Tag: iran

Let’s Leave the Strait of Hormuz Alone

President Trump was reportedly “shocked” to see many thousands of Iranians in the street mourning at the funeral of the country’s late leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, over the weekend. Khamenei was assassinated by the United States at the beginning of the February US surprise attack on Iran.

The US attack on Iran was sold to Trump by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and US neocons as an easy “cake walk” that would lead the Iranian government to fall and be replaced with a US-friendly regime.

“I thought they hated him,” Trump said of the murdered religious leader of Iran.

Not only did the Iranian people not rise up to replace their leadership with one friendly to Washington, but the society seems to have become even more cohesive and patriotic. This should surprise no one, as when similar tragedies occurred in the United States – assassinations, 9/11, etc – we also as a society came closer together.

In Soccer when you kick the ball into your own goal, it is referred to as an “own-goal.” That is what President Trump achieved with his attack on Iran on February 28th. In fact, it was not just one “own-goal,” but a series of them. The blunder will likely go down in American history as one of the worst foreign policy moves in our history.

The Iranians did not rise up and declare support for the US. American military bases throughout the region are so severely damaged by Iranian retaliation that most cannot be brought back online. Scores of US military equipment has been destroyed or damaged at a cost of tens of billions of dollars. Countries in the region are rethinking their decision to essentially become protectorates of the United States now that it is demonstrated that they cannot be protected by the United States. American military power suddenly looks less powerful.

But perhaps the most destructive “own-goal” of the US attack is the Iranian decision to establish control over the Strait of Hormuz. Even in the US/Israeli attacks of last June, the Strait was kept open by Iran. It is a vital trade route and in everyone’s best interest to keep open for business.

The February attack and Iran’s strong regional response led the country to embrace what some have called a de facto nuclear weapon: control of the Strait. Explaining why he signed the memorandum of understanding with Iran last month, President Trump mentioned the damage being done to the US economy by the closure of the Strait and the possibility that matters may even get worse without the agreement. The US economy desperately needed the Strait to be open.

Now, however, progress toward peace with Iran continues to be thwarted by the stubborn insistence on the US side that the Strait of Hormuz must not be controlled by Iran and that a fee system for passage through the Strait cannot be instituted by Iran and Oman. Several skirmishes have already taken place in the area, threatening to take the US back to war.

It is in the best interest of the United States to abandon claims on Hormuz – which is thousands of miles away – and live with the consequences of Trump’s mistake. Another war cannot win what two previous wars have lost. Let Iran control the Strait and let international trade and commerce be re-established. Let’s leave the Strait alone!

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Former Elizabeth Warren Volunteer Attends Ayatollah Khamenei’s Funeral, Says He Was the “Greatest Anti-Imperialist Leader During My Lifetime” in Iranian State Media Interview

A former Democrat activist and Elizabeth Warren Presidential campaign volunteer attended the funeral of the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and participated in propaganda interviews, wearing a hijab and traditional Muslim garb. 

Calla Walsh, in a documentary-style interview with Iranian state media, described herself as “a journalist, originally from the United States.” She told the propaganda outlet, “The US and Israel were mistaken in thinking that by assassinating the leader that they could overthrow the Islamic Republic. In fact, this aggressive move, this audacious move, has actually only had the opposite effect, and that the people are more determined than ever in favor of the revolution, in defending the Islamic Republic, in defending Iran’s sovereignty, and there is still continuity in the leadership of the revolution.

“he was a leader to all people of the world who struggle against imperialism, against arrogance, against Zionism, against genocide,” she said. “To me, he was the greatest anti-imperialist leader to have lived during my lifetime.”

As The Gateway Pundit reported, Iran began a weeklong funeral last weekend for Khamenei, months after an airstrike killed him at the start of the U.S.-Israeli war against the country.

Walsh, a 22-year-old social justice warrior-turned defector, started out as a youth leader in Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey’s 2020 reelection, volunteering with Senator Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 Presidential campaign, and championing progressive causes. Now, the former rising star in the Democratic Party is on a US government watchlist “for her expansive dealings with the governments of Cuba and Iran,” the Free Press reports.

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Houthis Say Forces ‘Repelled’ Saudi Warplanes From Threatening Iranian Civilian Airliner

Yemen’s Houthis announced Friday that they had “repelled” an attempt by Saudi warplanes to prevent an Iranian civilian aircraft from landing at Sanaa airport.

Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF) spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Saree said that Saudi warplanes violating Yemeni airspace were targeted with several air-defense missiles, forcing them to withdraw.

Saree stressed that the Iranian civilian aircraft was carrying more than 200 Yemeni citizens who had been stranded in Iran, including many who were sick or wounded.

“We warn the criminal Saudi enemy against repeating any attempt to violate our airspace or any aggression targeting our country. Such actions will be met with a comprehensive response targeting its airports and vital interests on land and sea,” Saree said in a video statement.

