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If Iran Blocks Strait of Hormuz, What Will Happen to U.S. Energy Costs?

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Iran is reportedly weighing blocking a key commercial choke point known as the Strait of Hormuz, a move that could drive up energy costs in the U.S. and across the globe, according to energy sector experts who spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Israel began to bombard Iran to eliminate the Islamic Republic’s ability to build a nuclear weapon on June 13, and the U.S. carried out “Operation Midnight Hammer” on Saturday night, bombing three of Iran’s nuclear facilities. While Iran’s parliament has reportedly voted to close the Strait of Hormuz in a retaliatory move to choke the world’s oil supply in response to the American strikes, the U.S. is well-positioned to combat the inevitable energy cost spike that would follow if Iran succeeds, sector experts told the DCNF.

“The escalating conflict between Iran and Israel is already putting upward pressure on oil and natural gas prices—and that pressure will intensify if the Strait of Hormuz is blocked,” Trisha Curtis, an economist at the American Energy Institute, told the DCNF. “This kind of disruption would send global prices higher and tighten supply chains. Fortunately, the U.S. is well-positioned to respond — our domestic production strength and growing export infrastructure make American oil and natural gas increasingly indispensable to global markets.”

Iran does not have the legal authority to halt traffic through the strait, meaning it would need to usurp control through force or the threat of force, according to legal scholars and multiple reports. The Iranian parliament’s reported move to block the Strait on Sunday awaits final approval by Iran’s Supreme Council, according to Iran’s Press TV.

The Strait is only 35 to 60 miles wide and connects the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean, flowing past Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. The thoroughfare is vital for global trade, as tankers carried one fifth of the world’s oil supply through the Strait of Hormuz in 2024 and the first quarter of 2025, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. (Read more from “If Iran Blocks Strait of Hormuz, What Will Happen to U.S. Energy Costs?” HERE)

Kremlin Warns That Other Nations Ready to Give Iran Nukes: ‘Dangerous Escalation Has Begun’

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Moscow warned Sunday that several nations are prepared to supply Tehran with nuclear weapons, as Russia and China condemned America’s attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Dmitry Medvedev, who serves as deputy head of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Security Council, claimed Saturday’s US airstrike — the first to use 15-ton GBU-57 “bunker-buster” bombs in combat — only caused minimal damage to Tehran’s nuclear sites, including the fortified Fordow enrichment plant.

Medvedev, who did not specify which countries are ready to arm Tehran, reiterated that the attacks would not stop Russia’s ally in the Middle East from acquiring nuclear weapons.

The statement comes as Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said he will be traveling to Moscow to meet with Putin to discuss countermeasures.

“We enjoy a strategic partnership, and we always consult with each other and coordinate our positions,” Araghchi told Russian media.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry described the American airstrike in Iran as “a gross violation of international law, the UN Charter, and UN Security Council resolutions. (Read more from “Kremlin Warns That Other Nations Ready to Give Iran Nukes: ‘Dangerous Escalation Has Begun’” HERE)

Homeland Security Warns of Possible Terrorist Attacks in U.S. Following Strike on Iran

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The Department of Homeland Security issued a terrorism alert on Sunday — warning of possible Iranian attacks against the US following the American airstrikes against Tehran’s nuclear program.

DHS warned officials to be on the lookout for Iranian-led attacks over the next three months by terror cells inspired to retaliate following Saturday night’s strike.

“The likelihood of violent extremists in the Homeland independently mobilizing to violence in response to the conflict would likely increase if Iranian leadership issued a religious ruling calling for retaliatory violence against targets in the Homeland,” DHS said in a statement. (Read more from “Homeland Security Warns of Possible Terrorist Attacks in U.S. Following Strike on Iran” HERE)

Neocons Use Accusations of ‘Appeasement’ to Morally Blackmail People Into Supporting Forever Wars

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Bad World War II analogies appear to have become a dime a dozen in today’s political discourse. In just the past few months, I’ve excoriated Russell Moore for his ridiculous reference to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in response to President Donald Trump’s push toward a peaceful resolution of the war in Ukraine and pilloried Max Boot’s baffling comparison of Ukraine’s recent attack on Russia’s bomber fleet to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Now, Mark Levin, in his zealous crusade to push the United States into directly joining Israel’s strikes against Iran, has invoked the most tired and most misconstrued talking point related to the Second World War: appeasement.

