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Are We There Yet?

March 20, 2026/in Commentary, Culture War, Hot Topics, Iranian influence, National Security, News, Policy, Politics, Radical Islamic Terrorism, Terrorism, Violence/by Kenneth R. Timmerman

Democrats and their mouthpieces in the media are like a bunch of kids in a car on vacation, screaming to Daddy: Are we there yet?

No we are not there yet. In fact, we are probably just past the halfway point in this war. The president said at the outset he thought military operations against Iran would last between four to six weeks. We are just finishing Week 3.

The Democrat media has also been trying to blow up the disagreement between President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu over Israel’s strike on Iran’s South Pars gas field.

As he spoke to reporters on Thursday with the Japanese Prime Minister at his side in the Oval Office, the president said he had not known about the Israeli plan to strike South Pars, didn’t agree with it, and told Bibi not to do it again.

The media tried to jin that up to sustain their anti-Semitic narrative that Israel dragged the US kicking and screaming into war with Iran.

But they conveniently ignored what Trump said next in a post on Truth Social: if Iran retaliated by attacking the Qatari portion of South Pars (which Qatar calls the North Gas field), then the US, “with or without the help or consent of Israel, will massively blow up the entirely of the South Pars Gas Field at an amount of strength and power that Iran has never seen or witnessed before.”

He continued: “I do not want to authorize this level of violence and destruction because of the long term implications that it will have on the future of Iran, but if Qatar’s LNG is again attacked, I will not hesitate to do so.”

Well, guess what? Iran retaliated – not against Israel – but against Qatar by hitting Ras Laffan Industrial City, the largest LNG production facility on earth, which processes an estimated 20% of the world’s LNG supplies.

I’ve been saying all week on Newsmax and other media that these Iranian moves are like demolishing the house of their last rich uncle. I think the regime is increasingly desperate, and like Samson, they are intent on bringing the entire house down around them.

The Qataris responded by expelling the Iranian ambassador and all Iranian diplomats. They also unleashed al-Jazeera, which in the past was known as Jihad TV, to attack Iran and praise the US-Israeli war effort.

When al-Jazeera praises Israel, you know there has been a fundamental shift in the attitude of the Gulf Arab states.

For 47 years, this regime in Tehran has made terrorism the lynchpin of its survival. It began with the seizing of the US embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979 and hasn’t stopped since. But until now, no US president has had the courage or the cojones to fight back.

When the 9/11 Commission discovered 75 smoking gun documents that clearly implicated Iran for providing material support to the al-Qaeda hijackers, the Commission staff director, Phil Zelikow, did his best to bury the information.

As I detail in my book on the dirty secrets of the Iranian regime, Countdown to Crisis, Zelikow ordered his investigators to minimize the information as far as possible. His rationale: If the American public knew the extent of the Iranian regime’s involvement in the planning and execution of the 9/11 attacks, they would demand that we go to war with Iran.

(You can find the sanitized version of what the investigators discovered on pages 240-241 of the Commission’s final report.)

The United States early on smashed the regime’s command and control, so that today no one really knows who is running the country.

But in true Samson mode, the regime had a backup plan, which we are seeing play out today: they decentralized command and control to local IRGC commanders, supplying them with Doomsday target lists they were to attack in the event they lost contact with regime central.

It will take time to localize and destroy these local commanders and the missile launchers and drone launchers they control.

That is why the United States continues to move additional assets to the region, including two groups of Marine Expeditionary forces (5000 marines in total).

This week we also saw the entry to the war of the venerable A-10 and the AH-64 Apache attack helicopters. Launched from the southern side of the Persian Gulf, they can loiter over target zones and launch devastating rocket fire on missile and drone launchers as they pop up.

The war cannot end until the United States restores freedom of navigation to the Strait of Hormuz, and that could take some time — perhaps even longer than the four to six week war the president and his military advisors foresaw.

When asked to supply minesweepers and other assets to help in this task, our NATO allies turned away. Belgium cried, “it’s not our war.” French president Macron, aka le p’tit macaron, or Little Cookie, told us to surrender. (Need I remind my readers that France is the only country whose tanks have back-up lights?).

Thanks to the behind-the-scenes support from the Japanese prime minister, it would now appear that the Euros have seen the light. We’ll see.

But I find it remarkable that when called upon, the only ally who immediately stepped up to the plate was the president of the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq, Nechirvan Barzani.

He got a call from U.S. special envoy Tom Barrack, asking him to reopen a long-closed pipeline to Ceyhan, Turkey, so the Iraqi government could export 250,000 barrels of oil per day. He said yes, immediately, and the oil started to flow the next day.

Now why is that remarkable? Because the Kurds closed the pipeline to Iraqi oil three years ago, after Baghdad refused to uphold the revenue sharing agreements they had agreed to long before.

