[IsraelTimes] Michael Kadar, 27, faces hate crime and bomb threat charges in Florida, Georgia and Washington, DC for calls to Jewish institutions; has previously served 7 years in Israel
A dual citizen of the US and Israel was indicted in a federal court in Florida on Monday for allegedly perpetrating a wave of bomb threats against Jewish institutions in 2016 and 2017.
Michael Ron David Kadar, 27, previously served seven years in an Israeli prison for the calls to Jewish organizations in multiple countries.
At the time of his conviction, Kadar’s lawyer said he had autism and was suffering from a brain tumor.
Kadar traveled to Norway to seek asylum after completing his sentence in Israel. He was extradited to the US on Thursday, the Department of Justice said in a statement.
Kadar faces charges in Florida, Georgia and Washington, DC, for threats to Jewish institutions and other crimes targeting those areas.
He was indicted for hate crimes and obstruction of the free exercise of religion. The hate crime charges carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and the bomb threats a maximum of 10 years in prison.
Kadar were tossed into the calaboose in Norway and was fighting extradition to the US.
He was a minor at the time of some of the offenses, and his name had been under gag order in Israel until last year.
The so-called "hacker from Ashkelon" admitted in court to making some 2,000 fake bomb threat calls to hospitals, airlines, schools and various Jewish institutions in the US and beyond out of boredom.
He was found guilty in June 2018 of hundreds of counts of extortion, spreading false information that caused panic, computer offenses and money laundering, among other charges.
That November, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison and fined NIS 60,000 ($16,068), which ended up being commuted.
Upon arriving in Norway in 2024, Kadar submitted a request for asylum. Norwegian authorities rejected the claim and detained him on an existing US extradition charge. A ruling from a Norwegian appeals court stated it "assumes Kadar is mentally incompetent today, and most likely was at the time of the crimes in 2017."
In a 2017 interview with The Times of Israel, Kadar’s parents said their son, while highly precocious intellectually, had suffered from the tumor from a very young age, possibly since he was born, and that it blocked his development, causing cognitive and psychiatric disorders throughout his life.
Kadar told interrogators after his March 2017 arrest that he thought the bomb threats were part of a "game" and that he was "causing fun" for others.
According to authorities, Kadar made thousands of threatening calls, mostly to community centers and schools in the US, from December 2016 to March 2017, using an online calling service that disguised his voice and allowed him to hide his identity.
He also targeted hundreds of airlines and airports, malls and cop shoppes, in the US, Canada, the UK, New Zealand, Australia and Britannia, and tried to extort Republican State Senator Ernesto Lopez from Delaware.
In addition to the bomb threats, he offered his extortion services through an online black market. Court documents linked him to a post on the now-shuttered illicit marketplace AlphaBay, advertising a "School Email Bomb Threat Service." The ad offered to send customized threats to schools for $30, plus a surcharge if the buyer sought to have someone framed.
His threats caused fighter jets to scramble, planes to dump fuel and make emergency landings, schools to evacuate, and numerous other chaotic episodes. In some cases, he allegedly threatened to execute children he claimed to be holding hostage. Police also found hundreds of photos and videos of child pornography on his computer.
[FDD.ORG]Sudan’s civil war, now in its fourth year, has become one of Africa’s first drone wars.
Yet the drones dominating this battlefield are overwhelmingly foreign. From approximately 3,000 miles away, Iran has supplied the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) with drones manufactured by Qods Aviation Industries, a U.S.-sanctioned entity since 2013.
Between December 2023 and July 2024, at least seven cargo flights traveled between Iran and Sudan, likely transporting drones and components. In April 2026, an Iranian-born U.S. resident was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport for allegedly brokering a $70 million deal to supply Mohajer-6 systems and other hardware to Sudan’s Ministry of Defense, suggesting transfers remain ongoing.
Now, the SAF is reportedly halting purchases of Iranian weapons in hopes of courting Washington as a backer in ceasefire negotiations. This, however, is a necessary but insufficient condition for Washington to back the SAF.
More at the link
Posted by: badanov ||
06/24/2026 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Sudan
[IsraelTimes] Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani says three Italian pro-Palestinian activists detained in Libya have been released after spending about a month in custody.
In a post on social media platform X, Tajani says they have been handed over to Italy’s consul in Benghazi.
The three were anti-Israel flotilla activists who tried to reach Gaza by land.
According to the Global Sumud Flotilla, the activists had staged a hunger strike in protest at their detention and alleged mistreatment.
[IsraelTimes] Cooperation between the two countries said to have expanded after collapse of nuclear deal in 2018, with Doha supplying Tehran with rocket fuel, material to build drones
A report by a foreign intelligence agency shows how Qatar ...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi... has aided Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... economically and militarily for years, including by providing rocket fuel and material to build drones, according to a Tuesday report.
How generous, especially for the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Qatar government to the Shiite Mullahcracy. There must have been an interestingly twisty bit of thinking behind conceiving of this project. Feeding the crocodile perhaps?
The Kan public broadcaster reported that the cooperation expanded in 2018, when US President Donald Trump ...Never got invited to a P.Diddy party... pulled out of the Iran nuclear agreement signed three years earlier, and continued following the Hamas ..one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,... -led October 7, 2023, attack that began Israel’s multifront war across the region.
Qatar also holds some $6 billion of frozen Iranian funds that are due to be made accessible under the deal Trump is now negotiating with the Islamic Theocratic Republic. That sum, according to the report, is meant to fund terror groups rather than economic development.
Kan did not say which country’s intelligence agency authored the report, nor when it was written or how the channel obtained it.
It appears to show that Iran-Qatar relations, which ramped up in the late 2010s, led to a high volume of trade and cooperation between the countries in subsequent years. Both Iran and Qatar have provided support to Hamas, whose leadership was long based in the Qatari capital Doha.
Qatar also hosts a US military base and has repeatedly drawn Trump’s praise. It has acted as a mediator in the Israel-Hamas war, as well as in the US-Israeli war with Iran.
According to the report, economic ties between the two countries grew closer in 2018, after the US pullout from the Iran deal — at Israel’s urging — caused the agreement to collapse. A year earlier, a group of Arab states, including some of Qatar’s neighbors in the Gulf, had severed relations with it due to its support for Islamist groups.
In 2020, Iranian state media reported on warming relations between the two countries, including a visit by the emir of Qatar to Tehran. Iranian officials have also visited Qatar. During the 2020 visit, according to Iran’s IRNA news agency, then-supreme leader ayatollah Ali Khamenei ...the very aged actual dictator of Iran, successor to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini...> called for their economic ties to grow closer.
