Latest Analysis and Commentary
by Guy Millière • April 13, 2025 at 5:00 am
[A]ll Hamas needs to do to prevent this destruction is return all the hostages it should not have kidnapped in the first place. Amnesty International has served up a remarkable inversion of facts. "What's shocking is that people in the Cease-Fire Now crowd don't appear to have much interest in making any demands of Hamas equivalent to those they make of Israel. They want Israel to stop firing. But do you often hear them insisting that Hamas return the favor? They want Israel to provide Gaza with humanitarian relief in the form of electricity, fuel and other goods. But I haven't seen those protesters in the street demanding that Hamas provide Israel with humanitarian relief in the form of immediately freeing all hostages.... For Israelis, what 'Cease-Fire Now' means is 'Surrender Now.' No wonder they decline to heed the call.... Whatever else one thinks of Israel, no country can be expected to sign its own death warrant by indulging those who, if given the chance, would annihilate it." — Bret Stephens, New York Times, November 21, 2023. Clearly a massive dark-money problem obscenely exists within far too many universities and cities both in the US and Europe. It is also important to highlight the unabashedly toxic role of the United Nations.... [T]he United Nations quickly became the world's leading organization for, among other unsavory practices, propagating hatred of Israel and a general hatred of Jews. The Palestinian Authority to this day pays its citizens to murder Jews -- the more Jews, the larger the payments. In Europe, organizations that fight anti-Semitism.... Often left-wing, they primarily denounce far-right anti-Semitism, but never far-left anti-Semitism, and never ever Islamic anti-Semitism -- currently the only form of anti-Semitism in Europe that attacks and kills Jews. Most Jewish organizations in Europe support Israel, but more often than not advocate for dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians and still support the mirage of a "two-state solution." The vast majority of Israelis seem finally to have understood that the goal of Palestinian organizations is not to create a state living in peace alongside Israel, but to destroy Israel.
The vast majority of Israelis seem finally to have understood that the goal of Palestinian organizations is not to create a state living in peace alongside Israel, but to destroy Israel. The West, wrote the columnist Melanie Phillips, needs "to take off its blinders, join up the dots and fight like Israel to survive." Pictured: Hamas terrorists on their way into Israel from Gaza Strip, on their mission to murder Jews, on the morning of October 7, 2023. (Photo by Said Khatib/AFP via Getty Images)
In the mainstream European and American media, the unspeakable October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre in Israel seems largely forgotten. The media rarely describe Hamas as a terrorist organization with genocidal aims. When the word "genocide" is used, even by self-described "human rights organizations," it is to accuse the victim of the attacks, Israel. Israel forcibly removed every Jew from Gaza in 2005 – long before the October 7, 2023 massacre. Nevertheless, one of Amnesty International's current campaigns, "End Israel's Genocide against Palestinians in Gaza," continues to refer to the "occupied Gaza Strip." Gaza has not been occupied for twenty years; it is not occupied now. Gaza is the theater from where Palestinians are still firing rockets and missiles at civilian targets in Israel.
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by Amir Taheri • April 13, 2025 at 4:00 am
Even the European Union, which initially threatened hell and high fire, is beginning to realize that if you are in a hole, you stop digging. Even China, which seems to have embarked on a game of chicken against the US, is almost certain to realize that it cannot afford a full-scale trade duel with the US. Trump is accused of protectionism. But here, too, a measure of protection is conducive to economic development. Without protectionism, Victorian England would not have been able to build its industrial revolution and create a global empire. It is obvious that achieving parity in most if not all those domains isn't a realistic aspiration, and that in any trading relationship one partner is at a disadvantage. Now in his second term, Trump intends to go further by addressing other problems inherent in the global system, including the vulnerability of supply chains and the danger inherent in strategic dependency on foreign sources of vital goods and services.