Even worse: Baghdad continues to pay the salaries of the Popular Mobilization Forces militias that have been firing rockets and drones at the Kurdish capital, Erbil, since the beginning of this war.

Despite the incredible animosity between Baghdad and Erbil, Barzani said yes, because the President asked. So today Iraq is able to contribute 250,000 b/d to the world oil supply, up from zero just the week before.

That’s what true allies do.

I discuss this, as well as the prospect that Ukraine becomes Putin’s Afghanistan, on this week’s Prophecy Today Weekend.

As always, you can listen live at 1 PM on Saturday on 104.9 FM or 550 AM in the Jacksonville, Florida, area, or by using the Jacksonville Way Radio app. If you miss us live, you can tune in later to the podcast here.

Yours in freedom.

Website: kentimmerman.com

Ken Timmerman’s 14th book of non-fiction, THE IRAN HOUSE: Tales of Revolution, Persecution, War, and Intrigue, can be ordered by clicking here or by viewing my author’s page, here.

Raising Olives in Provence, can be ordered by clicking here.

Why 2026 Could Be the Most Dangerous and Transformational Year Since World War II

March 20, 2026/in Culture War, Elections, Featured, Hot Topics, Iranian influence, National Security, News, Policy, Politics, Radical Islamic Terrorism, Terrorism, The Truth, Violence, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by The Daily Signal

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson.

2026 looks like it’s going to be the most tumultuous, geo-strategically significant and dangerous year since the fall of the Soviet system and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The whole world is in upheaval. Donald Trump is the catalyst of this. A lot of people, both in his base and his opponents, both here in the United States and abroad, blame him.

I think a few years ago, one European diplomat said, “Well, he’s a bull in a China shop, only he’s a bull in a nuclear China shop.” Maybe, maybe not.

But let’s just review what’s taking place right now. For the second time, we’re bombing Iran, and this time the negotiations clearly were not going to lead to this 47-year problem resolution.

Iran’s theocracy has no intention of stopping nuclear proliferation. It wants a bomb to dominate the Middle East, to intimidate the petro kingdoms of the Gulf, to show its dominance over Sunni Islam, and to destroy eventually Israel, threaten Europe for blackmail concessions and eventually us.

We’ve known that. Every president, all seven of them before Trump, said that, and they were going take care of the problem or prevent it from exacerbating. None did anything.

Trump tried to negotiate, take out the nuclear facilities, and then he learned that they were still trying to, after the bombing: restore them, expand their Russia, North Korean, Chinese ballistic missile force, ensure that nobody would dare attack them again.

And Trump did. And this time his plan is to remove either now or so detrite the theocracy that it would erode in the next few months by a popular uprising or maybe have a Venezuela solution. Barring that, at least make it inert militarily.

This follows the [Nicolas] Maduro, what do we call it, kidnapping coup. We removed this communist thug, drug lord, shipper of dangerous opiates into the United States, propped up Cuba and was trying to spread the Chavez communist message throughout Latin America. It looked like he was succeeding under Joe Biden. Now the whole world there is different.

Venezuela doesn’t have Maduro. It has a strong government in the sense that they will keep order, and maybe they will have transitions to democracy. We hope so. But they are terrified of the United States that removed their government and told them they put the oil on the world market, they reform their economy, they get the Chinese out, and they will have a bright future.

This coincides with democratic revolutions in Central America, Chile, maybe Bolivia and Peru. We’ll see how those work out. And of course, Argentina.

So it’s a whole new Latin America. It’s experiencing a westernized constitutional system revolution. And again, the catalyst has been Donald Trump.

First, by telling the Panamanians, “We know what you’re doing. It’s not smart for you to do this, to triangulate with the Chinese. If you do it, we’ll take back the canal.” And he got results. And the result is China and Russia are now excluded from the Western Hemisphere.

At the same time, he’s pressuring the Cubans. They have no more subsidized oil from Russia. They know that their drugs—that they are intermediaries in smuggling and shipping to the U.S.—are being blown up on the high seas. There’s no more Chavez-Maduro free fuel, and their innately incompetent and inert economy is imploding.

And Trump is basically saying, “You saw what happened to Venezuela, you saw what happened to Iran. You’re not halfway across the world. You’re not down in South America. You’re right here 90 miles away from us. And this will be a cakewalk if you don’t try to reform and give your people a choice, an economic liberation, a political liberation, a cultural, social liberation.”

And it looks like they’re going allow American businessmen, mostly Cuban Americans, to go back in there and invest.

If that happens and you start to see offshore companies, energy development, hotels, tourism, communism will die on the vine.

