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53 House Democrats Vote ‘No’ on Declaring Iran a ‘State Sponsor of Terrorism’

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A significant number of House Democrats voted “no” on declaring the Islamic Republic of Iran a “state sponsor of terrorism.”

Sponsored by Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), the resolution passed the U.S. House on Thursday by a 372-53 vote. Two Democrats voted present. While squad members like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) were expected to vote “no,” a full 53 proved somewhat surprising.

Their names, per Fox News:

Donald S. Beyer Jr.
Suzanne Bonamici
André Carson
Greg Casar
Joaquin Castro
Yvette D. Clarke
Steve Cohen
Danny K. Davis
Maxine Dexter
Lloyd Doggett
Dwight Evans
Lizzie Fletcher
Valerie Foushee
Maxwell Alejandro Frost
Robert Garcia
Jesús “Chuy” García
Al Green
Raúl M. Grijalva
Val Hoyle
Jared Huffman
Sara Jacobs
Pramila Jayapal
Henry C. “Hank” Johnson, Jr.
Robin Kelly
Ro Khanna
Raja Krishnamoorthi
Summer Lee
Sarah McBride
Morgan McGarvey
James P. McGovern
LaMonica McIver
Christian D. Menefee
Robert Jacobsen “Rob” Menendez Jr.
Gwen Moore
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Ilhan Omar
Chellie Pingree
Mark Pocan
Ayanna Pressley
Delia Ramirez
Emily Randall
Luz Rivas
Linda T. Sánchez
Janice D. “Jan” Schakowsky
Lateefah Simon
Mark Takano
Rashida Tlaib
Lori Trahan
Lauren Underwood
Nydia M. Velázquez
Maxine Waters
Bonnie Watson Coleman
Nikema Williams

The resolution said nothing about President Trump’s strikes on Iran, while saying the regime “remains the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism and provides substantial financial and military support to groups including Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis,” adding that it “poses a direct and persistent threat to the United States and is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American citizens,” (Read more from “53 House Democrats Vote ‘No’ on Declaring Iran a ‘State Sponsor of Terrorism’” HERE)

China Slashes Fuel Exports As War In Iran Magnifies Key Vulnerability

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China is demanding domestic oil refiners stop exporting fuel and renegotiate or cancel existing contracts as the conflict in Iran threatens the communist nation’s crude supplies.

Officials from China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), responsible for planning the nation’s economy, ordered oil executives to stop exporting refined fuel, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. The stockpiling comes as U.S. and Israeli military forces continue strikes on Iran as part of Operation Epic Fury. China is the world’s top oil importer and one of Iran’s top trade partners, reportedly purchasing over 90% of the Islamic Republic’s crude oil between 2024 and 2025.

The communist country also imports 30% of its liquefied natural gas and 40% of its oil through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran effectively closed at the start of the conflict. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned that any ships belonging to Western allies “will certainly be hit,” and although the Strait remains open for China, oil tankers are beginning to avoid the conflict zone. Bloomberg reported Wednesday that three “very large crude carriers” turned away from the Persian Gulf, attempting to avoid the increasing instability in the region.

China is one of Asia’s three biggest oil exporters, shipping over 43 billion barrels of oil in 2023. Beijing exports billions of dollars worth of refined oil to countries in southeast Asia including Singapore and the Philippines, meaning a freeze on exports will likely create price instability in the region. (Read more from “China Slashes Fuel Exports As War In Iran Magnifies Key Vulnerability” HERE)

‘Make The Right Choices’: Fallen Soldier’s Advice Should Guide Trump’s War In Iran

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. . .[M]essaging on the war has been disjointed, conflicting, and confusing, with administration officials citing different priorities and objectives. Is the endgame regime change? Is it knocking out Iran’s nuclear capabilities, the threat that we “totally obliterated” last summer?

Are we doing this to sate the unquenchable blood lust of the neocon warmongers? To further fatten the wallets of the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about so long ago?


Whatever the plan is, it must keep in mind the service members in and moving toward harm’s way. As of late Wednesday, there are six flag-draped caskets heading back from a war with many aims.

How many more families will have to hear the death knell of the doorbell like the Coadys? At the very least, they and their fellow Americans should know what it is we’re fighting for.

Sgt. Declan Coady, the Eagle Scout and cybersecurity major at Des Moines’ Drake University, the young man his mom described as “so kind and so amazing,” has given the last full measure of devotion and his future to the exigencies of war.