Despite the great deal of sound and fury that it has generated, it is perhaps too early to assess the lasting impact of President Donald Trump's latest fireworks on tariffs. Trump also intends to go further by addressing other problems inherent in the global system, including the vulnerability of supply chains and the danger inherent in strategic dependency on foreign sources of vital goods and services. Pictured: Trump displays a chart listing the tariffs he is introducing on imports, on April 2, 2025 at the White House in Washington, DC. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
Despite the great deal of sound and fury that it has generated, it is perhaps too early to assess the lasting impact of President Donald Trump's latest fireworks on tariffs. Some things, however, are certain. Contrary to assertions by talking heads on the small screen, we are not heading for a global trade war. True, the US is the world's biggest economy and ranks second as a trading power. But its share of world trade hovers around 12 percent, or under 10 percent of its GDP. The remaining 88 percent of world trade by 192 nations won't be immediately affected. Moreover, almost half of US foreign trade is with its two neighbors, Canada and Mexico which had a tussle over tariffs with Trump in his first term but managed to reach a deal and are poised to do the same this time.
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by Majid Rafizadeh • April 12, 2025 at 5:00 am
Tehran has played this game before: Agree to talks. Make vague promises. Extract sanctions relief. Then quietly continue nuclear development under the radar. This formula has worked for more than two decades. Right now, the only reason Iran is talking is to stall, to promise just enough to prevent America from striking it -- "We are almost there!" -- to keep its regime and avoid seeing its uranium centrifuges and enrichment sites blasted to rubble. The regime does not want war -- but it also cannot accept total nuclear disarmament. The Islamic Republic has smoothly outmaneuvered every administration. It has accepted deals to avoid confrontation, then quietly violated them. With each round of negotiations, Iran gained what it needed -- time, money, legitimacy -- and gave away nothing it could not reverse. Worse, Iranian officials have themselves confirmed what skeptics have long argued: that the regime's nuclear program was always military in nature. Former parliamentary speaker Ali Motahhari openly admitted in an interview that the Islamic Republic's nuclear activities were initially designed to build weapons, not generate electricity. That was not a slip of the tongue. It was a rare moment of honesty from a system built on lies. [W]orse yet, [the regime] could announce one day that it already possesses several nuclear bombs -- and that there is nothing anyone can do about it. Will the world then be forced to live with a nuclear-armed theocracy that sponsors terrorism, oppresses its people, and seeks to export its ideology across the region? That does not sound like a cheery future to accept. The Islamic Republic has demonstrated that it cannot be trusted to negotiate in good faith. It has lied, manipulated and deceived at every turn. Hoping for a different outcome, unfortunately, is self-deceptive make-believe. Negotiations only serve to give Iran what it wants: time and space to complete its nuclear project. Axios reported on April 10 that "sources said the Iranians think reaching a complex and highly technical nuclear deal in two months is unrealistic and they want to get more time on the clock to avoid an escalation." After watching what happened to Libya after it gave up its nuclear weapons program, and to Ukraine when it gave up its warheads. Iran's regime could hardly have any intention of abandoning their quest for the bomb. Diplomacy will not stop them. Appeasement will not deter them. The only solution, sadly, seems to be force. If the US and Israel fail to act now, we will soon be facing a world where the Islamic Republic of Iran has crossed the nuclear threshold and commands its bombs. Then what?
Negotiations for Iran's mullahs are simply a sign of strategic necessity. The regime needs breathing room -- and, most importantly, it needs to preserve what it sees as its ultimate insurance policy: a nuclear arsenal. Pictured: Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian looks on as a 'Qasem Soleimani' missile is displayed during a military parade in Tehran, on September 21, 2024. (Photo by Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images)
The Trump administration is once again engaging with the Iranian regime, this time in Oman, to encourage it to end its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs the way Libya's late leader Muammar Ghaddafi did. As US President Donald J. Trump transparently put it: "I would love to make a deal with them without bombing them." In recent weeks, the Trump administration has called for direct talks with Iran, in the apparent belief that a fresh deal -- tougher, broader and more binding than the Obama administration's 2105 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) -- could prevent Iran from an imminent nuclear weapons breakout. Unfortunately, the Islamic Republic of Iran has never been thrillingly honest about its nuclear ambitions, although, in fairness, an Iranian "senior aid" has already let it be known that the regime might "expel UN inspectors if the threat persists" and transfer "stocks of enriched uranium to secret locations."
