declare war. What remains has been little more than political theater.
Even under the WPA, Trump would have 60 days to prosecute this war and another 30 days to draw down forces without congressional approval. The court, in Campbell v. Clinton, noted that even if Clinton violated the WPA by continuing operations after the 60-day period, he was technically in compliance by withdrawing forces before the end of the 90-day period.
Trump could likely prosecute this campaign in 90 days. Indeed, if it goes beyond 90 days, we will likely be facing a potential global war with retaliatory strikes on both sides. In such an environment, it is very unlikely that Congress would withhold support for our ongoing operations.
In the meantime, the calls for impeachment are absurd given the prior actions of presidents in using this very authority. Once again, some Democrats appear intent on applying a different set of rules for impeaching Trump than any of his predecessors. Trump can cite both history and case law in allowing presidents to take such actions. At most, the line over war powers is murky. The Framers wanted impeachments to be based on bright-line rules in establishing high crimes and misdemeanors.
This is all part of the Claude Rains School of Constitutional Law. Members will once again express their shock and disgust in the use of the same authority that they once accepted in prior presidents. Trump has a great number of risks in this action from global military and economic consequences. The War Powers Act is not one of them if history is any measure.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and has both testified and litigated in the area of war powers, including the prior representation of members of Congress. He also testified in both the Clinton and Trump impeachment hearings.
N.B.: A slightly different version of this column ran on Fox.com
BREAKING: Israel’s Strikes Kill Head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, Members of Military’s Top Brass, Senior Nuclear Scientists
By Cristina Laila – The Gateway Pundit – June 12, 2025
Israel says it killed Iran’s military chief, senior nuclear scientists and top military brass Thursday night’s strikes. As reported earlier, Israel bombed Iran’s nuclear sites early Friday morning local time. The US said Israel took unilateral action Iran. “We are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region,” the White House said. The Times of Israel reported: Israel believes the chief of Iran’s military, Mohammad Bagheri, other members of the military’s top brass, and senior nuclear scientists were eliminated in the IDF’s opening strikes on Iran, a defense official says… READ MORE
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, Elon Musk, and President Trump.
Several Boeing 747s have been spotted on radar leaving China for Iran over the last week, according to reports, sparking concerns that the CCP is helping the Middle Eastern nation transport cargo or people out of the country as Israel continues to strike the country’s nuclear facilities.
Starting on June 14th, FlightRadar24 shows that at least five flights traveled from China to Iran, and The Telegraph reported that the “mystery transport planes” had flown westward along northern China before crossing into Kazakhstan, south through Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and then fell off radar as they approached Iran. Additionally, the report indicated that the flights had a final destination of Luxembourg but don’t appear to have ever crossed into European airspace.
Some experts have speculated that these types of planes are typically used for transport and could be evidence of China aiding its longtime ally Iran during the conflict with Israel, although Fox News Digital has not independently confirmed the nature of the flights.
Israel’s air defense targets Iranian missiles in the sky of Tel Aviv in Israel, on June 16, 2025. (Matan Golan/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
“I think it’s important to remember what the relationship is, forty-three percent of China’s oil and gas comes from the Middle East, a large volume of that from Iran,” Robert Greenway, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense, told “The Ingraham Angle” on Wednesday night.
“It likes to buy sanctioned oil below market value, and that fuels the Chinese economy and also its military ambitions, and so, that’s the central relationship. They’ve been relatively quiet – in fact, extremely quiet – about the current conflict and coming to Iran’s assistance. We also know that a large fire in Bandar-Bas port was Chinese solid propellant for missiles that exploded and created a tremendous amount of damage just about a month ago. I think it’s unlikely to see Chinese arms shipments under the circumstances to Iran. It’s more likely that Iran may be removing material or personnel or regime valuables to safe haven in light of the conflict. I think that’s probably the extent to which China is willing to accept the risk associated with the current circumstances.”
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei waves to the crowd during a meeting with officials, Islamic countries’ ambassador to Iran and a group of people in Tehran, Iran (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)
In 2021, Fox News Digital reported that Tehran and Beijing signed a 25-year cooperation deal amidst great fanfare in the Iranian capital. University of Tehran Professor Mohammad Marandi, who is close to the regime, told Fox News that it is about much more than what’s on paper.
“This strategic partnership is important because it allows Iran and China to build a roadmap for long-term relations that will be much more fruitful,” he said. “It’s also a signal being sent to the United States. The more the U.S. tries to isolate Iran and China, the more it causes countries like Iran and China to move more closely to each other.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping listens as Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, not pictured, speaks during their meeting at the Office of the Party Central Committee in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Monday, April 14. (AP/Minh Hoang)
Some have cast doubt on the flights representing a nefarious connection between the two nations, including Atlantic Council fellow Tuvia Gering who posted on X that an aviation expert told him the flights are “nothing to write home about.”
“There are regular cargo flights by the Luxembourg-based freight company from several locations in China to Europe, with a stopover in Turkmenistan (just a few dozen kilometers from the Iranian border),” Gering wrote.
“Some flight tracking websites lose the tracking signal shortly before landing and continue to show a projected route that appears to enter Iranian airspace. The sites clearly indicate that this is an estimated path; checking the aircraft tail numbers shows they take off again from Turkmenistan a few hours later, and reviewing the flight history of these routes shows they always land in Ashgabat and do not continue into Iran. All this is before even considering the obvious logic that a major European cargo company is highly unlikely to be the channel through which China transfers its super-advanced, top-secret strategic weapons to Iran.”
President Trump changed the command of the Greenland base in a strategic move as Russia and China take more interest in the Arctic region. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Tensions between Iran and Israel have escalated significantly in recent days, with the United States contemplating whether it will get directly involved in striking Iran. President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, and he is expected to meet with national security and defense leaders again on Thursday.
“Yes, I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do. I can tell you this that Iran’s got a lot of trouble, and they want to negotiate,” Trump said Wednesday.
“And I said, why didn’t you negotiate with me before all this death and destruction? Why didn’t you go? I said to people, why didn’t you negotiate with me two weeks ago? You could have done fine. You would have had a country. It’s very sad to watch this,” the president added.
Andrew Mark Miller is a reporter at Fox News. Find him on Twitter @andymarkmiller and email tips to AndrewMark.Miller@Fox.com.
President Donald Trump is expected to make a final decision within the next two weeks on whether the United States will enter the Israel-Iran conflict, following a devastating Iranian missile strike Thursday on Soroka Hospital in southern Israel. The attack, which injured more than 70 civilians, marks a turning point in the escalating conflict and raises urgent questions about Iran’s nuclear capabilities and intentions.
Early Thursday morning, a barrage of Iranian missiles struck Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, one of Israel’s largest trauma hospitals. According to Israeli officials, over 70 people were injured. Photos from the scene show thick plumes of smoke rising from the hospital complex.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the attack, calling it a direct strike on civilians and a war crime. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar echoed the sentiment, stating, “Iran has intentionally targeted a civilian medical facility—this is a violation of international law and an act of terror.”
The Iranian regime has not formally acknowledged targeting the hospital, but the strike comes amid intensifying missile exchanges between Tehran and Jerusalem following Israel’s recent strikes on Iranian military sites, including facilities allegedly tied to Iran’s nuclear program.
Trump to Decide Within Two Weeks on U.S. Involvement
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt addressed reporters Thursday afternoon, delivering a direct quote from President Trump:
“Based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks.”
Leavitt reiterated that President Trump remains open to diplomacy but emphasized his commitment to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. “Iran went for 60 days without responding to our outreach,” she said. “On day 61, Israel took action. The president will now determine if the U.S. should follow suit.”
Leavitt also confirmed there have been six rounds of direct and indirect negotiations with Iran since the conflict reignited, but she declined to disclose details of the discussions.
U.S. Intelligence: Iran Weeks Away From Nuclear Weapon
Leavitt warned that Iran is closer than ever to acquiring a nuclear weapon. “Iran has all that it needs to achieve a nuclear weapon. All they need is a decision from the Supreme Leader. It would take just weeks to complete production.”
This estimate is consistent with recent reports from U.S. and Israeli intelligence, which suggest Iran has enriched uranium to near-weapons-grade levels and has the necessary delivery systems in place.
Trump has consistently stated he would not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon, and his current deliberations include potential military action against Iranian enrichment and missile facilities. Reports indicate that bunker-buster bomb options are being reviewed among possible strike packages.
U.S. Evacuates Personnel, Israel Launches Counterstrikes
In response to the hospital attack and other Iranian strikes, the U.S. Embassy in Israel began evacuating nonessential personnel from high-risk zones, according to sources familiar with the operation.
Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Forces launched new airstrikes overnight, targeting Iranian surface-to-surface missile platforms and anti-aircraft units within Iranian territory. Israeli officials say these strikes are defensive and focused on degrading Iran’s offensive capabilities.
Internet Blackout Inside Iran
Amid growing unrest, Iran’s government has shut down internet access nationwide, cutting off millions of citizens from the outside world. While Elon Musk’s Starlink has been previously activated in Iran, satellite internet access still requires specialized dish hardware. Without this, most Iranians remain effectively cut off.
This blackout limits internal dissent and makes it harder for the international community to verify claims or assess civilian casualties following Israeli counterstrikes.
Trump Administration Reviews Military Options
According to senior defense officials, President Trump has approved U.S. military attack plans as part of contingency discussions but has not yet given a final order to proceed. These plans reportedly include limited precision strikes on nuclear and missile sites, designed to halt Iran’s nuclear progress without triggering a full-scale regional war.
Trump’s national security team has briefed both the House and Senate intelligence committees, and a classified Senate briefing is scheduled later this week to discuss the evolving situation.
The Bigger Picture
While the world waits, Trump’s decision could reshape the balance of power in the Middle East. The contrast between Israel’s military precision and Iran’s civilian-targeted attacks is already drawing renewed international scrutiny. And with Iran now only weeks from building a nuclear bomb, the margin for error is dangerously thin.
The next two weeks may determine whether this conflict remains regional—or becomes global.
WE’D LOVE TO HEAR YOUR THOUGHTS! PLEASE COMMENT BELOW. JIMMY
A.F. Branco Cartoon – After years of Iran killing our soldiers, bombing Israel, and financing their terrorist puppets (Oct 7), Israel had finally had enough and bombed their nuclear facilities along with their top-level officials. This is after Trump gave them 60 days to make a deal. On Day 61, the bombing started.
Shock Report: Iran Admits Israel Has Infiltrated the “Highest Offices” of Its Government – Even Counter-Espionage Units Are Filled with Israeli Agents
By Jim Hoft – The Gateway Pundit – June 15, 2025
On Friday, Israel launched an aerial attack that decimated Iran’s military leadership and destroyed much of Iran’s nuclear and military capabilities. This was a huge blow to Iran but not unexpected. The US had recalled several diplomats and officials across the MidEast earlier in the week in anticipation of an Israeli military strike on Iran. In two days of aerial strikes Israel eliminated several of the top Iranian officials sleeping in their homes in Tehran… READ MORE
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, Elon Musk, and President Trump.
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan says that the Iranian missile attack on Israel was “defeated and ineffective”, and that the U.S. military coordinated with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to repel the strikes. Iran launched nearly 200 ballistic missiles towards targets in Israel on Tuesday, Sullivan said at a Tuesday White House briefing, noting the move was a “significant escalation.”
The strikes were in response to the deaths of Hezbollah and Hamas leaders, Iran says. The move comes after weeks of Israeli strikes against Tehran’s proxies in the region.
Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepts rockets, as seen from Ashkelon, Israel, on Oct. 1, 2024. (REUTERS/Amir Cohen)
Sullivan said no deaths were reported on the Israeli side, although the White House is monitoring the reported death of a Palestinian civilian in Jericho in the West Bank.
“U.S. naval destroyers joined Israeli Air Defense units in firing interceptors to shoot down inbound missiles. President Biden and Vice President Harris monitored the attack and the response from the White House Situation Room, joined in person and remotely by their national security team,” Sullivan said.
“We do not know of any damage to aircraft or strategic military assets in Israel. In short, based on what we know at this point, this attack appears to have been defeated and ineffective. The word fog of war was invented for a situation like this. This is a fluid situation.”
Many missiles were intercepted by Israel’s missile defense systems, while others did hit the ground. The Pentagon says the U.S. fired approximately 12 interceptors against Iranian missiles.
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan says that the Iranian missile attack on Israel was “defeated and ineffective” and that the U.S. military coordinated with the IDF to repel the strikes. (Fox News)
“This is a significant escalation by Iran, a significant event, and it is equally significant that we were able to step up with Israel and create a situation in which no one was killed in this attack in Israel… We are now going to look at what the appropriate next steps are to secure, first and foremost, American interests and then to promote stability to the maximum extent possible as we go forward,” Sullivan said.
He said the U.S. will consult with the Israelis on next steps in terms of response and how to deal with the Iranian attack.
The White House is particularly focused on protecting U.S. service members in the region and implored American citizens in Lebanon to follow the State Department’s guidance of finding civilian commercial means to leave the country, Sullivan said.
Rockets fly in the sky, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, as seen from Tel Aviv, Israel, on Oct. 1, 2024. (REUTERS/Ammar Awad)
Sullivan also expressed his condolences to the victims who were killed in a shooting in the Israeli city of Jaffa, located near Tel Aviv on Tuesday. At least eight people were killed and at least seven injured, local officials have told Fox News. The incident, which is believed to be a terror attack, took place Tuesday outside a newly built light rail station on Jerusalem Street. Authorities say at least two individuals who opened fire on a crowd of people have been neutralized.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had warned citizens to shelter in place and follow instructions from the Home Front Command as the Jewish State’s Iron Dome anti-missile defense system worked to intercept the incoming rockets on Tuesday.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said this latest barrage of missiles is in retaliation for the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut, Lebanon, in an Israeli airstrike late last week and the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July, according to Fox News Chief Foreign Correspondent Trey Yingst.
A gunshot victim is transported away from the scene of the shooting Tuesday. Emergency responders have reported multiple deaths as well as more victims in critical condition. (Gideon Markowicz/TPS-IL)
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard warned in a statement released by Iranian state media that if Israel responds to the missile barrage, “it will face crushing attacks.” A senior White House official told Fox News earlier Tuesday morning that Iran was preparing to “imminently” launch a ballistic missile attack against Israel.
While White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre did not directly answer when asked if the United States had a heads-up from Iran about the strike ahead of time, Fox News was told by the Pentagon that they were “not aware of any pre-warning by Iran.”
Fox News’ Stephen Sorace, Liz Friden, Timothy H.J. Nerozzi, Trey Yingst and Yonat Friling contributed to this report.
Michael Dorgan is a writer for Fox News Digital and Fox Business.
You can send tips to michael.dorgan@fox.com and follow him on Twitter @M_Dorgan.
Israel intercepts an Iranian ballistic missiles near the northern city of Baqa al-Gharbiya, Oct. 1. (Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images)
Sirens sounded all over Israel Tuesday night as ballistic missiles flared overhead. Millions of Israelis were directed to hide in bomb shelters while at least 180 Iranian projectiles entered Israeli airspace.
Israel’s Iron Dome intercepted most of the missiles, but some managed to get through and hit locations in central and southern Israel, according to the Israel Defense Forces. Two U.S. Navy destroyers aided Israel in the attack and fired about 12 interceptors against the missiles, according to the Pentagon.
Iran carried out a similar missile attack against Israel in April. Most of the missiles were shot down, but an air base in southern Israel did sustain minor damage. After the spring attack, President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “take the win.”
Biden said Tuesday that he and Vice President Kamala Harris “convened our national security team to discuss Iranian plans to launch an imminent missile attack against Israel. We discussed how the United States is prepared to help Israel defend against these attacks and protect American personnel in the region.”
This morning, @VP and I convened our national security team to discuss Iranian plans to launch an imminent missile attack against Israel.
We discussed how the United States is prepared to help Israel defend against these attacks, and protect American personnel in the region.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday that the U.S. is “committed to Israel’s defense,” but did not give specifics. Iran’s attack came in response to Israel killing multiple terrorist leaders in recent days and weeks, including Hamas and Hezbollah leaders.
Iran called its missile attack on Israel a “legal, rational, and legitimate response to the terrorist acts of the Zionist regime—which involved targeting Iranian nationals and interests and infringing upon the national sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
Iran’s legal, rational, and legitimate response to the terrorist acts of the Zionist regime—which involved targeting Iranian nationals and interests and infringing upon the national sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran—has been duly carried out. Should the Zionist regime…
Iran warned Israel and its allies: “Should the Zionist regime dare to respond or commit further acts of malevolence, a subsequent and crushing response will ensue. Regional states and the Zionists’ supporters are advised to part ways with the regime.”
There were no immediate reports of deaths in Israel following the attack, but at least six people were killed in a shooting in Tel Aviv during the rocket attack. Police neutralized the attackers and say it was an act of terrorism.
