Esmail Qaani, commander of the Quds Force in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, was killed during an Israeli strike in Iran, The New York Times reported on Friday evening, citing an Iranian source.

Qaani succeeded Qasem Soleimani as commander after the latter was killed in a targeted operation by the United States in 2020.

What was Qaani’s mission in the Middle East?

From an intelligence perspective, Qaani’s mission appears to have had several dimensions, none of which have escaped the vigilance of Mossad, the CIA, or allied intelligence agencies in the region.

Qaani also wanted to revive and consolidate control of Iraq’s Shia terrorist groups. These militias, whether Arab, Sunni, or Kurdish (including the Barzanis and PKK), maintain close ties with the IRGC. Qaani aimed to exert more direct influence over groups like Hashd al-Shaabi, preventing the collapse of Iran’s proxy network in Iraq. Figures like Ali Sistani, who shared Khamenei’s vision of a Shia crescent, are unlikely to oppose these efforts.

This is a developing story.

Staff, Jerusalem Post

In recent hours, Israeli Air Force fighter jets, guided by precise intelligence from the Intelligence Directorate, completed a large-scale strike against the aerial defense array of the Iranian regime in western Iran.

As part of the strikes, dozens of radars and surface-to-air missile launchers were destroyed.

Throughout the war, the IDF has systematically targeted the aerial defense systems of the Iranian regime and its proxies across the Middle East.

These strikes enhance the Israeli Air Force’s freedom of aerial operation.

Israel was said to have neared complete air supremacy over Iran, meaning that it would be able to attack Iranian targets at will.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

Israel, its allies, and regional Arab countries together intercepted Iranian drones fired in retaliation for the massive Israeli airstrike launched early Friday, stopping them before they reached Israeli airspace.

As Breitbart News reported, Iran launched 100 drones at Israel after the Israeli Air Force (IAF) hit targets across Iran in a surprise attack that hit Iranian military leadership and nuclear sites in several waves.

Israelis were advised to remain near bomb shelters. However, the Jerusalem Post reported, the drones were all intercepted outside Israel — as in an earlier Iranian attack on Israel in April 2024.

The Post explained:The IDF’s Home Front Command rescinded the order to stay near sheltered areas nationwide on Friday morning, following a reduced threat analysis after the military said it intercepted drones launched from Iran.The IDF has not officially confirmed that every single drone was shot down, and there could be many more launched, but at this time, enough were shot down to make the home front instructions temporarily more lenient. The instructions could quickly become strict again at some point if and when Iran launches another large attack.Israel shot down the drones by scrambling aircraft as soon as Iran was confirmed to have launched the drones.

As in April 2024, several countries reportedly participated in shooting down Iranian drones that crossed into their airspace:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made his case before his people and the world in a seven-minute video explaining his reasoning for striking at Iran’s nuclear weapons program, killing senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leaders and six nuclear scientists.

Without the preemptive strike, Israel would have been targeted with “the new plan” to destroy Israel, Netanyahu said.

“Last year, Iran fired 300 ballistic missiles at Israel,” Netanyahu said. “Each of these missiles carries a ton of explosives and threatens the lives of hundreds of people. Soon, those missiles could carry a nuclear payload, threatening the lives not of hundreds — but of millions.

Iran is gearing up to produce tens of thousands of ballistic missiles within three years. Now just imagine — imagine 10,000 tons of TNT landing on a country the size of New Jersey. This is an intolerable threat. It, too, must be stopped.

“Iran is now working on what it calls ‘the new plan’ to destroy Israel.”

And there are reports that plan is being bolstered by its axis partners in Russia and China.

Iran had placed the order of tons of ballistic-missile ingredients from China to fuel hundreds of ballistic missiles for its IRGC and terrorists proxies in the Middle East, The Wall Street Journal reported in an exclusive last week.

The shipments were coming in the next few months, so Netanyahu did not hesitate to strike at the heart of Iran’s nuclear program before it could officially boast a nuclear-tipped ballistic missile.

“These substances are a major fire and explosive hazard,” International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Fabian Hinz told the Journal.