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by Nils A. Haug • April 11, 2025 at 5:00 am
Global Terrorism Index 2025, published by the Institute for Economics & Peace, reveals that the primary instigator of global terrorism during 2024 was the Islamic State (ISIS) and associated groups -- such as al Qaeda, Jamaat Nusrat Al-Islam wal Muslimeen, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, and al- Shabaab -- together responsible for more than 7,500 deaths. Although the West is experiencing escalating terrorism in countries such as Sweden, Australia, Finland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, the Sahel region evidently remains the "global epicentre of terrorism, accounting for over half of all terrorism-related deaths in 2024." Here, conflict deaths exceeded 25,000 for the first time, of which nearly 4,000 were directly connected to terrorism. A perturbing factor is that in Europe, "one in five persons arrested for terrorism is legally classified as a child." The consequence is, of course, that with the West's retreat, ISIS has free rein to action their visions of global influence. They are present in 22 countries at present.... Russia's Wagner mercenary militia, although rebranded as an "Expeditionary Corps," continues its predatory activities in the area, offering "governments in Africa a 'regime survival package' in exchange for access to strategically important natural resources." Covertly obtained Russian documents reveal how the group strives to "change mining laws in West Africa, with the ambition of dislodging Western companies from an area of strategic importance." The upshot is accelerating anti-Western sentiment, resulting in the local states seeking to expel hitherto entrenched foreign interests. "This is the Russian state coming out of the shadows in its Africa policy." Russia's patent objective is therefore to "seize control of critical resources," and "aggressively pursue the expansion of its partnerships in Africa, with the explicit intent to supplant Western partnerships." — Jack Watling, Royal United Services Institute, February 20, 2024. Currently, the significant strategic, political, and economic benefits in the region are reaped by Russia, China and Turkey. The West is nowhere to be seen.
Pictured: Soldiers inspect a damaged armored personnel carrier captured from Boko Haram jihadists on display in Goniri, Yobe State, in Nigeria's northeast on July 3, 2019. (Photo by Audu Marte/AFP via Getty Images)
The center of world terrorist activity and violent death is no longer the Middle East. The "Sahel region of Africa is now the 'epicentre of global terrorism,'" responsible for "over half of all terrorism-related deaths" worldwide, according to the respected Global Terrorism Index. The sub-Saharan Sahel is largely unknown to much of the world. It can be described as the large, mostly flat, strip, nearly 600 miles wide, located between the savannahs of Sudan to the south and the Sahara desert to the north. During the last ten years or so, according to the Royal United Services Institute, the world's oldest defense and security think tank, headquartered in London, the Sahel has undergone a "significant surge in jihadist violence. Armed actors take advantage of porous borders, fragile states, and local grievances to extend their operational reach,"
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by Anna Mahjar Barducci • April 10, 2025 at 5:00 am
A larger problem, apart from tariffs, is that China does not have a private sector. The Chinese Communist Party is the founding and only ruling party of the People's Republic of China. Hence, all Chinese companies directly support the CCP's priorities and ambitions to replace the United States as the world's leading superpower. This plan obviously has little that might be good for the US, its national security, or its interests abroad. China has openly been pursuing a policy of threatening to take over pro-Western neighbors such as Taiwan, the Philippines, South Korea, the Solomon Islands, India and Japan. In addition, Chinese warships have reportedly been invading Australian airspace and sailing alarmingly close to Australia. The CCP has also recently been trying to make it a "new normal" to have around Taiwan drills that at any time could turn into combat. It has become increasingly clear that China's plan to take over Taiwan and other neighbors is a question not of "if" but "when." It is therefore crucial to understand that there is no private sector in China. In the 14th Five Year Plan, the CCP identified the following industries as critical to China's economic development: Artificial intelligence, semiconductors, robotic technology and biotechnology, to name a few. Investing in China's "private sector" underwrites China's expansionist ambitions in Asia and enables it to continue claiming ownership of the South and East China Seas, as well as everything near it, to control world trade.
Investing in China's "private sector" -- effectively the same as its military -- destroys the West's interests, weakens its allies and fast-tracks the CCP in reaching its goals of seizing Taiwan and other neighbors, and possibly triggering a war with the United States. Investing in China's "private sector" underwrites China's expansionist ambitions in Asia and enables it to continue claiming ownership of the South and East China Seas, as well as everything near it, to control world trade. (Image source: iStock/Getty Images)
US President Donald J. Trump's current trade stand-off with the People's Republic of China (PRC) has already induced some Chinese companies, such as Shein, BYD, TikTok and Temu's parent company PDD Holdings to move away from China and have induced some Western companies – including Apple, Dell, Hasbro, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, Stanley Black and Decker, Foxconn, Nintendo, BYD Auto, TSMC, Intel, Mazda, Google and Samsung also to move away or diversify. A larger problem, apart from tariffs, is that China does not have a private sector. According to the United States–China Economic and Security Review Commission: "China's government has developed numerous avenues through which to monitor corporate affairs and direct nonstate firms and resources toward advancing the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) priorities."
