Tag: iran

Two Iranian Women in ICE Detention Are Not, In Fact, Related to Qasem Soleimani, Documents Show

Two Iranian women remain in immigration detention, arrested earlier this month on accusations of being the niece and grandniece of Qasem Soleimani, despite no connection to the late Iranian military commander. Drop Site reviewed Iranian birth records, identification papers, a family will, and other personal documents and found no connection whatsoever to him or his extended family. One of the women is now seriously ill in a Texas facility, her chronic blood condition left effectively untreated.

On March 8, right-wing activist Laura Loomer posted on X calling for the deportation of a woman she claimed was Soleimani’s niece. The commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Maj. Gen. Soleimani was assassinated by a U.S. drone strike, ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump, in Baghdad on January 3, 2020. The day after Loomer’s original post, she tagged Secretary of State Marco Rubio on X, claiming to have reported the woman to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for “posting content sympathetic to the Iranian regime and Ayatollah.”

On April 3, Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and her daughter, Sarina Hosseiny, were taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at their home outside Los Angeles. Rubio issued a statement headlined, “Secretary Rubio Revokes Green Cards of Foreign Nationals with Ties to Iranian Terror Regime,” identifying them as “the niece and grand niece of deceased Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Major General Qasem Soleimani” and describing them as “green card holders living lavishly in the United States.”

The claims made headline news in the U.S., while triggering immediate denials from Soleimani’s family that the two women were relatives of the military commander. The Trump administration has gone largely quiet about the women’s cases since their arrest, as they remain in ICE detention pending deportation to Iran.

As attention has faded, the situation for the women has turned dire at the South Texas ICE Processing Center in San Antonio, particularly for Hamideh, 47, who lives with autoimmune hemolytic anemia, which requires regular treatment and blood transfusions she isn’t getting.

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Former Iranian State Media Editor Now Works for ‘Nonpartisan’ US Media Bias Group That Rates Conservative Publishers as Untrustworthy Compared With ‘Reliable’ Liberal Outlets

A former paid scribe for an Iranian state-affiliated newspaper now works for a U.S. media watchdog group that produces a controversial “media bias” chart that consistently rates liberal outlets as more reliable than conservative ones, the Free Beacon’s Alana Goodman reports. Universities like Cornell and journalism nonprofits like Poynter have cited and praised the media bias ratings of this organization, Ad Fontes Media, like it’s a neutral third party.

Meet Meisam Zamanabadi, an Ad Fontes Media analyst who was raised in Iran and served as an editor at Hamshahri, an Iranian newspaper owned and operated by Tehran’s municipal government that has been associated with hardline politicians and drew international condemnation after holding a Holocaust denial cartoon contest in 2006. Posts from his blog indicate that Zamanabadi worked at the paper in 2008 and 2009, when Iranian parliament speaker and chief regime negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf served as mayor of Tehran.

Zamanabadi now resides in California and works for Ad Fontes, the Colorado-based “public benefit corporation” behind the Media Bias Chart, which evaluates U.S. news outlets by political leaning and trustworthiness. The chart “consistently rates left-wing sources as more reliable and often less biased than their conservative counterparts,” writes Goodman. Socialist magazine Jacobin, for example, enjoys a higher “reliability” rating than long-established, edited publications such as National Review, the New York Post, and the Free Beacon. On television, the chart says Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham and Jesse Watters are less reliable than their MS Now counterparts Chris Hayes and Jen Psaki.

News of Zamanabadi’s work for Ad Fontes—which markets its “analysis” to schools as a tool for teaching media literacy and claims that its ratings are “non-partisan”—comes as the watchdog faces questions about its own objectivity and ethics. Last summer, the Federal Trade Commission requested records about Ad Fontes’s business practices as part of an investigation into “possible collusion” in a scheme to get advertisers to withdraw their support for conservative content, the New York Times reported. The Trump FTC says these spending pullbacks are illegal boycotts.

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Trump’s Iran Fiasco’s Silver Lining – The End of NATO

The one great big positive that has come out of the Donald’s Iran fiasco is that he has not held back in blackening the name of NATO in a manner that has heretofore been unthinkable:

“NATO WASN’T THERE WHEN WE NEEDED THEM, AND THEY WON’T BE THERE IF WE NEED THEM AGAIN. Remember Greenland, that big, poorly run, piece of ice!!!”

The Donald also described NATO as a “paper tiger” and stated he is “strongly considering” pulling the United States out of the alliance, citing its failure to support his reckless war on the Persian Gulf:

“They weren’t there. None of them. They weren’t there.”

The Europeans, of course, had good reason not to sign up for America’s latest Forever War. They are being reminded of that at the petrol stations every day, but there is more to be said than, well, finally Washington called a War Party and no one sent an RSVP.

What is actually transpiring on the fraught world stage at the moment is powerful demonstration that allies and alliances are a profound detriment to the Homeland Security of America, not a fundamental necessity.