The Pentagon is discussing next steps with Israel.
The United States and European allies called on Iran to “stand down” Monday, as fears mounted of an imminent attack on Israel that could spark an all-out war in the Middle East. Tensions are soaring in the region, with the United States rushing a missile submarine and an aircraft carrier group in a show of support for its key ally.
Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah have vowed revenge for the killing of the political leader of the Palestinian group Hamas in Tehran, and of a Hezbollah commander in Beirut. International efforts to stave off an Iranian attack intensified, with US President Joe Biden and the leaders of France, Germany, Italy and Britain warning Tehran in a joint statement on Monday.
“We called on Iran to stand down its ongoing threats of a military attack against Israel and discussed the serious consequences for regional security should such an attack take place,” they said after speaking on Monday.
The White House warned that a “significant set of attacks” by Iran and its proxies was possible as soon as this week, saying that Israel shared the same assessment.
As the frantic diplomacy continued, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer both called on Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian to urge de-escalation. But Pezeshkian said Monday his country has the “right to respond to aggressors.”
Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh had been in Tehran for the new Iranian president’s inauguration last month when Haniyeh was killed in an attack that Iran has blamed on Israel. Israel assassinated Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut a day earlier, leaving the region on edge.
– ‘No further time to lose’ –
Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said his country was “ready to foil any threat in real time” but added that he was “not familiar” with reports that Iran was expected to launch an attack in the next 24 hours.
Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the country had strengthened defenses and organized “offensive options” as “threats from Tehran and Beirut may materialize.”
Washington and the four European nations meanwhile intensified their calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, regarding the conflict sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel as the root cause of the tensions in the Middle East. They backed a call by Biden and the leaders of Egypt and Qatar for renewed talks between Israel and Hamas this Thursday, “and stressed there is no further time to lose.”
They also called for “unfettered” delivery of aid to devastated Gaza.
The pressure to bring an end to the fighting in the Gaza Strip and for Hamas to release its hostages came as the militant group’s armed wing said it had killed one Israeli captive and wounded two more in “incidents”. The Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades said in a statement that two of its fighters “assigned to guard” the hostages had fired at them in “two separate incidents” and that a committee had been formed to investigate.
Hamas has urged mediators to implement a truce plan earlier presented by Biden instead of holding more talks. But Israel has accepted the invitation from the United States, Qatar and Egypt to send negotiators.
“The reason we’re doing that is to finalize the details of the implementation of the framework agreement,” Israeli government spokesman David Mencer told a news conference.
– ‘Stop this war’ –
Pressure for a ceasefire in Gaza grew after civil defense rescuers in the Hamas-run territory said an Israeli air strike on Saturday killed 93 people at a school housing displaced Palestinians. Israel said it targeted militants operating out of the school and mosque.
On Monday, witnesses told AFP Israel struck Khan Yunis and Rafah from the air. Palestinian group Islamic Jihad, which has been fighting alongside Hamas in Gaza, said its militants were battling Israeli troops in Khan Yunis. In central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, Suhail Abu Batihan said the Israeli bombardment was “causing terror” among residents, calling on mediators and “the world… to intervene to stop this war.”
The Gaza war began with Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel which resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures. Militants also seized 251 people, 111 of whom are still held captive in Gaza, including 39 the military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive in Gaza has killed at least 39,897 people, according to a new toll from the territory’s health ministry, which does not provide a breakdown of civilian and militant deaths.
A Pakistani man alleged to have ties to Iran has been charged in a plot to carry out political assassinations on U.S. soil, the Justice Department said Tuesday.
Prosecutors in Brooklyn announced criminal charges against Asif Merchant, accusing him of traveling to New York to try to hire a hitman for the assassinations. The plot was disrupted before it could be carried out.
Court documents do not identify any of the potential targets, but the case was unsealed just weeks after U.S. officials disclosed that a threat on Donald Trump’s life from Iran prompted additional security in the days before a Pennsylvania rally last month in which Trump was injured by a gunman’s bullet. That shooting, carried out by a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man, was unrelated to the Iran threat.
U.S. officials have warned for years about Iran’s desire to avenge the 2020 killing of Qassem Soleimani, who led the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force. That strike was ordered by Trump.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement: “The Justice Department will spare no resource to disrupt and hold accountable those who would seek to carry out Iran’s lethal plotting against American citizens and will not tolerate attempts by an authoritarian regime to target American public officials and endanger America’s national security.”
Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has ordered Iran to strike Israel directly in retaliation for the killing in Tehran of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, sources told The New York Times. Haniyeh was assassinated in the Iranian capital Tehran early on Wednesday morning, an attack that drew threats of revenge on Israel and fueled further concern that the conflict in Gaza was turning into a wider Middle East war.
The Palestinian Islamist militant group and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards confirmed Haniyeh’s death. The Guards said it took place hours after he attended a swearing-in ceremony for Iran’s new president. Although the strike on Haniyeh was widely assumed to have been carried out by Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government made no claim of responsibility and said it would make no comment on the killing.
Haniyeh was killed by a missile that hit him “directly” in a state guesthouse where he was staying, Khalil Al-Hayya, a senior Hamas official, told a news conference in Tehran, quoting witnesses who were with Haniyeh. “Now we are waiting for the full investigation from the (Iranian) brothers,” Al-Hayya said. Haniyeh, normally based in Qatar, had been the face of Hamas’ international diplomacy as the war set off by the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7 has raged in Gaza. He had been taking part in internationally-brokered indirect talks on reaching a cease-fire in the Palestinian enclave.
The assassination occurred less than 24 hours after Israel claimed to have killed Hezbollah’s most senior military commander in the Lebanese capital Beirut in retaliation for a deadly rocket strike in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Two Lebanese security sources said on Wednesday that the body of Hezbollah operations chief Fuad Shukr had been found in the rubble of a building hit by an Israeli airstrike in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Netanyahu made no mention of Haniyeh’s killing in a televised statement on Wednesday evening but said Israel had delivered crushing blows to Iran’s proxies of late, including Hamas and Hezbollah, and would respond forcefully to any attack.
“Citizens of Israel, challenging days lie ahead. Since the strike in Beirut there are threats sounding from all directions. We are prepared for any scenario, and we will stand united and determined against any threat. Israel will exact a heavy price for any aggression against us from any arena,” he said.
The latest events appear to set back chances of any imminent cease-fire agreement in the nearly 10-month-old war in Gaza between Israel and the Iran-backed Hamas. Hamas’ armed wing said in a statement Haniyeh’s killing would “take the battle to new dimensions and have major repercussions.” Vowing to retaliate, Iran declared three days of national mourning and said the U.S. bore responsibility because of its support for Israel.
ISRAEL INVITES ‘HARSH PUNISHMENT,’ KHAMENEI SAYS
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Israel had provided the grounds for “harsh punishment for itself” and it was Tehran’s duty to avenge Haniyeh’s death. Iranian forces have already made strikes directly on Israel earlier in the Gaza war.
Israeli government spokesperson David Mencer told a briefing with journalists that Israel was committed to Gaza cease-fire negotiations and securing the release of Israeli hostages held by Palestinian militants in Gaza. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, at an event in Singapore, sidestepped a question on Haniyeh’s killing, saying a cease-fire deal in Gaza was key to avoiding wider regional escalation. He told Channel News Asia that the U.S. had neither been aware of nor involved in the killing.
Qatar, which has been brokering talks aimed at halting the fighting in Gaza along with Egypt, condemned Haniyeh’s killing as a dangerous escalation of the conflict.
“Political assassinations and continued targeting of civilians in Gaza while talks continue leads us to ask, how can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on other side?” Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said on X.
Egypt said Haniyeh’s assassination showed a lack of political will on Israel’s part to calm tensions.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the killing and Palestinian factions in the Israeli-occupied West Bank called for a strike and mass demonstrations.
In Israel, the mood was buoyant as Israelis welcomed what they saw as a major achievement in the war against Hamas. Residents in besieged Gaza feared Haniyeh’s death would prolong the fighting that has devastated the enclave.
“This news is scary. We feel that he was like a father to us,” said Gaza resident Hachem Al-Saati.
MESHAAL IS LIKELY SUCCESSOR TO HANIYEH
Haniyeh’s most likely successor is Khaled Meshaal, his deputy-in-exile who lives in Qatar, analysts and Hamas officials said. Under Meshaal, Hamas emerged as an ever more important player in the Middle East conflict due to his charisma, popularity and regional standing, analysts said. Meshaal narrowly survived an attempt on his life in Jordan ordered by Netanyahu in 1997.
Appointed to the top Hamas job in 2017, Haniyeh moved between Turkey and Qatar’s capital Doha, escaping the travel curbs of the blockaded Gaza Strip and enabling him to act as a negotiator in the truce talks or to talk to Hamas’ ally Iran. Three of his sons were killed in an Israeli airstrike in April.
His deputy Saleh Al-Arouri was killed in January by Israel, leaving Yehya Al-Sinwar, the Hamas chief in Gaza and the architect of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, and Zaher Jabarin, the head of the group in the West Bank, in place but in hiding.
That assault by Hamas-led fighters killed about 1,200 people in southern Israeli communities and some 250 people were taken to Gaza as hostages, Israeli tallies say.
In response, Israel launched a ground and air offensive in the coastal enclave that has killed more than 39,400 people, according to Gaza health officials, and left more than 2 million facing a humanitarian crisis.
No end appears to be in sight for Israel’s campaign there as the cease-fire talks falter.
NEW YORK (AP) — Victims of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel sued Iran, Syria and North Korea on Monday, saying their governments supplied the militants with money, weapons and know-how needed to carry out the assault that precipitated Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in New York, seeks at least $4 billion in damages for “a coordination of extrajudicial killings, hostage takings, and related horrors for which the defendants provided material support and resources.”
Iran’s mission to the United Nations declined to comment on the allegations, while Syria and North Korea did not respond.
The United States has deemed Iran, Syria and North Korea to be state sponsors of terrorism, and Washington has designated Hamas as what’s known as a specially designated global terrorist.
Because such countries rarely abide by court rulings against them in the United States, if the lawsuit’s plaintiffs are successful, they could seek compensation from a fund created by Congress that allows American victims of terrorism to receive payouts. The money comes from seized assets, fines or other penalties leveled against those that, for example, do business with a state sponsor of terrorism.
The lawsuit draws on previous court findings, reports from U.S. and other government agencies, and statements over some years by Hamas, Iranian and Syrian officials about their ties. The complaint also points to indications that Hamas fighters used North Korean weapons in the Oct. 7 attack. But the suit doesn’t provide specific evidence that Tehran, Damascus or Pyongyang knew in advance about the assault. It accuses the three countries of providing weapons, technology and financial support necessary for the attack to occur.
Iran has denied knowing about the Oct. 7 attack ahead of time, though officials up to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have praised the assault. Iran has armed Hamas as a counter to Israel, which the Islamic Republic has long viewed as its regional archenemy.
In the years since the collapse of Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, Iran and Israel have been locked in a shadow war of attacks on land and at sea. Those attacks exploded into the open after an apparent Israeli attack targeting Iran’s embassy complex in Damascus, Syria, during the Israel-Hamas war, which sparked Tehran’s unprecedented drone-and-missile attack on Israel in April.
Neighboring Syria has relied on Iranian support to keep embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad in power amid a grinding civil war that began with the 2011 Arab Spring protests. Like Iran, Syria also offered public support for Hamas after the Oct. 7 attack. North Korea denies that it arms Hamas. However, a militant video and weapons seized by Israel show Hamas fighters likely fired North Korean weapons during the Oct. 7 attack
South Korean officials, two experts on North Korean arms and an Associated Press analysis of weapons captured on the battlefield by Israel point toward Hamas using Pyongyang’s F-7 rocket-propelled grenade, a shoulder-fired weapon that fighters typically use against armored vehicles. The lawsuit specifically cites the use of the F-7 grenade in the attack as a sign of Pyongyang’s involvement.
“Through this case, we will be able to prove what occurred, who the victims were, who the perpetrators were — and it will not just create a record in real time, but for all of history,” said one of the attorneys, James Pasch of the ADL, also called the Anti-Defamation League. The Jewish advocacy group frequently speaks out against antisemitism and extremism.
Hamas fighters killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted about 250 during the Oct. 7 attack. Israel invaded Gaza in response. The war has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. It doesn’t say how many were civilians or fighters.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of over 125 plaintiffs, including the estates and relatives of people who were killed, plus people who were physically and/or emotionally injured. All are related to, or are themselves, U.S. citizens. Under U.S. law, foreign governments can be held liable, in some circumstances, for deaths or injuries caused by acts of terrorism or by providing material support or resources for them.
The 1976 statute cited in the lawsuit, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, is a frequent tool for American plaintiffs seeking to hold foreign governments accountable. In one example, a federal judge in Washington ordered North Korea in 2018 to pay $500 million in a wrongful death suit filed by the parents of Otto Warmbier, an American college student who died shortly after being released from that country.
People held as prisoners by Iran in the past have successfully sued Iran in U.S. federal court, seeking money earlier frozen by the U.S.
The new lawsuit joins a growing list of Israel-Hamas war-related cases in U.S. courts.
Last week, for example, Israelis who were taken hostage or lost loved ones during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack sued the United Nations agency that aids Palestinians, claiming it has helped finance the militants by paying agency staffers in U.S. dollars and thereby funneling them to money-changers in Gaza who allegedly give a cut to Hamas.
The agency, known as UNRWA, has denied that it knowingly aids Hamas or any other militant group.
___
Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. AP writers Courtney Bonnell and Eric Tucker in Washington contributed.
Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Now this could truly be educational. Students protesting on our campuses have been offered free scholarships at Shiraz University in Fars. So, while Northwestern has reached a settlement with protesters to give scholarships to Palestinian students and positions to Palestinian faculty, U.S. protesters can now go to Iran for their education.
Mohammad Moazzeni, head of Shiraz University told media that “students and even professors who have been expelled or threatened with expulsion can continue their studies at Shiraz University and I think that other universities in Shiraz as well as Fars Province are also prepared [to provide the conditions].”
Warning: vegan meals are not available at Iranian protests. Instead, it has ordered the arrest and killing of writers and artists while holding such fun events as a cartoon competition on the Holocaust.
While expungements are not a common feature of the criminal justice system, it does have unique elements like judicially ordered blindings. Likewise, where else can you go where a criminal defendant was ordered to be executed by being tied into a burlap bag and thrown down a cliff with sharp rocks?
Some universities clearly have space after students were arrested for protesting the death sentence given a rapper. That includes Shiraz University where the Iranian regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) arrested students for protests.
The good thing is that U.S. students are already covering up their faces. Iranian women have faced arrest for being photographed without hijabs.
Students like Khymani James, the Columbia organizer declaring that “Zionists don’t deserve to live” have the right viewpoint but may find that the Iranian officials are less supportive in other respects.
Just a year studying abroad in Iran is worth a lifetime of education.
So Iranian universities are making the ultimate pitch to come for the free education and stay for the free amputations.
The U.S. under a second Trump administration would “be there” to help Israel defend itself against Iran, former President Donald Trump told Time magazine in an exclusive interview.
Despite promoting what Time termed an overall foreign policy based on “transactional isolationism,” Trump made it clear he would back Israel against Iran.
“If they attack Israel, yes, we would be there,” Trump told Time.
The former president added he now believes a two-state solution, with a Palestinian state neighboring Israel in peace, is increasingly unlikely after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and massacre and Israel’s retaliatory war.
“There was a time when I thought two-state could work,” he said. “Now I think two-state is going to be very, very tough.”
Trump, running to unseat President Joe Biden in November’s general election, criticized Israel’s handling of its war against the Hamas terrorists, who also took nearly 250 hostages Oct. 7.
He called for Israel to “get it over with.”
The former president appeared to levy criticism on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for failing to prevent Hamas’ attack.
“It happened on his watch,” Trump said.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee, once a close ally with Netanyahu, also told Time that he “had a bad experience with Bibi.”
According to Trump, a January 2020 U.S. operation to kill a top Iranian general was supposed to be a joint attack until Netanyahu backed out at the last minute.
“That was something I never forgot,” Trump told the magazine.
A senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander said Thursday that Iran could review its “nuclear doctrine” amid Israeli threats. While it was unclear exactly what he meant, and that term tends to refer to countries that, unlike Iran, have nuclear weapons, below is an outline of where Iran stands.
As its 2015 nuclear deal with major powers has eroded over the years, Iran has expanded and accelerated its nuclear program, reducing the time it would need to build a nuclear bomb if it chose to, though it denies wanting to.
COLLAPSE OF THE DEAL AND BREAKOUT TIME
The 2015 deal introduced strict limits on Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions against Tehran. It slashed Iran’s stock of enriched uranium, leaving it only with a small amount enriched to up to 3.67% purity, far from the roughly 90% purity that is weapons grade.