As a pre-teen in 2017, Coady offered some advice on his Facebook page that all of us, particularly the war planners, should take to heart: “The world is always changing my friends be prepared for your future and make the right choices.” (Read more from “‘Make The Right Choices’: Fallen Soldier’s Advice Should Guide Trump’s War In Iran” HERE)

Iran Warns U.S. Will ‘Bitterly Regret’ Sinking Warship, Calls for Trump’s Blood

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You’ll be sorry. That was the warning from Iran to the U.S. on Thursday as it responded to the torpedoing of an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean, with a Muslim leader adding a call for “Trump’s blood.”

As Breitbart News reported, the U.S. Navy sank the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena Tuesday night in the Indian Ocean which Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has since decried as “an atrocity at sea.”

A U.S. nuclear-powered submarine delivered the fatal blow in international waters off Sri Lanka as part of Operation Epic Fury.

“Frigate Dena, a guest of India’s Navy carrying almost 130 sailors, was struck in international waters without warning,” Abbas Araghchi wrote on social media.

“Mark my words: The U.S. will come to bitterly regret (the) precedent it has set.”

(Read more from “Iran Warns U.S. Will ‘Bitterly Regret’ Sinking Warship, Calls for Trump’s Blood” HERE)

Photo credit: Flickr

Senate Debate On Iran War Turns Into Senile Men Shouting At Sky

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The Senate sort of debated a war powers resolution on Wednesday that might have eventually stopped the war in Iran, although the resulting vote was only on a motion to bring the resolution to the floor. That vote failed, leaving the Trump administration with what amounts to implied congressional permission to continue. As Rand Paul noted, speaking as the only Republican who supported the measure, “This essentially is the vote whether to go to war or not.”

But the Senate wasn’t debating the war, or debating Trump: It was debating against its own history, poorly and without noticing, in a mostly incoherent series of self-negating rhetorical maneuvers. Taken as a whole, the Senate doesn’t seem to have known what it was debating at all.

You can watch the debate-shaped thing here, in an eight-hour video that doesn’t contain eight hours of war powers discussion. During speeches about the war, senators shouted and spoke of the need for urgency, invoking all of the usual language about the judgment of history. Between speeches, they took long pauses, and senators popped in with speeches on hockey, Netflix, healthcare, tax cuts, and housing shortages in Pennsylvania.

Somewhere around the middle, Colorado Democrat John Hickenlooper got in a campaign speech that mentioned the war while hitting all the major talking points of the day: job growth, rent, child care. Here’s a senator’s urgent contribution to a debate about a war powers resolution, with bombs currently falling: “According to Moody’s, the top 10% of U.S. households now account for nearly half of all spending. That means on paper the economy may look relatively good, but only for half of Americans. Half of Americans at the top. And while working families struggle to get by, the president has given an extra boost to the powerful and well-connected.” Hickenlooper’s office proudly posted a transcript, if you want to see it for yourself. You can feel how deeply he cares about stopping the war.

If you don’t have a habit of torturing yourself by watching legislative debate, you might have found yourself surprised by the coupling of a frequent recourse to rhetoric about urgency with an unmistakable lack of actual urgency. This is normal. It would take the United States Senate nine hours to evacuate a burning tour bus. They give viewers the sense of being the audience for bingo night at a convalescent home. (Read more from “Senate Debate On Iran War Turns Into Senile Men Shouting At Sky” HERE)

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Ex-Marine Dragged Out of Hearing After Anti-Iran War Protest

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A man was violently dragged out of a Capitol Hill hearing on Wednesday, March 4, by police and a Republican Senator after interrupting the proceedings to protest the war in Iran.

Senator Tim Sheehy of Montana said he assisted officers in physically ejecting “an unhinged protester” from the Armed Services hearing.

The protester, Brian McGinnis, describes himself as a Marine veteran and is running as a Green Party candidate in North Carolina’s Senate race.

In another video posted online, McGinnis can be heard yelling: “America does not want to send its sons and daughters to war for Israel.”

This footage shows members of the Capitol Police attempting to remove McGinnis from the hearing room. McGinnis appeared to struggle with officers near the doorway when Sheehy stepped in.

(Read more from “Ex-Marine Dragged Out of Hearing After Anti-Iran War Protest” HERE)

How Israel ‘Chain-Ganged’ The Trump Administration Into War Against Iran

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After several days of shifting and sometimes contradictory justifications from the Trump administration for why it launched a war against Iran over the weekend, Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday finally gave the real reason: Israel forced us into it.

“It was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack by anyone, the U.S. or Israel or anyone, they were going to respond against the United States,” Rubio said. But later he added this: “We knew there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks we would suffer higher casualties and perhaps even higher numbers of those killed. And then we would all be answering questions about why we knew that and didn’t act.”

