Conflicts 2026-03-24 00:15:57


Trump orders War Dept to postpone strikes on Iranian energy sites, citing ‘productive’ talks to end war

President Donald Trump, in an all-caps post early Monday morning, declared progress toward “resolution” of the war with Iran.

“I AM PLEASED TO REPORT THAT THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND THE COUNTRY OF IRAN, HAVE HAD, OVER THE LAST TWO DAYS, VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS REGARDING A COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION OF OUR HOSTILITIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“BASED ON THE TENOR AND TONE OF THESE IN DEPTH, DETAILED, AND CONSTRUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS, WHICH WILL CONTINUE THROUGHOUT THE WEEK, I HAVE INSTRUCTED THE DEPARTMENT OF WAR TO POSTPONE ANY AND ALL MILITARY STRIKES AGAINST IRANIAN POWER PLANTS AND ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE FOR A FIVE DAY PERIOD, SUBJECT TO THE SUCCESS OF THE ONGOING MEETINGS AND DISCUSSIONS.”

FOX Business’ Maria Bartiromo spoke with Trump shortly after the post, and Trump stressed, “Iran wants to make a deal badly.”

Trump’s move followed a threat by Iran to attack Israel’s power plants and those supplying U.S. bases across the Gulf region if the U.S. targets Iran’s power network.

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The post led to an immediate reaction in the oil futures market globally.

Iranian state television is denying that any negotiations are underway, but Trump rejected that reporting to Bartiromo, saying peace envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner had spoken with their counterparts Sunday night. 

The United Arab Emirates reported its air defenses were attempting to intercept new incoming Iranian fire Monday afternoon.

Prior to Trump’s announcement, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi acknowledged talking by phone with his Turkish counterpart, Hakan Fidan. Turkey has been an intermediary before in negotiations between Tehran and Washington.

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Speaking in Parliament, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday compared the challenges caused by the war to those faced during the COVID-19 pandemic and said India needs to be equally prepared this time.

Modi said the country’s power plants have adequate coal reserves and that all power supply systems are being closely monitored as summer approaches and demand rises. He said India’s fertilizer stocks remain sufficient.

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“This war is not in the interest of humanity,” Modi said. “India is encouraging all sides to end war peacefully.”

Power Couple of Chaos: How a tycoon and activist built a ‘Revolutionary Base’ at the House of Singham

As far-left American activists flood Cuba to support its flailing communist regime, U.S. officials have opened a sprawling investigation into an anti-America, pro-China nonprofit network forged during a wedding celebration in late February 2017, off Runaway Bay on Jamaica’s northern coast.

There, beneath a canopy of palm trees, an elite cadre of activists, intellectuals, celebrities, political organizers and comrades in a global Marxist-Leninist-Maoist movement assembled to celebrate the “Revolutionary Love” of two luminaries, both 62 at the time: Neville Roy Singham, an American-born tech tycoon living in Shanghai, and Jodie Evans, a red-haired veteran activist and co-founder of CodePink Women for Peace.

Like the opening scene of “The Godfather,” where powerful families consolidate power, the wedding celebration was about much more than the union of two people. 

Over four days of dancing, lectures and late-night conversations in venues from the Flavor Beach Bar to Sharkey’s Seafood, celebrating the bond of “Roy and Jodie,” alliances were formed that would shape protests, unrest and political agitation over the next decade, from the fiery 2020 scenes in Minneapolis to demonstrations today supporting the regimes in Cuba and Iran.

That weekend, Vijay Prashad, an academic described in the official wedding itinerary as a “Marxist intellectual,” spoke on a panel, “The Future of the Left.” Medea Benjamin, Evans’ friend and CodePink co-founder, danced barefoot at the wedding in a bright Indian outfit.

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Mao’s Blueprint for the ‘People’s War’

According to sources, the wedding attendees invoked the teachings of Mao Zedong, the 20th century Chinese Communist Party leader who ruled China with an iron fist, inspired by Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, and they discussed how to mobilize the masses to wage a Maoist “People’s War.” 

“The revolutionary war is a war of the masses,” Mao said in 1934.

Many were themselves relics of the Cold War, growing up before the Soviet Union was dismantled in 1989.

A monthslong Fox News Digital investigation pinpoints the Jamaica wedding as a starting point for launching a network of organizations that is today waging a new “People’s War” on America, aligned with the Chinese Communist Party’s geopolitical ambitions to eclipse the U.S. as a superpower through economic programs like the “Belt and Road” initiative, realizing the vision of China’s ideological godfather, Mao, through trade partnerships, economic deals and pro-China propaganda.

National security experts call it cognitive warfare.