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by Lawrence Kadish • April 10, 2025 at 4:00 am
Secretary of Energy Chris Wright could easily start assembling a Trump Manhattan Project for Nuclear Fusion Energy this week. If he did, he would no doubt find himself catapulted from stardom to superstardom, while at the same time serving his country, its global leadership and its president. Pictured: Wright stands behind President Donald Trump as he holds an executive order after signing a series of orders on American energy production, in the White House on April 8, 2025. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
While all eyes are focused on tariffs, deportees, taxes, and the stock market of course, President Donald J. Trump's cabinet choice currently positioned to emerge as the leading member of Trump's cabinet and the MVP of the Trump Administration's Golden Age of Energy is Secretary of Energy Chris Wright. Wright is already doing an exemplary job leading the revival of America's great asset, oil, to "Make America Great Again." By enabling lower prices, massive energy exports, and making the US not just energy-secure but energy-dominant, both he and Trump can be assured of success. However, the greatest leap to global preeminence for the United States, and as a stunning legacy for Trump and Wright, will happen if and when they succeed in catapulting America ahead of China in the newest global race for the only energy that is clean, inexpensive, and limitless: nuclear fusion energy.
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by Drieu Godefridi • April 9, 2025 at 5:00 am
The signal is clear: in the United States, no one any longer jokes with those who hinder the economy and trample on the rights of others under the guise of idealism. Greenpeace would apparently like organizations such as itself to directly or indirectly cause hundreds of millions of dollars worth of damage, while preventing any court from intervening. The applicability of the EU anti-SLAPP directive to the judgment in question is doubtful... It looks as if the EU, through this directive, once again is trying to dictate the law on American soil. Transatlantic tensions, already fuelled by trade disputes, issues of free speech, NATO funding and the war in Ukraine, would mount further.
In a spectacular decision, a court in North Dakota ordered the environmentalist organizations that comprise Greenpeace to pay $665 million in damages for "defamation, trespass, nuisance, civil conspiracy and other acts," to Energy Transfer, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline. Pictured: Activists who attempted to block construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline set structures on fire at the Oceti Sakowin protest camp, on February 22, 2017 in Cannon Ball, North Dakota. (Photo by Stephen Yang/Getty Images)
The news came down like a thunderbolt. In a spectacular decision, the Morton County courthouse in Mandan, North Dakota, ordered the environmentalist organizations that comprise Greenpeace to pay $665 million in damages to Energy Transfer, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline. The figure appears a monumental slap in the face to Greenpeace, which was sued by Energy Transfer for "defamation, trespass, nuisance, civil conspiracy and other acts," following demonstrations against the pipeline project in 2016 and 2017. The North Dakota jury did not pull any punches. Greenpeace was declared liable; its methods illegal and its actions harmful. Greenpeace has already announced that it will appeal. Beyond the legal wrangling, this ruling raises the question: what if this case marks the start of a major transatlantic rift between an America defending its energy interests and a Europe mired in its green romanticism?
