Kim Jong Un appears with teenage daughter at live-fire rocket test in North Korea
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un watched a live-fire test of multiple rocket launch systems alongside his teenage daughter Saturday, as the regime escalates weapons demonstrations amid joint U.S.–South Korea military exercises, state media reported.
The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim oversaw a strike drill involving twelve 600mm ultra-precision multiple rocket launchers along North Korea’s east coast, according to The Associated Press.
South Korea’s military said it detected about 10 ballistic missiles launched from an area near the North Korean capital of Pyongyang.
KIM JONG UN APPEARS WITH DAUGHTER AT MAUSOLEUM, FUELING SUCCESSION SPECULATION
South Korea’s National Security Council condemned the launches as a provocation and said they violated United Nations Security Council resolutions that prohibit North Korea from conducting ballistic missile tests, The Associated Press reported.
Kim said the drill was meant to demonstrate the destructive capability of the country’s tactical nuclear forces, according to state media.
“If this weapon is used, the opponent’s military infrastructure within its striking range can never survive,” Kim said.
KIM JONG UN CALLS SOUTH KOREA ‘MOST HOSTILE ENEMY,’ SAYS NORTH COULD ‘COMPLETELY DESTROY’ IT
Photos released by state media showed Kim Jong Un and his daughter — believed to be named Kim Ju Ae, about 13 or 14 years old — walking near launch trucks, The Associated Press reported.
Kim Ju Ae has appeared alongside her father at numerous military events, missile tests and parades since late 2022, fueling speculation that Kim Jong Un may be positioning her as a future successor.
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The live-fire test followed after the U.S. and South Korea began their annual military drills earlier this week, which North Korea routinely condemns as rehearsals for an invasion.
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Last month, Kim Jong Un reportedly gave his teenage daughter a leadership role in the regime’s powerful “Missile Administration,” the body that oversees Pyongyang’s nuclear forces.
Son of British couple detained in Iran ‘let down’ by Starmer’s leadership on parent’s imprisonment amid war
The son of a British couple who have remained jailed in Iran for more than a year is appealing to President Donald Trump as the war in Iran complicates the situation.
“Conditions have intensified over the last couple of weeks, to say the least, as you might imagine with the complexity of war,” Joe Bennett told Fox News Saturday.
He said the notorious Evin Prison, where his parents are being held in Tehran, was already at capacity, and a recent surge of protesters has created severely crowded conditions.
“Food is scarce,” he added. “We’re worried about the replenishment of their stocks of food. I mean, it’s unsanitary conditions. It has been described as ‘hell on Earth’ by them.
FREED IRANIAN PRISONER SAYS ‘IN TRUMP, THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC HAS MET ITS MATCH’
“With the bombs that are dropping and the activity that’s happening there at the moment, the anxiety is heightened for us and for them as well.”
Craig and Lindsay Foreman were arrested in January 2025 by Iranian authorities while on a global motorcycling trip and were later sentenced to 10 years in prison on suspicion of spying.
Bennett spoke in Washington, D.C., Thursday at the McCain Institute’s US-UK Transatlantic Conference on Hostage-Taking and Arbitrary Detention, criticizing British leaders’ — namely Prime Minister Keir Starmer — “non-existent” advocacy for his parents, BBC News reported.
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“The clear message to the U.K. government and Starmer is to stop hiding behind this as a consular case,” Bennett told Fox News. “I think that was put out the window when they were sentenced to 10 years for espionage, accused of being spies for the Israeli Mossad and the U.K. government.
“What we haven’t seen is leadership qualities from Keir Starmer. We haven’t seen him advocate since their sentencing to, as you say, condemn this sham process and the treatment of U.K. nationals.”
Starmer’s silence has left Bennett’s family feeling “let down,” he said. “We feel there’s an opportunity to do so and there still is.”
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Bennett stressed that his parents’ detention and sentencing “is hostage taking.”
“It affects not just the U.K., the U.S. as well and Western civilization,” Bennett added.