The United States said at the time that a main aim was to increase the time Iran would need to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb – the biggest single hurdle in a weapons program – to at least a year.
In 2018 then-President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the deal, reimposing sanctions on Tehran that slashed its oil sales and battered its economy. In 2019, Iran started breaching the restrictions on its nuclear activities and then pushed far beyond them.
It has now breached all the deal’s key restrictions, including on where, with what machines and to what level it can enrich uranium, as well as how much material it can stockpile.
Its stock of enriched uranium, which was capped at 202.8 kg under the deal, stood at 5.5 tons in February, according to the latest quarterly report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog that inspects Iran’s enrichment plants.
Iran is now enriching uranium to up to 60% purity and has enough material enriched to that level, if enriched further, for two nuclear weapons, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s theoretical definition.
That means Iran’s so-called “breakout time” – the time it would need to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear bomb – is close to zero, likely a matter of weeks or days.
The IAEA inspects Iran’s declared enrichment sites: an above-ground plant and a larger, underground one at its Natanz complex and another buried inside a mountain at Fordow.
As a result of Iran ceasing to implement elements of the deal, the IAEA can no longer fully monitor Iran’s production and inventory of centrifuges, machines that enrich uranium, and it can no longer conduct snap inspections. That has prompted speculation about whether Iran could have set up a secret enrichment site, but there are no concrete indications of one.
WEAPONIZATION
Aside from uranium enrichment, there is the question of how long it would take Iran to produce the rest of a nuclear weapon and potentially make it small enough to put in a delivery system like a ballistic missile, should it choose to. This is much harder to estimate as it is less clear how much knowledge Iran has.
U.S. intelligence agencies and the IAEA believe Iran had a coordinated nuclear weapons program that it halted in 2003. It worked on aspects of weaponization, and some work continued until as late as 2009, the IAEA found in a 2015 report.
Iran denies ever having a nuclear weapons program, though Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has said that if it wanted to world leaders “wouldn’t be able to stop us.”
Estimates of how long Iran would need for weaponization generally vary between months and about a year.
In March 2023 the top U.S. military officer at the time, General Mark Milley, testified to Congress that weaponization would take Iran several months, though he did not say what that assessment was based on.
In a quarterly report in February this year, the IAEA said: “Public statements made in Iran regarding its technical capabilities to produce nuclear weapons only increase the Director General’s concerns about the correctness and completeness of Iran’s safeguards declarations.”
Diplomats said those statements included a television interview by Iran’s former nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi in which he likened producing a nuclear weapon to building a car, and said Iran knew how to make the parts needed.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Obama and Biden both have fostered Iran, the top state sponsors of terrorism, keeping them flush with lots of cash to complete their evil deeds.
PURE EVIL: Biden Administration Reportedly Provided Guidance to Iran in Saturday’s Drone and Missile Strike on Israel
By Jim Hoft – April 15, 2024
Boy, the Biden-Obama regime really, really hates Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel!
According to reports coming from Israel and Turkey the Biden Administration provided guidance to Iran in its missile and drone strike against Israel. READ MORE…
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
If a belligerent state launched 186 explosive drones, 36 cruise missiles, and 110 surface-to-surface missiles from three fronts against civilian targets within the United States, would Joe Biden call it a “win”? Would the president tell us that the best thing we can do now is show “restraint”? What if that same terror state’s proxy armies had recently helped murder, rape, and kidnap more than 1,000 American men, women, and children? What if this terror state were trying to obtain nuclear weapons so it could continue to agitate without any consequences?
This is what Joe Biden and the Barack Obama acolytes, Iranian dupes, and Israel antagonists he’s surrounded himself with demand of Jewish State. And by “Iranian dupes,” I don’t only mean the Jake Sullivans and Antony Blinkens of the world, who worked to elevate the mullahs over Sunni allies and the Israelis, or even a Hamas-bestie like Rob Malley or Israel-hater like Maher Bitar. I mean assets of the Islamic State who promised the Iranian government to help out in any way possible.
Their worldview is a cancer that’s metastasized within the Democratic Party. To these people, Israel will always be the villain. And if the Iranian regime’s murder of more than 600 American servicemen couldn’t cool that bromance, 1,300 dead Jews certainly aren’t going to do the trick.
To begin with, Jared Kushner’s Middle East policy efforts were, by every measure, more successful than not only Obama’s efforts but the decades of Brookings Institute-endorsed failures the region has endured. The Trump administration undercut Palestinian terror efforts, stifled Iranian ambitions, and created space for the Gulf States and Israel to enhance ties.
Biden immediately reversed those gains, reverting to Obama-era Iranian boosterism. We’re now experiencing the consequences of pacifying Islamic ideologues. Obama might have sent the mullahs pallets of cash in the middle of the night, but the Biden administration openly subsidized the Revolutionary Guard with a $6 billion ransom payment, at least $25 billion in sanction relief, including $10 billion via a waiver, and so on.
Let’s also remember that one of Biden’s first foreign policy decisions was to overturn Trump-era policy by releasing millions to Gaza that would be sifted off by Hamas, releasing funding to Hamas-allied UNRWA, and removing the Iranian-backed Houthis from the terror list.
But to truly comprehend how demented our foreign policy has become, consider this: Iran reportedly informed Turkey in advance of its planned operation against Israel, and the U.S. told Iran through Ankara that the attack should be “within certain limits.” This is a longtime ally of the United States we’re talking about — and a foe that’s murdered and kidnapped Americans for decades.
It should be mind-boggling that Biden likely knew Iran was moving forward with its attack but still gave his goofy and impotent “don’t” when asked about it by the press.
Indeed, the Biden administration’s position seems to be that Israeli military and defense forces exist to allow Iran to have a hissy fit and save face. The Iranian attack is only “symbolic” because it failed. According to officials, the attack, indiscriminately aimed at civilian centers, was designed to cause “mass casualties.”
Just because you shoot at someone, and miss doesn’t mean you’re not trying to kill them. Yes, the Iranians were embarrassed. But they almost surely view this as a win. And they also crossed a red line by firing on Israel from their own territory. Yet Israel is apparently the only nation on Earth that is permitted to fully defend itself only if its enemies succeed.
Then again, virtually every conflict against Israel unfurls the same way: Its enemies threaten or attack the country. Israel responds and heads for a victory. Only then does the world demand “restraint.” Finally, the antagonists demand Israel rewind history to a more convenient spot. (Modern Democrats demand that Israel show restraint before it even has a chance to respond. That’s a new twist.)
Those, for instance, who contend that Israel started the conflict when it hit a “diplomatic mission” in Syria last week are engaged in restarting the historical clock when it suits them. There are no Iranian diplomatic missions in Syria. There are buildings where IRGC terror leaders coordinate attacks on civilians — against Arabs as well as Jews. Mohammad Reza Zahedi, the “general” Israel killed last week, helped plan the barbarism of Oct 7.
Recall that the United States atomized Qasem Soleimani at a neutral nation’s airport. Though, of course, Obamaites protested that killing as well.
Now, it is something of a cliché to contend that Israel must be right 100 percent of the time while its enemies only need to be right once. It also happens to be true. The lo-fi Hamas attack last year was a devastating failure for the Jewish state and its leadership. Israel, a country the size of New Jersey with a dense population area, relies on deterrence and preemption.
Democrats blamed their strawman, Benjamin Netanyahu, not Hamas or Iran, for trying to “drag” the world into war. The New York Times’ Tom Friedman, perhaps the wrongest person ever to tread on this planet, theorized that the prime minister wanted “a war to shore up his own crumbling political base.”
Meanwhile, Axois reports that Netanyahu was reluctant to strike back while his cabinet wanted to move immediately. Anyone who’s paid five minutes of attention to Israeli politics knows that Netanyahu is frustratingly cautious. The “war hawk” perception of him is a myth, created by the left because of the prime minister’s open opposition to Obama’s mullah bootlicking.
We have no idea what Israel will do. Maybe caution is the best policy. The notion that the Jewish state simply lashes out in revenge and doesn’t rationally consider all its options is preposterous. Whatever happens, it should be Israel’s terms, not Iran’s.
Jonathan Conricus, a former spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces, told Newsmax on Monday that Israel is formulating a comprehensive plan to “roll back Iranian aggression” following the attack by Iran over the weekend.
The IDF announced on Sunday that it had identified 300 Iranian drones and missiles and eliminated “99%” of those headed for Israel on Saturday night. The attack came in response to an alleged Israeli strike on an Iranian consulate in Syria that killed several high-ranking Iranian officials.
Conricus, now a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said on “National Report,” “An attack like this from a sovereign country against Israel is not something that can or will go unanswered or unchecked.”
He added, “Israel will retaliate. I think that what Israel is now doing is formulating a strategic plan so as not to retaliate just for the sense of retaliation, but to retaliate as part of a bigger and more expansive plan to really roll back Iranian aggression in the region.”
The chief of staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri announced on Sunday that the attack had concluded and there was no intention of continuing the operation.
Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan on Monday called for the U.N. Security Council to “impose all possible sanctions on Iran before it’s too late.
“This attack crossed every red line, and Israel reserves the legal right to retaliate,” he said.
Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Amir Saeid Iravani, defended the attack to the U.N. Security Council in a meeting, saying that Iran had to “exercise its inherent right to self-defense under international law” and that the country “does not seek escalation or war in the region” and does not want a conflict with the United States.
“Israeli civilians have been living under Iranian terror for far too long,” Conricus said. “All of the terrorist organizations around us — whether it’s Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, or Hezbollah in Lebanon, or a bunch of Iranian proxies in Syria — they are all funded and equipped and armed by Iran.”
“Iran’s actions over the weekend are, in fact, also an invitation for Israel to actually change its strategy and start repaying Iran for attacking and menacing so many Israeli civilians,” he said.
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U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin reiterated on Thursday Washington’s commitment to upholding Israel’s security, as the IDF continued preparations for an expected Iranian attack on the home front. Austin spoke with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant “to reiterate ironclad U.S. support for Israel’s defense in the face of growing threats from Iran and its regional proxies,” according to a Pentagon readout of their call.
“Echoing President [Joe] Biden’s unequivocal message to Israeli Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu, Secretary Austin assured Minister Gallant that Israel could count on full U.S. support to defend Israel against Iranian attacks, which Tehran has publicly threatened,” added the statement.
On Wednesday, Biden said his administration was committed to backing Israel amid reports of an imminent Iranian attack.
“As I told Prime Minister Netanyahu, our commitment to Israel’s security against these threats from Iran and its proxies is ironclad,” said Biden.
“Let me say it again, ironclad. We’re going to do all we can to protect Israel’s security,” he added.
Washington and its allies believe a major attack on Israel by Iran has become a matter of when, not if, following the killing of an Iranian general in Syria on April 1, which Tehran blamed on the Jewish state.
Israel has not officially taken responsibility for the attack in Damascus which killed Brig. Gen. Mohammad Zahedi, but four officials told The New York Times last week that Jerusalem ordered the strike.
On Thursday, Austin and Gallant “discussed readiness for an Iranian attack against the State of Israel, which could lead to regional escalation… [and] require an appropriate Israeli response,” according to an Israeli readout.
Gen. Erik Kurilla, commander of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees the Middle East, arrived in Israel on Thursday to coordinate with the Israel Defense Forces regarding a possible attack.
Jerusalem is preparing for a strike in the next 24 to 48 hours, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing U.S. intelligence.
The U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem announced on Thursday that “out of an abundance of caution,” government employees and their family members can only travel for personal reasons in the greater Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Beersheva areas “until further notice.”
On Thursday evening, IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said that Israel was “highly prepared for various scenarios, and we are constantly assessing the situation. We are ready on offense and defense using various capabilities, and also with our strategic partners,” he added.
The Israel Defense Forces has been placed on high alert, resulting in combat soldiers’ weekend leaves being canceled, and the military calling up additional reserve soldiers to the IDF Aerial Defense Array.
Netanyahu said on Thursday that the Jewish state would respond in kind to any attack.
Speaking during a visit to the Tel Nof Air Base, he said, “We are in challenging times. We are in the midst of the war in Gaza, which is continuing at full force, even as we are continuing our relentless efforts to return our hostages.”
However, he continued, “We are also prepared for scenarios involving challenges in other sectors. We have determined a simple rule: Whoever harms us, we will harm them.”
President Joe Biden’s policies arguably strengthened Iran’s proxies in the Middle East, including the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Pictured: Thousands of Houthi supporters, holding Yemeni and Palestinian flags, gather Feb. 9 at Sebin Square to stage a solidarity demonstration with Palestinians and protest in Sanaa, Yemen, against Israel’s efforts to eradicate the Hamas terrorist group in the Gaza Strip. (Photo: Mohammed Hamoud/Anadolu/Getty Images)
Not only has the president empowered Iran by relaxing former President Donald Trump’s sanctions on the world’s top state sponsor of terrorism, but he has also empowered Iran’s proxies through various geopolitical moves that make war more likely. Biden is not alone; previous administrations have directed funds to ostensible U.S. allies in the region, funds that likely contribute to the proxies’ forces.
Biden’s relaxation of Trump-era sanctions netted Tehran at least $77 billion, some of which Iran directs to proxies across the region. Yet the president’s other policies also emboldened Iran’s proxies, who have attacked Israel, U.S. forces, and global shipping since the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel.
“We have enabled and fed our enemies and constricted our friends,” Rob Greenway, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense, told The Daily Signal. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s news outlet.)
Greenway, who orchestrated Trump’s sanctions against Tehran, warned that Biden’s policies have “strategically appeased Iran.”
Benham Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow focused on Iran at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, told The Daily Signal that Iran has propped up proxies that represent “a state within a state,” exploiting instability in Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen to “benefit from the largesse of U.S. policy.”
Taleblu notes that this poses a “philosophical problem” for America, which funds Iraq and Lebanon, even though it cannot prevent those governments from funneling that money to Iran’s proxies in their countries. Iran excels at “indigenizing the capabilities” of its allies by partnering with groups that have already arisen in another country.
Neither the White House nor the State Department provided comments for this article.
1. The Houthis
The Iran-backed Houthi movement, a Shiite militant group in Yemen, adopted the slogan “God is the greatest, death to America, death to Israel, a curse upon the Jews, victory to Islam.” The Houthis took control of Sanaa, Yemen’s capital city, in 2014, pushing the country’s then-president, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, to the east. Hadi and his successor, Rashad Muhammad al-Alimi, enjoy support from the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.
During the Trump administration, the U.S. provided billions of dollars worth of arms to the Saudi-led coalition against the Houthis in Yemen. Trump vetoed a bill to block this funding in 2019. Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, designated the Houthis a terrorist group in 2021.
Under Biden, however, Secretary of State Antony Blinken reversed the terrorist designation in a move the administration framed as intended to “alleviate or at least not worsen the suffering of the Yemeni civilians who live under Houthi control.”
In February 2021, Biden announced: “We are ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales.”
The Houthis have repeatedly fired on international commercial shipping since mid-November, mostly targeting vessels with commercial ties to the U.S., Britain, or Israel. These attacks have prompted many companies to reroute ships to avoid the Red Sea, which offers a quicker, more direct route for global trade; the companies take the longer, more expensive route around Africa.
Since Jan. 11, U.S. and British planes have carried out retaliatory strikes across Yemen to respond to the Houthi attacks.
Greenway, the Heritage expert, warned that “Yemen aid is also invariably being diverted to the Houthis.”
He said the terrorists “create the humanitarian crisis, demand aid, and divert aid,” in a vicious spiral.
Last month, the Biden administration moved to redesignate the Houthis as a terrorist group, though it stopped short of the harsher designation Pompeo had used. Trump’s secretary of state had put the Houthis on the Foreign Terrorist Organization list, which bars members’ entry into the U.S. and enables the freezing of any Houthi assets in the U.S., among other things.
Blinken, by contrast, announced on Jan. 17 that the State Department would consider the Houthis a “specially designated global terrorist group” after a 30-day delay in which the U.S. would try to facilitate “humanitarian assistance” to Yemenis.
Edem Wosornu, the United Nations’ aid operations director, warned Wednesday against designating the Houthis as a terrorist group, saying the move may harm “Yemen’s already fragile economy.”
Rich Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies who previously directed a Trump White House program to counter Iran’s development of nuclear weapons, called Blinken’s forthcoming sanctions on the Houthis “toothless,” noting that they include “five broad general exemptions.”
Goldberg mentioned Saudi Arabia’s truce with Iran last year, which he said involved the Saudis “basically buying off the Houthis and the Iranians in exchange for the Houthis stopping drone strikes.”
