Britain's seizure of an Iranian oil tanker off the coast of Gibraltar is unacceptable and tantamount to piracy, Defense Minister Amir Hatami has claimed.

In a speech broadcast live on state television on Monday, Hatami denounced the "threatening" actions taken by the Royal Marines, describing Britain's detention of the Iranian vessel as similar to "maritime robbery." He said that Iran would not tolerate such behavior. An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman echoed Hatami's sentiments, describing the incident as a clear case of "piracy."

On Thursday, British marines and Gibraltar police seized 'Grace 1,' an Iranian super tanker, off the southern coast of the Iberian Peninsula. Gibraltar's Chief Minister Fabian Picardo claimed that the ship was transporting crude oil to Syria "in violation" of EU sanctions placed on Damascus. Tehran has denied the accusation, insisting that the ship's cargo was not destined for Syria.

Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Seyyed Abbas Araqchi said on Sunday that the British had no legal right to seize the tanker, and that Tehran hopes to resolve the issue through legal means.

A top commander of Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps suggested a different response to the incident, calling for a British ship to be seized in retaliation if the Iranian vessel is not released.

The US State Department, the Republican Party Institute and Igor Kolomoisky can't all be wrong about what the overwhelming majority of Ukrainian voters is thinking - that there is a civil war in the Ukraine which cannot be won by US arms, money, and putsches in Kiev.

The question to be decided on polling day, July 21, for the new Verkhovna Rada (parliament) is: which side in the war, the eastern Ukraine including Odessa, or the Galicians around Lviv in the west, will win power?

The answer already appeared in a May poll by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and in the most recent June and July voter surveys by the local Ukrainian pollster Rating. A coalition of parties whose support is strongest in eastern Ukraine will control parliament and will back the new President, Volodymyr Zelensky (lead image, left), to negotiate terms with the breakaway governments of Donetsk and Lugansk (collectively, the Donbass), and with Moscow. On these polls, the Galician parties of western Ukraine will have no national party representation in parliament, no ministers nor high-ranking officials, and just a handful of constituency seats in Lviv, Brody and Ternopil.

Last week, the Galicians held their election rally in Toronto, where their faction is headed by Chrystia Freeland (lead image, right), Canada's foreign minister, with financing from the State Department through USAID, and from Victor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian steel oligarch, supported by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, a lobby group representing west Ukrainian refugees from the German Army's defeat in 1945. Freeland, a Galician by origin, and Kurt Volker, a German by origin and the State Department's Special Representative for Ukraine, gave the proceedings, entitled the Ukraine Reform Conference, an official government appearance. So did appearances and speeches by President Zelensky and a handful of Baltic state politicians.

But Toronto votes don't count. If the domestic Ukrainian vote follows the current Ukrainian and US polls, then Freeland's Galicians will be forced to retreat, just as her grandfather Michael Chomiak fled with the German Army as it was driven out of Ukraine and Poland by the Red Army. Chomiak ended up in Alberta, Canada. Freeland too. After July 21, the last retreat for the Galicians is Canada.

The Norway-brokered talks aim "to establish a negotiation on the end of the dictatorship," the opposition leader said. Backed by Russia and China, socialist President Nicolas Maduro has refused to step down.

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido on Sunday announced fresh talks with the government of President Nicolas Maduro.

Guaido, who declared himself acting president earlier this year, said the Norway-brokered talks aim "to establish a negotiation on the end of the dictatorship," referring to Maduro's regime.

"The Venezuelan people, our allies and the world's democracies recognize the need for a truly free and transparent electoral process that will allow us to surpass the crisis and build a productive future," he said.

The United States Air Force published a report, according to which F-22 Raptor has become an aging design and that, sooner than later, it will not be competitive against evolving threats as nations like Russia and China continue to invest in new state-of-the-art technologies.

A 2017 Pentagon report to Congress detailing production retail costs for Lockheed Martin's F-22 Raptor show that reviving the powerful stealth air superiority fighter would be prohibitively expensive. Moreover, it would take so long to reconstitute the production line that it would not be until the mid to late 2020s before the first "new" F-22s would have flown. By that time, the F-22 would be obsolete, challenged by new and highly advanced Russian and Chinese capabilities.

"The timeline associated with pursuing F-22 production restart would see new F-22 deliveries starting in the mid-to-late 2020s," the Air Force report to Congress reads. "While the F-22 continues to remain the premier air superiority solution against the current threat, new production deliveries would start at a point where the F-22's capabilities will begin to be challenged by the advancing threats in the 2030 and beyond timeframe. F-22 production re-start would also directly compete against the resources necessary to pursue the Chief of Staff of the Air Force-signed Air Superiority 2030 (AS 2030) Enterprise Capability Collaboration Team (ECCT) Flight Plan, which addresses the critical capabilities required to persist, survive, and be lethal in the rapidly evolving-highly-contested Anti-Access/Area-Denial (A2/AD) threat-environment."