Over almost a decade, Fox News Digital has learned, Singham and Evans have activated a global network that now numbers an estimated 2,000 hard-left organizations that parrot anti-U.S. propaganda supporting autocratic regimes leading China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela and Gaza. Within activist circles, far-left critics refer to leftists who align with authoritarian regimes as “tankies.” Many groups and leaders from Singham’s network, including Evans and Benjamin, are part of the pro-communist convoy now in Cuba.

Fox News Digital has established a documented $278 million that flowed from Singham into organizations that “sow discord” in the U.S., as House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith put it recently at a hearing on foreign malign influence in the nonprofit industry.

According to the data, Singham created a base from which the U.S. is now one of the world’s most prolific exporters of radical pro-China communist ideology. Singham and Evans didn’t respond to requests for comment.

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‘Mao’s Dream for a People’s Army’

Xi Van Fleet, a Chinese American who survived Mao’s purge of innocents during the Cultural Revolution, told Fox News Digital that Singham and Evans are following the communist dictator’s playbook.

“Neville Roy Singham and his wife, Jody Evans, are bringing into the 21st century Mao’s dream for a People’s War,” Van Fleet said.

Mao’s doctrine of the People’s War emphasized long-term struggle through decentralized networks, ideological indoctrination and the mobilization of civilian institutions rather than direct military confrontation. 

“They are bringing to the streets America’s worst nightmare of a Red Army that is seeking to destroy the United States and make China more competitive on the world stage,” said Van Fleet, the author of “Made in America: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Enabled Communist China and Created Our Greatest Threat.”

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‘Adorable Troublemaker’

Singham grew up familiar with Mao’s dictates.

He was born in mid-May 1954 in Middletown, Conn., the son of Archibald Singham, a Marxist-Leninist scholar of Sri Lankan heritage, and Shirley Hume, who also adhered to far-left ideology. By his own account, he joined the League of Revolutionary Black Workers as a teenager and worked at a Chrysler assembly line in Detroit. 

FBI agents once attempted to interview him at the Chrysler Eldon Avenue Plant, noting in their report that he was “potentially dangerous” because of his “background, emotional instability” or role in groups involved in harmful activities “inimical to U.S.,” according to a copy of the FBI report released by the House Ways and Means Committee.

According to the FBI report, Singham told the agents, “I don’t want to talk to you,” and walked away.

Singham quietly built his Thoughtworks technology company through the 1990s. Meanwhile, Evans was campaign manager for Democratic politician Jerry Brown’s losing 1992 California governor’s race. 

After they exchanged vows in Jamaica, Evans called Singham her “adorable troublemaker,” her “darling Roy” and “adorable husband” in Instagram posts. 

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5 Rings, 2,000 Groups

Fox News Digital analyzed 223 transactions that moved $591 million in total across five continents from 2017 through 2025, the latest year available, and found the money flows through five concentric rings of an ideological pipeline that spreads pro-China propaganda:

  • Level 1: Singham allegedly set up a system to funnel tax-exempt dollars through two apparent shell corporations and a donor-advised fund, GS Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund For Wealth Management Inc., which is closely associated with Goldman Sachs. Wealthy patrons can hide donations as anonymous, experts say. Revealed here for the first time, Goldman Sachs spokesman Tony Fratto said the company’s philanthropy arm “terminated” Singham’s donor-advised fund in February 2024.
  • Level 2: Singham poured a documented $278 million from the three organizations into six nonprofits – five created virtually overnight with Evans on the board of several and the sixth being Evans’ longtime agitation project, CodePink. The six organizations are BreakThrough BT Media, CodePink, Justice and Education Fund Inc., People’s Forum Inc., People’s Support Foundation Ltd. and Tricontinental Ltd.
  • Level 3: Those six nonprofits have pumped about $163 million into 52 organizations – including themselves – and, importantly, five regions identified only by geography.
  • Level 4: Over this period, 11 groups have distributed $150 million into four nonprofits and five geographic regions, including $23 million to Sub-Saharan Africa.
  • Level 5: The network doesn’t stop where the money trail ends, because 67 core groups partner with hundreds of groups worldwide, creating a network of about 2,000 organizations worldwide.

Singham Emerges

Last November, Singham walked through the doors of the Golden Tulip hotel in Shanghai for one of his rare public appearances, a two-day “Global South Academic Forum” conference blessed by the country’s ruling Chinese Communist Party, which the government officially calls the Communist Party of China, or CPC.

Videos and images from the conference provide a rare public window into the messaging, symbolism and participants of a network that otherwise operates opaquely.

The opening talk featured Prashad, Singham’s wedding guest, releasing a 172-page treatise written by Singham, chairman of the “International Advisory Board” of Tricontinental, a think tank Singham had funded and one of the conference sponsors. Another co-sponsor was the East China Normal University, which is administered by the Communist Party of China.