Goldberg told The Daily Signal that the Biden administration sent Saudi Arabia many signals that it wouldn’t back Riyadh when facing Iran’s provocations.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman “decided there is no U.S. support, the U.S. is pumping money into threats attacking Saudi Arabia, so they need to cut their own deal with the Iranians to protect themselves,” Goldberg said.
The Saudis are pouring an “unknown amount” of money into Yemen, he said.
Ben Taleblu, the other senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, warned that the Houthis have “some of the most damning” missile capabilities of any Iran proxies. He noted that the Houthis launched the medium-range Burkan-3 ballistic missile for the first time in 2019.
2. UNRWA and Hamas
Biden restored funding that may have directly contributed to the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks, when Hamas terrorists brutally massacred at least 1,200 Israelis, including raping women and murdering babies, and taking hundreds hostage.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East portrays itself as an aid organization, but the Israel Defense Forces provided evidence that 12 UNRWA employees took part in the Oct. 7 massacre. The U.S., Germany, Britain, and seven other countries cut off UNRWA aid after the revelations surfaced late last month.
Israel revealed Sunday that Hamas operated a tunnel right underneath UNRWA’s headquarters in Gaza City. UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini insisted that the U.N. agency “did not know what is under its headquarters.” He said the agency left its headquarters Oct. 12, five days after Hamas’ terrorist attacks in Israel.
In 2014, however, part of the parking lot at the UNRWA headquarters began to sink, likely because of a Hamas tunnel underneath, The Wall Street Journal reported.
“No one talked about what was causing the collapse,” a former UNRWA official said, according to the Journal. “But everyone knew.”
U.N. Watch’s Hillel Neuer revealed what he claimed to be a chat group with 3,000 UNRWA teachers celebrating the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel. Neuer testified that U.N. leaders “could not possibly have been shocked that UNRWA employees are implicated in terrorism,” because his organization sent them reports in 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2021.
In 2018, the State Department under Trump announced that the U.S. would stop contributing to UNRWA, noting that the U.S. had shouldered a “very disproportionate share” of the burden and criticizing the U.N. relief agency’s “business model and fiscal practices” as “simply unsustainable.”
In 2021, the Biden administration announced plans to provide $235 million to UNRWA, restoring part of the approximately $360 million that the U.N. agency would have expected if the U.S. had not cut off funding in 2018.
It remains unclear how much of this money went to Hamas or to UNRWA employees who may have helped Hamas on Oct. 7.
“Hezbollah is a threat 10 times larger than Hamas, with long-range capabilities, precision-guided munitions, [unmanned aerial vehicles], and the ability to inflict far more damage on Israel than we’ve seen Hamas do even on Oct. 7,” Goldberg, the senior adviser at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, told The Daily Signal.
Hezbollah started a war on July 12, 2006, when militants captured two members of an Israel Defense Forces patrol inside Israel and killed the other three. Hezbollah launched rockets into Israel as a diversion. After Israel responded with rockets, a ground invasion, and a blockade, the United Nations negotiated a cease-fire.
The United Nations approved, and both Israel and Lebanon agreed to, U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which, among other things, requires Hezbollah to disarm and withdraw its forces north of the Litani River. That river is about 19 miles north of Israel’s border with Lebanon.
The U.S. has spent billions of dollars over decades funding both the Lebanese Armed Forces and the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, a “temporary” U.N. peacekeeping body established in 1978. Resolution 1701 states that the U.N.’s Lebanon force must disarm Hezbollah south of the Litani River, yet to this day, Hezbollah has armed forces south of that river.
“The return on investment is quite negative for the U.S. taxpayer in Lebanon these last two decades,” Goldberg said. “The threat has metastasized to such a degree that Israel is almost deterred from action in a full-scale attack on Hezbollah, and potentially deterred from action against Iran and its nuclear program.”
According to leaks following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks, Biden warned Israel against launching a preemptive strike against Hezbollah. “Now we see Hezbollah’s ramped up,” Goldberg noted.
Since Oct. 7, Hezbollah has attacked Israeli outposts along the Lebanese border and launched rockets into Israel. The Jewish state has evacuated tens of thousands of civilians from Israeli villages and towns near the border with Lebanon, fearing an Oct. 7-style attack from the north. Israel has demanded that Hezbollah abide by the terms of Resolution 1701.
A Biden envoy, Amos Hochstein, has been negotiating in the region. According to Axios’ Barak Ravid, earlier this month Hochstein presented a peace proposal to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The proposal wouldn’t require Hezbollah to move its forces north of the Litani River but only 5 to 6 miles from the Israeli border, with the Lebanese Armed Forces filling in.
Hezbollah has already moved most of its elite Radwan force north of this line. Israel would have to pull forces away from the border and move its jets out of Lebanese airspace. Western powers also would send money to Lebanon to sweeten the deal for Hezbollah.
Goldberg denounced the plan as a “bag of magic beans.” He noted that the plan doesn’t explain how fighters who live in southern Lebanese towns would be forced to leave, or how Israel could verify that missiles had been moved from under schools, homes, and hospitals in southern Lebanon.
“Who would ensure Hezbollah can’t come in to attack Israel?” Goldberg asked. “It will be the LAF and UNIFIL. That’s ludicrous after 17 years of teaching us that they will not do anything to stop Hezbollah.”
He was referring to the Lebanese Armed Forces and the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon.
Hezbollah has “taken effective political control of the country,” so the LAF does not represent any sort of check on Hezbollah, Goldberg said.
“In exchange for giving Israel no sense of security, there reportedly will also be a massive bailout of the Lebanese economy, and an Israeli commitment to negotiate giving up territory on the Lebanese border,” he said. “It’s completely insane.”
Israel needs the ability “to give residents of evacuated communities enough confidence to return to their homes” and to “prevent an Oct. 7-type invasion,” Goldberg argued, and this proposed deal doesn’t come close to meeting those goals.
The U.S. has generously funded the Lebanese army for years, with a slight, unexplained pause during the Trump administration.
“A lot of the money we give to the government of Lebanon goes to Hezbollah,” warned Greenway, director of Heritage’s Center for National Defense.
Goldberg noted that Congress knew the UNIFIL funding wasn’t deterring Hezbollah and yet continued to approve it, anyway.
“Going back to 2007, every year members of Congress wrote letters about the enforcement of [Resolution] 1701,” Goldberg said, specifying that many lawmakers demanded answers from the administrations of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Trump, and Biden. “It has been a bipartisan failure for years.”
Goldberg noted that the Trump administration attempted to “start enforcing congressionally mandated Hezbollah sanctions” and that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and the Justice Department reopened investigations into the terrorist group that were closed during the Obama administration.
“You haven’t heard anything on cracking down on Hezbollah since Joe Biden took office,” Goldberg said.
Hezbollah released videos in July 2023 showing how the terrorist group prepared for a multipoint invasion to kill and capture Israelis in Israel, Goldberg noted, adding that these videos “look like Oct. 7, only they’re set in Northern Israel, not on the Gaza border.”
“Hamas executed a plan that Hezbollah created,” he said.
4. Iran-Backed Militias in Iraq
The U.S. launched airstrikes on Feb. 2 targeting al Hashd al Shabi, an Iran-linked militia and part of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, following a Jan. 28 drone attack on the military base Tower 22 in Jordan that killed three American service members.
Heritage’s Greenway explained that the government of Iraq “owns” the Popular Mobilization Forces, but Iran effectively controls them. The U.S. has supplied $10 billion or more each year to Baghdad on semimonthly cargo flights carrying massive pallets of cash, drawn from Iraqi oil sales proceeds deposited at the Federal Reserve, The Wall Street Journal reported. It remains unclear how much of this money goes to Iran-backed militias.
Greenway warned that the Popular Mobilization Forces—an umbrella organization of about 67 diverse militias—are often “bigger than the army, and most groups are under Iran specifically and are designated terrorist groups.”
He also argued that when the U.S. allows Iraq to send money to Iran in exchange for natural gas, these electricity payments constitute a form of money laundering. (The State Department in November extended a waiver allowing Iran to sell electricity to Iraq and use the money to purchase goods overseas.)
As of 2022, Iraq was the world’s fifth-largest oil producer, producing 4.61 million barrels per day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Yet Iraq imports electricity from its eastern neighbor.
“A major oil producer importing electricity? It’s the stupidest thing in the world,” Greenway previously told The Daily Signal. “Iraq deliberately decides they need electricity and it won’t bring in countries to improve its electric grid.”
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella term for pro-Iran Shiite Islamist insurgents in Iraq, claimed responsibility for the Jan. 28 attack on the military base. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq is an ally of the Popular Mobilization Forces.
Taleblu, the expert at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, explained that the Iran-backed militias in Iraq started the Islamic Resistance in Iraq as an “umbrella group designed to further hinder attribution” for attacks.
When Islamic Resistance in Iraq takes responsibility for attacks like the one Jan. 28, it prevents the U.S. and allies from identifying which specific militia carried out the attack, Taleblu said. He described the resistance group as a “proxy for the proxies” of Iran.
For his part, Goldberg noted that the Trump administration attempted to start “squeezing Baghdad to stop financing these militias using U.S. cash.” But its efforts largely failed, he said, due to opposition from within the Defense Department, which sees the militias as allies against the Islamic State terrorist group.
Biden’s Vision for Iran
Why does Biden seem intent on helping Iran? Goldberg attributed the Biden administration’s policy to a balance-of-powers mentality that sees U.S. intervention as the major threat to Middle East peace.
“There is a worldview that in order to create an equilibrium in the Middle East that avoids conflict, you have to empower Iran to be an equal of the Sunnis and Israel,” he said. “Once they have a mutually assured destruction going on, the U.S. can pull out of the Middle East.”
“It’s a completely extremist, nonserious, ideologically fringe worldview, driven by the belief that the Islamic Republic of Iran is not an enemy but an enemy we have created,” Goldberg said.
If Biden wants to avoid a wider war in the Middle East, he needs to take action to deter Iran’s proxies. Unfortunately, the president’s policies seem to have done the opposite so far, perhaps even by design.
Crooked Biden, Xi of Chin, and the Ayatolha of Iran all would hate Trump to be reelected, and all for the same reason. Trump would put America first. Our enemies do not want America with an America First agenda, they would rather us have a weak president who is compromised that they can push around.
Putin Further Destroys the Trump-Russia Collusion Hoax — Says He Prefers Joe Biden to Win Than Trump Because He’s More “Predictable”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has further destroyed the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, stating a preference for Joe Biden over Donald Trump due to the current U.S. president’s predictability and experience. During a state television interview reported by the Financial Times on Wednesday, Putin broke his silence on the U.S. political landscape. He described Biden as “more experienced, predictable, an old-school politician.” “Biden, he’s more experienced, more predictable, he’s a politician of the old formation,” Putin said.“But we will work with any U.S. leader whom the American people trust,” he added. READ MORE
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
The U.S. military has begun striking targets linked to Iranian proxy groups after a drone attack killed three American soldiers in Jordan this past weekend, Newsmax and other outlets are reporting. The strike reports were confirmed to Newsmax by a U.S. official at the Pentagon, who said airstrikes were ongoing against Iran proxy groups in both Iraq and Syria.
The attacks began a little more than an hour after the conclusion of a dignified transfer ceremony honoring the three soldiers at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware Friday afternoon. That was attended by President Joe Biden. The U.S. has blamed the Islamic Resistance in Iraq umbrella group for the weekend attack that killed Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, 46, Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders, 24, and Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, 23, and wounded roughly 40 other American service members. With nearly a week passing between the attack and the U.S. response, critics of the Biden administration have warned that the delay has given Iranian military officials and members of Tehran-backed militia groups ample time to go into hiding.
Other actions
The reported military actions came as the United States announced terrorism and sanctions-evasion charges and seizures linked to a billion-dollar oil trafficking network that it says finances Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and other militant groups.
The cases are in response to the drone strike and other aggressive actions by Iran over several years, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said. In August of 2022, for example, the U.S. charged an IRGC member with plotting to murder John Bolton, who served as U.S. national security adviser under former President Donald Trump.
Actions by Iran-backed militants, including the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by the Palestinian group Hamas and the attack over the weekend in Jordan, have increased the focus on Iran’s oil trade, the DOJ said.
“The Justice Department will continue to use every authority we have to cut off the illegal financing and enabling of Iran’s malicious activities, which have become even more evident in recent months,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
The DOJ seized more than $108 million that it said China Oil & Petroleum Company Limited attempted to launder through accounts at U.S. financial institutions. The DOJ said China Oil & Petroleum is an IRGC front company.
The DOJ said it also seized more than 520,000 barrels of Iran’s oil aboard the crude tanker Abyss that were covered by U.S. sanctions.
Seven defendants, including Sitki Ayan, who is a Turkish national and chairman of the ASB Group, Morteza Rostam Ghasemi, who is the son of a former IRGC commander and Iranian petroleum minister, and Behnam Shahriyari, who is an IRGC Quds Force official, were charged in the Southern District of New York federal court in connection with the seizure of the money.
The DOJ also charged a Chinese woman, Shaoyun Wang, and an Omani man Mahmood Rashid Amur Al Habsi, with Iran sanctions evasion and money laundering in connection with the trafficking and selling of Iranian oil to Chinese government-owned refineries in a case in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Iran’s crude exports and oil output hit new highs in 2023 despite U.S. sanctions over Tehran’s nuclear program. Tehran says the program is for peaceful purposes. In January, China’s oil trade with Iran stalled as Tehran withheld shipments and demanded higher prices from its top client, tightening cheap supply for the world’s biggest crude importer. Iranian oil makes up some 10% of China’s crude imports.
Iran has crossed the rubicon, when its proxies launched a drone attack that killed three of our soldiers in Jordan on Sunday. The strike marks a clear escalation in the de facto war launched by Iran on the United States, in response to the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks by Tehran-backed Hamas on Israel.
Iran will almost certainly ratchet up hostilities in the coming days, weeks and probably months. The window of opportunity for President Biden to tame Iran with decisive action is closing rapidly. Here’s why.
First, Tehran highly likely views the Biden administration as extremely risk-averse and unlikely to engage with it in a direct large-scale kinetic confrontation. Despite the steady escalation of the scope and scale of Tehran-backed attacks on U.S. forces and bases in the Middle East in the past 100 days, Washington’s response has been focused on proportionality and escalation control. Rather than establishing escalation dominance by bringing war home to Iran, the White House authorized only periodic individual strikes on proxy targets.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reviews a group of armed forces cadets during their graduation ceremony, in Tehran on Oct. 10. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)
The number of attacks by Iranian militias targeting U.S. military personnel from Oct. 17 to Jan. 29 has reached 165 and the number of injured Americans has climbed to 34, most involving traumatic brain damage. And yet, the key message coming out of the administration has been “We do not seek war with Iran.”
Everyone, from Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, to the National Security Council’s John Kirby, to the commander in chief himself has rushed to telegraph to Tehran that the president’s primary goal is to avoid escalation and a wider conflict, rather than to protect U.S. troops and end hostilities. A key tenet of the Western conception of warfare, proportionality, is culturally alien to Iranians. Consequently, they interpret Biden’s measured response as a sign of weakness and acquiescence to aggression.
Second, Iran’s aggression is almost certainly underpinned by its increasing confidence in the imminent viability of its nuclear deterrent. In early January, nuclear expert David Albright, who served as a weapons inspector for the United Nations in Iraq, issued a shocking new report, assessing that Iran needs as little as one week to construct its first nuclear weapon, once the leadership issues the order to do so. According to Albright, Iran has sufficient weapons-grade uranium to build six weapons in one month, and 12 weapons in five months.
The Iranian regime, therefore, probably calculates that its new status of a de facto nuclear power is a sufficient deterrent that will prevent Washington from launching a mass devastating retaliatory strike on Iran proper.
President Biden speaks at the University of Tampa on Feb. 9, 2023. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Tehran likely watched closely the Biden administration’s reluctance to fully back Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s invasion. It is because of the threat – likely real, in my assessment – of Putin’s launching a tactical nuclear strike on the battlefield in Ukraine that President Biden ruled out the deployment of forces into the theater soon after Russia attacked Ukraine. The ayatollahs probably believe that Biden’s fear of nuclear Armageddon and of Iran’s strategic partnership with Russia will further influence the White House’s decision calculus regarding the kind of retaliatory measures it is willing to take against Iran.
Third, Iran probably believes it has a sufficient missile and drone arsenal to keep U.S. forces in the region at risk. Iran’s target list includes some 2,500 U.S. troops in Iraq, 900 in Syria and an embassy in Baghdad.
Iran has the largest and most diverse missile force in the Middle East, according to the 2019 assessment by Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) titled “Iran Military Power: Ensuring Regime Survival and Securing Regional Dominance.” Designed to “overwhelm U.S. forces and our partners in the region,” Tehran’s “substantial” arsenal includes close-range, short-range and medium-range ballistic missiles that can strike targets throughout the region as far as 2,000 kilometers from Iran’s borders, as far as Israel and southeastern Europe.