“Iran’s defense industrial complex does not have a strong track record in ensuring safety standards.”

Notably, Iran authorities order an acceleration of clearing “hazardous materials” through customs, the Journal reported.

“I want to assure the civilized world: We will not let the world’s most dangerous regime get the world’s most dangerous weapons,” Netanyahu said in his address to the world. “Iran plans to give those weapons — nuclear weapons — to its terrorist proxies. That would make the nightmare of nuclear terrorism all too real.

“The increasing range of Iran’s ballistic missiles would bring that nuclear nightmare to the cities of Europe, and eventually to America.

“Remember: Iran calls Israel the ‘Small Satan.’ It calls America the ‘Great Satan.’ And this is why, for decades, it’s led millions in the chants of ‘Death to Israel’ and ‘Death to America.’

“Today, Israel is responding to those genocidal calls with action, and with a call of our own: Long live Israel, and long live America.

“Our action will help make the world a much safer place.”

Eric Mack ✉

Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.

I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal. I told them, in the strongest of words, to “just do it,” but no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn’t get it done. I told them it would be much worse than anything they know, anticipated, or were told, that the United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the World, BY FAR, and that Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come – And they know how to use it. Certain Iranian hardliner’s spoke bravely, but they didn’t know what was about to happen. They are all DEAD now, and it will only get worse! There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end. Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire. No more death, no more destruction, JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE. God Bless You All! 

A graduate student fears she won’t be able to complete her 11th year of college in America because President Donald Trump might deport her.

Oriette D’Angelo, a doctoral student studying Spanish and Gender, Women and Sexuality studies at the University of Iowa, moved from her home country of Venezuela to Chicago in 2015 on a student visa.

Because consulate buildings were closed at that time due to Venezuela’s shattered relationship with the US, she had to travel to Colombia to renew it, D’Angelo told the outlet.

The 34-year-old, who is also a professor, chose to flee her home of Lechería after she watched it decline.

Although she’s been in the US for years to seek academic and professional opportunities, D’Angelo is scared her dreams could soon be crushed by Trump’s administration as he continues to crackdown on illegal citizens in America.

After finding out that her studies might come to an end, D’Angelo, who often writes poetry around themes of dictatorship for class, told friends she would mail Trump’s administration notebooks of her work if she was forced to head back to Venezuela.

‘It would be almost impossible to start over,’ she told the Chicago Tribune.

Over the years, D’Angelo has come face to face with immigration rules and guidelines, including when her Venezuelan passport expirI’m 2020

She then applied for temporary protected status (TPS), which was introduced under former President Joe Biden to help citizens of countries stricken by war or natural disaster get temporary work.

When she came back to the US in November 2024, D’Angelo was processed under TPS, not her student visa, as she made her way through O’Hare International Airpomailrt.

She had officially lost her foreign student status even though her whole reason for moving to the US was for her to study.

Daily Mail

The last time the phrase “Los Angeles riots” dominated the national headlines, Patrick Buchanan told a story about order being restored to the city.

“The mob retreated because it had met that one thing that could stop it,” he said at the 1992 Republican National Convention in Houston. “Force, rooted in justice and backed by moral courage.”

President Donald Trump has been compared to Buchanan before. As streets burn in Los Angeles in defiance of federal immigration law, he may have the opportunity for his ultimate Buchananite moment as he sends in the National Guard.

These Los Angeles riots are even less defensible than those of more than three decades ago. Nearly all big-city riots end up only doing more damage to communities that are already hurting. These mobs are attacking the very legitimacy of immigration and border enforcement.

Republicans didn’t win the 1992 presidential election. In fact, they lost California in the Electoral College for the first time since the country went all the way with LBJ, the last president to federalize the National Guard against the will of a Democratic governor, back in 1965. The aftershocks of the 1990–91 recession, compounded by a promise-breaking tax increase signed into law by the GOP incumbent, still lingered.

Instead of Buchanan, Republicans renominated the incumbent who broke his pledge not to raise taxes, presided over the recession, and generally seemed more interested in the New World Order than American domestic affairs.