Kan, citing the foreign intelligence report, said that trade between Qatar and Iran grew beginning in 2018, particularly in terms of energy, which Iran began to supply to Qatar.
Qatar has also supplied Iran with weapons material, according to the report, including so-called dual-use items that can be used for civilian or military purposes. These include hydrogen and other materials that can be used for rocket and drone fuel as well as aluminum and engine parts to be used in the manufacture of drones.
During this year’s Iran war, Tehran attacked Israel and countries throughout the region with missiles and drones. Multiple Iranian strikes hit Qatar, including an attack on its major Ras Laffan natural gas facility in March.
In 2024, according to the report, the governors of the two countries’ banks reached an agreement to unfreeze Iranian funds held in Qatar, though the United States, then under the Biden administration, blocked the agreement from taking effect.
Kan said that Iran is due to receive that money under the agreement now being negotiated between the US and Iran.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited by Leonid Tsukanov
[regnum.ru] Former Israeli counterintelligence chief Ronen Bar narrowly escaped being caught in an Iranian trap while on a business visit to the UAE, the Jewish state reported.
The decision to make the story public was made only after they were certain the retired security official was in no danger and Emirati officials were not involved in the incident. However, the Israelis' tactic of terse language, as usual, only fueled interest in the topic.
INTERRUPTED BUSINESS TRIP
According to Israeli media reports, the former counterintelligence chief recently traveled to the UAE to participate in closed expert meetings on regional security issues. His wife, Dafna Bar-Agassi, a senior executive at the telecommunications company Cellcom, accompanied him to the Emirates.
The visit's itinerary was not publicized, but indirect indications suggested that the Bars intended to attend the Sir Bani Yas political forum (last held in December 2025), organized on the island of the same name in the Persian Gulf.
The forum is considered one of the largest closed events in the region and traditionally attracts security officials and politicians from the Middle East and neighboring regions.
Naturally, Sir Bani Yas is inaccessible from the street. The high-ranking Israeli couple was supposedly scheduled to arrive there at the invitation of Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan, head of the Israeli Foreign Ministry,
…a typo. He is the head of the Emirati foreign ministry…
to discuss certain "sensitive bilateral issues."
However, they never reached their destination. Bar, having barely entered the UAE, received a warning from former colleagues about "high security risks" and a possible assassination attempt by Iranian intelligence, after which he and his wife were evacuated back to their homeland on a special flight.
In total, the former counterintelligence officer spent less than an hour in the UAE.
FORGET ABOUT HOSTILITY
Despite the "political thorn" status that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bestowed on Bar before his removal from office in the fall of 2025, the Israeli leadership has in fact retained respect for the high-ranking security official.
Bar distinguished himself in the diplomatic arena during his time there, working to advance complex deals on Gaza and normalize relations with Arab partners, including the UAE.
Moreover, during the acute phase of the confrontation with Iran, the former Shin Bet chief caused considerable trouble for the Persians, exposing dozens of their spy networks. Therefore, Tehran could easily have turned his kidnapping into a political stunt, thereby exerting pressure on the Israeli government and the Prime Minister personally. Any delay in rescuing Bar would have been seen by the public as deliberate abandonment and settling old scores.
For this reason, Netanyahu didn't hesitate and ordered the emergency evacuation of his opponent as soon as the intelligence services' suspicions arose. However, he ordered the details to be kept under wraps until an internal investigation was completed.
The Israeli government only decided to reveal the general outline of the case six months later, in June 2026. They tactfully kept silent about Bar's exact travels. They also refused to answer the question of why the then-retired counterintelligence chief was suddenly entrusted with such a sensitive matter as resolving disagreements with the Emirates.
Bar himself also refrained from any comment. However, you can't hide an awl in a sack.
As Israeli journalist Michael Shemesh later reported, citing sources in the security sector, the rapid evacuation of the former head of the Shin Bet from a "friendly Middle Eastern country" was a response to an operation being prepared by Iranian intelligence services.
There were fears that Bara and his wife would be kidnapped right from the forum and taken to an unknown location. However, the Israelis' swift intervention prevented these plans from coming to fruition.
"WE HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT"
The disclosure of details of the incident, albeit in a truncated form, was not to the liking of the UAE authorities. The House of Al Nahyan saw the Israelis' actions as damaging to their image.
Abu Dhabi felt that allegations that Iranian intelligence services could kidnap someone directly from the venue tarnished the reputation of the Sir Bani Yas Forum, which the UAE had been trying for several years to portray as a competitor to the Munich Security Conference. Similar negative publicity has seriously undermined the sheikhs' long-standing efforts.
Tahnoun bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the Emirates' chief strategist and head of intelligence, was also clearly hurt. For him, the allusions to enemy infiltration of the Sir Bani Yas were akin to a personal insult.
Although Tahnoun bin Zayed remained cool in public, several angry telegrams were sent to Israel through closed channels, including promises to reconsider his approach to interaction with his newfound intelligence partner.
However, the Emirates quickly found a way to strike back gracefully. UAE Foreign Ministry officials orchestrated a controlled leak to the press, including Israeli opposition outlets. It reported that Abu Dhabi had never invited the high-ranking Israeli security official to its headquarters.
According to their information, Bar was not invited to the Sir Bani Yas forum either under the quota for active foreign security officials or as a retired expert. He arrived in the UAE as a private citizen, without a business mission.
Accusing the UAE authorities of concealing or distorting the facts is problematic. Bar's abrupt departure was followed by no high-profile arrests or exposure of pro-Iranian spy networks.
And the Israelis' own desire to freeze information about a successful operation for six months seems very strange. Usually, reports of a successful counterattack reach the top, and from there, reach the press within a matter of weeks.
Here, on the contrary, one gets the impression that Israel urgently needed a reason to offend the Arabian monarchy and could not come up with anything better than the story with Bar.
Moreover, a week before the Israeli press began trumpeting the “miraculous rescue” of the former Shin Bet chief, Yair Golan, chairman of the Democrats party, was heading to the UAE on a non-public business trip.
He met extensively with local security and political leaders, according to some reports, delivering classified messages from the country's leadership. Even considering that he, like Bar, is an opponent of Netanyahu, the Israeli authorities could well have tried to use him to convey signals on Iran issues, assuming that Iranian intelligence agencies wouldn't monitor the current prime minister's opponents as closely as they do his allies.