Missiles and an Iran flag are displayed at Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) National Aerospace Park in western Tehran, Oct. 11, 2023. (Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Moreover, the Iranian state has prioritized its missile modernization, focusing on improvements in range, accuracy, mobility, warhead design and survivability. The employment of improved guidance technology and maneuverability has resulted in increased lethality and precision of Iranian missiles, almost certainly emboldening the regime to act more provocatively.
In its most recent effort to further augment its ballistic missile arsenal, on Jan. 20, Iran launched an advanced satellite, named Soraya, into the highest orbit yet. Carrying a 110-pound payload, Soraya was placed in orbit 460 miles above the Earth’s surface, using a three-stage Qaem 100 rocket. The launch, which was condemned by the U.K., France and Germany in a joint statement, very likely allowed Iran to test an increased lift capacity of its space launch vehicle (SLV) technology – needed to place an object in a higher orbit in space – that is essential for the development of an indigenous long-range strike capability.
Progress in its space program could shorten Iran’s pathway to an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) because SLVs use very similar technologies. If Iran develops a booster capable of ICBM ranges, it can reach the continental United States, if configured for that purpose, warned the DIA. The fact that Iran is deepening ties, including in “the field of military-technical cooperation,” with Russia, which is the world’s leader in space launch and nuclear know-how, makes Tehran’s progress in ICBM development even more alarming.
The flag of Iran in front of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) headquarters in Vienna, Austria. (Michael Gruber/Getty Images)
On Monday, Austin vowed that the U.S. will respond to Iran-backed lethal attack “at a time and place of our choosing.” But the president doesn’t have much time to deliberate. Iran clearly doesn’t feel threatened by Biden’s “Don’t. Don’t” counter-strategy and is postured to climb the escalation ladder.
Once Iran achieves an operational capability to deliver a nuclear strike on Israel and Europe – and then, eventually, on the U.S. homeland – it will be nearly impossible to re-establish deterrence without accepting the risk of a broader war. The time to act is now.
Rebekah Koffler is a strategic military intelligence analyst and the author of Putin’s Playbook. She is Managing Editor of an e-mail newsletter for independent thinkers, CutToTheNews.com. Follow her on Twitter @Rebekah0132
Obama and Biden (Obiden) have been very weak in dealing with the number one sponsor of terrorism, Iran. This has emboldened Iran and its proxies to wreak havoc and bloodshed in the Middle East.
President Trump Slams Biden in Statement on US Troops Killed in Drone Attack by Iran Proxy in Jordan
President Trump released a statement Sunday afternoon regarding the drone attack by an Iranian proxy group on U.S. troops in Jordan that killed three soldiers and wounded several dozen more.
Trump expressed his “profound sympathies” to the families of the fallen and prayers for the wounded. Trump went on to slam Joe Biden for reversing his policies on Iran, actions that have provided the state sponsor of terror with billions of dollars used to fund terror proxies in the Middle East, putting the U.S. “on the brink of World War 3.” Trump closed by saying, “Our Country cannot survive with Joe Biden as Commander in Chief.” READ MORE
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
If only Biden was as ferocious with Iran as he seems to be fighting against Texas’ border policy.
GOVERNOR GREG ABBOTT TO TUCKER: WE ARE ‘PREPARED’ FOR CONFLICT WITH BIDEN REGIME OVER BORDER – 10 STATES HAVE SENT THEIR NATIONAL GUARDS TO DEFEND TEXAS AGAINST INVASION (VIDEO)
Texas Governor Greg Abbott told Tucker Carlson Friday afternoon that he is fully prepared for conflict with federal authorities and that states have already sent their National Guards and other law enforcement to defend the border.
Tucker started the interview by asking Abbott what he would do if the Regime federalized the Texas National Guard. He responded they would attempt to defy the Regime and continue building barriers, including razor wire, and expand the denial of illegal entry into the state of Texas.
He went on to tell Tucker that 10 of the 25 GOP-led states pledging to defend Texas have sent their national guards to the Texas border, and more will follow soon. He did not specify which states had deployed forces. See and READ MORE
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
The U.S. needs to reverse the policies of the Obama and Biden administrations and treat Iran as “an evil enemy that cannot be placated,” said Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark. Two days after three American troops were killed, and dozens more injured in an overnight drone strike in northeast Jordan, Cotton said Iran and its terrorist proxies are exploiting a “weak” and “cowardly” president.
“[President] Joe Biden is weak and pathetic and cowardly,” Cotton said on Hugh Hewitt’s podcast. “You don’t deter people like the ayatollahs who govern Iran by going on TV and saying, Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t. You do it by holding at risk and ultimately destroying or killing the things and the people they hold most dear, like the Revolutionary Guard shock troops.
“Iran is laughing at us and high-fiving because they’ve had a decadelong strategy of using proxies throughout the Middle East to attack us so they can deny that it was them. And what do we do when we only attack Iranian proxies? We validate their proxy strategy.”
Cotton cited the America-First leadership of former President Donald Trump, under whom Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani was killed, and former President Ronald Reagan, under whom half of Iran’s navy was sunk or severely damaged.
“Unfortunately, this is the result of eight years of failed policy of Barack Obama and his understudy, Joe Biden. Or, I’m sorry, 11 years,” Cotton told Hewitt. “Eight years under Barack Obama, and three years under Joe Biden.
“They have viewed Iran as a normal nation that has legitimate grievances against America, and if we would simply conciliate with them and appease them and grant them one-sided concessions, Iran would pull in its horns and begin behaving like a normal nation, and everything would be wonderful again in the Middle East.
“It’s not the case. Iran has been an unappeasable enemy of the United States for 45 years.”
Cotton said the only way to respond to Sunday’s attack is with “massive and devastating military retaliation against Iran’s terrorist forces throughout the region and in Iran itself. Only then will Iran realize that killing an American is an absolute red line that they can never cross again.
“We have to totally reverse the failed Obama-Biden policy of 11 years and view Iran for what it is, an evil enemy that cannot be placated, that can only, in the long run, be defeated. That should be the policy of the United States.”
Cotton, an Army veteran, said there was “no shortage of targets that we could take out that would send a message to the Ayatollah.”
“We certainly should target all IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] camps and boats or ships and bases,” he said. “But there’s also other targets that would put immense pressure on Iran.
“For instance, their refineries, because that is a massive bottleneck in the Iranian economy, one also that is controlled in so small part by the people that run the IRGC, who are also getting rich off the killing of Americans.”
Pakistan recalled its ambassador to Tehran on Wednesday, a day after Iran conducted airstrikes inside Pakistan that it claimed targeted bases for a militant Sunni separatist group.
Islamabad denounced the attack as a “blatant violation” of its airspace and said it killed two children.
Tuesday’s airstrikes in Pakistan’s restive southwestern Baluchistan province imperiled diplomatic relations between the two neighbors, but both sides appeared wary of provoking the other. Iran and nuclear-armed Pakistan have long regarded each other with suspicion over militant attacks.
The attack raised the threat of violence spreading in a Middle East unsettled by Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Iran also staged airstrikes late Monday in Iraq and Syria over an Islamic State-claimed suicide bombing that killed over 90 people earlier this month. Iraq recalled its ambassador from Iran for consultations.
Mumtaz Zahra Baloch, the spokesperson for Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry, announced that Islamabad was recalling its ambassador to Iran over the strikes.
“Last night’s unprovoked and blatant breach of Pakistan’s sovereignty by Iran is a violation of international law and the purposes and principles of the charter of the United Nations,” she said in a televised address.
Baloch added that Pakistan asked the Iranian ambassador, who was visiting Tehran, not to return.
Iran did not immediately acknowledge Pakistan’s decision.
Iranian state media reports, which were later withdrawn without explanation, said the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard targeted bases in Pakistan belonging to the militant group Jaish al-Adl, or the “Army of Justice.”
Iran’s defense minister also said Wednesday that Iran would respond to any threats against itself, the official IRNA news agency reported.
Without naming any country, Gen. Mohammad Reza Ashtiani said: “We will show reaction to threat against the Islamic Republic of Iran from any region. The reaction will be corresponding, harsh and strong.”
Jaish al-Adl, which seeks an independent Baluchistan for ethnic Baluch areas in Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, acknowledged the assault in a statement shared online.
Six bomb-carrying drones and rockets struck homes that the militants claim housed children and wives of their fighters. Jaish al-Adl said the attack killed two children and wounded two women and a teenage girl.
Videos shared by the Baluch activist group HalVash, purportedly from the site, showed a burning building and two charred, small corpses.
A Pakistani intelligence report said the two children killed were a 6-year-old girl and an 11-month-old boy. Three women were injured, aged between 28 and 35, it said. The report also said three or four drones were launched from the Iranian side, hitting a mosque and other buildings, including a house.
Iran has fought in border areas against militants, but the air attack on Pakistan is unprecedented.
A senior Pakistani security official, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to talk to reporters, said Iran had shared no information prior to the strike. He said that Pakistan reserved the right to respond at a time and place of its choosing and that any strike would be measured and in line with public expectations.
However, there were signs Pakistan was trying to contain anger over the attack. The country’s typically outspoken and nationalistic media reported on the airstrikes with unusual restraint Wednesday. Pakistan is three weeks away from an election, and politicians are focused on campaigning.
Iranian state media did not address the strikes, instead discussing a joint naval drill held by Pakistan and the Iranian navy in the Persian Gulf on Tuesday. Pakistani officials acknowledged the drill but said it came earlier than Iran’s attack.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian acknowledged Tehran carried out the attack in Pakistan while speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He defended the action while repeatedly being told by the interviewer that Pakistan had condemned the attack.
“Regarding Pakistan, none of the nationals of our neighbor, brother and friend Pakistan were the target of Iran’s drones and missiles,” Amirabdollahian said. “We have discussed them with Pakistan’s high-ranking military, security and political officials. Our response is against Iranian terrorists inside Pakistani soil.”
Pakistani Foreign Minister Jalil Abbas Jilani said he received a call later from Amirabdollahian.
Jilani told the Iranian the attack seriously damaged relations and could undermine regional peace and stability, according to a statement from the Foreign Ministry in Islamabad. “No country in the region should tread this perilous path,” Jilani said in the call.
Pakistani defense analyst Syed Muhammad Ali said that the government might take some measures in response to the attacks, but that it would weigh any military retaliation carefully. He noted Pakistan’s air defense and missile systems are primarily deployed along its eastern border to respond to potential threats from India.
Jaish al-Adl was founded in 2012, and Iranian officials believe it largely operates in Pakistan. The group has claimed bombings and kidnapped members of Iran’s border police in the past. In December, suspected Jaish al-Adl members killed 11 people and wounded eight others in a nighttime attack on a police station in southeastern Iran. Another recent attack killed a police officer in the area.
In 2019, Jaish al-Adl claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing targeting a bus that killed 27 members of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
Iran has suspected that Sunni-majority Pakistan is hosting insurgents, possibly at the behest of its regional arch-rival Saudi Arabia. However, Iran and Saudi Arabia reached a Chinese-mediated detente last March, easing tensions. Pakistan, meanwhile, has blamed Iran for militant attacks targeting its security forces.
It remained unclear why Iran launched the attack now, particularly as its foreign minister met with Pakistan’s caretaker prime minister, Anwar ul-haq Kakar, the same day at the World Economic Forum.
Kakar had yet to comment publicly on the attacks.
His predecessor, Shehbaz Sharif, said he was shocked at the breach of sovereignty. Writing on X, formerly known as Twitter, Sharif said that “sincere dialogue and meaningful cooperation” between the two countries was needed.
Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Two journalists working for a Lebanon-based TV channel and a third person were killed by a rocket strike near Lebanon’s border with Israel on Tuesday, the Lebanese state news agency reported. The agency said the incident took place near the town of Tir Harfa, about a mile from the Israeli frontier. The strike came less than a day after Hezbollah hit Israeli Defense Forces’ military positions near the border, according to reports.
“According to Israeli Media, Hezbollah has launched upwards of 40 Rockets and 3 Attack Drones against IDF Positions in Northern Israel this morning causing Significant Damage to at least 1 Military Outpost along the Border, with this being seen as a Serious Escalation,” an open-source intelligence monitor posted Monday on X.
Israeli aircraft Tuesday struck three-armed terror cells in Lebanese territory close to the border, as well as a number of Hezbollah targets, the army said, according to Jewish News Syndicate. Sirens sounded in northern Israel on Tuesday morning due to a potential hostile aircraft intrusion from Lebanon, with the IDF later giving the all-clear.
Three anti-tank missile launches from Lebanon toward the area of Metula near the Israel-Lebanon border were identified by the IDF on Tuesday morning. No injuries were reported, and the IDF struck the source of the launches. Later on Tuesday morning, the IDF reported that terrorists fired mortar shells at a military post in northern Israel.
Lebanon’s Al Mayadeen TV, which the two killed reporters were working for, said Israel had carried out the attack and deliberately targeted the journalists. Israel’s military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Fighting between Israel and Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah broke out after Hezbollah’s Palestinian ally Hamas launched an attack on Israel on Oct. 7. The border violence has escalated, raising Western fears of a widening war in the Middle East that could draw in both the United States and Iran.
It is the worst violence at the border since Israel and Hezbollah fought a war in 2006 and has so far killed more than 70 Hezbollah fighters, 13 Lebanese civilians, seven Israeli troops and three Israeli civilians.
Newsmax writer Eric Mack and JNS.org contributed to this report.
Architects of Barack Obama’s 2015 Iran giveaway deserve plenty of blame for empowering terrorist proxies throughout the Middle East, including the one that murdered 1,400 Jews — over 30 Americans. At this point in history, they should have nothing to do with our Israel policy.
And yet, welcome our new ambassador to the Jewish State, Jack Lew.
Sen. Ben Cardin, the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations, ludicrously claimed during Lew’s confirmation hearing that the former Treasury Secretary was “eminently qualified to serve in this post. He has extensive experience.”
Lew’s only experience in foreign policy is championing pro-Iran policies. During the Iran deal debate, Lew predicted the giveaway “will make our country safer, it will make our allies safer, and it will make the world safer.” Not once, in his Washington Institute speech praising Obama’s foreign policy, incidentally, did Lew mention the word “Israel.” What the deal — and subsequent support for Iran — did was reward the Revolutionary Guard for murdering around 600 Americans in Iraq and incentivize that regime to take more American hostages.
Our allies certainly aren’t any safer. Israel not only has to deal with Iran-funded Hamas but also the Iran-funded Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Iran-funded Houthis in Yemen and Iran-funded Islamic terror groups still operating within Judea and Samaria.
The Obama administration, which refused to show any solidarity with the Green Revolutionaries, rarely had a bad word to say about Iran. Not so Israel. Because of his Jewish background, Lew was recruited by the administration to publicly rebuke duly elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for being critical of the deal. It was “beyond the pale,” said Lew in 2015, the man now being sent to pressure that same man into letting Hamas off the hook.
Then again, it should not be forgotten that Lew went above and beyond for Iran. As Treasury Secretary, he oversaw the $400 million “pallets of cash” transfer to the mullahs (we later learned it was much worse.) For over 37 years, through five administrations, both Democrat and Republican, the United States’ position was that those funds were not “Iran’s money.” Yet, rather than handing the funds to the families of American terror victims who were still owed $53 billion in court decisions against the terror state, Lew sent it to Ali Khamenei.
It got worse. After telling Congress that the mullahs wouldn’t be granted access to the American financial system, Lew secretly helped Iranians convert nearly $6 billion into dollars and then euros. (Apparently, Iran likes their blood money in $6 billion cuts.)
There was no stipulation in the Iran deal compelling the United States to license the exchange of mullah blood money in American banks. But, as usual, Lew lied. “Since Iran has kept its end of the deal, it is our responsibility to uphold ours, in both letter and spirit,” he said in 2016, without explaining how the transaction was legal. Iran, of course, hadn’t upheld its end of the deal. Nor was it in the “spirit” of the deal to covertly circumvent sanctions that were intentionally left standing. Though to be fair, Lew does know a thing or two about shady banking.
In 2006, Lew had parlayed his Clinton-era administration experience into a job heading up a Citigroup hedge fund that bet against the housing market. And still, somehow, under Lew, the fund lost nearly all its value. More than 50,000 employees at Citigroup were fired. For all his good work, however, Lew was cut a $940,000 bonus check right after Washington gave his company a $301 billion federal guarantee taxpayer-funded bailout and right before he became Budget Director for Obama.
Now, “Lew will have to take up Washington’s call to protect civilians in Gaza amid the widening human suffering,” according to CNN. Indeed, the myth that Israel isn’t engaged in a proportional response and hasn’t gone out of its way to warn Arab civilians to get out of the way is a kind of blood libel Democrats like to engage in to placate its pro-Hamas wing. Lew will likely incentivize Hamas to use more civilians as shields, as he did Iran, since it is obviously an effective tactic.