That’s obviously true with respect to Israel, which lured the gullible Trump into attacking Iran for no good reason of Homeland Security, but it’s also true on a universal basis. In fact, NATO is every bit as much of an albatross for the reasons that we amplify at length below; it’s very existence 35 years after the Cold War ended demonstrates why it is long past time to revert to the wisdom of the Founders and anchor America’s national security posture on –

… peaceful commercial relations with all, entangling alliances with none.

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Iran Blockade: IRGC Attacks Three Container Ships in Strait of Hormuz

At least three container ships have been attacked in the Strait of Hormuz by Iran this morning, with a Royal Navy office reporting “heavy damage” to at least one, and Tehran claiming ships had been seized and taken into Iranian waters “in order to examine the cargo and documents”.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has opened fire on three container ships attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz, the maritime chokepoint at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, as a strained ceasefire is challenged by two mutual blockades imposed by Iran and the United States attempt to deny each other access to the critical-to-trade waterway.

Britain’s Maritime Trade Operations centre (UKMTO) reports that in the early hours of Wednesday morning the Greek-owned, Liberia-flagged container ship Epaminondas was approached by an “IRGC gun boat” and fired on without warning.

The attack “caused heavy damage to the bridge”, although no injuries, fires aboard, environmental concerns were reported. “All Crew reported safe”, it was stated. London state media says it understands that the ship’s master believed he had permission to transit the Strait of Hormuz, and was ‘running dark’ — the ship’s AIS transponder being turned off to avoid attention — but was nevertheless attacked.

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Far-Left Sen. Chris Murphy Backtracks After Backlash, Claims “SARCASM” Following Praise of Iran’s Shadow Fleet Dodging U.S. Blockade

Radical Democrat Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut is cheering for America’s enemies during active hostilities with Iran, and when called out, he pulled the classic leftist move, gaslighting, and deflection.

As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, Murphy replied with a smug one-word “awesome” to a Lloyd’s List report claiming that at least 26 ships from Iran’s notorious “shadow fleet” had brazenly bypassed the U.S. naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz/Gulf of Oman area.

Murphy didn’t express concern for U.S. troops. He didn’t worry about Iranian oil money flowing to terrorists. He didn’t even pretend to support America’s interests.

He just typed “awesome.”

X users immediately unloaded on the Connecticut Democrat, calling the remark “literally rooting for the enemy” and “treasonous.”

White House officials ripped him for gleefully regurgitating Iranian propaganda while U.S. forces are actively engaged. Even some on the left couldn’t defend it.

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Trump Gives an Indefinite Cease-Fire to Iran. What Is This War?

Last Friday, President Trump posted a series of announcements on Truth Social, claiming that Iran had given him everything he wanted in exchange for nothing. The President asserted that Iran had agreed to hand over what he called their “nuclear dust” (the enriched uranium buried under ground from last June’s American air attack); to stop funding Hezbollah and Hamas; and to open the Strait of Hormuz and never close it again. Many of Trump’s pro-war supporters declared victory, reveling in their triumphalism.

While that was a feel-good story, there were many obvious problems with it, starting with the fact that Iran never confirmed any of it and would never realistically surrender, given its perception of the massive leverage it continues to possess. Sure enough, Iran later that day denied having agreed to anything beyond opening the Strait during the cease-fire negotiations. But after Israel continued to bomb Lebanon, despite Trump’s announcement that he had “PROHIBITED” Israel from doing so, which he followed by announcing a full military blockade of the Strait to prevent Iran from selling oil, it was clear that a deal to end the war was very far away.

During his flurry of victory claims, Trump set Wednesday — tomorrow — as the deadline for Iran to agree to a comprehensive deal, after which he said he would begin obliterating the country. He announced that he was sending Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff (with J.D. Vance being added later) to Islamabad to meet with the Iranians. In response, Iran announced that it would refuse to attend any negotiations while the U.S. was blockading the Strait. As a result, Trump’s deadline will come and go tomorrow, presumably without a deal.

As he has done before, Trump’s response to the lapse of his deadline is not to follow through on his threats (thankfully), but instead to announce an extension of the deadline. Today, he did exactly that, though notably, his extension came without any new deadline: it is just an indefinite suspension of hostilities pending an agreement. All of this raises a question that has lurked since the start of this: what is the purpose of this war, and how can it end? We examine those questions in the above 30-minute video.

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‘Iran’s Enemy is Our Enemy: Russia Detains 40 Israelis at Moscow Airport – Report

Israelis Detained at Moscow Airport

Russian authorities detained at least 40 Israeli citizens at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport after their arrival from Tel Aviv, according to official Israeli sources cited in the Times of Israel. 

The outlet reported that the Israeli Foreign Ministry confirmed that the group was held before later being released following diplomatic intervention.

According to reports cited by Times of Israel, the Isreali citizens were detained on suspicion of having connections to Israel’s military aggression against Iran.

Russian security personnel reportedly told detainees that Iran is an ally of Moscow and that anyone who is an enemy of Iran is “our enemy as well.”