So what am I getting at? I’m getting at that there’s a world upheaval that Donald Trump sort of took a fuse and he lit it, and things are blowing up everywhere, and everybody is paranoid and crazy, and they’re thinking that he’s a disruptor.

And then we have the Ukraine war, and he has convinced the Europeans that you have to do two things that they don’t understand. You can’t buy energy from Russia. Maybe he’s lifted that because the Straits of Hormuz are closed temporarily. But you can’t subsidize the Russian war machine and then tell the United States that because of your suicidal energy policies, you have to do that. But you also have to have the United States step in and save you.

And so, we’re trying to find a solution, but one of the tactics that Trump is using, that’s very misunderstood. He is trying to say [Vladimir] Putin is a monster. Of course, he is. Don’t trust him. But I wasn’t the one that started this crazy reset. I was the one that got rid of the Wagner Group. I was the one that went after the oligarchs. I was the one that got out of the missile treaty. I was the one that gave offensive weapons to Ukraine, not you.

I was the one that warned you about the Nord Stream pipeline, not you, not [Joe] Biden. I did. So here, if I’m going to get involved, don’t demonize him, because we can weaken him and then we can flip him so that he doesn’t go back into Europe, but he also triangulates against China.

So what I’m getting at, if that happens, and you see a different government in Cuba, Venezuela and a tidal wave of reform in Latin America, where at the same time you get rid of the 47-year cancer in the Middle East for which American troops have been based, take away the Iranian theocracy, and there’s not going to be 200 installations of Americans in Syria and Iraq.

And then you add into the combination what Cuba has done to us all these years. It’s been a receptacle of American terrorists, hijackers, drug smugglers.

At one time, remember, it was going to base nuclear weapons from Russia pointed at us, the Cuban Missile Crisis of ’62. It’s just been a headache.

If you could solve all of those things in one year, it would be unheard of. It would make [Ronald] Reagan’s achievement of destroying the Soviet Union, although it fell during the successor George H.W. Bush, it would look minor in comparison almost.

Think about this very quickly. This was not necessary in Trump’s political calculus. He had the midterms coming up. Eight or nine months when he went into Venezuela and Iran. That took a great risk to distract attention away from the economy. The economy had been moribund under Joe Biden, and it was starting to pick up, and he was bragging about the low cost of energy.

If you’re just a political animal, what you don’t do right before the midterms is go into two of the largest oil-producing countries in the world and, for the short term at least, ensure their oil is going be reduced. And yet he took that risk.

And more importantly, he knows how Europe feels about it. Europe is so touchy because they have ruled out basically producing their own natural gas, their own oil. They’re very reluctant to follow the French example of nuclear power. And the result is they’re very dependent on imported oil, and they’re whispering to Trump, “Don’t do this, don’t be disruptive.” So he’s got a problem with this.

And then the MAGA base, remember, says, “No optional wars abroad.” And Trump is trying to say, well, these are using air power. I haven’t used ground troops. This is not Afghanistan. These are going to be short-term solutions to long-term problems. And in the future, if we’re successful, there’ll be fewer Americans abroad because we’ll have a greater number of American allies and friends who will be consensual.

They’ll be ruled by consensual governments. They’ll have free economies. And more importantly, they will have a different attitude or view of the United States, not one as a reluctant weakling or an unarmed or a Joe Biden, Barack Obama appeaser, but somebody who’s very unpredictable but follows up what he says, and they will be more likely to respect and join us. Strength radiates friendship, weakness repels it.

Finally, again, I think we misunderstood what’s going on. There are disruptions all over the world, but three quarters of them are reaching a consensus, an end, some type of resolution one way or the other.

I don’t know how they’re all going turn out, but there is a good chance they could turn out with the United States in a preeminent position that we haven’t seen at least since WWII.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

AUTHOR

Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson, a senior contributor for The Daily Signal, is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and host of “The Victor Davis Hanson Show.” His website, The Blade of Perseus, features columns, lectures, and exclusive content for subscribers. Contact him at authorvdh@gmail.com. VDH on X: @VDHanson.

Victor Davis Hanson: Trump’s Jacksonian Foreign Policy (With a Twist)

Victor Davis Hanson on Trump’s Dream Iran Outcome

Iran Indicates Khamenei’s Hardline Son Will Be Next Supreme Leader

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U.S. Allies near China on Edge as Weapons Shift from Asia to Iran

March 18, 2026/in Chinese influence, Hot Topics, Iranian influence, National Security, News, Policy, Politics, Radical Islamic Terrorism, Socialism, The Truth, Violence/by Center For Security Policy

WASHINGTON – When the US pulled its only aircraft carrier based in Asia to support the military surge in Afghanistan back in 2010, allies in the region had little concern that China or North Korea might look to take advantage.