Virtually every instinct of the contemporary Democrat about this conflict has been disastrously wrong. And few of them have been more wrong than Lew.
Iran-backed forces across the Middle East have attacked American positions and allies at least 23 times in the last two weeks, the Pentagon said Monday, adding that a U.S. military response will occur “at a time and place of our choosing, and we’re going to continue to do so.”
Since October 17, in the wake of Hamas’s war on Israel, Iranian terror forces have launched 14 attacks on American assets in Iraq and nine in Syria “through a mix of one-way attack drones and rockets,” a senior Defense Department official told reporters during a press briefing. The U.S. military responded last Thursday to these strikes by bombing Iranian positions in Syria, and American forces will continue to target Tehran’s proxy groups at will, the official said. Iran, the Pentagon assesses, is targeting American forces, threatening to drag the United States into a larger regional war.
“It’s about Iran and the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], who use infrastructure, militants, and proxies on the ground across the Middle East to include both Iraq and Syria,” the Defense Department official said, speaking only on background. “We reserve the right to respond at a time and place of our choosing, and we’re going to continue to do so.”
“Let me be clear,” the official added: “We’re going to continue to respond when the president decides that’s necessary for U.S. force protection.”
In the weeks since the Iran-backed terrorist group Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel, killing more than 1,400, Tehran’s allies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen have stepped up their terrorism activities. These activities include rocket fire and shelling on Israel from areas in both Syria and Lebanon, where Hezbollah forces are stationed.
Iran’s assets in Iraq have also increased their strikes on American forces in the country, resulting in last week’s military response by the United States. The Pentagon also said that Hamas militants are using hospitals and other civilian structures to conduct their terrorism operations against Israel.
The Israeli military’s foray into civilian areas of the Gaza Strip has fueled accusations that the country is intentionally targeting innocents, claims that have been amplified by anti-Israel U.S. lawmakers such as Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.). The Pentagon, however, says it has seen evidence that Hamas is using civilian structures as command centers.
“What I would say about Hamas is [its] use of civilian structures for command-and-control facilities and to hide weapons,” the official said. “There is an abundance of public reporting about the ways in which Hamas uses civilians as human shields and civilian structures to hide and obfuscate tunnels, as well as weapons.”
This includes “Hamas’s use of hospitals to emplace command-and-control infrastructure or other weapons that can be used against Israeli civilians.”
As of Monday afternoon, the Pentagon said it has no plans to facilitate “military-assisted departures” for American citizens stuck in the region.
There’s a simple pattern that the media follow when covering each new crisis that pops up during Joe Biden’s catastrophic presidency: A calamity occurs either domestically or abroad, and rather than examining the cause, the media instantly frame Biden as a hero at battle.
War in Ukraine? “Joe Biden Marshals U.S. Allies Against Russia” (Newsweek).
Obscene gas prices? “Biden’s frustration with soaring prices” (Washington Post).
War in Israel? “Why this Israel-Gaza conflict is so complicated for Biden” (CNN).
Folks! He’s frustrated, folks. It’s complicated for Biden, folks.
The New York Times’ David French offered up that same spa treatment for the president this week under the headline “Joe Biden knows what he’s doing.” In the piece, French implored his readers to “consider” all it is that Biden “confronts”: a war in Ukraine, another one in the Middle East, plus the ever-present threat from China. “And keep in mind,” he said, “Biden is managing these conflicts all while trying to make sure that the nation emerges from a pandemic with inflation in retreat and its economy intact.”
Folks! Keep it in mind, folks. Biden is trying, folks. He’s managing lots of complicated problems, folks. It’s frustrating to the president, too, folks.
Honestly, I felt the same way under President Trump when he was confronted by two hot wars, record inflation, and impossible energy prices. He did the best he could to manage the challenges he faced — the struggles he endured.
Wait, that’s not right. There were neither wars nor inflation during Trump’s term. The U.S. was energy independent, and gas was cheap precisely because he flooded the market with oil for the taking. My mistake!
Actually, now that I think about it, I recall that despite a remarkable period of global calm and even a historic peace deal reached between Israel and the Arab world, the Trump era was marked by nonstop hysterics from the media about our supposedly shaken allies and emboldened foes. (i.e., Trump demanded that Western Europe live up to his part of the NATO bargain and made it known that the U.S. cannot solve all of the world’s problems, especially when large parts of the world don’t see them as such.)
But back to Biden. He’s not confronting or managing a series of events that happened to him. He and his party actively created them. Or, at minimum, they created an environment that anyone could have predicted would lead to them.
Russia has long insisted that NATO stop expanding along its border. The second Biden got into office, he pushed for Ukraine’s membership. Israel had its country under relative control for years right up until Biden’s team gifted Iran, the Jewish state’s greatest threat, $6 billion worth of goodies. We were energy independent until Biden said we couldn’t be. The economy was working itself out until Biden and his party thought it would be a good idea to pump hundreds of billions of dollars more into Covid-era welfare (“childcare” and “living assistance”). And let’s not start on the electric vehicle scheme, wherein car companies grabbed another round of multi-billion-dollar taxpayer funds, courtesy of Biden, for a product that barely works (and for which manufacturers are now rolling back their production of).
Biden isn’t a knight of the kingdom off to slay a dragon. He’s a dunce screwing up everything. He doesn’t get to turn the economy and international stability into ruins and then get credit for saying he takes it all very seriously.
He’s not “struggling” or “managing,” and it’s not “complicated.” Biden is the struggle. He is the thing to manage. He is the complication.
Democrats appear to be sticking by Joe Biden as their only presidential candidate for 2024 and don’t seem interested in any debates involving Robert F Kennedy or Dean Phillips of Minnesota. How’s that for upholding democracy? Shouldn’t voters have the ability to hear the opposition in order to make an informed choice within their own party?
There’s a lot of rigorous debating going on within the Republican Party that more closely resembles what democracy actually looks like, as opposed to the Democrats running their party like a communist politburo out of the former Soviet Union or Communist China. Democrats always seem to be in lockstep with each other, especially when it comes to policies that hurt Americans and their constitutional freedoms at large.
Israel is totally surrounded by the Muslim world and is constantly threatened with genocidal rhetoric, along with rockets being constantly fired on their innocent citizens every day from Gaza. The threat is instigated primarily by the Islamic Republic of Iran, a well-funded state sponsoring terrorism across the globe with the help of their branches, Hamas and Hezbollah.
Sadly, whenever Israel acts to defend their population against this barbarism surrounding them, the left in America and much of the world defend Hamas and these bloody acts of Terrorism. Many of the LGBTQ-XYZ groups are also protesting against Israel and defending the Hamas attacks against innocent civilians without any understanding that they themselves would be killed for being gay, lesbian, or trans in Gaza or in much of the Muslim world.
Most people now realize that Iran is directly involved with Hamas and the recent attacks on Israel through the funding they have received from Biden, the $6 billion, and $58 billion through oil revenue when Biden ignored the embargo placed on their production by Trump.
This can even be traced back to when Obama was president, giving Iran pallets full of millions of dollars. Most of the money from Biden and Obama has most likely ended up in the hands of terrorists like Hamas and Hezbollah that have killed Jews and Americans.
Obama has long been suspected of favoring Iran over the people of Israel and their welfare and having strong Muslim sympathies that may have been instrumental in his Middle East policies.
We have a New Speaker, Mike Johnson. Will he be the anti-RINO we all have been hoping for?
House Republicans came to their collective senses on Oct. 25 and elected U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) as the new Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, ushering in new leadership three weeks after former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was ousted when 208 House Democrats joined a coalition of 8 House Republicans on Oct. 3 in removing his via motion to vacate the chair.
The vote among Republicans for once was unanimous on the House floor, with Johnson getting even more support than did McCarthy when he was finally elected in January. What remains to be seen is if Republicans will be able to keep the conference united when the House proceeds to imminent appropriations bills Johnson has promised to put onto the floor in the coming days and weeks.
In an Oct. 23 dear colleague letter to House Republicans prior to winning the internal conference election for the Speaker nomination, Johnson laid out the legislative calendar for appropriations for the next 18 months. Per the calendar, four appropriations bills will come up immediately in the next week: Energy and Water, Legislative Branch, Interior and Environment and Transportation, Housing and Urban Development.
Four more would follow in the week after that, in time for the Nov. 17 when the current continuing resolution comes due. Johnson acknowledged that his proposed, expedited schedule for passage of appropriations was “ambitious,” and afforded that there might not be time to work out differences with the Senate.
If so, Johnson also offered another continuing resolution as a fallback: “if another stopgap measure is needed to extend government funding beyond the November 17 deadline, I would propose a measure that expires on January 15 or April 15… to ensure the Senate cannot jam the House with a Christmas omnibus.”
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
Biden has been having a lot of problems with his dogs biting people at the White House. It seems as though Iran has a couple of dogs that are even more ferocious, but it seems as though they’re well-trained. Their names are Hezbollah and Hamas.
It appears these dogs, Hezbollah and Hamas, have been well fed by Iran with money paid to them by the US… Biden and the US gave Iran $6 billion or more and paid Hamas $6 million, not to mention the $58 billion Iran made from oil production unleashed by Biden’s policies. President Trump had put restrictions on Iran’s selling of oil that Biden canceled as soon as he came into office.
Bottom line, you could say for sure that it was Obama and Biden who funded the terror and genocidal attack on Israel on October 7th due to their weak and ignorant Middle East policies in a desperate attempt to secure a nuclear deal with Iran and their appeasement of evil dictatorships.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
The U.S. response to Hamas’ Nazi-like massacre of Israelis, Americans, and anyone else in its murderous path has been, almost without exception, robust. But U.S. officials are largely missing the larger picture and risking being drawn into an escalation — on the enemy’s terms.
Hamas and Hezbollah are the symptoms; Iran is the disease.
But President Biden’s Oval Office address to the nation on Oct. 19 danced around the core issue of Iran’s financing, training, and encouragement of violent, brutal forces across the region and beyond, as well as its nuclear missile program. Thus, the gathering might of the U.S. Navy off the coast of Israel in the form of two aircraft carrier strike groups and a Marine Expeditionary Unit betrays unimaginative, linear thinking.
If used, American firepower would augment Israel’s own considerable military force. In theory, this threat helps to deter Hezbollah from unleashing its arsenal of 100,000 missiles on Israel, many of them sophisticated.
But, like Hamas, Hezbollah is expert at digging. They hide their missile launchers in an extensive network of tunnels and bunkers — all guarded by an air defense network that is likely to get lucky enough times to raise the specter of captured American pilots.
If the incremental addition of American airpower is helpful to the pending effort to destroy Hamas while deterring a wider conflict, that role can more than adequately be filled by the U.S. Air Force. The U.S. Navy should instead be concentrating 2,000 miles to the east in the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. There, the U.S. Navy would be playing to its unambiguous strength, enforcing sanctions against Iran by controlling the sea lines of communication that Iran depends on to generate the cash for its empire of terror.
Unfortunately, this would require a Biden administration that was both imaginative and strategic — and not in the thrall of a recently revealed Iranian influence operation that managed to place several advisors friendly to the Iranian mullahs in key national security positions since the Obama administration. Chief among these, Robert Malley, a longtime friend of Secretary of State Antony Blinken and an architect of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran, a deal that focused exclusively on Iran’s nuclear program, rewarding the mullahs with cash and sanctions relief while greenlighting their missile program and global support for terror.
Iran’s Nuclear Program
Instead, Biden’s systematic appeasement of Iran, a continuation of the Obama-era policy that weirdly sought to use Iran as a counter to perceived Israeli intransigence on the Palestinian problem, has resumed. Up until the gruesome events of Oct. 7, Biden’s national security team was willfully blind to Iran’s bloody history of sponsoring terror and its determined drive to produce nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them.
As a result, U.N. sanctions against Iran’s nuclear, missile, and drone program — never well enforced by Biden — expired on Oct. 18 with the U.S. announcing its own unilateral set of sanctions. The U.S. continues to pretend these efforts are somehow slowing Iran’s drive to push its nuclear program to completion, while Russian use of Iranian combat drones in Ukraine reveals the prior sanctions regime as inadequate to the task.
Reagan-Era Lessons
The U.S. never fully grappled with the Iranian theocracy after the shah was toppled in 1979. During the Cold War, it was assumed that the Soviet Union would come to Iran’s aid and that the military cost of defeating the regime would be too high. Instead, the U.S. was content to see Iran tied down in a bloody stalemate against Iraq after the latter invaded in 1980.
As the war started to threaten oil exports out of the Gulf, America responded by providing a U.S. Navy escort to six Kuwaiti-owned super tankers in July 1987. After an escorting U.S. Navy ship struck a mine on April 14, 1988, the Reagan administration responded only four days later with Operation Praying Mantis. It was the Navy’s largest combat action since World War II, sinking an Iranian guided missile frigate, crippling a second, sinking four other boats, and destroying two militarized oil platforms at the cost of one helicopter with two crew lost.
The operation was thoroughly wargamed a year before, when it was determined that an unambiguously aggressive response to Iran would likely prevent the conflict from escalating. In other words, a disproportionate response would rob Iran of the ability to control the timing and mode of escalation, reducing U.S. casualties and preserving the peace.
Applying Force
This lesson from the Reagan era opens up a final consideration. Rather than following through on the foolish precedent of incentivizing hostage-taking via negotiation and cash payments, America should ditch the carrots and pick up the stick.
Imagine the transformative discussion over the current hostage crisis — and the forestalling of future hostage-taking by Iran and its proxies — if the U.S. were to announce that every hostage taken is worth $1 billion (or $1.171 billion if we wish to account for Bidenflation). That amount would be deducted from seized Iranian assets or taken from oil tankers filled with Iranian oil. The proceeds would compensate hostages and their families, with the remainder used to replenish the Pentagon’s waning stocks of armaments.
This is exactly the kind of naval power application the U.S. Navy was built for. Unfortunately, the radical cadres infesting the Biden administration’s national security staff would never allow such an idea to reach the desk of our cognitively impaired commander-in-chief.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
Biden administration officials including President Joe Biden warned over the weekend that Hamas’ attack on Israel has resulted in an increased threat of terrorism within U.S. borders. FBI Director Christopher Wray warned on Saturday that the “heightened environment” presented by the fighting in Israel and Gaza has caused “an increase in reported threats.”
“We’ve got to be on the lookout, especially for lone actors who may take inspiration from recent events to commit violence of their own,” Wray said during his address at the International Association of Chiefs of Police Conference. “I’d encourage you to stay vigilant because as the first line of defense protecting our communities, you’re often the first to see the signs that someone may be mobilizing to violence.”
Biden similarly confirmed during a “60 Minutes” sit-down that Americans are at greater risk of a terrorist attack on U.S. soil after the events of the last week and a half.
“Because of what we’re seeing in the Middle East, is the threat of terrorism in the United States increased?” CBS’s Scott Pelley asked.
“Yes,” Biden replied. “I had a meeting this morning with the Homeland Security people, with the FBI, in the Situation Room for the better of part of an hour to discuss how we make sure that we prevent a lone wolf and or any coordinated effort to try to do what was done in synagogues before, do what was done to Jews in the street.”
Biden claimed that his administration is “making a major effort to make sure that doesn’t happen,” yet he has no concrete plans to cut off the biggest potential terrorist pipeline into the United States.
Hama’s “global day of rage” prompted terrorist attacks and anti-Israel demonstrations not just in France, China, Jordan, Iran, and Italy, but also in states like Washington and California. In addition to the Iranian spies who made their way into the Biden administration and the terrorist sleeper cells already embedded in U.S. cities, foreign incendiaries who wish ill on Americans can literally walk right into the U.S. via our compromised Southern border.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection sources confirmed to Fox News on Monday that two of the Iranians caught sneaking across the Southern border in the last month were pinned as “raising red flags that they could pose a significant security threat.” Their information was later located in the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB).
The capture is not the least bit surprising to border officials who, since October 2022, arrested nearly 160 illegal border crossers whose information was found on the TSDB. The Department of Homeland Security even admitted last week that “[t]errorists and criminal actors may exploit the elevated flow and increasingly complex security environment to enter the United States” via its open Southern border.
Yet, Biden has no plans to stymie the border crisis created by his commitment to undo Trump-era security policies. On the contrary, the Democrat has repeatedly reinforced that he does not care to stop the collapse of the Southern border.
When word spread that Biden, in a major reversal, sought to build part of the Trump border wall he had been “quietly”auctioning off, the Democrat regime scrambled to assure Americans that the administration did not care to secure the nation’s borders, especially with physical barriers.
I want to address today’s reporting relating to a border wall and be absolutely clear.