As it was explained in the report, the aging F-22 design will not be competitive against rapidly evolving adversaries coming from Russia (Su-57) and China (J-20).

Germany has rejected a US request for German ground troops to move into Syria.

German government spokesperson Steffen Seibert said on Monday that Germany would not increase its military presence in the country.

On Friday, the US had called for Germany to send ground troops into Syria.

"When I say that the government intends to continue with its ongoing measures in the framework of the anti-IS coalition, then that means no ground troops," Seibert said.

'Significant military contribution'

The German military currently provides reconnaissance jets, a refueling aircraft and other non-combat military assistance in the fight against IS.

Germany has "for years been making a significant and internationally acknowledged contribution" to fighting Islamic State, Seibert said.

The US has called for European countries, including the UK, France and Germany, to pledge more support to the fight against Islamic State.

Our report, 'Syria Boils Over While Iran Heats Up' covered the recent resurgence of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in its attempt to breakout from Idlib in the north, while the National Front for Liberation (NLF) has renewed attacks near Deir Ezzor. The NLF is primarily supported by Turkey. The renewed attacks by takfiri terror groups in the north and south have caused Russian security forces and local government forces to respond.

Commander Miraj Ural also known as Ali Kayali of the pro-government Popular Front for the Liberation of Iskenderun was seriously wounded in an attempted assassination attack on July 5th, the attack reportedly led by Captain Naji Mustafa of Ajabha Alwataniya Lil Tahrir of the NLF.

Ali Kayali is accused of war crimes, but according to local reports, Commander Ural has done much to prevent Turkish-sponsored terrorists (NLF) from maintaining their base in Latakia. While the temporary loss of Commander Ural may pose a minor setback for the Syrian government, the greater point is about the general outbreak of new hostilities in the northwest.

The concern is that HTS and NLF terror militias have been allowed to re-group and re-arm by Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, on behalf of the United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel, subsequent to an uneasy truce agreed for Idlib last year.

The Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline is one of the ways for Germany to meet its growing energy demand, Economy Minister Peter Altmaier has said, rebuffing criticism that the project increases Russia's energy leverage on Berlin.

Germany will have an increased demand for natural gas, as the country is phasing out coal and nuclear power, the minister said in an interview to Bild shortly before his trip to the US - one of the most vocal critics of the Nord Stream 2 project.


"We do not depend on Russia. It is about shortening delivery routes and creating new supply structures," Altmaier said. He added that the completion of the pipeline, designed to deliver Russian gas to Europe, serves the same purpose as building new terminals for American liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the country.

The statement came as the Nord Stream 2 received another barrage of criticism, this time from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). On Sunday, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly's committee adopted a resolution against the Nord Stream 2 and Turk Stream projects, labeling them a tool that Moscow could allegedly use for its political purposes.

Key witnesses sought for questioning by Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz early in his investigation into alleged government surveillance abuse have come forward at the 11th hour, Fox News has learned.

Sources familiar with the matter said at least one witness outside the Justice Department and FBI started cooperating -- a breakthrough that came after Attorney General William Barr ordered U.S. Attorney John Durham to lead a separate investigation into the origins of the bureau's 2016 Russia case that laid the foundation for Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe.

While the investigative phase of the inspector general's long-running probe is said to be complete, the sources said recent developments required some witnesses to be reinterviewed. And while Barr testified that he expected the report into alleged Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuse to be ready in May or last month, multiple sources said the timeline has slipped.

'Someone must have been slandering Josef K, for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested'.

A few days ago, on 3rd July, Julian Assange celebrated his 48th birthday, if 'celebrated' is a word that can be used for a man in his predicament.

By a strange coincidence, the imprisoned journalist shares his birthday with Franz Kafka, a man who knew all about persecution.

In his classic novel The Trial, Kafka tells the story of one Josef K, a man who awakes one morning to find himself under arrest for a crime which is not revealed to him. The parallels with Julian Assange's plight are unsettling.

In a troubling trend that continues to be overlooked by international media, the Temple Activist movement that seeks to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and replace it with a Third Temple continues to advance its agenda. The movement's forward progress is largely thanks to its successful efforts in recent years to rebrand as a "civil rights" movement — securing support from secular and religious Zionists alike — as well as to growing levels of support in Israel's executive and legislative branches of government.

As was detailed in Part I of this series, the Temple Activist movement is now more mainstream than ever before and its effort to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, the third holiest site in Islam, has advanced with great rapidity since the year began and has picked up precipitously in recent weeks. Yet this new face of the Temple Activist movement — one that claims that its quest is to wrest control of the holy site from Jordanian and Palestinian custody in the name of "equal rights" for Israeli Jews — obfuscates the troubling origins of this once-fringe yet now normalized campaign.