Today things are different.

As the US continues to pour weapons into the Middle East for military operations against Iran, current and former defence officials in Asia are growing concerned that more American firepower will be shifted over time if the war drags on.

And even if fighting wraps up soon, they warned that depleted stockpiles of munitions could also take years to replace, leaving Taiwan and other places vulnerable.

In a cabinet meeting this week, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung confirmed the US may need to relocate air defence assets to the Middle East and subsequent reports said that multiple launchers of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence, or THAAD, system were spotted moving out of a southern base.

While downplaying the risk, calling Seoul’s capabilities “undeniably overwhelming”, Mr Lee also said he opposed the Trump administration’s decision but couldn’t “impose our position” on the US.

“Anytime that we’re pulling air and missile defences out of theater, that’s going to create obvious concerns,” said Mr Lindsey Ford, who previously served as deputy assistant secretary of defence for South and Southeast Asia during the Biden administration. “They are not only critically important, but I think they give countries a sense of reassurance.”

The rapid pace of China’s military build-up over the last two decades, as well as North Korea’s development of advanced missiles, mean the stakes have become much higher in East Asia.

The US has already deployed around one-third of its naval surface fleet to the Middle East, and other essential parts of the military logistics chain such as aerial refueling aircraft and supply ships are heavily concentrated near Iran.

Asked for comment, a Pentagon official said the department doesn’t discuss movement or disposition of specific weapons systems. But the Pentagon is managing its global responsibilities while making sure US forces remain capable of deterring any aggression in the Indo-Pacific, the official said.

At the moment, China has given little indication it’s looking to ramp up tensions with Taiwan, calling for an urgent ceasefire in the Middle East while dialing back pressure on the island’s air defences. Still, the war in Iran has some in Taipei nervous.

US military assets and resources “cannot be deployed in two places at the same time,” Mr Chen Kuan-ting, a Taiwanese lawmaker and member of the Foreign Affairs and National Defence Committee of the legislature, said in an interview. “Deploying the main military assets in Asia and confronting the US’s primary competitor here is more in line with US interests.”

US officials have sought to downplay any worries about munitions or a spread of the war to other parts of the globe, even as the rhetoric ramps up on both sides.

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters earlier this month that he had no message for China or Russia, saying “our issue is not with them”.

Despite the war, US President Donald Trump is still planning to head to Beijing in a few weeks for a summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

“The US military in Trump 2.0 has again been distracted by the Middle East, but as long as the status quo in the Taiwan Strait remains unchanged, Beijing is unlikely to act,” said Mr James Char, an assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University. “Some probing on the margins is possible” in the form of grey zone operations, he added.

At a Senate hearing last week, Mr Elbridge Colby, US undersecretary of defence for policy, said top American officials were focused on “very close alignment with our allies and partners” in the Indo-Pacific region. He noted his first call after the attack on Iran was to the defence minister of the Philippines.

“We are laser-focused on the First Island Chain,” Mr Colby said, a term that refers primarily to Japan, the Philippines and Taiwan.
A military official from the Philippines, who requested anonymity because he’s not authorized to speak publicly, said the nation had no concern about its alliance with the US due to the war in Iran.

Annual exercises are still planned with the US military next month, which typically include training to defend Filipino islands near Taiwan, the official added.

Still, some strategic thinkers in the region see little scope to dial back the US military presence in East Asia without affecting the balance of power.

China continues to build and deploy military equipment at a rapid rate, including a much faster pace of ship production than the US. At least two US destroyers based in Japan have been deployed to take part in Iran strikes, according to US military photos.
Mr Rommel Ong, a retired rear admiral in the Philippine Navy, said the current level of US naval presence was needed to “prevent China from 100 per cent sea control of the South China Sea.”

“Right now, even without the situation in Iran, the Chinese maritime forces in East Asia enjoy numerical advantage,” he said.

It’s not unusual for the US to move weaponry around the world. In 2025, Patriot air defence systems were moved from South Korea to Qatar ahead of the US-Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear sites.

They were returned after a few months.

So far, the war in Iran has been almost exclusively an air campaign, making it different to prior conflicts. But if it expands it could draw in other parts of the US military, such as Marine Corps battalions from Japan that were sent to Afghanistan.

During previous conflicts in the Middle East, the US military deployed a range of capabilities from East Asia, including the aircraft carrier USS George Washington from Japan for a few months during the surge period of the Afghanistan campaign.

“If major US military assets like the USS George Washington aircraft carrier in Japan were moved to the Middle East, it would be problematic for readiness in the Indo-Pacific,” said Mr Hirohito Ogi, a former Japanese Defence Ministry official, adding that he thought it was an unlikely scenario.