There is no new Administration policy with respect to border walls. My full statement ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/ga1fEMqvN8
— Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas (@SecMayorkas) October 5, 2023
Biden is not blind to the fact that nearly 7 million illegal border crossers have marched into the country detected by border officials, though likely not detained for long. Instead of addressing the border crisis that is clearly used as a pathway by potential terrorists to infiltrate the states, however, Biden is planning a trip to Israel to discuss its border issues.
If the Biden administration can waive more than two dozen laws to begrudgingly erect part of the border wall, it could easily reinstate other border security measures that would keep illegal border crossings down and free up Border Patrol to capture the several potential terrorists who inevitably make up part of the 1.5 million gotaways who made it into the U.S. under Biden.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
Iran is warning of a possible “preemptive” strike against Israel soon. The warning, reported by Aljazeera, came as Israel prepared for a major ground offensive in Gaza.
Tensions have flared along the Lebanon-Israel border between the Hezbollah group and Israeli military, The Associated Press reported. While shelling has been limited to towns along the border, there have been fears Hezbollah and other Iran-backed groups would escalate their actions to support Hamas should Israel begin a ground operation in Gaza.
“All possible options and scenarios are there for Hezbollah … Naturally, resistance leaders will not allow the Zionist regime to take any action in Gaza, and when it feels reassured about Gaza, move on to other resistance areas in the region,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said on state TV late on Monday, referring to his meeting with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah the previous day.
“Therefore, any preemptive measure is imaginable in the coming hours,” he added.
According to the New York Post, he further said: “The resistance front is capable of waging a long-term war with the enemy [Israel] … in the coming hours, we can expect a preemptive action by the resistance front.”
The Post noted that Iran had applauded the brutal attack on Israel by Hamas, which had targeted innocent civilians.
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
An Israeli Defense Force commander told journalists that soldiers founded babies beheaded in the wake of Hamas terrorists’ assault on Israel. The IDF showed journalists around Kfar Aza, a town near Gaza, on Oct. 10. Pictured: A view of a house left in ruins after an attack by Hamas militants on this kibbutz days earlier when dozens of civilians were killed near the border with Gaza. Oct. 10 in Kfar Aza, Israel. (Photo: Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images)
Israeli soldiers report finding the bodies of babies, some of them decapitated, in the ruins of a town ravaged by Hamas terrorists in their surprise attack on Saturday. Israeli Defense Force soldiers took dozens of foreign journalists Tuesday to Kfar Aza, a town about 1.5 miles southeast of the Gaza border. Journalists surveyed the devastation, with explosions and artillery fire occurring in the background.
“It’s not a war,” Gen. Itai Veruv, head of the IDF’s Depth Command, told reporters. “It’s not a battlefield. You see the babies, the mothers, the fathers in their bedrooms, in their protection rooms, and how the terrorists kill them.”
“It’s not a war … it’s a massacre,” Veruv added.
'It's not a war, it's not a battle. It's a massacre'
Journalists are let into Kfar Aza for the first time, four days after the community came under the shock attack by Hamas terrorists
IDF Major General Itai Veruv describes the scene of brutal violence, where whole families… pic.twitter.com/HJzoMKj2Ta
Nicole Zedek, an i24 News reporter, said that an IDF commander told her they found the bodies of some 40 babies, some of whom had been beheaded.
i24NEWS Correspondent @Nicole_Zedek reports from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, a quarter-mile from the Gaza border, and recounts the atrocities that were committed in the small community which remains an active scene as soldiers clear booby traps and recover the bodies of dozens of victims pic.twitter.com/J4ZfWZQYHp
Earlier Tuesday, the IDF reported having regained control over the border with the Gaza Strip, roughly 72 hours after Hamas terrorists blew through sections of the barrier and launched the invasion early Saturday morning, The Times of Israel reported.
Hamas militants attacked Israel on the last day of the Jewish festival of Sukkot, as well as the Sabbath day of rest and the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. The terrorists slaughtered over 900 Israelis, including about 250 at a music festival, and kidnapped more than 100.
“This morning, on Shabbat and a holiday, Hamas invaded Israeli territory and murdered innocent citizens, including children and the elderly,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement posted on X (formerly Twitter) Saturday. “Hamas has started a brutal and evil war.”
“They didn’t go for military targets—they went for civilians, they went for grandmothers, children, babies,” Israeli Defense Forces’ international spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht said in a video message Sunday. “The numbers are unprecedented.”
“The style of attack is barbaric,” Hecht added. “In a way, this is our 9/11.”
He explained that the Hamas fighters attacked a party near the Gaza strip and kidnapped a grandmother. “Everybody, nearly, in Israel is affected by this.”
Hamas militants shot civilians at bus stops, on roads, and in their cars, photos show, according to Israeli experts who spoke to the Times of Israel. Videos reportedly show Israeli civilians, including women and children, getting abducted and taken to Gaza. Two videos raise concerns of sexual assault or rape.
Operational update with IDF International Spokesperson Lt. Col. Richard Hecht. https://t.co/9d9JeiUYFG
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators gather in support of the Palestinian people during a rally for Gaza at the Consulate General of Israel on Sunday in New York City. (Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
A national pro-Palestine student organization is calling for a “day of resistance” on college campuses Thursday in support of brutal terrorist attacks on Israel, emphasizing that they are not only in solidarity with Palestine, they are “PART of this movement.”
A toolkit released by the national Students for Justice in Palestine calls for the student movement for “Palestine liberation” to organize a national day of resistance on college campuses across the U.S. and Canada. The organization did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“We as Palestinian students in exile are PART of this movement, not in solidarity with this movement,” the toolkit messaging says in bold. “This is a moment of mobilization for all Palestinians. We must act as part of this movement. All of our efforts continue the work and resistance of Palestinians on the ground.”
At least six chapters have already announced such events for Oct. 12, according to the Anti-Defamation League: Arizona State University, University of Arizona, Butler Universityin Indiana, University of Louisville in Kentucky, University of Binghamton in New York and the University of Virginia.
“We must continue to resist directly, through dismantling Zionism and wielding the political power that our organizations hold on our campuses and in our communities,” the Students for Justice in Palestine toolkit says. “We are asking chapters to host demonstrations on campus/in their community in support of our resistance in Palestine and the national liberation struggle—one which they play a critical role in actualizing.”
Israeli soldiers on Monday remove the body of a civilian killed days earlier in an attack by Palestinian terroists on this kibbutz near the border with Gaza in Kfar Aza, Israel. (Photo: Amir Levy/Getty Images)
If a protest is not possible, the national Students for Justice in Palestine encourages other forms of engagement, such as a sit-in, “disruption” or “educational event.”
The Anti-Defamation League expressed concerns about such tactics: “Although these are all nonviolent tactics, they raise the real possibility of creating a hostile environment for Jewish students, and the confrontational spirit that permeates the toolkit raises the concern that these actions could lead to acts of harassment or vandalism targeting Jewish students and organizations.”
Victoria Coates, vice president of The Heritage Foundation’s Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, told The Daily Signal on Tuesday that “the corrosive antisemitism that infects American higher education today has been on ugly display since the terrorist attacks against Israel over the weekend.”
“Instead of denouncing the genocidal Hamas terrorists who hunted, tortured, murdered and took Jews hostage, all too many in academia have come out in favor of their depraved and savage rampage as if it were somehow legitimate because the victims were Jews,” Coates said. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
She added: “This bigoted response stands in stark contrast with the wave of support for Ukraine after [Russian President] Vladimir Putin’s invasion in 2022, when the same campuses that will host these anti-Israel rallies flew Ukrainian flags in solidarity with the victims of Putin’s attack.”
The calls for demonstrations come after the terrorist group Hamas infiltrated Israel over the weekend, firing more than 4,500 rockets and slaughtering more than 1,000 people, including many women, children, and babies.
Media reports continue to describe unspeakable atrocities committed by Hamas. An Israeli Defense Forces spokesman said Tuesday that Israeli soldiers had found beheaded corpses of babies in a town near Gaza.
“It’s not a war, it’s not a battlefield. You see the babies, the mother, the father, in their bedrooms, in their protection rooms, and how the terrorists killed them,” IDF Maj. Gen. Itai Veruv said as reported by Fox News. “It’s a massacre.”
But the national Students for Justice in Palestine messaging states that “when people are occupied, resistance is justified.”
“Normalize the resistance,” the messaging says, urging students to describe the current events as a “struggle for national liberation,” rather than a war or a conflict.
The invasion shows that “Israel is fragile,” the messaging continues. “The Zionist entity is fragile, and Palestinian resistance is alive.”
George Washington University Students for Justice in Palestine weigh in on the devastation in Israel: "WE WILL BE CAGED NO LONGER."
Meanwhile, pro-Palestine groups at universities such as George Washington University in Washington, D.C., are expressing support for Palestine without acknowledging the atrocities that the terrorists have committed in Israel.
“This past weekend we witnessed them break free, tearing down the prison walls, and making it known to the world: WE WILL BE CAGED NO LONGER,” says a statement from GW Students for Justice in Palestine. That statement praises the invasion as “history in the making” and “the beginning of a new era in our struggle.”
“GW Students for Justice in Palestine maintains unwavering support for our people’s resistance, in all its forms,” the statement says. “Every single act of resistance moves us closer to the liberation of our homeland. We will never capitulate to the colonizer or his sympathizers, and we stand firm and steadfast in support of our people’s right to resist. We call upon all our people and those in solidarity with us to join us in this struggle.”
Jewish Insider editor-in-chief Josh Kraushaar reacted to the student statement by calling it a “look at the intellectual/moral climate on top college campuses.”
Lawyer and commentator Erielle Davidson tweeted: “My skin is crawling at the thought that American universities allow bloodthirsty freaks to carry their degrees. GW has a high Jewish population. Despicable.”
And Israeli television anchor Lidar Grave-Lazi said in a social media post that “the world is finally opening its eyes to see the true face of the ‘Pro-Palestinian’ movement.”
“It is not about human rights,” she said. “It is about brutality, barbarism, hatred and the annihilation of Israel. Unfortunately, they have infiltrated college campuses across the U.S. and not enough is being done to counter their hatred. Just look to @Harvard’s deafening silence. Anyone who is civilized and has a shred of humanity should condemn such statements and call them out for what they truly are.”
George Washington University did not immediately respond to requests for comment as to what steps it is taking to ensure the safety of its Jewish students.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
The New York Times broke the news last Sunday morning that the Iranian government abolished its notorious morality police, government agents who enforce a strict dress code based on the state’s interpretation of Islamic Sharia law. They have become a universally condemned symbol of oppression after 22-year-old Iranian woman Mahsa Amini died on Sept. 16 in Tehran after the “morality police” arrested and beat her for not wearing her hijab “properly.” Amini’s death sparked nationwide protests that continue today.
The Times celebrated Iran’s abolishment of the morality police as an “apparent victory for feminists.” Other corporate media, from The Wall Street Journal to CNBC, quickly repeated the Times’ story. Margaret Brennan, host of CBS’s “Face the Nation,” began her interview with the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken by saying, “I want to start with some breaking news overnight out of Iran, they have abolished the morality police.”
Yet within minutes of the Times’ reporting, human rights activists in Iran and the West denounced the Times story as false. U.S.-based Iranian activist Masih Alinejad tweeted, “It’s disinformation that the Islamic Republic of Iran has abolished it’s [sic] morality police. It’s a tactic to stop the uprising.” Another Iranian activist, Amin Pouria, tweeted, “To lift world’s public opinion pressure, the IR changes [the] name of the ‘Morality Police.’ However, Iranian women & girls are still beaten, imprisoned or killed like #MahsaAmini for mandatory dress code. Don’t let the IR fool you with lies and be Iranian’s voice.”
Even Iran’s government and state media have denied suspending the morality police. Iranian lawmaker and cleric Hossein Jalali reportedly said the morality police are here to stay, and “the Islamic Republic’s crackdown on women not wearing proper hijab will continue with a range of measures that may include blocking their bank accounts.” Kasra Aarabi, an analyst of the U.K.’s Tony Blair Institute, called the Times’ story “fake news.” He pointed out in his tweet, “This disinfo was propagated today to distract media attention from the 3 days of major protests in #Iran which begin tomo. Why did mainstream media ignore this context?”
It turned out the Times’ report was based on a vague comment by Iran’s Attorney General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri. When asked by reporters why people hadn’t seen many “morality police” on the streets, Montazeri replied, “The morality police had nothing to do with the judiciary, and the same institution that established it has now shut it down.” The Times ran its story based on this comment while ignoring what Montazeri said: “the judiciary will continue to supervise social behaviors.” After the pushback from Iranian human rights activists, some media began questioning or adding context to the story. Still, the Times has issued no correction or apology to its original report.
How did Western corporate media such as the Times get the morality police story wrong? Corporate media today are less about reporting straight news than advocating narratives, and people who work at these outlets see themselves as activists more than traditional journalists.They search for and only report news that supports their preferred narratives. The fake story of the morality police’s abolishment fits neatly with the narrative that courageous feminists forced an authoritarian regime to make a compromise. It was such a perfect story that the Times’ reporters ran with it rather than spending time to verify and confirm it with more reliable sources.
I see a similar pattern in how Beijing’s latest moves to lift some Covid restrictions after week-long national protests were reported. One analyst of Human Rights Watch tweeted, “The Chinese government is now easing Covid restrictions, thanks to the protesters who courageously took to the street.” While it is true that Chinese protesters were courageous, and Beijing did announce some relief from its Covid restrictions this week, it is delusional to interpret Beijing’s action as a comprise to the protesters.
The Wall Street Journal reported that some Chinese officials were quietly seeking ways to ease the “zero Covid” restrictions to rescue China’s falling economy months before the nationwide protests. According to the WSJ, “Chinese exports fell at the steepest pace in more than two years in November, the latest indication of how the country’s pandemic restrictions and waning global demand for goods are throttling China’s economy.” Besides the economic toll, Beijing is concerned that the continuation of strict Covid controls would “threaten China’s key position in global supply chains” and “lead to a broader decoupling between China and the world.” While Xi publicly vowed to stick to his “zero Covid” policy, he permitted the lifting of some Covid restrictions because even he was keenly aware that economic instability would lead to social unrest. The economic reality, not the nationwide protests, drove Beijing’s latest announcement.
While there is easing, some loathed Covid restrictions remain in place. For example, in some cities, when even one person in an apartment building tested positive, local Covid police sealed the entrance and exit to the entire building and confined all residents in their tiny apartments, forcing them to survive on limited and often overpriced food delivery. The continuation of these inhuman restrictions should surprise no one because Beijing’s “zero Covid” policy was never about health care but controlling people.
Besides chasing narratives, the lack of understanding of the true nature of authoritarian regimes is another explanation for why corporate media outlets often fall for authoritarian disinformation and inadvertently become useful idiots for these regimes.
It is common for democracies to respond to people’s will and make necessary policy changes. But authoritarian regimes do not budge, and their response to civil disobedience is more violent oppression. Since nationwide protests erupted in Iran, more than 18,000 protesters have reportedly been arrested, and the death toll of protesters surpassed 470. This week, Aarabi tweeted that the Iranian government executed another young protester and announced more future executions. Canadian human rights activist and lawyer Kaveh Shahrooz said in an interview, “Iran’s regime is not normal; its official statements are often lies designed to mislead the world. Our media should not take them at their word and must exercise extra caution when reporting on Iran.”
The CCP is not normal, either. It didn’t send tanks to flatten protesters last week only because the regime has found a better way to crack down on dissent without the “unpleasant” visuals of protesters dying in broad daylight. In recent years, Beijing has perfected its surveillance tools in Xinjiang against the Uyghurs. By persecuting Hong Kong’s pro-democracy activists under a dubious national security law, the Chinese authorities have not only silenced the city’s political dissent but also established the illusion that the CCP practices “rule by law.”
Beijing has already deployed these tactics to identify and intimidate protesters. Additionally, Covid-tracking QR codes that every Chinese citizen was forced to download on their phones to “track not only their COVID-19 risk status, but also their minute-by-minute movements — where they go, how they travel, and the people they encounter — data that is available to police.” Even if not all of these protesters end up in jail, the omnipresent social credit system will ensure they live a miserable life, unable to travel, find employment, open a bank account, or even own a pet.
If the corporate media truly care about maintaining their credibility and striving to support people who live in authoritarian regimes who yearn for freedom and democracy, they need to develop an understanding of these authoritarian regimes and understand that tyrants do not compromise. Corporate journalists must stop passing on these regimes’ disinformation, no matter how well it fits their preferred narratives. They must also find the decency to apologize and retract reporting when proven wrong.
Helen Raleigh, CFA, is an American entrepreneur, writer, and speaker. She’s a senior contributor at The Federalist. Her writings appear in other national media, including The Wall Street Journal and Fox News. Helen is the author of several books, including “Confucius Never Said” and “Backlash: How Communist China’s Aggression Has Backfired.” Follow her on Parler and Twitter: @HRaleighspeaks.
