Free Republic

Stocks rose on Tuesday following new reports that gave investors hope that the U.S.-Iran war could soon come to an end. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 1,125.37 points, or 2.49%, and closed at 46,341.51. The move came after an unconfirmed report said Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian was open to ending the war with guarantees. The S&P 500 gained 2.91% to end at 6,528.52, and the Nasdaq Composite advanced 3.83% to 21,590.63. All three indexes posted their best day since May. To be sure, Pezeshkian made similar remarks earlier this month, saying in a post on X that the...

Four years after the liberation of Bucha, the town remains a central reference point for understanding the nature of the war in Ukraine and the limits of current diplomatic efforts. The events that followed the withdrawal of Russian forces in March 2022, when hundreds of civilians were found dead across the Kyiv suburb and the wider region, continue to shape how Ukraine defines both security and peace. Bucha has become more than a historical episode. It functions as a political and moral benchmark in discussions about any future settlement. Ukrainian authorities report over 400 civilian deaths in the town itself...

Serious disagreements have emerged between Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian and IRGC chief-commander Ahmad Vahidi over how to manage the war and its damaging impact on people’s livelihoods and the economy, sources with knowledge of the matter told Iran International. Pezeshkian has criticized the approach of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps regarding escalating tensions and continuing attacks on neighboring countries, warning about the economic consequences of the situation, according to the sources who spoke on condition of anonymity. He has stressed that without a ceasefire, Iran’s economy could face total collapse within three weeks to one month, the sources said. As...

The Trump Administration has been clear that its national defense strategy is to defend the homeland and deter China. To achieve these goals, the new funding made available in the FY 2027 defense budget should be focused on expanding capacity across the services—especially in sea power and airpower with large procurement orders for existing programs and investments in next-generation capabilities like the B-21 and F-47. America’s long-neglected strategic deterrent needs funding to defend the homeland, to include necessary support for programs like the Sentinel missile and Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine. New spending needs to prioritize the Indo-Pacific and the Western...

Working with a team of visual investigators that included the Bulletin, the French newspaper Le Monde has analyzed a previously unreported satellite image of the Iranian nuclear site at Isfahan, showing a large truck loaded with containers. In a Le Monde article published Saturday, experts said they could not be certain what the containers held. But the timing of the image, the type of load, and other indirect evidence suggest that Iran may have placed a significant quantity of highly enriched uranium—possibly all of its inventory—at the facility ahead of the June 2025 strikes by Israel and the United States...

Fox News anchor Mark Levin and former Fox News star Megyn Kelly continued mocking each with high school-esque sexual insults on Saturday, extending their smutty feud that began two weeks ago. The latest round started on Friday, when Levin branded Kelly [EXPLICIT] referring to the 1972 porno flick — after she mocked him for suggesting President Donald Trump bring in Secretary of State Marco Rubio or Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff to manage the relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, rather than Vice President JD Vance. “Oh the stories I hear,” Levin said about Kelly. “Filthy mouth."

General or partial assessments of the number of victims in the war in Ukraine reveal the high human cost of an armed conflict unprecedented in Europe in the last eight decades. With estimates of nearly two million military casualties, it is reminiscent of the worst conflicts experienced in the 20th century on the Old Continent. The most conservative figures — around half a million deaths on the Ukrainian side — are five times higher than those of the Balkan War (1992-1995), which totaled 100,000, of whom 13,500 were civilians. The Ukrainian Commissioner for Missing Persons in Special Circumstances has just...

Russia has quietly become Iran’s most consequential external partner. Public reporting shows Moscow feeding Tehran real time satellite imagery of U.S. and Israeli positions — a simple but powerful boost to Iranian targeting and battle damage assessment. Russia has also helped upgrade Iran’s Shahed drones with better navigation and communications systems. These aren’t glamorous contributions, but they matter: they force the United States to burn multimillion dollar interceptors on cheap, disposable threats. None of this changes the balance of power. But it absolutely changes the tempo of the war. China’s support looks different — quieter, but just as important. Beijing...

Operation Epic Fury marks a turning point in the art of war. The key to 20th-century battles was air power. In the past, space and cyber activities have traditionally played supporting roles as so-called force multipliers. But this is no longer the case. In this conflict they have become mainstream, carving out new fronts for the wars of the future. The use of space is no longer something that is just nice to have, because everything from comms to intel to navigation uses space and cyber assets. Along with the National Reconnaissance Office, which manages US spy satellites, the US...

More than 8,000 tons of weapons and military equipment have been transferred to Israel since the start of the offensive against Iran. The backbone of the effort is U.S. Air Force strategic airlift, with the C-17 Globemaster III serving as the dominant platform. Regularly identified through “RCH” callsigns in open-source flight tracking systems, these aircraft operate from bases in the continental United States—primarily Joint Base Charleston—toward Israel, both via direct routes and with stopovers in Europe. Within this framework, hubs such as Ramstein and Spangdahlem in Germany, as well as Rzeszów in Poland, function as transit and cargo reconfiguration nodes....