In the report, “80th Anniversary of the Victory of the World Anti-Fascist War: Acknowledging Who Truly Saved Human History and Restoring Historical Truth,” which Fox News Digital has uncovered, Singham rewrote the history of World War II to elevate the role of China and the “Global South” in defeating Nazi Germany.

On page 61, Singham blasted the West but held out hope it could be defeated. 

“Socialist peoples and leadership can defeat imperialism in any form – fascist then, hyper-imperialist now – despite every material disadvantage,” he argued. “That victory required genius, courage and unimaginable sacrifice. It also proved something imperialism cannot accept: ordinary people, organised and led with brilliance, can defeat any empire.”

Singham then quoted Mao, saying that the brutal leader “crystallized this truth” in his book “On Protracted War,” when he wrote, “The richest source of power to wage war lies in the masses of the people.”

In the paper, Singham diminishes the deaths of U.S. and British troops and service members, writing that the Soviets and China really won the war with, “59.8% socialists dead, 13.1% colonised peoples dead – only 1% Anglo-Americans dead.”

He also condemns British leader Winston Churchill’s “genocidal impulses.”

About 23 minutes into his remarks, Prashad welcomed Singham on stage with two other colleagues and Singham took a bow to the applause of the audience members and said, “Thank you, comrades, friends.” 

In a video of the event, unearthed by Fox News Digital, Singham railed against “the fascist lie” of the West that “there is a battle between fascism, democracy and communism.”

Singham articulated a view of global power that challenges the Western understanding of World War II and the postwar international order.

“Fascism is actually a face of capitalism and imperialism, as is colonialism. These are the three faces of a system that is quite now becoming very dangerous for us.”

He didn’t identify “us.” 

In the clip, Singham describes a “rules-based international order” that he argues is built on a “lie” about democracy. The excerpt is included for the purpose of reporting and analyzing the content of his remarks.

He talked about the Americans and “their” failure to hold fascists accountable from the “anti-fascist” war. 

“If we want to, therefore, have a new world order that is based on multilateralism that President Xi and CPC and China have proposed, we have to undo the ideological damage that has been done by the narrative of World War II,” he said, using the acronym for the Communist Party of China, called CCP in the West.

He ended by recognizing Soviet and Chinese fighters who died during World War II, and he urged the group to “honor” them for their underappreciated sacrifice. 

“China has a very important role, and we, in this forum, have a very important role,” Singham said, “that to envision a new order, a new multi-polarity order, requires, quite frankly, the deconstruction, a restorationist history of what really happened, who really suffered. Of those who died, almost 70% of the people who died in World War II were in China and the Soviet Union.”

The comments reflect a broader ideology that reframes historical events and positions China’s communist system as the better alternative to Western “democracy.”

Asked about Singham, Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Washington, D.C., told Fox News Digital, “I am not familiar with the specifics of this particular case.”

Pengyu added, “As a matter of principle, however, China consistently upholds the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries.”

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Asymmetric War Machine

As part of this investigation, Fox News Digital tracked street protests from New York City to Berkeley, Calif., and built a database with thousands of pages of IRS tax filings, corporate records, social media posts, website content and other material. 

The investigation analyzed 1,663 events the People’s Forum hosted from early August 2018 and its most recent gatherings early this year. The events included academics and researchers from at least 225 colleges and universities that are being analyzed separately.

The scale of what the couple built goes far beyond anything previously documented, revealing a network that acts like a transnational, asymmetric propaganda machine. It features a central headquarters, substantial war chest, defined command structure, propaganda wing and street-level foot soldiers. Its operations extend beyond the United States into multiple overseas theaters.

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‘Terrorist’

At a protest in Lower Manhattan in early January, David Chung, organizing director at the People’s Forum, and Hannah Priscilla Craig, art, culture and communications director at the People’s Forum, walked away from requests for interviews.

When approached by Fox News Digital at the People’s Forum offices in Manhattan, Brian Becker, a founder of the Party for Socialism and Liberation and the ANSWER Coalition, with operations at the People’s Forum, called the inquiries “witch hunting” and referred to a reporter as “a terrorist.” 

Manolo De Los Santos, executive director of the People’s Forum, compared the scrutiny to the era of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who conducted congressional hearings into communist infiltration in the U.S. in the 1950s.

Becker’s son, Ben Becker, editor-in-chief of BreakThrough BT News, a propaganda wing of Singham’s network, watched silently.

Soon after, in mid-February, the Global South Academic Forum released a video, “The World Is Small, The South Is Vast,” featuring highlights from last fall’s conference at Shanghai’s Golden Tulip hotel. The video underscores how the Singham network has created a “Revolutionary Base” in which academic discussion blends with historical symbols tied to revolutionary communism.

In the last seconds of the video, Singham stands at attention as a global communist anthem, “The Internationale,” plays, his comrades punching the air with their fists in solidarity.