But in Bill Clinton, Democrats nominated someone who balanced his sympathy for Rodney King with a rebuke of Sister Souljah. Clinton was also the party’s first presidential standard-bearer in a generation to back capital punishment for murderers, just four years removed from the Willie Horton fiasco. Clinton promised to help pass a crime bill and hire 100,000 new police officers to patrol the streets.

Today’s Democratic elected officials agree with the anti-ICE rioters that mass immigration, even when illegal, is the civil rights issue of our time. They believe that the next phase of the Resistance should be to resist the deportation of illegal immigrants. Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass find themselves appealing to states’ rights.

Some of the people being deported may be sympathetic on an individual basis, even if Kilmar Abrego Garcia does not seem like the best example with which to make that point. But Democrats are ignoring that a diverse coalition of voters, including a majority of Hispanic men, elected Trump precisely to get immigration back under control after nearly four years of neglect under former President Joe Biden. The polls suggest majorities still support that endeavor.

In 2024, Gallup found that 55 percent wanted reduced immigration levels. That was the biggest majority behind that position recorded by the venerable pollster since 2001. Just 16 percent supported an increase in immigration.

It isn’t 1992 anymore. Neither is it 2020.

At a purely naked political level, each party is heeding its base. Republicans elevated Trump over 16 other candidates a decade ago because they believed he was more serious about immigration than his rivals. They helped return him to the White House after the Biden border crisis. But Biden unleashed that influx because he believed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was the future of the Democratic Party and he could not bear to be called the “deporter-in-chief” like his former boss, Barack Obama.

Public opinion on immigration can be nuanced. But there is still more reason to believe that for now the Trump-era Republican stance on immigration has more crossover appeal than a Democratic alliance with mobs waving Mexican flags in protests against American law enforcement. The Democrats’ border failures have hardened popular attitudes compared even to Trump’s first term.

The Democrats, led by a California governor who would like to be their 2028 presidential nominee, have chosen the mob. Trump has picked the other side. We will eventually see who was right. For now, it looks like it will take massive overreach—or another recession—to turn the tide.

Bill Clinton isn’t walking through that door. But maybe Pat Buchanan is.

W. James Antle III, American Conservative

“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.—James Madison

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is facing mounting backlash after a leaked report revealed she had ordered the LAPD to stand down during violent riots, leaving federal officers without critical backup as the situation spiraled out of control..

when DHS and FBI requested assistance because they were overwhelmed by rioters, LAPD sat idle waiting for direction. Instead of allowing the Incident Commander to act, Mayor Karen Bass bypassed established protocol

…

By personally directing operations, Bass functioned as a de facto Incident Commander, in direct conflict with the City’s Emergency Operations Plan and National Incident Management System (NIMS) protocols. This breach of the chain of command prevented the Incident Commander from making crucial operational decisions, put DHS officers, FBI agents, and community members at risk, and delayed immediate LAPD support.”

…

This unprecedented political interference demands a federal investigation into potential endangerment of federal personnel and obstruction of emergency response.”

Economic Times

The second season of Live Action’s “Face to Face” series continues, and in the latest episode, brings together two groups of post-abortive parents.

In a discussion facilitated by Live Action founder and president Lila Rose, women who had abortions against the wishes of their babies’ fathers speak about their experiences with men whose wanted children were aborted.

“He begged me not to do it”

Sara Boling got pregnant unexpectedly, and terrified of her mother’s reaction, got an abortion — something pushed on her by everyone around her, except for her boyfriend and his mother. But she “thought [abortion] was normal” and said Planned Parenthood “made it really easy, and said if you don’t tell the father, if you don’t tell your parents, we can help you. [I was] 17 years old. I just said okay.”

The father of the baby was her high school sweetheart, and she thought they would be together forever. “He, along with his mom, begged me not to do it. She told me she would take me in,” she said. “She told me she would help as much as she could. And I was just scared.”

All of Boling’s friends and other trusted adults told her to have the abortion, saying a baby would ruin her life. Meanwhile, the staffers at Planned Parenthood told her the baby was just a clump of cells, not a human being. She was well into her second trimester of pregnancy at the time. It was years later before she learned what really happened to her child.