On April 4, Nato will be 77 years old. The chance that America will be counted among the celebrants when the birthday celebrations roll around is somewhere between nil and zero. President Trump had long predicted that if America needed help, Nato would not come to its aid, even though, as he sees it, the United States has spent billions of dollars over decades defending Europe from Russian aggression. And when America did need help in the war against Iran – a few mine sweepers, please, sirs – the answer “no” came back in several languages. Britain’s Prime Minister Keir...

Israel attacked Iran’s Khandab heavy water reactor in Arak, as well as the uranium enrichment facility at Ardakan, on Friday, the IDF confirmed. Earlier Iranian state media reports noted that the enrichment facility produced yellowcake, a concentrated uranium powder used in the early stages of nuclear fuel production. A government official told the Islamic Republic’s semi-official Fars News Agency, which is linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), that no casualties occured in the reported attack on the heavy water reactor, and that there is no danger to the local population. Fars reported that the facility was struck twice....

The GoFundMe for a Trussville man killed last week during Operation Epic Fury has reached over $1 million in donations. Maj. John A. "Alex" Klinner, 33, was one of six killed in an incident involving a KC-135 and another aircraft. Klinner's sister-in-law set up a GoFundMe to support Klinner's wife, Libby, and the couple's three children. Within hours, the fundraiser reached its $150,000 goal, and it was increased to $1.5 million after donations poured in, surpassing $1 million. Among donors was billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who gave $100,000. Two others killed in the incident were from the 99th...

Ari Kalker joins the show under heartbreaking circumstances to tell the story of Josh Boone, a lone soldier from Boise, Idaho, who became a decorated IDF sniper and a relentless “guardian of Israel,” logging an almost unbelievable 748 days of reserve duty before PTSD took his life. This episode pulls you past the headlines and into the hidden cost of a long war: how trauma shows up, why the “strongest guy in the room” is often the last to ask for help and what real intervention looks like when bureaucracy moves too slowly. You’ll also learn the crucial distinction between...

Vladimir Putin is raking in at least $760m (£570m) a day as the war in Iran drives soaring demand for Russian oil. Kremlin sales from oil and gas will double from about $12bn to nearly $24bn this month as Putin profits from an enormous price surge and Donald Trump’s sanctions waivers, according to the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) Institute. Even if the war ends in the next few weeks, Russia’s oil and gas revenues are expected to surge to $218.5bn this year – 63pc more than if there was no disruption to Middle East energy supplies. It means Putin...

An official from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said the minimum age for participation in war-related support roles has been lowered to 12, according to remarks aired on state media. Rahim Nadali, a cultural official with the Guards in Tehran, said an initiative called “For Iran” was recruiting participants to assist with activities such as patrols, checkpoints and logistics. “Given that the age of those coming forward has dropped and they are asking to take part, we lowered the minimum age to 12,” he said, adding that 12- and 13-year-olds could now take part if they wished. The comments were broadcast as...

Most Americans probably don’t look back at March 2012 — if they remember it at all — and think of terrifyingly high gas prices. In the month when “The Hunger Games” ruled the box office and President Barack Obama was on his way to a comfortable re-election, the price of Brent crude closed the month around $123 a barrel. That would be about $175 a barrel in today’s dollars. As of Tuesday, despite Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz and its attacks on its neighbors’ energy facilities, it’s hovering around $100, slightly higher than the average inflation-adjusted price...

Do politicians internalize the consequences of their war-related votes? A new paper published in the Journal of Political Economy finds that they do -- when their family is involved. In “No Kin in the Game: Moral Hazard and War in the U.S. Congress,” authors Eoin F. McGuirk, Nathaniel Hilger, and Nicholas Miller compare conscription-related voting records of members of Congress with and without draft-age sons. They find that legislators with sons eligible for the draft are 7-11 percentage points less likely to vote for conscription than their counterparts with daughters of the same age. The authors compiled a dataset of...

BREAKING: Immunity for two key figures in the Iranian leadership: Iran regime's FM and Parliament Speaker get temporary immunity from the US and Israel, Channel 14's @bardugojacob reports. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf received temporary immunity from Israel and the United States, valid at least for the entire five days of negotiations underway with Tehran.

But what it is, is entirely unclear. President Trump has announced a breakthrough in negotiations with Iran: President Trump said Iran has agreed to his biggest demand in order to stop the war: no nuclear weapons. “They’ve agreed,” he said. “They will never have a nuclear weapon. They’ve agreed to that.” Tehran has not stated that publicly — and denied even talking to the US. But Trump has made clear that the no-nukes demand is necessary for the US to stop its military campaign. *** “We’re actually talking to the right people and they want to make a deal so...