Iran

What’s wrong with this picture?

Featured image The Biden administration conveys a pathetic weakness for which the physical person of President Biden serves as an apt metaphor. In its current story on administration negotiations with Iran that date back to January, the New York Times reports: Two Iranian officials, one with the foreign ministry, said that Iran had maintained in the talks that it did not control the activity of the militia [targeting Americans], particularly the Houthis, »

Retaliation, Biden style

Featured image In response to the killing of three American soldiers in a drone strike conducted by Iranian proxy forces, the United States struck over 85 Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force and Iranian-backed militia targets in Iraq and Syria yesterday. According to Critical Threats, Iranian-backed Iraqi militias said that they will continue attacks targeting US forces until US forces are expelled from Iraq. Centcom’s press release announcing the strikes is »

No better enemy

Featured image 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 “No better enemy” (at FDD, where it is posted with links). Cliff has kindly given us his permission to post his columns on Power Line. He writes: Seven »

Axis of Biden crises

Featured image Andrew McCarthy has posted “Biden’s Iran Crisis Overlaps with His Border Crisis” in the accessible Corner cubby of NRO. This is his opening (links omitted): For many years, Iran has had an operational alliance with the Marxist totalitarian regime in Venezuela. This gives Iran a toehold in the West and a well-trod route to infiltrate operatives across the southern border. Biden has appeared blithely indifferent to this — which is »

Killed in Jordan

Featured image The Department of Defense has identified the three American soldiers killed in Jordan. They were by an Iranian proxy using a drone. More than 40 other service members were injured in the attack on Tower 22. The three soldiers killed are Sgt. William Jerome Rivers of Carrollton, Georgia; Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders of Waycross, Georgia; and Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett of Savannah, Georgia. All three were assigned to the 718th »

The long arm of Iran

Featured image Andrew Luger is the United States Attorney for the District of Minnesota. Much of the work his office performs is directed to filling the role that local law enforcement has proved itself unable and/or unwilling to play over the past few years. Today, however, Luger’s office has charged out a case that originates in Iran. The charges are brought against an Iranian operative named Naji Sharifi Zindashti, a/k/a Big and »

Can you top this?

Featured image “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child,” King Lear memorably observes in Shakespeare’s play named after him. John Bolton’s New York Post column reminds me — I had forgotten when I wrote my own comments on Iran’s latest proxy strike on American forces — that I can top that for ingratitude. Only last week the Biden administration leaked a story to the Wall Street »

Three Americans killed by “militants”

Featured image 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 »

What we’ve got here, cont’d

Featured image 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 »

What we’ve got here

Featured image 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 »

Time For Regime Change In Iran

Featured image 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 »

Beyond the Houthis

Featured image 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 »

A stern warning

Featured image 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 »

All the ayatollah’s men

Featured image 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: »

The $6 billion misunderstanding, cont’d

Featured image 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 »

It’s not just Zelensky’s war

Featured image 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 »

After the atrocity video

Featured image 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 »