A more immediate concern, he said, is the depletion of missiles such as Patriot interceptors. It takes a long time to make them, meaning it could take years to return to fully replenish inventories. “That could have a serious impact on readiness in the Indo-Pacific region, including the defence of Taiwan,” Mr Ogi said.

The Payne Institute, a public research institute in Colorado, estimates that more than 300 Patriot and other interceptors were used by US defence systems in the first 36 hours of the Iran war, and a further 280 used by Gulf countries.

Details about missile stockpiles aren’t publicly available, but Lockheed Martin makes around 620 Patriot missiles a year.

“We’re seeing the results now of a ‘just in time’ approach to equipping and manning the military, based on the assumption that we’d never fight a major war again – much less two of them at once,” said Mr Grant Newsham, a former US Marine Corps colonel and liaison officer to the Japanese military.

That’s a problem for Asia, which still relies on the US as the main deterrent against China. Countries in the region need to do more to ensure they have their own resources and “won’t necessarily be dependent on the US” if there’s a crisis in the region, according to Mr Ford, the former US defence official.

“We’ve all seen this dance before,” she said. “But I do think that it creates a lot of questions for Asian allies about what they need to do regarding their own sovereign capabilities.”

Of particular note was the reported redeployment of parts of the THAAD air defence system from South Korea, said Mr John Delury, a senior fellow at the Asia Society. Both China and North Korea strongly objected to its installation in South Korea in 2017.

“It’s hard to overstate the irony of THAAD, a symbol of the pivot to Asia, being removed in the dead of night for a new war in the Middle East,” Mr Delury said.

Originally published by The Straits Times

AUTHOR

Grant Newsham

Senior Fellow

Iran Regime Savages Gang-Raped, Tortured Nurses Who Treated Wounded Protesters, “One Victim Begging Surgeons to Let Her Die.’

March 18, 2026/in Hot Topics, Iranian influence, Must Read, Radical Islamic Terrorism, Social Issues, Terrorism, Violence, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by The Geller Report

Horrific gang-rape and torture ordeal of Iranian nurses: Medics ‘subjected to brutal sex attacks in revenge for caring for wounded rioters with one victim begging surgeons to let her die.’

Not one word from the left.or from pathetic college campuses or from Hollywood’s loudest voices on Oscar night all puffed up like peacocks, flaunting ignorance and Jew-hatred as if it were something to admire.

\The left, much like the Iranian regime, must be crushed.

Horrific gang-rape and torture ordeal of Iranian nurses: Medics ‘subjected to brutal sex attacks out of revenge for treating wounded rioters with one victim begging surgeons to let her die’

Warning: Graphic content

By Adam Pogrund, Daily Mail, 16 March 2026

Two Iranian nurses were gang-raped and brutally tortured by regime security agents because they treated wounded protesters during anti-government demonstrations in January, a report has claimed.

Members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), who have close ties to the country’s new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei, slaughtered thousands of protesters before killing and sexually abusing medics who helped the injured at Tehran’s Rajaei Cardiovascular, Medical and Research Center, it is reported.

One nurse, 33, was held in detention and said she had been repeatedly gang-raped by three IRGC agents at a time for three days, according to Iran International.

The sexual assaults were so severe doctors had to remove part of her intestine and her uterus may have to be taken out. She also has to live with a colostomy bag.

The woman is so traumatised she begged surgeons to let her die and she is currently tied to the hospital bed to stop her from harming herself as she remains under the supervision of IRGC security forces.

Another nurse who was arrested and gang-raped in custody has been fitted with a colostomy bag and doctors removed her uterus due to extreme bleeding.

The opposition outlet also reported the nurse was forced to sign a document saying she married one of the IRGC agents and her family had to pay him a large fee to secure her release.

She also had to sign a statement which blamed her rape and abuse on ‘rioters’, sources said.

Two Iranian nurses were reportedly gang-raped and brutally tortured by regime security agents because they treated wounded protesters during anti-government demonstrations in January.

Two Iranian nurses were reportedly gang-raped and brutally tortured by regime security agents because they treated wounded protesters during anti-government demonstrations in January.

One nurse, 33, was held in detention and repeatedly gang-raped by three IRGC agents at a time for three days, according to Iran International. (Pictured: IRGC guards drag an emaciated prisoner, at Evin prison in Tehran)

One nurse, 33, was held in detention and repeatedly gang-raped by three IRGC agents at a time for three days, according to Iran International. (Pictured: IRGC guards drag an emaciated prisoner, at Evin prison in Tehran)

The nurses had provided medical treatment to injured demonstrators who took part in nationwide protests against the cruel regime in January.

The hospital, based in the Vali-Asr area of the capital, received waves of injured protesters, including those shot by IRGC forces, on the evening of January 8.

