For almost two weeks now, the US and Israel have been waging war on Iran. What Washington initially presented as a military campaign that would swiftly alter the strategic balance and put Tehran in a vulnerable position has proven to be far more complex. Over the past months, the White House has maintained that Iran could be on the brink of total defeat by the end of the first, or at most, the second day of a conflict. Apparently, the American side expected a rapid dismantling of Iran’s capabilities and a serious destabilization of its government. However, recent developments tell a different story.
03 World
Vladimir Putin’s “hidden hand” is likely helping Iran respond to Donald Trump’s war, the UK defence secretary has said, as it emerged that Iranian-linked drones hit a base in Iraq where some British troops are located.
They were not hurt.
John Healey said attacks by Iranian forces against targets across the Middle East “have the hallmarks” of how Russian troops operate in their war against Ukraine.
US and Israel Strike Basij Checkpoints in Iran; Hitting ‘the regime’s protest-crushing machine’
The Basij are the paramilitary forces (often voluntary) that serve to enforce Sharia law and civil compliance on the streets. They are a key impediment to protestors coming outside and taking their country back. Iranian activist Nariman Gharib: The IDF and US forces delivered precision strikes, surgically dismantling Basij checkpoints in the heart of Tehran’s streets, the very thugs who beat, arrest, and shoot protesters every single night. No civilian casualties. Just clean, targeted operations. And the people? They’re not hiding. They’re back on the rooftops, voices shaking the city: “Marg bar Basij!” (Death to Basij!) “Marg bar dictator!” (Death to the dictator!) The regime’s own enforcers are being eliminated while the people cheer from the rooftops. The fear is gone. (Gharib).
Similar reports coming out of the west, in the province of Ilam: The IDF says it destroyed major bases of Iran’s internal security forces and the Basij militia in Ilam Province. These are the same forces used by the regime to crush protests and brutalize Iranian civilians. In simple terms: Israel hit the regime’s protest-crushing machine (Mossad).
Oil prices rose back above $100 and stocks sank Thursday as Iran’s attempts to hit supplies in the Middle East and bring down the global economy overshadowed a record release of strategic crude reserves by the International Energy Agency.
Stock markets in Asia closed down Thursday and European markets opened with losses as investors saw few signs the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran would end soon, despite President Trump’s repeated assurances that it would.
U.S. Energy Secretary Christopher Wright announced on Wednesday that the U.S. would release 172 million barrels of oil from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve, while the International Energy Agency — which has 32 member nations, including the U.S. — announced it would release 400 million barrels from its own reserves.
President Trump addressed reports of Iran potentially launching drone strikes on California.
As WLT Report previously covered, the FBI sent out warnings to dozens of police departments in California, warning that Iran may attempt to attack the West Coast with drones.
In the bulletin, the FBI warned police departments in California to be vigilant of a potential retaliation attack from Iran in the form of military drones.
Italian Military Base in Erbil Struck by Drone Wanted in Rome
from news.google.com
China passes new ethnic minority law, prioritise use of Mandarin language Reuters
from news.google.com
China passed a law on a “shared” national identity among the country’s 55 ethnic minority groups on Thursday, a move critics say will further erode the identity of people who are not majority Han Chinese and risk making anyone challenging that “unity” a separatist punishable by law.
Called “Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress”, the ethnic minority law aims to forge national unity and advance the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at its core, a draft copy of the law showed.
FRANCE 24’s François Picard is pleased to welcome Dr. Rouzbeh Parsi, Adjunct Senior Lecturer at Lund University in Sweden. According to Dr. Parsi, the current political situation in Iran should be approached with caution, too much attention is being paid to the potential rise of Mojtaba Khamenei. Yet the Islamic Republic is not a system built around a single person, especially during a time of war. Decision-making power lies with institutions such as the Revolutionary Guards and the broader security establishment.
This institutional dynamic also complicates efforts to understand Khamenei himself, explains Dr. Parsi. Whether he intends to maintain continuity with the political baseline established by his late father or eventually chart his own course remains difficult to assess. For now, the Islamic Republic is fundamentally focused on survival, and that struggle will likely shape both internal politics and foreign policy.
Militarily, there is also a tendency among outside observers to misinterpret Iranian behaviour. A reduction in missile launches, for example, should not automatically be interpreted as a lack of capability. It may simply reflect a deliberate strategic approach aimed at weakening defensive systems first, thereby increasing the effectiveness of later strikes. Ultimately, Iran’s objective appears to be political as much as military: to demonstrate that attacking Iran carries costs, and to ensure that any eventual negotiations with the United States occur under more serious terms than those previously attempted. And so, Dr. Parsi argues, “the Iranians are going to play this game their own way”.