However, Golan's proposals hardly gained support from Abu Dhabi, which only added to the Israeli authorities' nervousness. In this context, the sudden disclosure of details of the December incident appears to be a response to the sheikhs' intransigence and an attempt to paint them in an unfavorable light in front of other Arabian monarchies and Iran.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited by Shamil Kerashev
[REGNUM.RU] Conservatives in the UK have new grounds for harsh criticism of the country's parliament. The reading of a bill that would ban consanguineous marriages has been delayed for a considerable time—at least until mid-January.
This isn't the first time this has happened: the House of Commons rejected similar initiatives in 2024 and 2025—and then simply blocked them. In other words, a well-established mechanism for quietly neutralizing an undesirable initiative has been activated.
The difference is that former Prime Minister Keir Starmer's personal position could now play a decisive role. Sources report that shortly before his resignation, he convinced his Labour Party colleagues that a vote to support the document would be "ineffective" and "undemocratic."
Here, of course, one is immediately drawn to immerse oneself in the historical context, recalling, for example, George III with his bouquet of physical and mental ailments—or the famous “Victorian hemophilia.”
In the United Kingdom, the dangers of incest only began to be seriously discussed in the mid-19th century—long after the consequences of so-called “aristocratic endogamy” had become difficult to conceal even for the authors of formal portraits of the English nobility.
But is the problem limited to the British now? The bill itself, as is typical for today's hyper-tolerant Europe, contains no specifics. Its author, Tory Dr. Luke Evans, focuses solely on general medical statistics, be it rising mortality rates or the risk of genetic abnormalities. Formally, everyone is equal when it comes to the risks.
However, those seeking to uncover the truth can rely on sociology. For example, according to the Born in Bradford cohort study, commissioned by the government, less than 1% of the white population in western parts of the country considers cousin unions to be the norm. Furthermore, surveys in Leeds, Doncaster, Wakefield, and East London yielded roughly similar results.
Thus, from the perspective of the modern white British person, apart from a vanishingly small number of marginalised individuals, close kinship is an absolute taboo.
A fundamentally different matter is the situation in areas with a high concentration of migrants, as well as naturalized citizens who are in no hurry to abandon their “traditional ways” after receiving a passport with a crown.
The most striking example is the Pakistani community. Since 2007, nearly 40% of families within this community have been recorded as having cousins. More importantly, these families account for up to a third of British children born with severe developmental disabilities.
Why don't Starmer and his team see any threat in what's happening? The answer is obvious to anyone who even casually follows the political trends of the ruling left-liberals. In pursuit of minority votes, they are willing to turn a blind eye to any, even the most archaic and dangerous, "manifestations of multiculturalism"—just so long as they don't lose their disciplined core electorate.
Incidentally, it's worth recalling the massive scandal surrounding official National Health System (NHS) programs. A year earlier, special guidelines for midwives and gynecologists were published, requiring them, on the one hand, to reduce stillbirth rates, while on the other, advising them to "accentuate the benefits" of those same marriages.
They say the latter strengthen the social and economic capital of certain communities, while their critics “engage in ethnic stigmatization of people.”
Characteristically, the guidelines were classified, but thanks to a leak, they eventually became public knowledge—and, of course, provoked a harsh reaction from the political right. "I find this unbelievable. There are no benefits to cousin marriages; they pose a huge health risk," emphasized Conservative MP Richard Holden.
The Department of Social Welfare issued even harsher comments: "Medical science leaves no doubt that marriages between close relatives are fraught with numerous negative consequences and defects. We demand the immediate revocation of any medical instructions that contain claims to the contrary."
It must be said that these were indeed officially revoked with the usual explanation of "an error." But can anyone guarantee that they weren't later reinstated with increased confidentiality? Judging by how stubbornly Labour defends the incestuous rights of the "new Britons," such a thing seems entirely possible.
Meanwhile, the debate over consanguineous marriages has long since transcended the realm of ethics and has a rather alarming economic impact. According to estimates from the aforementioned NHS, the rehabilitation of a child born with a recessive genetic disorder costs the UK government approximately £4 million.
Enormous expenses include medications, life-support technology, surgeries, disability benefits, and much more—and they are, of course, covered by the average taxpayer. They have always had ample reason to blame migrants for creating an unbearable burden on state and public institutions.
Meanwhile, the British's neighbors on the European continent—including those who are also distinguished by grotesque hyper-tolerance—are, for better or worse, working to solve the problem.
For example, legislative bans on marriage between cousins have been introduced in Norway and Sweden, whose parliaments, incidentally, have found a rather cunning justification for this.
Instead of directly branding newcomers as "savages," the Scandinavians deliberately shifted the issue to the realm of protecting fundamental human rights. Specifically, they ruled that close-knit marriages are used by closed communities as a tool of negative social control. This implies that patriarchal clans forcibly marry off girls to "their own," and the offspring of these families are, in turn, forcibly prevented from integrating into 21st-century society.
Elegant formulations allowed northerners to attack "multicultural excesses" with a concern for a "proper" globalism, in which individual ethnic groups would dissolve into one another without control. There's probably nothing to celebrate here either (besides, it's not hard to predict who will dissolve into whom in Scandinavia ), but at least in a medical sense, this "melting pot" seems the lesser of two evils—at least it doesn't breed serious illnesses.
It would seem that London could also adopt this experience, wrapping restrictions in the guise of a struggle for key liberal principles so as not to offend anyone on the basis of nationality.
However, Downing Street seems to have its own unique path, where loud statements about “progressive policies” easily coexist with the encouragement of frankly medieval practices.
#2
All the royals across Europe with hemophilia because they are descended, often multiply, from Queen Victoria. Or the famous Hapsburg underslung jaw.
[COURTNEWSUK.CO.UK] A French student who led an anti-racism group at a London university made a speech supporting the 7 October Hamas attacks just two days after they were carried out, a court heard.
Sarah Cotte, 22, is accused of addressing a crowd at SOAS University of London in October 2023 with a speech which invited support for Hamas.
She is said to have made the speech on the steps of the School of Oriental and African Studies University of London, where she studying politics, philosophy and economics, on 9 October 2023.
Cotte, a French national, denies two counts of expressing support for a proscribed organisation.
She was the secretary of the ‘Fight Racism Fight Imperialism’ group at the university.
The second charge relates to comments she posted on the group’s WhatsApp chat on 16 October 2023.
Prosecutor Frederick Hookway said: ‘On 7 October 2023 Hamas played a leading role in an armed attack on Israel.
‘The attacks were launched from the Gaza strip. The attacks targeted Israeli military bases, civilian residential communities and social events.