IRGC agents warned hospital staff against helping the wounded. But this was ignored by 14 of 27 nurses.

Two male nurses among were arrested after expressing sympathy with the wounded.

As nurses helped the injured, IRGC forces entered the hospital and fired at patients, according to Iran International.

Two nurses who tried to treat the wounded were killed, while others were beaten and arrested.

Staff were then warned not to touch the bodies of the dead, leaving corpses to rot.

The bodies of the two dead nurses were later found in Kahrizak, where rows of body bags were piled as the government massacred thousands for protesting.

Iran’s savage Revolutionary Guards have repeatedly used sexual violence to punish dissenters, human rights groups claim.

Sara Hossain, chair of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran established by the UN Human Rights Council, said: ‘The information we have gathered points to severe human rights violations, including unnecessary and disproportionate use of force, resulting in arbitrary killings, torture, sexual violence, arbitrary arrests and detentions, and forced confessions.’

Two girls, aged 15 and 17, were reportedly raped by soldiers while being held in detention during the January protests.

The Islamic Republic’s ruthless jailers have long used extreme violence to spread fear among those who dare stand up to the regime.

Amnesty International has documented cases in which detainees were suspended by their hands and feet from a pole in a painful position referred to by interrogators as ‘chicken kebab’, forcing the body into extreme stress for prolonged periods.

Other reported methods include waterboarding, mock executions by hanging or firing squad, sleep deprivation, exposure to extreme temperatures, sensory overload using light or noise, and the forcible removal of fingernails or toenails.

Continue reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED VIDEO: The Problims with Mecca

In Iran, the Army’s Resentment of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Continues to Grow

March 17, 2026/in Anti-Semitism, Culture War, Hot Topics, Iranian influence, National Security, News, Radical Islamic Terrorism, Socialism, Terrorism, Violence, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Jihad Watch

The troops in the Iranian Army (Artesh) believe that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) soldiers are mistreating them, refusing to share medical personnel, and leaving the regular army with insufficient food, water, and even ammunition. The hostility of Artesh recruits toward the “spoiled” combatants of the IRGC continues inexorably to grow. More on this outbreak of mutual hostility in the ranks can be found here: “Desertions, shortages and army-IRGC rift strain Iran’s military,” Iran International, March 12, 2026:

Iran’s armed forces are facing acute supply shortages, rising desertions and deepening friction between the regular army (Artesh) and the Revolutionary Guards, according to informed sources who described a military system under growing strain as the war intensifies.

Among the most serious allegations are reports that wounded army personnel have been denied assistance by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), that some frontline units are operating with minimal ammunition, food and drinking water, and that attempts to mobilize reserve forces have faltered.

Tensions between army and Revolutionary Guards

One of the sharpest points of friction appears to involve medical support for wounded soldiers.

Sources said that regular army units are suffering significant casualties but that IRGC personnel have refused to transport injured army soldiers to hospitals despite having access to medical facilities.

According to the sources, Revolutionary Guards officials rejected repeated army requests for assistance, citing shortages of ambulances and blood supplies.

The refusals have deepened anger and resentment between personnel from the two forces, adding to long-standing institutional tensions between the regular army (Artesh) and the IRGC….

Large numbers of troops have been reported as having deserted from their bases en masse, and seeking refuge among sympathetic Iranian civilians in towns nearby.

The strain is not limited to the regular army, according to the sources.

Even within IRGC missile units – traditionally among the best resourced parts of Iran’s military – there have been reports of communications equipment failures and shortages of food and other basic supplies.

The IRGC’s elite units, containing the soldiers in charge of missile launches, have always been given the best treatment by the regime. But even they are suffering from a lack of food and water, though not to the extent endured by the regular army.

The upper echelons of the IRGC are determined to keep their missile systems operational, which means ensuring a steady supply of components. And that matters far more to them than does the wellbeing of their troops; food for those troops arrives only intermittently. They are not starving, but are certainly undernourished.

Even the elite IRGC, whose troops are the best-fed and best supplied In Iran, are finding that they can no longer count on their own reserves answering the call when summoned. More of those refractory soldiers simply don’t show up. Worse still, a noticeable number are moving their families closer to the country’s borders — especially those with Iraq and Turkey — in the hope that they can together make it safely across.

Meanwhile, the resentment in the regular army at the high-handed ways of the IRGC continue to roil the ranks. Especially infuriating is the IRGC’s refusal to let its own medical personnel treat wounded soldiers from the regular army. The fury is not yet to the point of mutiny, and a demand for better treatment “at the same level as the Revolutionary Guards enjoy” but it’s getting there. It’s not far-fetched to imagine a future scenario with the Iranian National Army refusing to fire on protesters, and the IRGC then firing on the army.