The YAF spokesman further stressed that “our hand is on the trigger” to implement any directives issued by Ansarallah leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi “within the framework of breaking the Saudi-American siege on our people and expelling the occupiers.”

Saree also praised Iran’s role in “breaking the siege” on Yemen by operating flights to transport patients and stranded people and to alleviate humanitarian suffering in Yemen.

After landing in Sanaa, the Iranian plane safely returned to Tehran carrying an official delegation of the Republic of Yemen to participate in the funeral of slain Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei.

Since 2015, Saudi Arabia has imposed a blockade on Yemen’s land, sea, and air ports, severely restricting vital commercial and humanitarian imports, including fuel and food.

The blockade triggered what the UN called one of the most severe humanitarian crises globally, leading millions towards famine and drastically damaging healthcare and water systems.

The Saudi siege on Yemen was partially lifted following April 2023 negotiations with the Ansarallah resistance movement, which leads the YAF and is closely allied with Iran.

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US Believed Israel Tried To Assassinate Iran’s Top Negotiators As Ghalibaf’s Plane Made Emergency Landing

The New York Times has issued a new report citing unnamed US officials who believe that Israel came close to assassinating Iran’s top negotiators Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

According to the report, a concrete Israeli threat against Ghalibaf and the FM emerged while they were traveling back to Iran from Islamabad following talks with US Vice President JD Vance on April 12.

Prior to that point, during active fighting, Israel had worked its way through killing much of Iran’s senior leadership starting with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but questions lingered over whether the country’s top negotiators – who have come to represent Tehran on the global stage – could be deemed legitimate targets.

Even as Washington and regional brokers stepped in to try and halt the prospect of runaway conflict, wherein the US would find itself in yet another ‘forever war’ and quagmire, Israel still floated the potential for more assassinations targeting top Islamic Republic leadership. 

The NYT, citing officials, sets up the mid-April near-miss incident as follows:

In April, Mr. Ghalibaf was set to travel to Islamabad to meet with Vice President JD Vance. But Iranian security officials were concerned that Israel would use the opportunity to assassinate Mr. Ghalibaf or Mr. Araghchi to derail the talks, the officials said.

Iranians sought guarantees from the United States, through Pakistani and Qatari intermediaries, that Israel would not carry out any covert operations targeting the Iranian delegation, the officials said.

Pakistani fighter jets escorted the Iranian airplanes carrying a delegation of more than 70 Iranians from the border of Iran to Islamabad and back again when the session was over.

But on the way back to Tehran, an Israeli security threat emerged.

From there, Iranian security forces reportedly notified Ghalibaf’s plane of intelligence indicating that Israel planned to attack the aircraft – and the delegation took the warning seriously enough to divert from the original flight path and make an emergency landing in Mashhad, northeastern Iran.

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Why Iran Believes Israel Will Attack Again Before October

Will Israel restart the war with Iran before the October elections? This is the consensus view emerging within Iran’s internal national security debate over the past week.

Several factors are driving Tehran to this conclusion. Beyond its deep – and not entirely unwarranted – suspicion of President Donald Trump’s intentions, heightened by Vice President JD Vance’s recent remark that Trump wants to use the MOU to replenish global oil reserves and then “see where the hand is,” two developments stand out: the recent Israeli-Lebanese agreement and its impact on Hezbollah’s military posture over the coming months.

From Tehran’s perspective, the agreement hands Israel a significant advantage in any renewed war with Iran – one it lacked in February. By allowing Israeli forces to remain in parts of southern Lebanon, the deal appears to contravene the MOU while fundamentally reshaping the military balance. Israel’s continued presence in these strategic positions would make it far more difficult for Hezbollah to mount the kind of offensive operations that proved critical during the previous round of fighting.

That matters because, in February and March, the Iranians say they used only about 40 percent of their offensive capabilities against Israel, because Hezbollah carried much of the remaining burden. At the time, pundits in the West were debating why Tehran hit the UAE harder than it did Israel.

Part of it was because of Israel’s much higher pain tolerance compared to the GCC states. Tehran was aiming to reach the most accessible pain threshold to pressure the US to end the war. But part of it was the critical role Hezbollah played in the war, contrary to much of the press coverage at the time. It played a critical role in stretching Israel’s defenses, complicating its targeting decisions, and forcing it to divide resources across multiple fronts.

That role, however, was poorly understood because Israel imposed near-total military censorship during the war – far stricter than the censorship regime in June 2025 – which sharply limited public visibility into Hezbollah’s operations and their impact. As a result, the degree to which Hezbollah shaped the course of the war has been significantly underestimated.