Canada’s department in charge of Indigenous relations essentially censored what it calls “confidential” files related to a First Nations community spending millions searching for alleged mass graves at former Canadian residential schools.
Canada’s Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations recently placed as “confidential” all files relating to $12.1 million paid to the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation for an alleged grave dig that turned up nothing to date.
The “confidential” file ruling comes, as reported by LifeSiteNews, after the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation recently admitted that its quest to find graves of hundreds of children on the site of former residential schools, which sparked massive arson attacks on Catholic churches across Canada, has come up empty.
The Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations recently released the censored reports from 2023; all of the main details were redacted as “confidential.”
With jagged cliffs rising from the Arabian Sea, the Strait of Hormuz is striking in its scenery — and these days, its emptiness. This resource superhighway, which normally hosts more than a hundred of the world’s largest oil and liquid natural gas (LNG) tankers every day, has seen no more than a handful all week.
They are the brave ones, daring to run these front lines where U.S. and Iranian naval forces face off. At least 14 commercial vessels have suffered some kind of violent incident, leaving at least eight mariners dead.
In a joint op-ed published in German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama called for an accelerated integration process of Serbia and Albania into the EU.
Confusion on whether Iran truly needed only “two weeks to four weeks” to make a nuclear weapon, as President Donald Trump suggested on Monday, hangs over the ongoing U.S. and Israeli war on the Persian Gulf nation. Nuclear experts call this claim unlikely—but the confusion may stem from some basics of atomic chemistry.
“There was no evidence that Iran was close to a nuclear weapon,” says Jeffrey Lewis of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. His comment echoed those of other experts after the war’s start, as well as statements from International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi at that time and in 2025 and last year’s “threat assessment” report by U.S. intelligence agencies.
According to an IAEA estimate, as of June 2025, Iran possessed 441 kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium, where the percentage refers to the share of the isotope uranium 235 (U 235) found in the material. That would be enough for 10 nuclear weapons if the material could be enriched further to full 90 percent weapons-grade concentrations, according to the IAEA. That further enrichment would take a matter of weeks in a fully functioning Iranian nuclear complex, perhaps explaining the time line within Trump’s declaration.
An emergency meeting has been called amid fears over a severe global oil shortage, with petrol prices already surging in the UK. Over 30 members will “assess the current security of supply and market conditions to inform a subsequent decision on whether to make emergency stocks […] available to the market,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said in a statement.
Oil prices dropped by more than 11% as markets began anticipating a release of emergency oil reserves, a sharp reversal after prices had surged to nearly $120 per barrel on Monday following the supply disruption. Fatih Birol noted that energy ministers from the Group of Seven nations met earlier on Tuesday to discuss possible responses to the crisis.
UK lawmakers scrap under-16 social-media ban but back wider child safety powers MLex
from news.google.com
The national average price for regular gas continues to soar, reaching $3.578 per gallon on Wednesday morning. The price point marks a 64-cent-per-gallon increase compared to a month ago, according to AAA.
The rise in gas prices over the last month is the largest single monthly increase since 2022, when fuel costs increased by 71 cents per gallon between February and March, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Between the week of February 9, 2026, and March 9, 2026, the average price for regular grade gasoline rose from $2.902 per gallon to $3.502 per gallon, according to the EIA. Moreover, gas prices today are nearly 50 cents per gallon more expensive than a year ago, according to AAA.
The Chinese Communist Party oddly found a reason to promote the U.S. Constitution, or at least an interpretation of it, journalist and author Peter Schweizer noted before a Senate panel Tuesday.
At a hearing on birthright citizenship, Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., asked Schweizer if the Chinese government promotes exploiting the concept.
“They have run articles in the People’s Daily, which is the main news organ of the Communist Party, explaining that you have a constitutional right in the United States,” said Schweizer, president of the watchdog Government Accountability Institute and author of the recent book, “The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon.”
The Canadian government has created a committee filled with euthanasia advocates to determine whether or not Canada should expand assisted suicide to those with mental illness, but a few Members of Parliament on the committee promise to advocate for life.
The Special Joint Parliamentary Committee is made up of 10 MPs and five senators who will look at Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) program to determine whether it should be expanded yet again.
One of the committee members is pro-life Conservative MP Andrew Lawton, who announced on X that “I’m honoured to be named to the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying, which will review the incoming expansion of MAID to people with solely a mental illness and no physical ailments.”
“This expansion comes into force next year unless new legislation is passed.”
Russia is hitting Ukraine with “thousand cuts” tactic in 12 places in north, while Kyiv runs successful counteroffensives in south Euromaidan Press
from news.google.com
To understand modern Iran, you have to go back. That’s because what is happening right now did not begin with President Trump or President Obama or even the Ayatollah Khomeini. It began in the cradle of civilization itself.Persia was one of the greatest civilizations in human history — and its identity runs further back than Islam.