A stranded Iranian Christian migrant holds the Bible as he prays at dawn in front of a fence reinforced by barbed wire and a wooden barricade at the Greek-Macedonian border near to the Greek village of Idomeni November 30, 2015. | REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis
The Iranian government is actively inciting “derogatory public opinion” against Christianity and other faiths by using Iranian media outlets to spread religious propaganda, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
A new report from the bipartisan federal advisory committee says Iran’s government uses official media, government-linked media and social media to spread “falsehoods and misconceptions” about religious minorities to turn public opinion against these communities.
The report “Religious Propaganda in Iran” attributes the effort to a “systematic campaign to deny freedom of religion or belief to groups that do not conform to the government’s singular interpretation of Ja’afri Shi’a Islam.”
For instance, the government describes some Christians as belonging to an “Evangelical Zionist cult” and uses vague national security accusations to target Christian converts.
The phrase was referenced in the Nov. 3, 2021 ruling by Iran’s Supreme Court, declaring that promoting Christianity and establishing home churches are not crimes and do not amount to national security crimes.
The court’s opinion used the phrase “Evangelical Zionist cult” to refer to the Christian converts whose case it was addressing.
Under Iran’s legal system, a ruling by a Supreme Court branch is not necessarily binding on lower courts.
“This misinformation campaign restricts freedom of religion or belief for religious minorities in Iran,” USCIRF Commissioner Sharon Kleinbaum told The Christian Post.
According to USCIRF, Iranian state propaganda against Christian converts is often disguised as anti-Zionism, and Christian converts are regularly referred to as members of a “Zionist” network.
Officials say the reference to Zionism in this context does not refer to specific allegations of links between Christian converts in Iran and the state of Israel but rather “a broad conspiracy in which Evangelical Christians across the world promote political viewpoints that serve Zionist ideology.”
The report also cites what USCIRF called “Iran’s misinformation campaign against Christian converts,” which officials say seeks to differentiate Christian converts from Armenians and Assyrians as recognized religious minority groups.
Hojjat al-Islam Kashani, a Muslim cleric who serves as the secretary of the Islam-Christianity Dialog Association, told an Iranian media outlet, “What is being promoted today as Christianity is not traditional Christianity, but rather it is Evangelical and colonial Christianity.
“Evangelical Christianity is not a religion. It is a policy-oriented towards colonialism.”
According to the report, Kashani accused Evangelical Christian Iranians of pursuing a political agenda of expansion designed to undermine Iran’s government.
Those political aims of Evangelical Christians have “resulted in their alienation from other Christians, and that Iranian Armenians are opposed to Evangelical Christians,” Kashani said.
Iran’s history is replete with examples of outside intervention by colonial powers in its domestic affairs, so this comment appeals to the sense of injustice some Iranians may feel about foreign meddling in Iranian politics, Kleinbaum said.
“The impact on Iranian Christians is that they cannot rely on the government to uphold its obligations under international law to protect freedom of religion or belief, and are more likely to face discrimination from Iranians who internalize the government’s false messaging,” she added.
In addition to Christian converts, the USCIRF report identifies and reviews the significant themes Iran’s government deploys against Jews, Sunni Muslims, Gonabadi Sufis and Baha’is.
Besides providing data and analysis on religious freedom abroad, USCIRF also provides foreign policy recommendations to the president, secretary of state and U.S. Congress to fight religious persecution and promote freedom of religion and belief. Iran is one of 10 countries recognized by the U.S. State Department as a country of particular concern for tolerating and engaging in religious freedom abuses.
Just one year after Iran signed a historic nuclear deal with the U.S. and other Western nations in 2015, USCIRF reported that religious minorities in Iran, including Christians, continue experiencing severe human rights abuses.
The report found that religious freedom conditions “continued to deteriorate,” with Christians, Baha’is and the minority Sunni Muslims facing the most persecution in the form of harassment, arrests and imprisonment.
Open Doors USA, a watchdog group that monitors religious freedom abuses in over 60 countries, ranks Iran as the ninth-worst country regarding Christian persecution.
Discontent with left-wing policy failures is triggering massive protests all over the world. Just don’t expect to read all about it in the New York Times.
If you skim the front pages of major corporate news outlets, you’ll find no mention of the economic protests raging in Spain, Morocco, Greece, and the United Kingdom.
According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which records protests worldwide, 11 countries are currently seeing protests of more than 1,000 people in response to the rising cost of living and other economic woes in 2022. As of July 5, Carnegie had recorded protests of more than 120,000 people in France, 100,000 in Spain, 10,000 in Greece, 10,000 in Kazakhstan, 10,000 in Sri Lanka, 10,000 in India, 5,000 in Iran, 5,000 in Peru, 1,000 people in Argentina, 1,000 in Morocco, and 1,000 in the U.K.
When vaccine passports were being implemented, protests took place around the world – but there was hardly any coverage from the media.
Due to the cost of living crisis, protests are happening around the world – but again, the media turns a blind eye.
Many of the French protesters took to the streets on May Day for salary increases and against President Emmanuel Macron’s increase of the retirement age. Fifty-four people were reportedly arrested in Paris after some demonstrations turned violent. France’s economy, Europe’s third-largest, shrank in the first quarter of 2022, and in June, inflation shot up 5.8 percent compared to last year. Protesters also held demonstrations in March, with some complaining they had lost 15 to 20 percent of their purchasing power. Meanwhile, France’s answer to inflation? Keep spending; the country is throwing $20.4 billion at the problem.
In Spain, with gas subsidies, direct grants, and an increase in the minimum wage, the socialist-leaning government has seen only rising inflation rates (10.2 percent), and the accompanying price hikes are driving thousands of people onto the streets to protest. The country is finding out the hard way what a 40 percent reliance on renewable energy will do to the labor market. With its high unemployment rate at 13.65 percent as of the first quarter of 2022, labor shortages are raising prices on staple grocery items to an almost 30-year high. Thousands of demonstrators protested in March for relief in the form of tax cuts.
Meanwhile, it’s no surprise that any supply issues, aggravated or initiated by the Russia-Ukraine war, would burden Greece’s weakened economy that only just emerged from a decade-long crisis in 2018 to be sent right back by Covid shutdowns in 2020. In April, thousands gathered at a labor union-organized rally outside parliament in protest of inflation, which followed a February demonstration where about 10,000 people showed up to protest electricity prices that had leaped 56 percent, fuel prices that had jumped 21.6 percent, and natural gas prices that had skyrocketed 156 percent in January.
In India, a country locked in a vicious cycle of going into debt to pay off interest of former debts, the increasing cost of living is racking the country. In March, an estimated 50 million workers participated in a two-day strike to protest the loss of jobs and income, with communist groups organizing rallies in May decrying the high rate of inflation.
The socialist government in Argentina that led the country to default seven times and produced the largest decline in the relative standard of living in the world since 1900 is trying to do something new. On Monday, Argentina’s new economy minister Silvina Batakis announced her plan to cut the fiscal deficit — a proposal more than a thousand Argentines are protesting.
Decades of government spending and faulty economic policies have led to Argentina’s inflation rate growing to 58 percent. Prices are liquid and through the roof, with iPhones costing six months’ rent and a two-hour plane ticket equaling the cost of a month’s college tuition. Batakis plans to hold Argentina to the terms of a $44 billion debt deal it made earlier this year with the International Monetary Fund. Thousands of Argentines meanwhile flocked to protest against the economic hardships felt by the country upon cutting spending and took up banners crying for Argentina’s separation from the IMF.
The United Kingdom is suffering from a high 9.1 percent inflation rate as of May, and many are tired of the government’s response. Brits flocked out in February to protest rising costs of living, with demonstrations held in at least 25 towns and cities and signs reading, “tax the rich” and “freeze prices not the poor.” The U.K.’s inflation rate was already at 5.4 percent in January of this year due in part to the 2020 Covid shutdowns, but it has since almost doubled, largely due to the EU’s sanctions on Russian oil. In June, thousands marched down central London in protest, wanting the government to boost its welfare response.
Still reeling from the worst drought it has had in 40 years, Morocco is seeing price spikes on even the most basic goods. Thousands of Moroccans joined protests in February to decry the increasing cost of living, with unions staging more demonstrations in April. The country has high unemployment rates and large public debt, along with a heavy reliance on imports.
Aside from a scant headline here and there, America’s most popular news providers, The Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, and NBC, did not cover these protests, despite the French and Spanish protests being 10 to 100 times larger than the protests these corporate media giants did report.
None of these four major outlets wrote a single line on the protests of more than 100,000 demonstrators in Spain, more than 10,000 in Greece, more than 1,000 in Morocco, and more than 1,000 in the U.K. The New York Times published one lone article on the strike in India, where an estimated 50 million people walked off the job. The Washington Post has two small articles on the Argentinian protests of more than 1,000 as inflation appears set to hit 70 percent, and it has reported once on the May Day protests in France where more than 120,000 people protested government pension reforms. NBC mentioned the May Day protests once in a world report. This is the entire 2022 coverage by these media giants of these countries’ protests over economic turmoil.
Of these 11 countries, only four made any major headlines. The corporate press oftentimes only highlights these economic protests when they get so loud they can no longer be ignored, as we saw with Kazakhstan’s kill order to quell protests and the Sri Lankans’ attack on their president’s home. Over the weekend, the biased media finally began covering the Sri Lanka protests that are over 10,000 people strong — but only because footage of demonstrators swarming the president’s residence by the thousands on Saturday went viral.
Corporate media won’t talk about the rest of these protests because the countries are struggling from economically disastrous policies akin to President Joe Biden’s. Any show of economic turmoil in EU member states could be traced back to EU sanctions on Russia or green energy failures, which would fly in the face of the corporate media’s agenda. Many of these countries have inflationary monetary policies.
The leftist media will tell you about Sri Lanka, Kazakhstan, Iran, and Peru, however, but only to bolster its pro-Ukraine/anti-Russia narrative that denies the realities of war to promote Biden’s efforts to empty our pockets and replenish Ukraine’s.
In its treatment of the Kazakhstan protests, The Washington Post made sure to mention the country’s relationship with Russia. The Times’ articles on the Sri Lanka protests framed the economic downturns in terms of problems stemming from Russia’s invasion and ignored Sri Lanka’s Green Deal ban on chemical fertilizer that ultimately crashed its economy. Both CNN’s coverage of protests in Iran and NBC’s reports of those in Peru likewise stressed the Russia-Ukraine war as the cause for economic turmoil.
The media only highlight these world protests when they grow too big to ignore or when the facts can be skewed toward their preferring narratives. Cherry-picking which protests to highlight gives media cover to paint them as isolated incidents in non-Western countries instead of a worldwide trend showing the consequences of embracing left-wing policies. After all, Biden is making the same blunders in the United States, and corporate media can’t have Americans connecting those dots.
The U.S. labor market is in shambles. Inflation has skyrocketed to a 40-year high at 9.1 percent. The Biden administration is drawing down our emergency oil reserves, shipping it overseas to nations that can’t function on their “Green Energy” policies any more than we can. Irony alert: The oil will go through a European pipeline despite Biden citing climate conservation to shut down our own Keystone pipeline.
Discontent with these policy failures is triggering massive protests all over the world. Just don’t expect to read all about it in the New York Times.
Beth Whitehead is an intern at The Federalist and a journalism major at Patrick Henry College where she fondly excuses the excess amount of coffee she drinks as an occupational hazard.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
A British-Iranian woman held prisoner in Iran for nearly six years has been freed and is returning home to the United Kingdom after the U.K. government negotiated to pay a historic debt the Iranian government claimed was owed to the Islamic theocracy.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a charity worker with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was imprisoned in Iran in 2016 after the authoritarian regime accused her of being a spy and of plotting to overthrow the government. She and her family denied the charges, insisting she was on vacation with her daughter to visit family in Tehran.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe spent nearly five years in prison before she was released to house arrest in her parents’ home, the Washington Post reports.
Iranian state media reported Wednesday that Zaghari-Ratcliffe and another dual national, Anousheh Ashouri, left the country after the U.K. government paid more than $500 million to Teharn, according to Reuters.
That money was part of a debt Iran’s theocratic rulers claimed the British government owed after the shah of Iran purchased 1,750 Chieftain tanks and other weapons from the United Kingdom in the 1970s. But the U.K.’s International Military Services never delivered those weapons because the Islamic Revolution of 1979 toppled the U.S.-backed Shah. The order was canceled even though the previous Iranian government had paid in advance for it, and the Islamic regime that replaced the shah’s government has since demanded the repayment of those funds.
Richard Ratcliffe, Nazanin’s husband, who has tirelessly protested and advocated for his wife’s release, had previously accused Iran of using his wife as a political hostage in the country’s dispute over the debt.
U.K. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss confirmed in a statement Wednesday that “we have also settled the IMS debt” after announcing Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release. The British government has denied that the two issues are related.
Earlier this year, however, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson did not deny there were efforts to negotiate Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release by settling the debt dispute with Iran.
On Feb. 9, British member of Parliament Tulip Siddiq said she had learned of a deal signed between the U.K. government and Iranian authorities in the summer of 2021 “that would have resulted in the payment of the £400m that we owe Iran and the release of my constituent Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe,” but that deal had fallen through, according to Sky News. Siddiq asked Johnson to meet with her and Richard Ratcliffe to explain why the deal had collapsed.
“The International Military Services, or IMS, debt is difficult to settle and square away for all sorts of reasons to do with sanctions. But we will continue to work on it and I will certainly make sure that we have another meeting with Richard Ratcliffe in due course,” Jonson said in response, suggesting the IMS debt was in-fact part of the negotiations to secure Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release.
Foreign Secretary Truss said in her statement that resolving the IMS debt payment and securing the release of detained British nationals were “my top priorities” upon assuming office in September 2021.
“Last month I spoke twice to Iranian Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian in a final push to bring negotiations to a successful conclusion. Our officials then held a last round of negotiations to sign off an agreement allowing Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori to return to the UK, and Morad Tahbaz to be released on furlough to his house in Tehran,” Truss said.
“The IMS debt has been settled in full compliance with UK and international sanctions and all legal obligations. These funds will be ring-fenced solely for the purchase of humanitarian goods.”
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Iran has just unveiled a new missile that can strike targets in Israel and American military bases in the Middle East.
On Wednesday, the Iranian government debuted its new solid-fuel missile on state television. The missile has a range of 1,450 kilometers — roughly 900 miles — and is called the Khaibar-buster.
Khaibar was an ancient Jewish palace that was overrun by Muslim armies under the leadership of Muhammad in the early days of Islamic expansion.
The Khaibar-buster is manufactured completely domestically in Iran and, per the Times of Israel, may be able to circumvent sophisticated missile defense systems.
Iran debuted its new missile as the United States continues to re-negotiate the 2015 nuclear agreement. Iran has long claimed that it does not wish to develop nuclear weapons and insists that its missile development programs are simply a deterrent.
Iran isn’t able to launch the Khaibar-buster at intercontinental targets, but the new missile is able to reach American military bases in the Middle East.
Mohammad Bagheri, chief of staff for the Iranian armed forces, described the Khaibar-buster as a “long-range missile” and said that “the enemies of the Revolution and the Islamic Republic do not understand anything but the language of power and force.”
Iranian leadership is dedicated to wiping the Jewish state of Israel off the map. Ayatollah Khamenei has even referred to the “Zionist regime” as a “long-lasting virus.”
Some argue that the Zionist regime is a reality that the region must come to terms with. Today the #Covid_19 is a reality; should it be accepted or fought?!\nThe long-lasting virus of Zionism will be uprooted thanks to the determination and faith of the youth. #Covid1948
Iran’s aggressiveness towards and perpetual harassment of Israel have led to the Jewish state hastening the development of new missile defense systems. Israel is 620 miles away from Iran, well within the Khaibar-buster’s range. This missile is capable of reaching targets deep inside Israel.
This past January, Iran successfully tested a solid-fuel rocket engine that is allegedly designed to launch satellites into orbit. According to an Iranian spokesperson, via Reuters, this rocket launched research devices into space at an “altitude of 470 km (290 miles) and at a speed of 7,350 meters per second.”
Satellite rocket engines are usually powered with liquid fuel, and pure solid-fuel rockets are typically associated with ballistic missile systems, so the international community remains highly skeptical of Iran’s intentions.
It’s unclear whether the rocket reached orbit, but the Iranian government confirmed, “The intended research objectives of this launch were achieved.”
According to the U.S. State Department, this launch violated a 2015 U.N. Security Council resolution. A State Department spokesperson said, “The United States remains concerned with Iran’s development of space launch vehicles which pose a significant proliferation concern.”
Last week, the State Department confirmed that Iran was merely weeks away from being able to fuel and power a nuclear weapon.
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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