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Trump’s Iran strategy is working and teaching our foes what deterrence means

President Donald Trump didn’t start this war. The Islamic Republic did — on Nov. 4, 1979, when it invaded the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. For nearly half a century, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism has killed and maimed more Americans than any other terrorist regime on Earth. It even plotted twice to assassinate Trump himself.

The regime’s attacks against the United States and our allies are not a series of isolated incidents, but a single, continuous war waged by the mullahs for 47 years. From the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing to the Iranian IEDs that killed 603 Americans in Iraq — roughly one out of every six American combat fatalities — the regime operated on the assumption that Washington lacked the stomach to respond. For years, that bet paid off. Tehran interpreted restraint not as prudence but as permission.

From the October 7 Hamas massacre of roughly 1,200 people, including 46 Americans to 180-plus attacks on U.S. forces last year, the regime has always told us what it wants: death to America.

To confront this looming threat, every American president since Jimmy Carter chose to kick the can down the road, calling it diplomacy. That changed in 2020 when Trump ordered the strike against Qassim Soleimani, the regime’s chief terrorist and IED mastermind. Washington’s foreign-policy class criticized it, but the Iranian people celebrated it.

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When the regime massacred more than 40,000 protesters in January 2026 and attempted to hide the atrocity from the world by shutting down the internet, the people again looked to Trump for help. He answered their call by doing what his predecessors never dared, moving to “end this long-running danger once and for all.”

The case for action was strong. Beyond humanitarian grounds, Steve Witkoff, the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, revealed the details of his and Special Peace Envoy Jared Kushner’s negotiations leading up to the conflict. Their Iranian counterparts proudly admitted they stockpiled enough uranium for 11 nuclear bombs, attainable in weeks. When the U.S. offered to supply Iran’s nuclear fuel for free in exchange for a halt to enrichment, Tehran refused. Witkoff concluded that Iran had no intention of doing anything other than weaponizing its stockpile.

This nuclear threat was built on decades of deception. The regime hid tubes from IAEA inspectors so it could secretly restore the Arak reactor. It concealed an entire nuclear weapons archive from negotiators (subsequently acquired by Israel), then stonewalled international investigators probing undeclared nuclear materials and activities at multiple sites.

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The Obama administration’s deeply flawed Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) did not constrain the Islamic Republic. Instead, it legitimized and funded Iran’s gradual pursuit of nuclear weapons. Trump accurately called the JCPOA “the worst deal ever negotiated.” He walked away from the agreement in 2018, instituting a maximum pressure campaign, denying the regime more than $200 billion in oil revenue that would otherwise have financed terror operations.

President Joe Biden inexplicably abandoned the strategy, handing Iran the breathing room to accelerate enrichment — until Trump struck the regime’s nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan last June during Operation Midnight Hammer. When Iran’s negotiators bragged about their bomb-ready stockpile, telling Witkoff, “We’re not going to give you diplomatically what you couldn’t take militarily,” Trump launched Operation Epic Fury.

The operation’s objectives — the embodiment of Trump’s “peace through strength” doctrine — were laid out by the Department of War: destroy Iran’s offensive ballistic missiles and production facilities, annihilate its navy and naval infrastructure, sever terrorist proxy networks, prevent nuclear-weapons development by targeting related sites and degrade the regime’s security apparatus — including Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) command centers, air defenses, missile and drone launchers and airfields.

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So far, the results are ahead of schedule. In a joint operation with Israel, Ali Khamenei, the regime’s leader, was killed alongside much of his inner circle and the senior military command — including the heads of the IRGC and Basij, as well as senior power broker Ali Larijani.

More than 80% of Iran’s ballistic missile stockpile and production capacity has been destroyed, along with the bulk of its naval fleet and port infrastructure. Iran’s proxy financing networks — the pipelines that kept Hezbollah, the Houthis and Hamas armed and operational — have been severed. Nuclear-related sites across the country have been obliterated. At least 49 senior regime officials have been killed or removed from the battlefield.

Their Iranian counterparts proudly admitted they stockpiled enough uranium for 11 nuclear bombs, attainable in weeks. 

This unprecedented degradation of the regime’s repressive forces is leveling the battlefield and creating unprecedented conditions on the streets for the Iranian people to rise up and challenge the mullahs directly.

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The job is not finished. But it is on track. Staying the course will finish it.

President Trump spoke directly to the Iranian people in his address launching the operation: “[T]he hour of your freedom is at hand…When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.” That moment is now within reach.

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Trump’s strategy is working. His legs are not wobbly and his commitment unshaken: “We don’t want to leave early, do we? … We don’t want to come back every two years.” Half-measures against this regime have a 47-year track record of failure. History will vindicate Trump’s resolve to end it.

As Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the leader of Iran’s democratic opposition, put it: Donald Trump will be remembered as the leader who stood with the Iranian people when it mattered most — alongside history’s greatest liberators.