Unlike the MOU, the current Israeli-Lebanese agreement does not require Israel to withdraw from Lebanese territory until Hezbollah has been disarmed. Since that outcome is highly unlikely in the foreseeable future, Israel is poised to retain its positions inside Lebanon, enabling it to renew the war with Iran without facing the same pressure from its northern front that constrained it during the previous conflict.

Netanyahu’s motivations are clear. Beyond his long-standing desire to use American force to subjugate Iran to Israeli domination and achieve a regional balance favorable to Israel, he now also has stark political and personal reasons to restart the war.

The MOU has come at a steep political cost for Netanyahu. His prospects for reelection in October are weaker than they have been in months. Once seen as the Israeli leader uniquely capable of delivering President Trump, he now confronts the prospect that both the war and the ensuing diplomacy will leave Israel in a strategically weaker position – undermining the very case he has made for his leadership.

And of course, if he loses the elections, he will likely spend the next few years in jail, as he will lose his immunity as Prime Minister and face trial over corruption charges.

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Israeli authorities arrest 20-year-old American citizen in Jerusalem on suspicion of conducting espionage missions for Iranian intelligence

In a major joint counterintelligence operation, the Israel Police and the Shin Bet security agency announced the arrest of a 20-year-old American citizen residing in the Jerusalem area on suspicion of conducting espionage missions for Iranian intelligence.

The suspect, whose identity remains withheld under court-authorized restrictions, was taken into custody following critical intelligence provided by a number of undisclosed security agencies.

A prosecutor’s statement was formally filed in court, a mandatory legal precursor signaling that a formal indictment and a request to hold the individual without bail until the conclusion of legal proceedings will be submitted.

According to security officials, the investigation revealed that the suspect had been actively maintaining contact with operatives acting on behalf of Iranian intelligence agencies over the course of several months.

During this period, the American reportedly accepted and executed numerous assignments that primarily involved documenting and photographing sensitive strategic sites across Israel. In exchange for the surveillance data and media, the suspect allegedly received financial compensation “ranging from dozens to hundreds of U.S. dollars per completed task.”

The arrest comes amid a sharp spike in Iranian-directed espionage operations inside Israel, which have increasingly relied on recruiting local residents and foreign nationals through digital platforms.

Chief Inspector Amichai Panta, an investigations officer with the Jerusalem District’s Major Crimes Unit, emphasized the gravity of the case, noting that multiple espionage operations have been dismantled recently, with some suspects operating directly during active wartime to aid hostile foreign plots.

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Americans Want Peace, Israel Wants War

America wants peace. Israel wants war. The great majority of Americans want an end to the war against Iran. The great majority in Congress just want more contributions from the Israel Lobby and its supporters.

Now, most members of Congress are really squirming. They know that most of their constituents are fed up with foreign wars and want this stupid war in Iran over, the sooner the better.

But they are afraid to criticize Israel’s war for fear of the Israel Lobby steering big campaign contributions against them. Their silence is deafening.

Most members are trying to keep quiet. Almost no one other than Mark Levin, Ben Shapiro, and the Israel First crowd are enthusiastic about this war.

The only ones speaking out strongly in favor of it are members who have received and/or who hope to receive millions in campaign contributions from the Lobby like Senators Ted Cruz, Lindsay Graham, Tom Cotton and others.

They didn’t even criticize Israel when it was starving and killing more than 20,000 children in Gaza. Congress would have rushed to pass a resolution of condemnation if it had been done in any other country than Israel.

But the killing goes on, even during so-called ceasefires. Thousands have been killed over this past year by Israeli forces in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran.

We don’t hear and see as much about all this killing because Israel was losing the public relations battle, and pro-Israel billionaires bought up significant parts of the national media that they did not already own.  Lesser-known conservative “influencers” and podcasters were given money, and 1,000 ministers were given free trips to Israel. Even TikTok was bought because its coverage was supposedly causing too many teenagers to have anti-Israel opinions.

However, all the pro-Israel propaganda has not worked so far. Even President Trump has apparently gotten angry at times with Netanyahu, telling him at one point that he shouldn’t blow up an entire apartment building to get at one person.

And Vice President Vance told the world in a press conference that Israel’s cabinet should realize that President Trump was the only world leader still supporting  Netanyahu and that two-thirds of all the military equipment and ammunition used by the IDF in these latest wars had been paid for by U.S. taxpayers.

The very few members of Congress and commentators who are criticizing President Trump for giving into Iran in the Memorandum he signed need to be asked what their alternative is.

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US strikes Iran again, as Trump threatens the country “will no longer exist”

US warplanes bombed Iranian coastal radar and air defense sites on Friday and again on Saturday, striking 10 targets near the Strait of Hormuz in the second wave.

The US attacks are the latest in a series of military escalations since the announcement of a “ceasefire” on June 17, when US President Donald Trump signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Iran at Versailles.