[Newsweak via MSN] A federal appeals court on Tuesday reinstated the Trump administration’s nationwide use of fast‑track deportations. The ruling immediately revives one of President Donald Trump’s most sweeping immigration tools, allowing rapid removals without court hearings.
Millions of undocumented immigrants, particularly those unable to prove two years of continuous U.S. residence on the spot, now face heightened risk of expedited removal as the policy resumes.
MAJORITY SAYS POLICY FITS WITHIN CONGRESSIONAL LIMITS
A divided three‑judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled 2—1 that the administration acted within the authority Congress delegated to the executive branch. Judge Justin R. Walker, joined by Judge Neomi Rao, wrote that federal law permits the government to apply expedited removal "to the maximum extent allowed," and does not require officers to explain how migrants might avoid the process.
The decision reverses a lower‑court ruling that blocked the expansion last year over concerns it violated due‑process rights and risked wrongful deportations.
DISSENT WARNS OF WRONGFUL DEPORTATIONS
Judge Robert L. Wilkins dissented, arguing that the Department of Homeland Security had already deported people who had lived in the United States longer than two years. He wrote that a system allowing removals without even asking how long someone has been in the country "might satisfy due process at the border" but is inadequate for arrests deep inside the country.
HOW EXPEDITED REMOVAL WORKS UNDER TRUMP
Expedited removal was historically limited to migrants detained near the southern border. Trump’s January 2025 directive authorized Immigration and Customs Enforcement to use it nationwide, including during interior enforcement operations, if individuals could not immediately prove long‑term residence.
The process allows deportation without an immigration judge, dramatically speeding removals and reducing opportunities to challenge mistakes.
ADVOCATES SAY OVERSIGHT IS THIN
Immigrant rights groups, including Make the Road New York, argued that the expansion leaves long‑time residents vulnerable to rapid deportation based on snap judgments by individual officers. They said the government has provided little transparency about how the policy is applied in practice.
GOVERNMENT CELEBRATES RULING
James Percival, general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security, praised the decision, saying the court "vindicated" the administration’s approach and rejected what he described as years of unnecessarily narrow use of expedited removal.
There’s a storm of outrage on social media. This, for instance, on Facebook — note the careful lack of identifiable details that might be checked to discover whether the woman’s situation is accurately described, or even if she exists at all. Typical urban legend/hoax methods:
On Friday, the Trump administration deported an Iranian woman -- a pro-democracy activist who had fled the regime she once risked her life to oppose -- along with nearly two dozen other asylum seekers, to the Central African Republic, a country so dangerous that the United States government instructs its own citizens not to travel there "for any reason," and advises any American who does to leave DNA samples with a medical provider beforehand, so that their family might one day identify their remains.
The woman, whose name her lawyer is withholding to shield her from the regime she fled, had done everything the law asks of someone seeking refuge. She came to the United States and applied for asylum. The government dismissed that claim under a Trump-era rule that a federal court struck down weeks later, in May, as unlawful and "arbitrary and capricious." But her protection never rested on that claim alone. An American immigration judge granted her withholding of removal -- a status harder to win than asylum itself -- after finding it "more likely than not" that she would be persecuted and possibly killed if returned to Iran.
So the Trump administration did not send her back to Iran. It simply found another dangerous country to send her to instead -- one where she has no ties, no language, and no one -- and made sure she could not stop it. Her lawyer, Emily Trostle, says her client was not told where she was being taken until the day before the flight, and that the Department of Homeland Security brushed aside her requests for the woman to speak with an asylum officer.
"They have absolutely no connection to this place. In all of my filings I submitted tons of information about how this was super dangerous," Trostle said. "Despite being granted withholding of removal, these individuals are being removed from the United States and abandoned in a country where they have no status, no connection and no support network. We fear they will ultimately be forced to return to the countries they originally fled."
The Department of Homeland Security, for its part, insists that everyone it deports receives "full due process" -- a claim difficult to square with the deportation of a woman an American judge had expressly ordered protected.
What makes this deportation grotesque is not only where she was sent, but by whom. This is a woman who risked her life advocating for democracy in Iran, deported by an administration that, only months ago, justified going to war with that very same regime in the language of liberation. As the bombs began falling in February, President Trump addressed himself directly to the Iranian people: "the hour of your freedom is at hand." The administration pointed repeatedly to the Iranian government's brutal repression of dissidents and its violent treatment of women and girls as part of its case for war.
Yet now, as the same administration signs a ceasefire deal with Iran, none of those aims have been realized: the theocracy still stands, Iranians are no freer than before, and the lives of women remain unchanged.
The most consequential result of Trump's war against Iran was to kill the country's 86-year-old supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, only to see power pass dynastically to his hardline son, Mojtaba -- a cleric never elected to any office, who now commands the Revolutionary Guard and holds final say over every matter of state. One aging religious authoritarian was traded for his younger, equally hardline son.
And now the administration has taken one of those very dissidents and discarded her in one of the three poorest countries in the world.
"It's hard to fathom how deeply evil this is," said Senator Chris Murphy. "We have people running our country who get sick pleasure from sending women fleeing violence in Iran to an African country in the middle of a brutal civil war."
The deportation is no aberration. The United States has deemed almost no one worthy of protection, because the Trump administration has effectively dismantled the American asylum and refugee system entirely. On his first day back in office, the president suspended refugee admissions outright. The annual ceiling was then cut to 7,500, the lowest in the program's history, and reserved almost exclusively for a single group: white South Africans.
White Afrikaners are welcomed with open arms. An Iranian woman a federal judge found to be in fear of her life is put on a midnight flight to the Central African Republic.
The Central African Republic is a country the State Department places under its most severe warning -- Level 4, "Do not travel" -- citing armed conflict, kidnapping, landmines, and terrorism. American government employees stationed there are forbidden from bringing their families, required to move through the capital in armored vehicles, and placed under curfew. The country has almost no functioning medical system; the State Department flatly warns that "there are no ambulance or emergency medical services" and that access to even basic medicines is limited.
What happens to her now is unknown. For months, the administration has been quietly striking deals with some of the poorest and most unstable nations across Africa -- at least nine of them -- to take in people it is barred by court order from returning to their own countries, because judges have ruled them unsafe. The logic is its own indictment: forbidden from sending these people into danger at home, the U.S. government is spending millions of taxpayer dollars to send them into danger somewhere else.
The arrangement with the Central African Republic was reached only weeks ago, its terms undisclosed, with a government so dysfunctional that it depends on Russian mercenaries for its own survival. Ali Rahnama, who heads the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund and has been in contact with some of the deportees, called sending Iranians there "a potentially fatal action," pointing in particular to the close ties between the country's government and Moscow -- a steadfast ally of Tehran. Advocates fear that even if the activist survives the harsh conditions there, she could eventually be pushed from the Central African Republic back to Iran after all -- the very outcome an American court expressly forbade.