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by Robert Williams • April 8, 2025 at 5:00 am
[World Economic Forum founder Klaus] Schwab appears to be a great admirer of the Chinese Communist state, which he praised in 2022 as a "model" to emulate. In reality, the purpose of the smart city, as seen by its widespread use in China, has little to do with improving quality of life. Instead, it is overwhelmingly about state surveillance, followed by total monitoring and control of the inhabitants and the uninhibited extraction of their data for its system of social credits. Smart cities, in fact, are a Chinese Communist idea, established by the Chinese government in its 12th Five-Year Plan, issued in 2011. In China, smart cities have been purposely developed into terrifying tyrannical nightmares. In many cities, including Shanghai and Hangzhou, every district has a data-hub, known as a so-called "City Brain," that monitors and stores unbelievable amounts of information about all citizens. The data is gathered by millions and millions of surveillance cameras with facial recognition technology, aided by artificial intelligence. They all feed in the smallest details, such as whether a construction worker is wearing his helmet on the job, wrongful disposal of garbage and other minute offenses. Police patrols access the monitoring systems through a mobile app, to enable them to act immediately against any offenses of the law. Offenses lead a citizen to receive a low social credit score, which in turn can lead to blacklisting from traveling on airplanes and high-speed trains, a ban on leaving the country, denial of access to services and even being barred from renting an apartment. This is the Chinese system which Schwab so openly admires. According to a 2024 World Population Review article, "Smart cities started in Europe with early adopters being Barcelona and Amsterdam..." No mention of China and its more than 500 smart cities, because that might start people questioning the plan. Better to pretend that it is a European concept. But who is watching the watchers? The entire concept is based on the fox watching the henhouse. Schwab has made it clear that he and his political and business cohorts have a grim, all-encompassing grip in store for the free world – total surveillance, total control. Schwab's own yearly Davos meetings, in which the world's political, business and cultural elites hold secret meetings about the future of the world without facing any critical questions, are -- obviously -- not subject to any form of transparency. The WEF is apparently so fearful of criticism and transparency that it has turned off comments on its own X account. Elected leaders, ostensibly in Davos to take care of "we the people's" interests, continue to worship at Schwab's altar nevertheless. They flock to his annual January meeting there, presumably in the hope that they, the anointed, will be the chosen to be the rulers in his elite global politburo.
For years, the UN and the World Economic Forum, led by Klaus Schwab, have been promoting global surveillance in the form of so-called "smart cities." The purpose of the smart city, as seen by its widespread use in China, is overwhelmingly about state surveillance, followed by total monitoring and control of the inhabitants and the uninhibited extraction of their data for its system of social credits. Schwab appears to be a great admirer of the Chinese Communist state, which he praised in 2022 as a "model" to emulate. Pictured: Schwab shakes hands with China's President Xi Jinping at the World Economic Forum, on January 17, 2017 in Davos, Switzerland. (Photo by Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)
Once upon a time, long before the Covid-19 lockdowns, the West pretended to be concerned about things such as freedom, the right to privacy, and the dangers of surveillance and data harvesting from its citizens. China's surveillance police state was, at least publicly, mostly described as an abomination that threatened human rights -- not an example to emulate. Sadly, that no longer seems to be the case. For years, in the name of environmental sustainability, energy efficiency, safety and convenience, the United Nations and the World Economic Forum (WEF), led by Klaus Schwab, have been promoting global surveillance in the form of so-called "smart cities." In China, already by 2018, there were more than 500 smart cities in place.
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by Lawrence Kadish • April 8, 2025 at 4:00 am
(Image source: iStock/Getty Images)
President Donald Trump is no fan of wind turbines. Grounded in the economics of business, he appreciates that the energy rate of return for the enormous investment required to build wind turbines makes little sense. He remains focused on some of America's greatest energy resources, domestic fossil fuels, making us not only capable of running our economy but independent of foreign crude and those control that spigot. And yet, there is an energy shortage on our nation's horizon.
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by Khaled Abu Toameh • April 7, 2025 at 5:00 am
The last thing the Palestinians need are more calls from Qatar-based extremist for terrorism and jihad. If these Muslim "scholars" really want to help their Palestinian brothers, they should be calling on Hamas to release all the Israeli hostages they kidnapped, then to disarm, and then to stop pursuing the disastrous path of terrorism and jihad. The "scholars" leading the IUMS live safely in Qatar, not in the Gaza Strip, and they are therefore not directly affected by the war that Hamas launched. That such a call by an influential Islamic group comes from an organization based in Doha illustrates why Qatar cannot be trusted as an honest mediator in the Hamas-Israel war.... Since then, Qatar's royal family -- who amusingly seem to imagine that they are doing the US a favor by hosting the largest US Air Force base in the Middle East -- have smoothly persuaded the Americans and other Westerners that they are neutral, trustworthy mediators in the Hamas-Israel war. In reality, they are doing their utmost to protect their long-term client, Hamas, and keep it in power, just as they protected their other client, the Taliban, in Afghanistan to make sure it remained in power. If the US were to transfer its air base to a real ally, such as the United Arab Emirates, Qatar would probably not survive a week. It is time for the US to understand that Qatar continues to serve as a base and platform for jihad and Islamist terrorism. Qatar is not an ally in the war on terrorism. Qatar is the predominant sponsor and leading voice that promotes Islamist terrorism. Qatar is also, perilously, the towering donor to universities in America. To American voters, it must look as if Qatar's sham-negotiations to keep Hamas in power are being conducted by US President Donald J. Trump's envoys primarily with an eye to avoid disrupting any future real estate deals with the emirate, rather than actually to stop the Hamas-Israel war and free the hostages. At the very least, the US might threaten to withdraw its military assets from Qatar's Al-Udeid Air Base, just to put the most minimal pressure on the Doha to stop supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and other questionable Islamist organizations. The US might also designate the Muslim Brotherhood and IUMS as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.