Levin’s screed (it’s far too light on substance to be called an op-ed), titled “Isolationism is the same as appeasement — and it’s keeping Trump, Netanyahu from transforming the Middle East,” does little more than launch ad hominem attacks and provide a masterclass in projection. It’s amazing to read sentences like these: “They’re too self-righteous in their ignorance to realize how absurd they sound. … In fact, they’re so blind and self-important that they don’t see the new foreign policy taking place in real time, right in front of their eyes!” and not even detect even a hint of self-awareness from a man who is advocating for the United States to become stuck in yet another Middle East quagmire.

Remember how all those other times our attempts to “transform” the Muslim world worked out so well?

Afraid that his readers won’t be convinced by merely insulting the intelligence of so-called “isolationists,” Levin tries to morally blackmail any potential skeptics by blowing the appeasement dog whistle as loudly as he can. “There’s nothing new or good about isolationism, which, in a word, is appeasement. It’s old and promotes war, such as World War II,” he writes bluntly.

It seems like whenever very reasonable people object to yet another forever war, neocons crawl out of the woodwork to screech “appeasement!” to try to cow their foreign policy opponents into embarrassed silence. If you don’t agree with the neocons’ next regime-change project, you’re no better than British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who meekly gave in to Adolf Hitler in 1938 and emboldened Nazi aggression — thereby unleashing all of the devastation that ravaged Europe. If you don’t believe in toppling tinpot dictator No. 12, installing an American puppet state, and sacrificing untold amounts of American blood and treasure, you, specifically, are setting the stage for another World War II, another Holocaust. At least, that’s the implication. (Read more from “Neocons Use Accusations of ‘Appeasement’ to Morally Blackmail People Into Supporting Forever Wars” HERE)

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

China Raises Eyebrows With ‘Mystery’ Flights Reportedly Sent to Iran

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Several Boeing 747s have been spotted on radar leaving China for Iran over the last week, according to reports, sparking concerns that the CCP is helping the Middle Eastern nation transport cargo or people out of the country as Israel continues to strike the country’s nuclear facilities.

Starting on June 14th, FlightRadar24 shows that at least five flights traveled from China to Iran, and The Telegraph reported that the “mystery transport planes” had flown westward along northern China before crossing into Kazakhstan, south through Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and then fell off radar as they approached Iran.

Additionally, the report indicated that the flights had a final destination of Luxembourg but don’t appear to have ever crossed into European airspace.

Some experts have speculated that these types of planes are typically used for transport and could be evidence of China aiding its longtime ally Iran during the conflict with Israel, although Fox News Digital has not independently confirmed the nature of the flights.

“I think it’s important to remember what the relationship is, forty-three percent of China’s oil and gas comes from the Middle East, a large volume of that from Iran,” Robert Greenway, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense, told “The Ingraham Angle” on Wednesday night. (Read more from “China Raises Eyebrows With ‘Mystery’ Flights Reportedly Sent to Iran” HERE)

Iran Turns Against Anti-Israel U.N. After It Condemned Illegal Nuclear Enrichment

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Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei on Thursday blasted the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its director, Rafael Grossi, for condemning Iran’s nuclear program.

Baghaei accused the IAEA of helping Israel launch an “unjust war of aggression” against Iran.

The Iranian regime is furious at the IAEA for declaring Iran to be in breach of its nuclear non-proliferation obligations last Thursday. The U.N. nuclear watchdog has been frustrated with Iranian evasiveness and obstruction of its inspections for years, but Thursday was the first time since 2005 that it formally condemned Iran for non-compliance.

The governing board of the IAEA found Iran guilty of “many failures to uphold its obligations since 2019 to provide the agency with full and timely cooperation regarding undeclared nuclear material and activities at multiple undeclared locations.” Iran’s failure to explain traces of uranium found at three undeclared nuclear sites was a particular annoyance.

The censure of Iran was seen as a momentous event by security analysts, and sure enough, Israel swiftly moved in to dismantle Iran’s air defenses, humiliate its military, and attack its nuclear program. The first wave of Israeli strikes was launched on Friday, the day after the IAEA condemned Iran.

(Read more from “Iran Turns Against Anti-Israel U.N. After It Condemned Illegal Nuclear Enrichment” HERE)

Discredited Neocon Talking Points From the Iraq War Are Back, Lazily Re-Purposed for Iran

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Remember all the infamous one-liners from the Global War on Terror? In the years after 9/11, when the neocon establishment in Washington was pushing ahead with its disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they were everywhere.