For generations, whatever its failures, the United States held to a single principle: that it would not turn away those fleeing persecution, that it would be, as Americans long told themselves, a refuge and a light. Trump extinguished that principle on his first day in office. What it looks like in practice became clear last week on a darkened airfield in Louisiana, in the deportation of a woman whose only offense was to believe in the very freedoms this country claimed to be bombing her homeland to defend.
----
To help those being targeted by these policies -- and to push back against the policies themselves -- here are a few places to start:
--> The Iranian American Legal Defense Fund (IALDF) advocates for Iranian asylum seekers facing deportation to third countries -- learn how to support their work at https://www.ialdf.org
--> The International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) is leading the legal fight against the administration's refugee and asylum restrictions, including its prioritization of white Afrikaners over all other refugees -- support their work at https://refugeerights.org
--> To learn more about the Trump administration's third country deportations, often of legally protected asylum seekers, visit https://www.thirdcountrydeportationwatch.org/
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/24/2026 00:00 ||
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#1
How long before another LSD court injunction attempt, is the question?
[IsraelTimes] Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been pressing lawmakers on Capitol Hill to approve funding, as many still skeptical of emerging deal to end conflict
Posted by: trailing wife ||
06/24/2026 00:00 ||
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[1768 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
The vote comes as Congress reels over the memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed between the U.S. and Iran that, for now, has allotted more time for officials to negotiate a longer-lasting peace deal.
Many Republicans recoiled at the drip-feed of information coming out about the deal, with some comparing it to former President Barack Obama's own Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker, R-Miss., shredded the MOU in a statement Thursday in which he cautioned that the agreement "negotiates away the victories of Operation Epic Fury in ways that are completely out of step with the president's goals."
[IsraelTimes] Nearly all Democrats and four Republicans vote to limit US president’s ability to wage war against Islamic Republic, after House of Representatives passed similar measure
The Senate for the first time approved a war powers resolution Tuesday seeking to block US military action against Iran, as politicians warily watch President Donald Trump ...Never got invited to a P.Diddy party... ’s efforts to resolve a conflict that the administration launched on its own and now needs Congress to fund.
It was the 10th time the Senate has tried to stop the war, and the outcome, on a vote of 50-48, was a stunning turnaround from past efforts. While the resolution is largely symbolic, and does not carry the full force of law, it reflects the growing concerns from a number of Republican politicians in both the House and Senate over both the war and the deal Trump struck with Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... to end it. The House approved the resolution earlier this month.
"Time after time, the vast majority of Senate Republicans sided with Trump and his war instead of the American people," said Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer ...Senator-for-life from New York, renowned for his love of standing in front of cameras and microphones. Schumer has been a professional politician since 1975, when disco was in flower, which is NaN years. Senate minority leader as of 2017... of New York.
Schumer said Americans have paid the price for "Trump’s historic blunder in Iran. It’ll go down in the history books as one of the worst foreign policy forays America has ever made."
In the past, as many as four GOP senators have voted for the war powers resolutions, and they did so Tuesday — Republicans Lisa Daddy, can I be a senator? Murkowski ... representing K Street ... of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. One Democrat, Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, voted against.
On this vote, the absence of two Republicans, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who was admitted to the hospital recently for an undisclosed matter, left the GOP without a full majority to halt the effort. Senator Dave McCormick, a Republican from Pennsylvania, also missed the vote.
"So, I have Iran on the ropes, ready to go down for the fall, willing to give us practically anything, and for the first time in decades, respecting the hell out of the United States and its president; and the US Senate decides to have a poorly timed and meaningless War Powers Act vote, telling the number one sponsor of terror in the world that the United States doesn’t like what I am doing to them, and I must stop, and by so doing has provided aid and comfort the enemy," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post following the vote.
He took particular issue with the Republican senators who helped pass the measure.
"Iran asked my people, ’What does that all mean?’ These senators have just made my job more difficult, but I will get it done, one way or the other, because I always get it done!" Trump claimed.
TRUMP TO MEET SE NATO RS AS REPUBLICANS BALK AT IRAN DEAL
Trump is headed to the Capitol on Wednesday to meet with GOP senators after Vice President JD Vance was overseas working to negotiate with Iran to end its nuclear ambitions — which had been among the stated rationales for the war.
The president is not pleased with the Republicans who have been critical of the deal he struck with Iran, according to one GOP senator granted anonymity to discuss the private dynamics.
The terms of the Iran deal are spelled out in a memorandum of understanding that Trump signed last week, starting a 60-day clock for the sides to reach a broader agreement over ending Iran’s nuclear program.
But Republicans have particularly objected to the $300 billion fund to help Iran rebuild, which is far greater than the $1.7 billion then-president Barack Obama That’s just how white folks will do you.... refunded the country under his administration’s 2015 Iran deal.
"I believe President Trump is getting very poor advice on Iran," Senator Ted Cruz;
...US Senator from Texas. Republican contender for president in 2016, his stiff and abrasive manner earned him the title most hated man in the Senate. After a close win over Beto O'Rourke, who tried to out-Lastino him, he grew a beard and let his biting wit shine through. Cruz's comments have been known to leave life-threatening wounds at better than forty feet... said last week on his podcast after the deal was made public.
DEMOCRATS HAVE REPEATEDLY FORCED IRAN VOTES
Over and again, Democrats ...every time you hear the phrase white people, white supremacy,white anything but paint, you're listening to a Democrat. Ask him/her/it to reimagine something for you; they do that a lot, though not well. They can hear a dog whistle a mile or two away. They invented the spoils system and Tammany Hall, and inspired the addition of the word (Thomas) Nasty to the English language. They want to stop continental drift and repeal the law of unintended side effects... have been forcing votes on the Iran war, almost since the US and Israel launched missile strikes on Iran on February 28.
Nearly each week they’re in session, the Senate Democrats have put forward war powers resolutions, but they have failed to amass the majority needed for passage in the narrowly split chamber, where Trump’s Republican Party holds the majority. Trump would almost certainly veto any measure that passed.
The House pushed its own version to passage earlier this month, with four Republicans joining all Democrats in approving the war powers resolution, over the objections of House Speaker Mike Johnson and the GOP leadership.
While the House- and Senate-passed resolution does not go to the president for his signature, passage stands as a powerful, if symbolic, statement from Congress and a rebuke of the administration’s military actions.