The Qatar-based International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), an association of extremist Islamic theologians affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, has issued a fatwa (Islamic ruling) calling for jihad (holy war) against Israel. The fatwa, shared by IUMS Secretary-General Ali al-Qaradaghi, calls for "urgent, widespread action by Muslim countries and peoples, including military action [against Israel]." Pictured: Al-Qaradaghi (L) speaks with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal at an IUMS conference in Doha, Qatar on September 21, 2014. (Photo by Faisal Al-Tamimi/AFP via Getty Images)
While Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are facing death and destruction as a result of the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, the Qatar-based International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), an association of extremist Islamic theologians affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, has issued a fatwa (Islamic ruling) calling for jihad (holy war) against Israel. The IUMS, a largely Sunni group founded in 2004, consists of some 95,000 Muslim "scholars" globally and 67 Islamic organizations. It included among its members the late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, killed by Israel in an explosion last year in Iran. These Muslim "scholars" also called for "urgent, widespread action by Muslim countries and peoples, including military action [against Israel]."
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by Nils A. Haug • April 6, 2025 at 5:00 am
The apparent normalization of jihadist-Islamist radicals, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, became frighteningly real when a video revealed that two Muslim immigrant nurses working in a Sydney hospital boasted that one of them had "killed Israeli patients" and the other had sworn to "let them die." After local Sheikh Wesam Charkawi declared his support for the two nurses, "Pro-Palestinian teachers led dozens of schoolchildren in chants of 'Allahu Akbar' outside a western Sydney public school" in support. Charkawi, who is employed by the New South Wales Department of Education, was "ordered to work from home after defending the two nurses in an Instagram post." As has occurred in Scandinavian countries such as Sweden, or in many other countries in Europe, Islamic extremism in Australia is becoming brazen. When Salwan Momika, a Christian Iraqi immigrant who criticized jihad, was murdered in Sweden, the event was met online with applause. Egyptian journalist Mouna Al-Hilmi explains that Islamic jihadist ideology exists for the precise purpose of eradicating Western civilization through world-wide "jihad to establish a global Islamic caliphate." Why, therefore, should Western nations be shocked when it becomes active and causes social chaos? Perhaps Australia's Labour Party leaders might take cognizance of Netanyahu's explanation of why the dangerous ideology of Palestinianism should be rejected, and act to protect their citizens from Islamist terror for generations to come?
An undercurrent of extremist Islam exists within Australia's Middle Eastern community. Anti-Semitic acts have become common in Australia, with more than 2,000 incidents in 2024 alone. They included 65 physical assaults and 600 cases of verbal abuse. Pictured: The damaged front entrance of the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne, on December 6, 2024, after a firebomb attack forced congregants to flee as flames engulfed the building. (Photo by Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images)
The happy-go-lucky country of Australia, located at the far-end of the globe, away from the geopolitical turmoil in Europe and the Middle East, is a peaceful and pleasant place to live – or should be. Most of the immigrants seem to have assimilated comfortably, enjoying generous benefits such as state-sponsored medical care, welfare packages, high wages, vast open spaces and low crime. Life is good in Australia, with thousands of applicants from all over the world keenly seeking a better life in the sun. Although with a relatively small population of some 25 million, four of its cities are currently rated among the world's top 20 most livable.
