Iran
January 28, 2024 — Scott Johnson
CentCom has issued a bare-bones press release (below) announcing the death of three American service members and the injury of 25 more in a drone attack last night at a base in Jordan near the border with Syria and Iraq. Axios and others identify the base as Tower 22. A White House statement attributed to President Biden discloses that “we know it was carried out by radical Iran-backed militant groups
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January 16, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Jay Solomon reports for Semafor this morning that commanders and advisers from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are on the ground in Yemen and playing a direct role in Houthi rebel attacks on commercial traffic in the Red Sea. Solomon’s story is posted here. Semafor provides this summary of the story in its Principals newsletter (links omitted): Iran has deployed personnel from its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to Yemen, according
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January 15, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Via the tweet below, CentCom reports that yesterday “at 4:45 p.m. (Sanaa time), an anti-ship cruise missile was fired from Iranian-backed Houthi militant areas of Yemen toward USS Laboon (DDG 58), which was operating in the Southern Red Sea. The missile was shot down in vicinity of the coast of Hudaydah by U.S. fighter aircraft. There were no injuries or damage reported.” That is yet another in a series of
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January 13, 2024 — John Hinderaker
The Houthis are the last straw. Iran’s mullahs are behind just about everything bad that is happening in the Middle East–Hamas, Hezbollah, interference in Iraq and now the Houthis. With serious threat of a wider war, and now an unacceptable disruption of international shipping, the mullahs have to go. And they need to go now, since they are very close to having nuclear weapons, which will complicate any effort to
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January 12, 2024 — Scott Johnson
The Houthis have conducted more than two dozen drone and missile attacks against commercial shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden since November. Following many threats and warnings, the United States launched retaliatory strikes against a dozen Houthi targets in Yemen last night. The Houthis are a terrorist group — a terrorist group delisted as such by the Biden administration foreign policy apparat. They are, moreover, one of
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January 4, 2024 — Scott Johnson
The Houthi terrorist group is an Iranian proxy that Iran has found increasingly useful. The Houthis have attacked American assets stationed in their vicinity at will and disrupted commercial shipping in the Red Sea. American forces sunk three Houthi boats attacking a commercial freighter this past Sunday. The Biden administration has politely warned the Houthis to knock it off. Going a step further, the Biden administration has organized Operation Prosperity
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January 3, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Cliff May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times. He is a veteran reporter, foreign correspondent, and editor for the New York Times and other publications. Cliff’s current column is “All the ayatollah’s men” (at FDD, where it is posted with links). Cliff has kindly given us his permission to post his columns on Power Line. He writes:
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December 27, 2023 — Scott Johnson
FDD’s Rich Goldberg has sought to publicize President Biden’s illicit secret deal with Iran giving the regime everything it wants. Among other venues, Goldberg wrote about it in this September 12 New York Post column. I flagged Goldberg’s column in “The $6 billion misunderstanding, cont’d.” Former Wall Street Journal reporter Jay Solomon now writes for Semafor. Solomon’s 2016 book The Iran Wars remains a valuable contribution to understanding the war
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December 21, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Cliff May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times. He is a veteran reporter, foreign correspondent, and editor for the New York Times and other publications. Cliff’s current column is “It’s not just Zelensky’s war” (at FDD, where it is posted with links). Cliff has kindly given us his permission to post his column on Power Line. He
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December 14, 2023 — Scott Johnson
My friend Steve Hunegs of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas invited me to attend a showing of the atrocity video compiled by the IDF in the aftermath of the October 7 massacres and atrocities perpetrated by Hamas. I am grateful to Steve for the invitation and for opening his home to his guests. Other reporters in attendance included Reid Forgrave of the Star Tribune, Matt
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December 13, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Cliff May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times. He is a veteran reporter, foreign correspondent, and editor for the New York Times and other publications. Cliff’s current column is “The lessons of ‘Casablanca'” (at FDD, where it is posted with links). Cliff has kindly given us his permission to post his column on Power Line. He writes:
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December 12, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Senator Cotton makes several crucial points in the video at the adjacent post. They are to some extent stated and elaborated by Israeli historian Gadi Taub in the December 7 Tablet column “Antony Blinken Is Hardly the Next Kissinger.” While the headline understates matters considerably, the text does not: If Kissinger’s policy loosened the noose around Israel’s neck, Blinken’s policy of appeasement will only tighten it. Restraining Israel would save
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November 19, 2023 — Scott Johnson
I greatly admire former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. He is my idea of a great public servant. Appearing on Fox News Sunday this morning (video below), he nailed each response to the questions posed by Shannon Bream. At one point, Bream asked him (her question begins at 3:35 of the video): You’ve seen the data. You’ve served on the job. We keep hearing about what a problem the border
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November 15, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Nearly 300,000 citizens from around the United States gathered peacefully on the Mall in Washington yesterday to express support for Israel and opposition to anti-Semitism. The Biden administration found a peculiar way to respond. It freed up an additional $10 billion for Iran by reapproving a sanctions waiver that will allow Iran to access that amount in frozen assets. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller explained the logic of the action
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November 3, 2023 — Scott Johnson
I attempted to summarize what I found to be the most newsworthy elements of IDF Lt. Colonel Jonathan Conricus’s CAMERA briefing in a nearby post this morning. I mentioned that the briefing had been recorded, but that it had not been made available. CAMERA has just sent out an email with links to its webinars including the Conricus briefing. I thought this was an intensely interesting and informative briefing. I
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November 3, 2023 — Scott Johnson
I sat in on a 25-minute Zoom briefing by IDF Lt. Colonel Jonathan Conricus yesterday afternoon. The briefing was hosted by CAMERA, which recorded the briefing but has not made it available. Conricus spoke rapidly and with great intensity. Among other things I have not read or heard elsewhere, he observed that Hamas had fired 8,000 rockets at Israel so far. Taking notes, I found it difficult to keep up
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November 3, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times. He is a veteran reporter, foreign correspondent, and editor for the New York Times and other publications. I’m late getting to Cliff’s October 25 column “The second war against the Jews” (at FDD, where it is posted with links). Cliff has kindly given us his permission to post
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