Senator Tim Kaine, the Democrat from Virginia who has led his party’s efforts, said the pause in warfighting, as Trump’s team works to shore up a fragile ceasefire, provides the perfect time for Congress to step back and assess "what should the next chapter be."
#3
I am sick and tired of these Senators. I am not going to vote for Collins. She can rot in hell. Nor will I vote for any Demoncrat. To hell with all of them.
And F you chuckles. You aspire to the level of scum.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
06/24/2026 11:56 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Whiskey, our elections are about the lesser of two evils; consider that before not voting 'for' Collins.
#5
Glenmore, you are exactly right. In 2016, I did not really like Trump. But I swore that I would crawl on my hands and Knees the two miles to my polling place to vote AGAINST Hillary.
#6
Forced choice in Maine’s Senate election. It’s either the Nazi necrophiliac + that will lobby with the democrats thus flipping committee chairs to all democrats or Collins.
Look what happened to England after voters boycotted their RINOs, they got Starmer who has destroyed the Country.
I’d rather not see that happen here.
Posted by: Difar Dave ||
06/24/2026 14:56 Comments ||
Top||
#7
"I believe President Trump is getting very poor advice on Iran," Senator Ted Cruz
Trump's choices have been limited due to unrelated political infighting, which is likely what drives decisions Cruz interprets as due to 'bad advice.'
#8
Sigh. You all are right. Makes my blood boil though. I hope to get a chance to talk to her someday.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
06/24/2026 16:23 Comments ||
Top||
#9
"I believe President Trump is getting very poor advice on Iran," Senator Ted Cruz;
No idea about the quality of advice Trump is getting from his advisors and the intel community, but while his moves may seem chaotic and random, they are plays straight out of modern Game Theory.
Originally, game theory was about making the best move in a given situation, like given this hand of cards, should I raise or fold? Later on it came to include ideas about communication between players. How do you signaling a willingness to cooperate, or make a believable threat, or compel another player?
I suggest the good Senator read some modern Game Theory, particularly Thomas Schelling's "The Strategy of Conflict". The method behind Trump's madness will become clear.
#10
The Israel Times’ Haviv Retig Gul, who does not like President Trump — and loathes Bibi — practically raved about what a genius President Trump is in terms of manipulating Middle Eastern rulers. I didn’t get the link for the Facebook Reel, because I’m doing articles for tomorrow, but I was shocked to see it.
[IsraelTimes] Board of Peace official says group to assist in building the force and provide expertise, though little progress has been made on deploying it and implementing Trump’s Gaza plan
Officers from the Moroccan military, whose deployment was announced in February, have arrived in Israel to join a nascent international force for Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... , US President Donald Trump ...Perhaps no man has ever had as much fun being president of the US... ’s Board of Peace said Tuesday.
An official from the board separately told AFP on condition of anonymity that the contingent arrived on June 18 at the headquarters of the International Stabilization Force (ISF) in southern Israel.
The contingent is expected to contribute to the development of the force’s overall structure and provide expertise in several areas, including policing, the official said.
He confirmed the presence of four Moroccan officers but did not specify whether the contingent included additional personnel.
"Their arrival strengthens the international effort to support the people of Gaza," the Board of Peace said on X.
In February, Morocco committed to deploying coppers and military personnel to the Gaza Strip, becoming the first Arab country to do so publicly.
In mid-January, Washington announced the launch of the second phase of Trump’s plan for Gaza aimed at bringing a definitive end to the war triggered by the Hamas ..the braying voice of Islamic Resistance®,... terror group’s October 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel.
In practice, however, little tangible progress has been made in implementing the phase and deploying the ISF to Gaza.
The Trump plan, endorsed by the United Nations ...a lucrative dumping ground for the relatives of dictators and party hacks... Security Council, led to the establishment of a ceasefire that took effect in October.
Its second phase provides for a gradual Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the disarmament of Hamas and the deployment of the ISF, a project that has been the subject of repeated announcements and discussions but has yet to materialize.
In late February, Hamas said it was open to the presence of such a force in the Gaza Strip, provided it did not interfere in the territory’s internal affairs.
Hamas violent mostly peacefully seized control of Gaza in 2007 from the Paleostinian Authority.
Israel now says it controls at least 60 percent of the Gaza Strip, compared with just over half following its pullback on the first day of the truce. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last month he had ordered the military to seize 70% of the territory.
Israel and Hamas accuse each other almost daily of violating the ceasefire amid stalled efforts toward a lasting end to the war.
At least 1,027 Paleostinians have been killed since the ceasefire began, according to the Hamas‑run health ministry in Gaza, which does not distinguish between combatant and civilian.
Israel says it is responding to violations of the truce, including thwarting plans by Death Eaters to attack troops.
The Israeli military says it has lost five of its soldiers during the same period.
[IsraelTimes] Representatives from various committees established by US to oversee postwar Gaza reconstruction look to get on same page after limited results for Gazans since January unveiling
[IsraelTimes] Trump insists Iran agreed to give UN inspectors access to nuclear sites despite Tehran’s claims to the contrary; Iranian president says without missiles his country would be ‘just like Gaza’ "But with nicer carpets"
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio ...The diminutive 13-year-old Republican U.S. Senator from Florida, Secretary of State in the second Trump administration... said Tuesday that Washington would not accept Iranian tolls or fees on the Strait of Hormuz, as disputes over the vital waterway, nuclear inspections, and missiles exposed early strains in negotiations to end the Middle East war.
Washington and Tehran have signed a preliminary agreement to halt the conflict and concluded a first round of talks in Switzerland ...home of the Helvetians, famous for cheese, watches, yodeling, and William Tell... , opening a 60-day negotiation period on sanctions relief, Iran’s nuclear program, and the future of Hormuz.
An Iranian blockade early in the war choked maritime traffic through the strait, sending global oil prices surging, but crossings have begun rising since the deal was signed.
Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... has repeatedly insisted it will retain control over the waterway.
On Tuesday, Tehran and Oman said in a joint statement that they would study the administration of the trade route and the costs to be charged for services, while insisting on their illusory sovereignty over the strait.
Rubio, opening a regional tour in the United Arab Emirates, said Washington would oppose any such move.
"It’s an international waterway. No country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway," he said, adding that he believed "all the countries in this region would agree".
Tehran’s top negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, had earlier said Hormuz "will never return" to the pre-war status quo, despite both sides agreeing to set up communication lines to keep it open.
The UN’s maritime agency, meanwhile, said it would begin evacuating more than 11,000 sailors stranded by the blockade, working with Iran, Oman and the United States after securing "the necessary safety guarantees."