“Innocent people are being targeted for leverage as political pawns.”
He also urged Trump to be “concise” with Iranian strikes and not to forget that Brits and Americans are in that prison.
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“Two things I’d like to say to Mr. Trump is, firstly, that safety is important,” Bennett told Fox News. “Missiles have hit Evin in June of last year but also were very close.
“So, I think the target — I just want him to be concise that, you know, so that Evin isn’t a part of that, and, secondly, is to not forget that they are there.”
He noted that, along with his parents, U.S. nationals are also imprisoned at Evin.
“And as a humanitarian plea, from a son for his mother’s release is what I’m asking for,” he said.
With dogs, dance and uncovered hair, Iranians defy ‘unholy alliance’ of socialists, radicals: ‘Hypocrites!’
Washington, D.C. – “You’re hypocrites!”
The shout cut across H Street NW last week as about 500 Iranian Americans supporting regime change in Iran marched toward a smaller group of pro-China socialists gathered two blocks away across from the White House, backing the radical clerics leading Iran.
“We are here for freedom of Iran,” Jay Gorbani, an Iranian American, explained as he held his Labradoodle puppy, Bella, while other members of a fledgling group, the National Solidarity Group for Iran, marched by.
“We are against the religious mafia regime of Iran.”
The far-left activists they confronted had assembled under bright green and yellow signs pulled out again this weekend that said, “STOP WAR IN IRAN.” But the organizers aren’t simply “peace” activists, a Fox News Digital analysis of scores of pages of communications by protest organizers revealed.
Fox News Digital has identified at least 75 organizations that have protested in support of the regime in Iran since the war began, including 50 organizations that are far-left, Marxist, socialist or communist; 22 that are Muslim organizations that support Islamism, or political theocracy; and the remaining three that are socialist-Islamist adjacent.
They parrot the pro-regime messages that the Chinese Communist Party has expressed in recent days as China sends military equipment to Iran, according to national security experts.
Last weekend, they coordinated demonstrations in 63 cities across 29 states and Washington, D.C., using identical signs, chants and protest infrastructure, which are available now in a digital toolkit, and they are replicating the protests this weekend and in the coming days.
The main organizers are funded by an American-born tech tycoon Neville Roy Singham, who is based in Shanghai, and lawmakers in the House Ways and Means Committee and House Oversight Committee have accused the network of promoting the interests of the People’s Republic of China.
Singham didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment.
The Singham-funded network includes the People’s Forum Inc., the ANSWER Coalition, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, CodePink Women for Peace and the Palestinian Youth Movement, which has helped organize these protests.
The Democratic Socialists of America, which helped elect Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City, also co-sponsored the protests. The organizations didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Global defiance
The confrontation in the nation’s capital reflects a broader struggle unfolding not only in Iran but also in the West.
From Phoenix to Dallas, Indianapolis, Toronto and Manchester in the U.K., members of the diaspora are increasingly challenging far-left activists they accuse of amplifying propaganda that favors the clerical rulers Islamic Republic.
This weekend, Gorbani and other Iranian Americans took to the streets again. They argue their advocacy for a secular democracy — and rejection of Islamism, or theocracy — offers the strongest response to rising acts of extremism by Muslim ideologues.
In recent days, incidents of violence in Austin, Texas; New York; and Norfolk, Virginia, have been punctuated by shouts of “Allahu Akbar,” or “God is great.”
‘Unholy alliance’
These tensions reflect a political dynamic with deep historical roots.
In 1965, Time magazine published an article, “Unholy Alliance,” bluntly describing “the Communists and fanatical Moslems” working together to oppose Iranian leader Shah Reza Pahlavi’s efforts to “modernize and Westernize Iran” as a secular democracy.
Time quoted Pahlavi warning of “an unholy alliance between two extremist wings,” communist revolutionaries that he called “unpatriotic, destructive Reds,” and radical Muslims, many wearing black robes, turbans and headscarves.