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by Amir Taheri • April 6, 2025 at 4:00 am
Tehran's aim is either to derail the whole thing [indirect negotiations with the Trump administration] and blame Trump, or go into slow-motion mode in the hope that the US mid-term elections might puncture the Trump balloon. In such a scenario, talks about who is to be mediator could take weeks, if not months. If and when a mediator is agreed by both sides, talks would be needed about what level any negotiations should be held at, and the location of the encounter. After that, talks could take place on establishing an agenda. The subtext in all that is Khamenei's belief that since he and Khomeini managed to play seven US presidents like a mandolin, there is no reason why it shouldn't work with an eighth one.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's belief is that since he and Ruhollah Khomeini managed to play seven US presidents like a mandolin, there is no reason why it shouldn't work with an eighth one. Pictured: Iran's then Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has a laugh while meeting with then US Secretary of State John Kerry, at the United Nations on April 27, 2015, in New York City. (Photo by Jason DeCrow-Pool/Getty Images)
After a three-year break, a serial that started almost 50 years ago is expected to return to world screens with a new season: Uncle Sam wooing the Mullahs of Tehran. The new season started with a letter sent by US President Donald J. Trump to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei three weeks ago, reportedly inviting him for a face-to-face rendezvous. A similar letter was sent by US President Jimmy Carter to Ruhollah Khomeini during his exile in a Paris suburb in 1978, delivered by former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark. Carter wrote Khomeini another letter a year later, when he had already seized power in Tehran. Delivered by Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, at a meeting with Khomeini's Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan, the letter repeated the American desire for friendly cooperation with the new regime in Iran.
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by Majid Rafizadeh • April 5, 2025 at 5:00 am
The West needs to recognize the intentions of Iran's rulers. The regime has made it clear that it has no plans to abandon its nuclear or ballistic missile programs. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has openly stated that Libya's Muammar Gaddafi made a fatal mistake by giving up his nuclear program. Each time Iran's regime finds itself under pressure, it calls for talks. The goal, however, is never to reach a real agreement. The goal is to delay. Tehran knows that once talks begin, the focus will shift from its nuclear violations to the negotiation process. This gives the regime heaps of time to further its nuclear weapons program while diplomats engage in discussions that lead nowhere. No negotiation with the Islamic Republic of Iran has ever led to a lasting, constructive result. Instead, all negotiations have enabled the mullahs to manipulate the international community under the guise of diplomacy. This is not the time to sit, even "indirectly," at a table with Iran. It is the time to recognize the regime's deception and act. Every moment in talks is a moment wasted -- before the world wakes up to the nightmare of a nuclear-armed Iran.
The Iranian regime has made it clear that it has no plans to abandon its nuclear or ballistic missile programs. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has openly stated that Libya's Muammar Gaddafi made a fatal mistake by giving up his nuclear program. Pictured: A Fattah hypersonic ballistic missile is displayed during the annual military parade in Tehran, on September 22, 2023. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)
Iran's ruling regime is once again resorting to its most effective survival strategy: pretending to be open to negotiations. As expected, Tehran has responded to President Donald J. Trump by expressing willingness to engage in talks, sort of: indirectly. This move should not be mistaken for a sign of goodwill or a genuine desire to resolve tensions. Instead, it is a calculated attempt to buy time, deceive the West, and accelerate the regime's nuclear program.
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by Igal Hecht • April 4, 2025 at 5:00 am
Because this is precisely where Canada is going. Historically, Canada has been behind Europe on antisemitism by a generation, but the pace at which it is gaining momentum is now catching up. The same forces that have harmed France and the United Kingdom are now entrenched in Canada: radicalized academic environments, media that demonize Israel and downplay antisemitism, politicians pressured to appease extremists, and a Jewish community that, even as it grows more alarmed, is still unwilling to confront the reality of the threat. At the eye of the storm is the Liberal Party of Canada and its new leader, Prime Minister Mark Carney. Many would argue that in the past decade, the Liberal government under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau increasingly empowered antisemitic elements.... In the process, it has encouraged antisemitic opinions to intensify and be legitimized. Britain's and France's abuses did not happen by chance. They were the consequence of political choices. In Canada, those choices have already been made. Some in the media, politics and faculty members excused or justified these acts. What if black students had been prevented from moving freely on campus? All hell would have broken out — or should have. Yet, when it comes to Jews, or as the antisemites like to say "Zionists," no one, it seems, has a problem. In Carney's Canada, violence, intimidation and dangerous rhetoric against Jews, like that of the Nazi sympathizers of the 1930s, are now becoming the norm.