AUTHOR

Hugh Fitzgerald

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Naturalized Terrorism

March 17, 2026/in Anti-Semitism, Assassination attempt, Criminal Illegal Aliens, Elections, Hot Topics, Iranian influence, Marxism, Must Read, National Security, News, Radical Islamic Terrorism, Terrorism, Violence, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Conservative Commandos Radio Show and AUN-TV

String of attacks connected to naturalized citizens raises national security questions. The United States is left vulnerable even by its own naturalized U.S. citizens from hostile foreign lands, proving a free country can be exposed to security risks by the very freedoms the Constitution endows, an expert warned on Fox News.

“That’s partially because of legal reasons: They can’t just monitor constitutionally protected free speech and opinions after they become a naturalized citizen, indefinitely, just to keep tabs on them,” Mauro Institute president Ryan Mauro told Fox News on Saturday. “They legally can’t do it, and they also don’t have the resources to do it.”

Just this month alone, the U.S. has experienced four attacks with ties to naturalized citizenship.

March 1 — Austin, Texas, bar shooting
March 7 — New York City attempted bombing (parents of suspects were naturalized citizens)
March 12 — Old Dominion University shooting
March 12 — West Bloomfield, Michigan, synagogue attack

“There’s a bit of a jihad olympics going on, which is where you have the Sunni radicals like ISIS competing with the Shiite radicals of the Iranian regime because they need attention in order to survive and in order settle the argument of who has Allah’s blessing so that they can trigger the apocalypse,” Mauro said.

Republicans Close University of Florida Chapter Over Alleged Antisemitism

March 16, 2026/in Anti-Semitism, Culture War, Education, Hot Topics, Iranian influence, Marxism, Must Read, News, Policy, Politics, Radical Islamic Terrorism, Terrorism, Violence/by The Geller Report

The surge of antisemitism on the right is deeply disturbing, and it is not hard to trace the source. Figures like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Megyn Kelly and their fellow travelers have driven a stake straight through the moral center of what was once a reliably pro-Israel, philo-Semitic political home.

For Jews like myself—proud, unapologetic Zionists who long felt safe and politically at home within the Republican Party—the shift is jarring. For decades, the locus of organized Jew-hatred in American politics was overwhelmingly on the left: among Democrats and the ideological alliance that increasingly includes Islamic movements and their Western enablers.

To see that poison now metastasizing on the right is not merely disappointing—it is profoundly alarming.

So it is no small comfort that Republicans would close their University of Florida chapter over antisemitism. At least the right is pushing back, fighting this scourge, this awful poison. The left, on the other hand, is embracing it.

Republicans close University of Florida chapter over alleged antisemitism

The announcement is the second report this month of antisemitic behavior by a conservative group at a Florida school.

By: J Post, March 15, 2026;

The Florida Federation of College Republicans disbanded its University of Florida chapter and asked the school to remove it as a student organization due to alleged misconduct that includes antisemitism, the university said on Saturday.

The request was based on the federation’s own investigation that uncovered a “pattern of conduct that violated its rules and values, including a recent antisemitic gesture,” the university wrote in a post on X. The federation asked the school to “deactivate” its Republican chapter while the group tries to restart the chapter with new leadership, the university wrote.

The school’s post said it is “committed to preventing and addressing antisemitism and other forms of discrimination and harassment” that threaten and disrupt the school community, and that it will help the federation reactivate its local chapter when it is reformed.

The announcement is the second report this month of antisemitic behavior by a conservative group at a Florida school.

Florida International University said on March 5 that law enforcement is investigating a Miami Herald report that prominent members of the local Republican Party and conservative student leaders exchanged racist, antisemitic, ‌and homophobic messages in an online group chat.

The Herald reported that logs of the leaked WhatsApp group chat showed participants, including prominent local Republican Party officials and student leaders of FIU’s Turning Point USA chapter, a conservative youth group founded by slain activist Charlie Kirk.

Continue reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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VIDEO: IDF pilots have begun a new wave of strikes against Iran

March 15, 2026/in Anti-Semitism, Culture War, Hot Topics, Iranian influence, National Security, News, Policy, Politics, Radical Islamic Terrorism, Terrorism, The Truth/by NEWSRAEL Telling the Israeli Story

The IDF has begun a new wave of strikes against regime infrastructure in western Iran

After Iran attacked Israel in the last 24 hours with rockets and cluster bombs, causing damage and death of innocent civilians, the IDF is now hitting Iran in a new wave of strikes.

This is a developing story.

While Some Allies Hesitate, Israel Is Already in the Fight Against Iran

Trump: US Airstrikes ‘Totally Obliterate’ Iranian Military Targets on “Crown Jewel” Kharg Island

“Orphan Pearl of the Persian Gulf.”