Now, 20 years later, she still struggles with post-abortive regret, though she said she knows she will see her child in Heaven. She mentors young adults now, so they won’t feel forced to make the decision she did.

“I never really had closure with the father,” she said. “I don’t know how he really feels. After that, it was over. I just — my guilt, I couldn’t allow myself to be loved by him anymore. And I just ended it.”

“I stole fatherhood…”

Melissa Manion was already a single mother when she got pregnant for the second time. And at first, she and her new boyfriend planned to raise the baby together. She said the young man was kind to her and they had planned to have the baby despite having dated for just three months.

“I told everyone, and then I just… I got scared. I thought, ‘I just got on my feet. I have a son that I need to take care of. I don’t love him. I don’t know what to do.’ And instead of speaking to him about it, I spoke to some friends who had had abortions, and in an instant, I changed my mind.”

She called Planned Parenthood and made an appointment for the very next day; when the father came home, she told him directly that she was having an abortion, and there was nothing he could do about it.

“He became really erratic, and was crying and begging me, please not to do this,” she said. “And I don’t really remember a lot of it. It’s – trauma will do that. I just remember, somewhere subconsciously, thinking, this is my right…. I truly gave no thought to the fact that this wasn’t my child alone, that it took two people to create this life. It shouldn’t take one to be able to end it. And so I told him to leave and I have never seen him again since.”

“I stole fatherhood from a completely innocent and kind man, along with ending the life of my child,” she added.

“It’s not your decision”

The conversation then shifted to the men’s perspectives.

Gregory Mayo said he was 18 when his first child was aborted, which he did not want. “I protested, but in the way a scared, unsure 18-year-old kid does. And so when her mom said, ‘Well, this is going to happen anyway,’ I thought, ‘Okay, what does everybody say I’m supposed to do? Well, I’m supposed to go be supportive.’ So I went with her…. I remember the overall feeling of just being scared, and what are we doing, and this is one of those things you can’t undo. And then she came out, and I saw it on her face immediately… something was gone. And then I decided to — not consciously — but decided, I’m just not going to deal with emotions right now.”

That relationship ended not long after, and a few years later, another girlfriend got pregnant. She, too, decided to have an abortion. He tried harder this time, offering to marry her, or even take and raise the baby on his own, but she refused. When nothing worked, he told her was going to drive 16 hours to be there with her, and she said not to bother; it wouldn’t be in enough time to stop the abortion appointment early the next morning.

He went on to have other children, but the loss of his first two children affected him for the next 10 years until he found healing.

“I felt truly powerless”

Sean Corcoran was the last member of the panel to share his story. When his girlfriend got pregnant, he immediately began trying to figure out how it would affect his life, and how they would handle it. “She stopped me and she said, ‘Well, I’m not going to have the baby; I’m going to have an abortion.’ And that was counter to everything that I was raised to believe,” he said. “I argued against it. I can’t remember the exact conversations, but it got to the point where my dad drove nine hours to be there the next day.”

“And the last thing I remember saying on the phone to her was screaming at the top of my lungs, ‘Please don’t kill my baby!’…. [S]he said, ‘It’s not a baby, and it’s not your decision,’” he recalled. “And she hung up, and I was in a panic. I just remember screaming and yelling at the top of my lungs, and throwing stuff around my apartment.”

His girlfriend’s mother also flew in, but unlike Corcoran’s parents, she supported the abortion. His parents offered to adopt the baby, but they remained unmoved, and his girlfriend went through with the abortion, because she and her family thought pregnancy would ruin her chances to graduate from college.

“This was the first time in my life that I felt truly powerless, that there was just not a solution,” he said. “I sat in my dorm room for the remainder of that semester. Didn’t go to class, didn’t go to take tests.” And his troubles only got worse.

“I failed out of college. I ended up in a seven-year methamphetamine addiction. I was homeless, unemployed, and it wasn’t until I was in treatment that I was able, through the counselors, to connect the dots that this is the void I was trying to fill with the drugs, with the addiction, with all the other destructive behavior that comes along with that.”

Cassy Cooke, Live Action znews