Conditions of Detention

The Times of Israel also cited a source cited by the Russian outlet Mediazona, which said that the detainees were interrogated for several hours under these suspicions.

According to the same source, detainees were asked to unlock their mobile phones. When they refused, they were instructed to turn the devices off.

The group reportedly included both Israeli nationals and individuals holding dual citizenship.

They were eventually released after signing documents stating the “inadmissibility of violating the law,” according to the report.

Diplomatic Intervention

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said it intervened immediately after learning of the incident.

“Immediately upon learning of the incident, at the instruction of Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, the Foreign Ministry acted both with the foreign ministry in Moscow and with the Russian embassy in Israel,” the ministry said.

“Following this intervention, the incident was resolved, and the Israelis’ entry was approved,” it added.

The ministry also said that Russian authorities were informed that the conduct was “completely unacceptable” and that Israel views the matter seriously.

The detentions come amid heightened geopolitical tensions linked to the war involving Iran, a key ally of Russia.

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The Consequences of Incompetence

For nearly 40 days, Israel and the United States carried out an extensive aerial campaign against Iran designed to topple the government and suppress Iran’s ability to defend itself. This campaign failed to achieve any of its stated objectives. Instead, it devolved into a numbers game where inflated outcomes were sold to an unquestioning public by military professionals and politicians alike. The Iranian government not only withstood the efforts at decapitation-induced regime change, but actually strengthened its hold on power when the people of Iran, instead of turning on the Islamic Republic, rallied to its cause. Moreover, rather than suppressing Iran’s ability to launch ballistic missiles and drones against US military bases, critical infrastructure in the Gulf Arab States, and Israel, Iran not only sustained its ability to strike, but deployed new generations of weapons that readily defeated all missile defense systems while, using intelligence information that permitted accurate targeting, destroyed critical military infrastructure worth tens of billions of dollars.

Regional experts had long warned about the consequences of entering an existential conflict with Iran, noting that Iran would not simply allow itself to be erased as a viable nation state without ensuring that the other nations of the region were subjected to similar existential threats to their survival, and that global energy security would be disrupted in such a manner as to trigger a world economic crisis. These assessments were backed up by a belied that Iran would not only be able to shut down shipping transiting the Strait of Hormuz, but also effectively target and destroy the major energy production potential of the Gulf Arab States.

It wasn’t that the politicians and military planners in the US and Israel doubted Iran’s ability to impact global energy markets or strike targets in Israel and the Gulf region.

They knew Iran had the potential.

They just believed that they would be able to achieve regime change in Tehran in relatively short order, thereby mooting any threat Iran might pose to energy supplies and infrastructure.

They were wrong, which is why the US was looking for an offramp from the war soon after it started.

The end result was this current ceasefire, which was ostensibly entered into to buy time for US and Iranian negotiators to hammer out a lasting peace plan.

There is a fundamental problem, however.

While Iran has approached the current negotiations from a practical, reality-based posture predicated on resolving the actual major points of difference between the US and Iran, the US is being held hostage by the politicized whim of an American President who needs to shape domestic public opinion in a way which transforms the reality of a humiliating defeat into the perception of a bold victory.

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Glam Iranian businesswoman busted at LAX, charged with helping regime sell drones, bombs and ammo

A glamorous Iranian businesswoman with a US green card was arrested at the Los Angeles International Airport for allegedly trafficking arms on behalf of Tehran.

Shamim Mafi, 44, of Woodland Hills, was taken into custody on Saturday night and charged with brokering deals for Iranian drones, bombs, and millions of rounds of ammunition bound for Sudan, according to the office of the US Attorney for the Central District of California.

Mafi had allegedly conducted the arms deals while in close contact with Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, which provided instruction and funds for her to open a business in the US to operate out of, according to court records.  

“She is charged with a violation of 50 U.S.C. § 1705 for brokering the sale of drones, bombs, bomb fuses, and millions of rounds of ammunition manufactured by Iran and sold to Sudan,” First Assistant US Attorney Bill Essayli said Sunday, announcing the arrest.

Mafi posted glam pics of herself traveling the world — including posing in a $100,000 Mercedes-Benz roadster.

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US Military Prepares to Seize Vessels Linked to Iran Outside Middle East – Reports

The US military is preparing to seize commercial vessels and tankers affiliated to Iran in international waters outside the Middle East in the coming days, The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing US officials.

On Saturday, the Iranian military command said that the Iranian armed forces have restored military control over the Strait of Hormuz due to the US blockade.

The administration of US President Donald Trump is seeking to intensify economic pressure on Tehran to force the Iranian government to reopen the waterway and make concessions on its nuclear program, the report said.

On April 13, the US Navy began blockading all maritime traffic entering and exiting Iranian ports on both sides of the Strait of Hormuz, which accounts for approximately 20% of the world’s oil, petroleum products, and liquefied natural gas supplies. Washington maintains that non-Iranian vessels are free to transit the Strait of Hormuz as long as they do not pay Tehran a toll. Iranian authorities have not announced the imposition of a toll, but have discussed such plans.

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