Later in the day, Speaker Mike Johnson said pretty much the same thing, that, “This was a defensive measure … If Israel fired upon Iran and took action against Iran to take out the missiles, then [Iran] would have immediately retaliated against U.S. personnel and assets.”

These remarks from Rubio and Johnson would seem to confirm recent reporting from the New York Times, which published a lengthy account Monday chronicling how President Trump decided to go to war. The article opens with this line: “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel walked into the Oval Office on the morning of Feb. 11, determined to keep the American president on the path to war.” It goes on to explain that amid weeks of U.S.-Israeli planning for war, Trump administration officials had begun negotiating with Tehran over the future of its nuclear program, “and the Israeli leader wanted to make sure that the new diplomatic effort did not undermine the plans.”

Netanyahu, who has been candid about his decades-long desire to draw the United States into a war against Iran, was successful in this effort. The diplomatic talks with Iran faltered and Trump gave the go-ahead to launch strikes that immediately took out Tehran’s entire leadership, effectively bringing about a decapitation of the regime.

Why did it happen? Not necessarily because of our decisions, but because of Israel’s. According to the Times’ reporting, just hours before President Trump’s State of the Union address last Tuesday, Rubio and John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, briefed congressional leaders from the so-called Gang of Eight about ongoing negotiations with Iran and the possibility of strikes if those talks failed. “In the briefing, Mr. Rubio argued that, no matter if Israel or the United States struck first, Iran would respond with a powerful barrage of weapons against U.S. bases and embassies. It was logical then, Mr. Rubio said, that the United States should act in concert with Israel, since America would be dragged in anyway. And Israel, Mr. Rubio said, was determined to act.” (Read more from “How Israel ‘Chain-Ganged’ The Trump Administration Into War Against Iran” HERE)

Photo credit: Flickr

Ayatollah Khamenei’s Son Is Frontrunner to Succeed Dad as Iran’s New Supreme Leader: Report

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The son of Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is the frontrunner to replace him as supreme leader, according to reports.

Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, is currently favored to take control of Iran by the country’s Assembly of Experts, a powerful body of clerics that makes the decision, the New York Times reported while citing sources close to the deliberations.

Other outlets – including Israeli media and Iranian opposition channels – were reporting early Tuesday that Mojtaba had already been selected, though Iranian state media has not confirmed anything.

The report was widely being picked up by Israeli media but had not been confirmed by Iranian state mouthpieces.

Mojtaba was at first believed to have been among the 40 top Iranian aides killed during the Saturday strike that took out Iran’s highest-ranking cleric. (Read more from “Ayatollah Khamenei’s Son Is Frontrunner to Succeed Dad as Iran’s New Supreme Leader: Report” HERE)

China Is Refusing to Help Iran Fight, but Is Offering This Instead

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As we enter the fifth day of Operation Epic Fury, few people — outside of Democrats and their Leftist allies — are really going to bat for the Iranian regime.

This includes China, who is reportedly not going to offer Iran, a major supplier of oil to the communist nation, any material support. China does, however, offer Iran “moral backing.”

We suppose that’s better than offering them cheap, ineffective military equipment. After all, failed Chinese-made radar helped the U.S. capture Nicolas Maduro back in January.

Iran is hoping so.

That’s more accurate.

(Read more from “China Is Refusing to Help Iran Fight, but Is Offering This Instead” HERE)

Michigan Imam Mourns ‘Beloved’ Khamenei, Says He Was Martyred by ‘Wretched Hands,’ Slams U.S. Strike as ‘War Against Justice’

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A Metro Detroit imam publicly praised Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as a “martyr” in remarks delivered during a Ramadan program at his mosque amid joint U.S.-Israel operations in Iran and the death of the brutal dictator.

On Saturday in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, Mohammad Ali Elahi, spiritual leader of the Islamic House of Wisdom, delivered a eulogy for Khamenei during a livestreamed event at the mosque, as reported by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

lahi, an Iranian-born cleric who emigrated to the United States in 1991 and established the Islamic House of Wisdom in Metro Detroit, described the death of Khamenei as a profound loss and condemned U.S. military actions that preceded it.

Lamenting what he called the “depths of the tragedy,” Elahi characterized the “evil” and “ugly” operations in Iran as “a war against justice, against humanity, against morality, against legality, [and] against truth.”

(Read more from “Michigan Imam Mourns ‘Beloved’ Khamenei, Says He Was Martyred by ‘Wretched Hands,’ Slams U.S. Strike as ‘War Against Justice’” HERE)