By 550 B.C., Cyrus the Great had built the largest empire the ancient world had ever seen — stretching from Eastern Europe to Asia. Isaiah records that the Lord anointed Cyrus, King of Persia, to release the Jewish people from Babylonian captivity and to fund the rebuilding of the Temple. That is the Persia the modern world has completely forgotten.
The ancient Persians were Zoroastrians, not Muslims. Islam did not arrive until Arab armies conquered the land in the 7th century A.D. The Persians absorbed Islam, but they were never fully Arabic in their customs or culture. They kept their language, their literature, their distinct identity — and they eventually embraced Shia Islam over the Sunni tradition, a distinction that would define centuries of conflict to come.
The leaders of Slovakia, Hungary, and Serbia have long touted their loyalty to President Donald Trump, courting Washington’s conservative wing. But when Trump launched his war with Iran, the mask came off.
Trump has backed Prime Minister Viktor Orban to the hilt as the Hungarian strongman seeks to cling to power in an upcoming election. But that didn’t stop Orban from quickly raising concerns about Trump’s war. Within hours, he raised Hungary’s terrorist threat level, warning that a prolonged Middle East conflict could trigger new waves of migration from Iran through Turkey and the Balkans. “Hungary must prepare and make sure the dam holds,” Orban emphasized.
The U.S. military released striking new footage Tuesday showing American forces systematically destroying major elements of Iran’s naval fleet, offering the public a rare look at the scale of the campaign unfolding across the Persian Gulf and nearby waters. U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) published the video alongside a statement declaring that the strikes are aimed at dismantling Tehran’s ability to threaten international shipping lanes and destabilize the region.
“U.S. forces are degrading the Iranian regime’s ability to project power at sea and harass international shipping,” CENTCOM said. “For years, Iranian forces have threatened freedom of navigation in waters essential to American, regional and global security and prosperity.”
Back in 2019, I was excited to report that President Donald Trump had officially launched the “U.S. Space Force,” which would bring the nation’s military space capabilities under one organization.
However, many Democrats, progressives, and Trump-haters derided this development.
The idea was widely mocked when it was first floated, providing fodder for late night hosts, newspaper cartoonists and comedy writers. Senior military officials have previously raised concerns about what it will cost, and former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis warned against rushing into creating the force without clearly defined goals.
The Trump administration is being urged to tackle imported generic pharmaceuticals, most of which are made in China, due to national security implications.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, wants the Commerce Department to consider using Section 232 national security tariffs on imported generic medicines and their ingredients. Such a move would frame the U.S. pharmaceutical supply chain as a national security vulnerability rather than a purely economic issue.
The push comes as policymakers recognize the United States relies heavily on China for key pharmaceutical materials, particularly the raw components of many antibiotics, while producing a small share domestically, China specialist Gordon Chang said.
“Healthcare, as evident in country after country, is best left to the market, but as China weaponizes trade—and continually threatens war—it’s clear that Washington has to temporarily implement non-market solutions to ensure that Americans have access to the medicines they need,” he wrote in a paper published on Conservative Political Action Conference’s website titled “China’s ‘Pharma Death Grip’ on America.”
Can Beijing Help Contain Washington’s War? Foreign Policy
from news.google.com
Hezbollah, Iran unleash coordinated cluster bomb strikes on Israel in major escalation 930 WFMD Free Talk
from news.google.com
The United States military has destroyed several Iranian vessels believed to be capable of laying naval mines near the strategic Strait of Hormuz, according to the US central command, as concerns grow around Tehran’s attempt to disrupt shipping in the critical waterway.In a post on X, the United States central command (CENTCOM) said US forces targeted and destroyed multiple Iranian naval vessels on Tuesday. “US forces eliminated multiple Iranian naval vessels, March 10, including 16 minelayers near the Strait of Hormuz,” the command said, sharing a video showing some of the strikes.The claim followed comments by US president Donald Trump, who earlier said American forces had struck Iranian vessels capable of laying mines in the area. But interestingly, according to Trump 10 vessels were destroyed, contradictory to the military’s claim of 16. In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote: “I am pleased to report that within the last few hours, we have hit, and completely destroyed, 10 inactive mine-laying boats and/or ships, with more to follow!”
Anti-Christian violence and legal pressure rising in Europe, UN experts told Christian Post
from news.google.com
Speaking with FRANCE 24’s Sharon Gaffney, Elke Schwarz, Professor of Political Theory at Queen Mary University of London, says that there’s “a radical acceleration” in the speed of acquisition of military targets through the use of AI and how quickly action is taken on these targets, which raises concerns about the lack of human oversight, especially considering that AI models have “25 to 50% reliability, which means they are wrong very often”.
from www.france24.com