Kharg Island is the nerve center of Iran’s oil production. The depot is the beating heart of the Iranian oil industry, storing and loading most of its crude exports

The depot is the beating heart of the Iranian oil industry, storing and loading most of its crude exports.

The U.S. military bombed Iran’s most strategic economic asset, Kharg Island. The tiny spot of land in the northern Persian Gulf is the launch point for 90% of the country’s oil exports.

Despite its size, it is one of the most critical pieces of Iran’s energy infrastructure.

The US striking this small but vital island in the northern Gulf is like going for Iran’s economic jugular vein.

Ninety percent of Iran’s crude oil comes through a terminal on the island — transported through pipes from the mainland.

Very large tankers – capable of carrying up to 85 million gallons of oil — are able to come up to the island’s long jetties to pick up the oil. The island’s coast is close enough to deep waters, unlike the shallower coast of the mainland.

The tankers then come back down the Gulf and out of the Strait of Hormuz, to China — the main buyer of Iranian oil.

A terminal for the export of Iranian oil, the island provides a major source of revenue for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

US obliterates ‘every MILITARY target’ on Iran’s oil-critical Kharg Island in historic bombing raid, Trump says

By Victor Nava, NY Post, March 13, 2026, 7:18 p.m. ET

Military targets on Iran’s Kharg Island – the loading site for most of the Islamic Republic’s oil exports — were “totally obliterated” by US airstrikes during a historic bombing raid in the Persian Gulf, President Trump announced Friday.

“Moments ago, at my direction, the United States Central Command executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the History of the Middle East, and totally obliterated every MILITARY target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The island, located about 16 miles off the Iranian coast, is one-third the size of Manhattan and controls 90% of Iranian crude oil exports.

Trump said the island’s oil infrastructure was not targeted but may be hit in future strikes, if the Iranian regime doesn’t allow ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

Satellite view of Iran’s Kharg Island, home to its main crude export terminal, surrounded by the Gulf.

“Our Weapons are the most powerful and sophisticated that the World has ever known but, for reasons of decency, I have chosen NOT to wipe out the Oil Infrastructure on the Island,” the president said.

“However, should Iran, or anyone else, do anything to interfere with the Free and Safe Passage of Ships through the Strait of Hormuz, I will immediately reconsider this decision,” Trump warned.

The two-week conflict, dubbed Operation Epic Fury, hadn’t impacted the island — with Iran exporting more fuel than before the war started, according to the Wall Street Journal – until Friday’s strikes.

The US and Israel are both believed to be keen on seizing Kharg at some point in the war, The Post reported earlier this week.

Experts have told The Post that taking control of the oil-critical island could spell doom for Iran.

“Take it out, and this means cutting off the military budget in addition to pulling the plug on the basic services that keep Iranian society functioning,” said Mohammed Soliman, a senior fellow at the DC-based Middle East Institute.

“Losing Kharg for even a few weeks will create a security and societal crisis in Iran at the same time. Tehran doesn’t get to choose which one to deal with first,” said Soliman.

Former administration official John Ullyot added that seizing Kharg and its oil facilities would “cripple the regime.”

Trump, however, downplayed his interest in taking the island in an interview with Fox News Radio host Brian Kilmeade that aired Friday morning.

“It’s not high on the list, but it’s one of so many different things, and I can change my mind in seconds,” the president said.

Trump chided the “Fox & Friends” co-host for even bringing up the question – hours before he attacked the island.

“Let’s say I was going to do it, or let’s say I wasn’t going to do it. What would I tell you? ‘Oh, yes, Brian, I’m thinking about doing it, let me let you know what time and when it’ll take place.’… It’s sort of a foolish question,” he said.

In his announcement of the bombing run, Trump boasted that Iran “has NO ability to defend anything” the US military chooses to attack.

“During my First Term, and currently, I rebuilt our Military into the Most Lethal, Powerful, and Effective Force, by far, anywhere in the World,” the president said. “Iran has NO ability to defend anything that we want to attack — There is nothing they can do about it!”

He maintained that Iran “will NEVER have a nuclear weapon, nor will it have the ability to threaten the United States of America, the Middle East or, for that matter, the World!”

Trump further called on members of Iran’s military and anyone with ties to the regime to “lay down their arms, and save what’s left of their country, which isn’t much!”

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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Trump: U.S. Airstrikes ‘Totally Obliterate’ Iranian Military Targets on “Crown Jewel” Kharg Island

March 15, 2026/in Featured, Iranian influence, National Security, News, Policy, Politics, Radical Islamic Terrorism, Socialism, Terrorism, Violence/by The Geller Report