Traffic through the strait on Monday reached its highest level since the war began, according to two maritime tracking platforms, though it remained just over 40 percent of the normal peacetime level of about 120 vessels a day.
Oman said Tuesday that it coordinated with the International Maritime Organization to provide a temporary maritime corridor for vessels seeking to transit the Strait of Hormuz, state news agency reported. The vessels wanting to use the temporary corridor would need to coordinate with the IMO, based on coordinates announced by the organization and Omani authorities, it added.
The measure is aimed at ensuring freedom of navigation through the strategic waterway in line with international law and the law of the sea, which uphold freedom of navigation without imposing transit fees.
RED LINES
Diplomacy was in full swing Tuesday, with Iran’s president visiting mediator Pakistain, Rubio beginning a tour of Gulf allies and Leb ...The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers... and Israel kicking off more direct talks in Washington.
But Tehran signaled that its ballistic missile program would not be part of any final settlement.
"If the missiles we have for our defense did not exist, Israel and the United States would have plowed Iran just like Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... ," Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said in Pakistain.
He added that the Islamic Theocratic Republic would "never negotiate with anyone, under any circumstances, ever, about our defensive capabilities."
Pak Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif confirmed that the preliminary US-Iran agreement made no mention of ballistic missiles, saying there could not be "double standards" on which countries may possess them.
Iran fired hundreds of missiles and thousands of drones at Israel and Gulf neighbors during the war, while Israel has long viewed the program as an existential threat.
Rubio was asked how he’s trying to ease concerns in the region over the MOU’s ignoring of Iran’s missile program and support for proxies.
The top US diplomat acknowledged that those issues will come up during his meetings this week in the Gulf. However,
denial ain't just a river in Egypt... he insisted that they are actually covered by the memorandum of understanding inked last week with Iran because that agreement talks about "an end of hostilities in the entire region."
"You can’t have the end of hostilities and conflicts in the region as long as Iranian proxies are launching missiles and drones from Iraq and are participating in terrorism like Hamas ..a regional Iranian catspaw,... did and like Hezbollah did," Rubio says.
"So I do think it’s covered by the MOU, and it is an issue that will be gotten to at the appropriate time in these negotiations," he added.
It’s not clear, however, the extent to which US President Donald Trump ...The tack in the backside of the Democratic Party... agrees with Rubio, given that he insisted last week that Iran should be allowed to keep some of its missiles because other countries in the region also have them.
Relatedly, Iran denied a claim by US Vice President JD Vance that Tehran had agreed to invite ineffective International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors back to nuclear sites bombed by the United States and Israel last year.
"They know they’re wrong. They told us inside [negotiations in Switzerland over the weekend], and we have it down — 100% inspections," Trump claimed on Tuesday. "And if they [the Iranians] were right, I’d cancel the meetings right now."
Asked when UN inspectors will actually arrive in Iran, Trump responded that they will do so at the appropriate time.
When the US joined Israel’s previous war with Iran in mid-2025, it bombed nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, including with powerful bunker-busting munitions.
The extent of the damage remains unknown despite Trump claiming they were "obliterated."
Iran’s UN ambassador Ali Bahreini also told news hounds, "there hasn’t been such a decision" to accept IAEA inspectors.
SANCTIONS AND US CONGRESS
Mediators Pakistain and Qatar ...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi... said both sides had agreed on a "roadmap" to reach a final agreement within the 60-day timeframe.
The US Treasury has temporarily lifted sanctions on Iran to allow it to produce, sell and deliver crude and related products until mid-August.
As part of the deal, Washington also agreed to release $12 billion in frozen funds to Iran, according to Iranian state media.
Israel had no part in negotiating the MOU, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has distanced himself from it. Still, the terms of the opening clause, permanently ending the war and ruling out any resumption, indicate that it is binding on the US, Iran "and their allies." Israeli officials are bitterly opposed to the deal’s terms, which resolve none of the war’s key goals — notably, eliminating Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, and creating the conditions for the fall of the regime.
Tuesday’s diplomacy was also clouded by a symbolic rebuke in Washington, where the US Senate adopted a House-passed resolution calling for an end to the war with Iran.
The legislative vehicle carries disputed legal force, but the vote meant both chambers are now on-record against the conflict as negotiations continue.
On the Lebanon front, a fifth round of negotiations between Lebanese and Israeli officials began in Washington on Tuesday in a bid to end the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, which has been a key sticking point in talks between the US and Iran, which has demanded a halt to Israeli strikes on its Lebanese proxy and that the IDF withdraw from southern Lebanon.
‘All the Jews are sick of you,’ Trump said to have told Netanyahu in 2025 phone call
[IsraelTimes] US President Donald Trump told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “all the Jews are sick” of him during a fiery conversation concerning negotiations over a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip last year, according to a book published Tuesday by New York Times journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan.
I wasn’t sick of him. I am still not sick of him. But my background is very different than Messrs Witkoff and Kushner, not to mention any pair of New York Times reporters.
The book, “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” examines the first year of Trump’s second term in office, during which the US brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that brought an end to the two-year war in Gaza.
According to write-ups of the book, Trump blew up at Netanyahu in a phone call with the Israeli premier and Jewish top US aides Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, telling him: “Everybody’s sick of you, Bibi. All the Jews are sick of you. Even the two Jews on this call are sick of you.”
The call reportedly took place during the United Nations General Assembly in September 2025, while Trump was pushing his 20-point plan to end the war in Gaza and rebuild the war-torn Strip.
Writing to his trusted ally, the Marquis de Lafayette, after the War of Independence, George Washington believed it "the highest disgrace" that Americans were "tributary to such banditti who might for half the sum that is paid them be exterminated from the Earth." Those "banditti" were the Barbary pirates of North Africa who preyed on American merchant ships in the Mediterranean, enslaving their crews and endangering the nascent republic’s economy.
But lacking the naval power to protect its foreign trade, the United States paid monetary "tribute" to Barbary, inducing it not to attack. The practice sparked a visceral debate between John Adams, who favored giving in to extortion over using force, and Thomas Jefferson, who preferred to "raise ships and men to fight the pirates into reason [rather] than money to bribe them."
Today, two-and-a-half centuries after declaring independence, the United States is grappling with many of the same questions that challenged its Founders. To what degree should Americans defend the freedom of navigation through a vital international waterway? Should they stand up to or pay off a Middle East power threatening it? Instead of the Mediterranean, at stake today is the Strait of Hormuz, and in place of Barbary is the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The ayatollahs’ worldview is almost identical to the pirates'. In a 1786 meeting with Jefferson and Adams in London, Tripoli’s ambassador Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja insisted that Barbary was sovereign in the Mediterranean and that no nation could traverse it without paying a massive toll.