After ordering Saturday’s strikes, Trump threatened to annihilate the country. The United States, he wrote, “will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started. If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!”

As he has done repeatedly, Trump is using genocidal language, threatening to annihilate a country and exterminate large portions of its population. As with his earlier outbursts, the vow to make Iran “no longer exist” carries an implicit threat to use nuclear weapons.

The attacks and threats come amid a deepening political crisis within the American ruling class over the ceasefire Trump announced on June 17. In the 11 days since, the deal has come under sustained attack from dominant sections of both the Republican and Democratic parties, which have denounced it as a surrender to Tehran.

Republican Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said it “negotiates away the victories” of the war. The Democrats condemned the agreement as having failed to secure the interests of US imperialism. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said that under the deal,“Iran is stronger and America is less safe.”

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The Islamabad Memorandum and the Decline of the Paradigm of Absolute Victory

Almost every war produces the same immediate question: who won? Yet the more consequential question is whether either side can convert battlefield pressure into a political order it can sustain. The Islamabad Memorandum, signed by the United States and Iran on June 17, brings that distinction into sharp relief. It is a 60-day framework linking an end to military operations and navigation through the Strait of Hormuz to negotiations over sanctions, Iran’s nuclear program, and a broader political settlement. Its importance lies less in the document’s promises than in the reality that produced it: neither Washington nor Tehran could credibly claim that continuing the war would deliver the political outcome each sought.

This does not mean military power has ceased to matter. In conflicts where both sides can impose serious costs and frustrate the other’s objectives, the ability to damage an adversary is not the same as the ability to compel it. The Islamabad Memorandum is evidence of power’s limits when it cannot be translated into a durable political order.

The framework reflects those limits. It envisages commercial navigation through Hormuz, an end to the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports, temporary sanctions relief, and talks on Iran’s enriched-uranium stockpile under international supervision. Each element acknowledges that neither side achieved its preferred end state through force. The United States did not secure a stable regional order by military pressure alone; Iran did not compel Washington to abandon every demand merely by raising the costs of escalation. Security, nuclear questions, economic restrictions, and maritime access must instead be negotiated together.

For Washington, this is the central strategic lesson. The United States has never lacked the capacity to strike Iranian targets or impose material costs. The question was whether that superiority could produce a political arrangement that reduced risk without drawing America into an open-ended regional war. Iraq and Afghanistan offered a familiar warning: tactical success can destroy infrastructure and degrade capabilities, but it cannot settle rival security claims or force an adversary to accept a political future it regards as intolerable. In the Iranian case, additional strikes could have increased pressure, but they also risked higher energy costs, disruption to shipping, wider instability, and a conflict with no clear endpoint.

Diplomacy, then, should not be described simply as American retreat. It is an admission that an objective becomes less attainable as the cost of pursuing it rises. A strategy that can keep escalating but cannot define a credible political end state is not a strategy of victory. The memorandum gave Washington a way to pursue verification and regional stability without assuming that force could resolve every issue on American terms.

Iran reached a parallel conclusion from a different position. Tehran demonstrated that it could not be excluded cheaply from the regional security equation. Its capacity to impose costs on shipping, energy markets, and U.S. interests made a purely coercive settlement difficult. But resilience is not identical to the ability to impose one’s full political will. Iran could raise the price of war; it could not assume that prolonged confrontation would automatically produce sanctions relief, economic recovery, or a stable security environment. Negotiation therefore offered Tehran not capitulation, but a route to protect core interests while reducing pressures that military endurance alone could not remove.

This convergence of limitations gives the Islamabad Memorandum its historical significance. The document does not resolve decades of disputes, and it would be premature to treat it as the beginning of a settled regional order. Its provisions remain vulnerable to disagreement over sequencing, verification, sanctions implementation, and the future of nuclear talks. The recent suspension of Iranian participation in technical discussions and the subsequent agreement to halt mutual strikes show how fragile the arrangement remains. A fragile agreement is not yet a strategic transformation.

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Trump Threatens “the Islamic Republic of Iran Will No Longer Exist” Following Collapse of Ceasefire – CENTCOM Releases Footage of US Strikes

President Trump on Saturday threatened to wipe Iran off the face of the Earth after US forces launched strikes against the country for its violations of the 60-day memorandum of understanding and ceasefire.   

“It is very possible that they will never learn!” Trump said, noting that Iranian missile, drone storage locations, and coastal radar sites were hit by US aircraft.

“There may come a point when we are no longer able to be reasonable, and will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started,” he continued. “If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!”

United States aircraft just struck Iranian missile and drone storage locations, and coastal radar sites, for violating the Cease Fire Agreement, AGAIN! It is very possible that they will never learn! There may come a point when we are no longer able to be reasonable, and will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started. If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist! President DJT

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