It’s a slam dunk case! We have to fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here. We’ll be greeted as liberators. Islam is a religion of peace. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. God has planted in every heart the desire to live in freedom.

Those last two are direct quotes from President George W. Bush, the man most responsible — whether through extreme naiveté or extreme duplicity — for propagating these ridiculous slogans and using them to justify decades-long wars that ended in ignominy for the United States. You’d think that after Iraq and Afghanistan this kind of rhetoric would be totally discredited. But you’d be wrong.

Over the past few days, almost since the moment Israel began bombing Iran, we’ve seen the reappearance of almost all the old GWOT rhetoric. Then as now, the purpose is to justify a U.S. military adventure abroad and gaslight the American people into supporting regime change in Iran.

For those of us who were in high school and college during and immediately after 9/11, who saw the propaganda play out in real time, it’s an amazing thing to witness what’s happening now. (Read more from “Discredited Neocon Talking Points From the Iraq War Are Back, Lazily Re-Purposed for Iran” HERE)

Donald Trump: We Don’t Want a Long-Term War With Iran

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President Donald Trump made clear Wednesday the administration is “not looking for a long-term war” with Iran.

Trump addressed concerns among members of the Make America Great Again base that the United States would be pulled into a long-term war, while fielding a question from Brian Glenn of Real America’s Voice.

“We’re not looking for a long-term war. We’re looking– I only want one thing–Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. That’s it,” Trump said. “I’m not looking long-term, short-term, and I’ve been saying that for 20 years. I’ve been saying it as a civilian, who got a lot of publicity, people would cover it.”

“Very simply, Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. That’s it,” he continued. “It’s not a question of anything else, and if you did, you wouldn’t have much of a country because they would use it on us and use it on other people and they’d be a terror all over the world.”

Trump notably tweeted in 2011, before he even entered the political world, that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, and has been firm in his stance throughout his political career and the presidential campaign in 2024.

(Read more from “Donald Trump: We Don’t Want a Long-Term War With Iran” HERE)

‘Highly Vulnerable’ Iranian Supreme Leader May Try to Activate ‘Sleeper Cells’ in the West as Israeli Onslaught Mounts: Expert

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Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei may be attempting to activate terrorist “sleeper cells” across the West as he repeatedly makes inflammatory statements rejecting President Trump’s calls for surrender, Middle East experts say.

As Iran is increasingly squeezed by Israel — losing far more than the Jewish state has in the nearly week-old war — Henry Jackson Society research fellow Barak Seener warned Wednesday that Khamenei may be seeking to awaken terrorist Iranian sympathizers across the world as he runs out of traditional resources.

“The very fact now that the Iranian regime is volatile, it’s targeted, and it’s highly vulnerable — that’s what actually makes it increasingly dangerous to the West, in that it has nothing to lose it has this about this sense of nihilism, and it affects the rational calculus,” Seener said during a call with reporters hosted the America-Middle East Press Association.

Khamenei on Wednesday rejected Trump’s demands that Tehran give up its nuclear program, calling the president’s demands “absurd rhetoric” while refusing to back down.

“The US entering in this matter is 100% to its own detriment,” he said. (Read more from “‘Highly Vulnerable’ Iranian Supreme Leader May Try to Activate ‘Sleeper Cells’ in the West as Israeli Onslaught Mounts: Expert” HERE)

US Is Assisting Israel Against Iranian Missile Attacks, Official Confirms

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The U.S. is offering assistance to Israel against hundreds of missiles launched in a retaliatory attack from Iran, according to an email from a U.S. official to Blaze News.

Iran issued the attack after Israel launched Operation Rising Lion that successfully targeted Iran’s nuclear development capabilities as well as its military leadership. The U.S. admitted prior knowledge of the Israeli plan but denied any direct involvement.

In a statement to Fox News, a senior U.S. official confirmed that the U.S. is aiding Israel against the missile attacks.

“There are hundreds of thousands of American citizens and other American assets in Israel, and the U.S. is working to protect them,” the official said.

An email from a U.S. official to Blaze News confirmed the report.

That email said the U.S. is assisting Israel with shooting down the Iranian missiles but offered no other details. (Read more from “US Is Assisting Israel Against Iranian Missile Attacks, Official Confirms” HERE)