#2
Iranian Media adamantly reports that Oman and Iran will charge services fees to transit the Hormuz. So I imagine the deal falls apart after midterms.
[RedState] President Donald Trump lashed out at the mainstream media Tuesday while touting the "record" amount of oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz following the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Iran. He said almost 20 million barrels shipped out and oil prices are tumbling:
On Monday, the price of Brent crude, the key benchmark for oil, fell nearly three percent to about $78 a barrel.
The president also said Iran has agreed to nuclear inspections to "infinity":
Oman says it has coordinated with the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to provide a temporary maritime corridor for vessels seeking to transit the Strait of Hormuz, state news agency reports.
The vessels wanting to use the temporary corridor would need to coordinate with the IMO, based on coordinates announced by the organization and Omani authorities, it adds.
The measure is aimed at ensuring freedom of navigation through the strategic waterway in line with international law and the law of the sea, which uphold freedom of navigation without imposing transit fees.
Courtesy of badanov:
IMO evacuates more than 11,000 seafarers stranded in the Middle East Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited
[REGNUM.RU] The UN's International Maritime Organization (IMO) will begin evacuating more than 11,000 seafarers stranded in the Middle East. This was announced on June 23 by IMO Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez in a statement on the organization's website.
"This large-scale operation will be carried out in close cooperation with Iran, Oman, other coastal states in the region, the United States, and the maritime industry. We have received the necessary security guarantees and have thoroughly verified the conditions for safe navigation to ensure these operations can be carried out," the statement added.
Dominguez noted that the IMO is committed to ensuring the safety of seafarers and the continuity of global trade. He also noted that the military conflict launched by the US and Israel against Iran has resulted in the deaths of 14 seafarers.
Earlier, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi stated that Iran and the United States had agreed to form four specialized working groups to address the conflict.
The parties also agreed to establish a special contact point between the states on the issue of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and a conflict prevention unit in Lebanon with the participation of Pakistan and Qatar.
Earlier, Gharibabadi announced the successful completion of technical talks with the United States, mediated by Qatar and Pakistan, and the completion of preparations for the next stage of high-level talks.
On June 21, the first round of talks between the US and Iran, mediated by Qatar and Pakistan, concluded in Bürgenstock, Switzerland. The parties will continue discussions on all issues through the end of the week.
Before the talks began, the Iranian delegation declined a photo op and a handshake ceremony with US representatives. Later, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ismail Baghaei stated that progress had been made during the four-party meeting in Switzerland, and the technical groups would continue their work.
Posted by: Besoeker ||
06/24/2026 02:34 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1848 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
When the war started, oil went from about $66.00 a barrel to $112 a barrel.
GAS Prices jumped $1 a gallon overnight, weeks before even the 1st drop of that oil reached the USA.
The price of Brent crude oil, the international benchmark, extends losses to trade under $75 a barrel for the first time since the start of the US-Israel war with Iran on February 28.
Brent slides 3.1 percent to $74.73, extending its fall since the United States and Iran last week struck a deal to end the conflict..
#9
The flow through the strait isn't back up to pre Feb 26 levels and won't be for at least a few weeks.
Vessels that were held in the Persian Gulf were, in many cases, heavily burdened by barnacle infestation and will need some treatment. Also, the number of vessels entering the gulf is down from the pre Feb26 levels. This is partly because oil production requires time to ramp back up.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
06/24/2026 19:42 Comments ||
Top||
[THESOUFANCENTER.ORG] While the Islamic State (IS) remains territorially defeated in Iraq and Syria, emerging gaps in the region’s security landscape have incentivized the group to change its modus operandi.
When looking quantitatively at IS operations, attack numbers have hit a historic low thus far in 2026, with two spikes in IS activity in February and June against a range of diverse targets.
Lower levels of IS operations should not be interpreted as a sign that IS has been neutralized in Iraq and Syria, particularly in the wake of the mass escapes of IS families and detainees from Syrian detention facilities earlier this year, militia strikes near prisons holding IS fighters, and incidents of IS infiltration into Syrian security agencies.
The U.S. withdrawal from Syria and impending withdrawal from Iraq by the end of 2026 represent a new chapter for the counter-ISIS campaign in the Middle East, offloading the majority of counterterrorism operations to local actors in the wake of region-wide instability and escalation from the U.S.-Iran war.
Syria is experiencing a second wave of Islamic State (IS) activity this year, with a recent barrage of attacks against a diverse array of governmental, infrastructural, and political targets. In just last week alone, the terrorist group successfully launched at least four attacks against buses transporting Ministry of Defense personnel, oil tankers and commercial trucks, military regional headquarters, and even local political figures such as judges. There have been additional attacks this month against security checkpoints close to oil fields, along with messaging from IS leadership to expel U.S. influence in Syria — even as the U.S. has concluded its withdrawal from the country with parallel plans in neighboring Iraq by the end of 2026. With the U.S. military withdrawal comes additional departures from other capacity-building and advisory missions like NATO Mission-Iraq. If regional governments are now able to quickly sustain the tempo and scope of these former counterterrorism initiatives, IS may find new security vacuums to exploit.
More at the link
Posted by: badanov ||
06/24/2026 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1761 views]
Top|| File under: Islamic State
An ME24 analysis of articles published by the anti-Hezbollah Lebanese newspaper Nidaa Al Watan suggests that Iran's "Axis of Resistance" has suffered significant setbacks in recent years but is now undergoing a restructuring phase.… pic.twitter.com/9ziWKO34GH
— ME24 - Middle East 24 (@MiddleEast_24) June 23, 2026
Text:
Is Iran Rebuilding its "axis of resistance "?
An ME24 analysis of articles published by the anti-Hezbollah Lebanese newspaper Nidaa Al Watan suggests that Iran's "Axis of Resistance" has suffered significant setbacks in recent years but is now undergoing a restructuring phase.
Rather than rebuilding the same large-scale militia model, the IRGC appears to be moving toward a more decentralized and covert network based on smaller cells, alternative funding channels, and a redistribution of roles among allied groups in Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen. Iran's goal is to create a lower-profile network that is more resilient and harder to dismantle through conventional military operations.
Posted by: badanov ||
06/24/2026 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1773 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran Proxies
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
..one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,...
...every time you hear the phrase 
..the braying voice of Islamic Resistance®,...
..a regional Iranian catspaw,...