Since October 7, 2023, on university campuses across Canada, encampments have appeared, where Jewish students and faculty are harassed and obstructed. "Montreal has become North America's capital of antisemitism," according to Professor Gad Saad, of Montreal's Concordia University. The city is quickly becoming the continent's largest hotbed of radical Islam. Pictured: A banner calling for a violent "intifada" at an anti-Israel protest encampment, on the campus of McGill University in Montreal, on April 29, 2024. (Photo by Graham Hughes/AFP via Getty Images)
History is a stern teacher. Too frequently, its warnings go unheeded. Twenty years ago, France descended into a season of antisemitic violence that continues to this day. In 2006, when a young Jewish man named Ilan Halimi was kidnapped, tortured for three weeks, then brutally murdered by a Muslim criminal gang infamously referred to as the "Gang of Barbarians," the international community was shocked. The reason for the kidnapping, torture and murder was the old stereotype that supposedly all Jews are rich. Halimi's family could not afford to pay the 450,000 euros demanded as ransom. Antisemitic crimes in France, however, exceeded that single event. In 2012, a Muslim terrorist attacked a Jewish school in Toulouse and murdered a rabbi and three young children. For centuries, Jewish communities have been, with various pretexts, objects of hostility.
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by Charles Jacobs and Uzay Bulut • April 3, 2025 at 5:00 am
Jihadists are murdering, raping, torturing, kidnapping, enslaving, and, in some instances, burning people alive — across Africa, and now in Syria. Local jihadist organizations go by different names, but the ideology that drives them is the same: Every one of them deeply believes that Allah wants him to wipe the world clean of the kuffar (infidels). More than 16.2 million Christians in Sub-Saharan Africa have been driven from their homes by jihadi violence and conflict, reports the human rights organization Open Doors. Women and girls are abducted, forced into "marriage," forced to convert to Islam, raped, and subjected to forced labor. Several girls have been forced to act as suicide bombers or human shields at the hands of jihadis. In Sudan, a current genocide includes race-based slaughter of indigenous Africans by Arab jihadists... with the RSF forces targeting ethnic African minorities for extermination... According to the organization "Operation Broken Silence," more than 150,000 civilians are estimated to have already perished from violence and hunger. In Libya, slavery, forced labor and human trafficking are still widespread, as seen in video evidence of an auction of sub-Saharan Africans in the country. In Somalia, no area is safe for Christians... [al-Shabaab] maintains a commitment to eradicating Christianity from Somalia and often murders Christians on the spot. Nigeria has seen a dramatic increase in the abduction of Catholic priests, seminarians and religious women — for ransom, as Vatican News noted. All decent people.... need urgently to address this question: Why does the liberal West turn a blind eye when Islamic jihadists abduct, abuse, rape, enslave, forcibly convert or murder millions of darker-skinned people in Africa and the Middle East? A refusal to address such lethal moral blindness signifies that the West has chosen a path to its own demise, and will be abandoning countless innocents as it goes.
In Mozambique, a majority-Christian country, the rise of Islamist extremism in the north, especially in regions such as Cabo Delgado, has made life increasingly perilous for Christian communities. Islamists there unleashed a wave of violence, targeting Christian places of worship, abducting pastors and murdering many Christians. Pictured: Displaced persons from the town of Impire in Cabo Delgado, on June 14, 2022, flee from jihadists who attacked their community. (Photo by Alfredo Zuniga/AFP via Getty Images)
Jihadists are murdering, raping, torturing, kidnapping, enslaving, and, in some instances, burning people alive — across Africa, and now in Syria. Recent videos posted on X show that Syrian Islamists are doing to Alawites what Hamas did to Jews living near Gaza. Christians, Druze and Yazidis in Syria — like their non-Muslim or non-Arabized counterparts in Africa— fear they may be next. The al-Qaeda-affiliated Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) terrorists, led by Ahmed Hussein al Sharaa, who conquered Damascus in December 2024, are going from door to door in western Syria and massacring religious minorities in cruel, sadistic ways. Social media posts show Alawite men, women and children shot at close range. According to Greek Member of European Parliament Nikolas Farantouris, who recently visited Syria, "Reliable data indicate 7,000 massacres of Christians and Alawites and unprecedented atrocities against civilians." The death toll is still rising.
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