“This is the very familiar, what we call, unholy alliance between the black and the red that is the communists and the very reactionary people or strata. We always see it because they are both against the progress and happiness of the country,” Pahlavi said years later.
It’s an alliance now called the “red-green alliance,” with green symbolizing the color of Islam.
PROTESTERS HOST QUDS DAY RALLY IN NYC: “SHAME, SHAME USA!”
‘Freedom for Iran’ v. the regime
Last weekend, an Iranian American woman with another nascent group, DCProtests4Iran, faced off against women in black robes from the Manassas Mosque in northern Virginia, where mosque leaders support the Iranian theocracy. Her hair loose in the wind, she flashed a “V” for victory and shouted, “Down with the Islamic regime!”
Staring down H Street NW at the socialists, Reza Rezavi, an engineer from Rockville, Maryland, and a volunteer with DCProtests4Iran, said his group supports Pahlavi’s son, Reza Pahlavi, as the leader of a new transitional government that would realize a “democratic Iran.”
“Freedom for Iran!” screamed another Iranian American woman, holding her Lhasa Apso dog, Cocoa, rescued in 2019 from Tehran, where the regime has ruled dog walking illegal in many cities.
At protests from London to Washington, D.C., Iranian diaspora activists say they are confronting far-left groups they accuse of stealing democracy from them dating back to 1979, when they defended radical clerics who came to power in 1979, overthrowing Pahlavi.
“It’s cultural warfare,” said Paul Mauro, an attorney, former New York Police Department counterterrorism inspector and a current Fox News contributor.
“Marxism is probably the most malevolent single idea ever devised,” Mauro said. “And our culture has now become infected with a tolerance for Marxism that is being translated into a very dangerous political energy that is working with Islamists to undermine America as we know it.”
‘Would you like a sign?’
LIke clockwork, members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the ANSWER Coalition and other socialist organizations had arrived at 2:28 p.m. last weekend at the corner of 16th and H Street NW. One woman sipped an iced coffee, while another pulled a red wagon piled with megaphones. A third pushed a grocery cart filled with a marching drum and fluorescent yellow signs that said, “STOP THE WAR ON IRAN!”
A young woman dragged a dozen or so signs, asking, “Would you like a sign? Sign? Anyone like a sign?”
Tourists looked away as far-left activists, including CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin and DC coordinator Olivia DiNucci arrived with a new protest banner. Ignoring the approaching crowd of Iranian Americans, Benjamin posed for a photo with Korean Americans who support China, Iran and North Korea’s communism.
Soon, the group broke into familiar anti-American chants heard at protests for years, but this time they were muffled by the chants of the Iranian protesters, chanting, “USA! USA!”
Asked about Singham’s funding of the protest’s socialist sponsors, Benjamin said, “I’d rather not talk about it.”
Dancing in the streets in defiance
Minutes later, the Iranian American groups rounded the corner from L Street NW and stopped about 200 yards from the far-left activists on 16th Street NW. They blasted Iranian music and danced.
In defiance of strict interpretations of Islam, families walked pet dogs near Bella and Cocoa as women shouted with their hair in the wind, and men and women freely danced beside each other to Iranian pop music, acts mostly banned in Iran. The scene stood in defiance of the strict religious rules imposed by Iran’s clerics, who have barred pet dogs, forced women to cover their hair and suppressed music, dancing and dissent.
An Iranian American woman smiled and slowly raised her middle finger at the socialist activists, their chants of “Down, down with the USA,” drowned out by music blaring in Farsi.
Across the police line, field marshals from the Party for Socialism and Liberation corralled elementary-aged girls swaddled in black headscarves to the microphone, filming them close up as the children stumbled over their words, reading chants from a phone as activists egged them on.
When a girl got in the shot, the field marshal filming the canned chanting tried to shoo her away.
“Those people are supporting terrorists,” said one Iranian American with the reform-era Iranian flag draped over his shoulder like a cape that featured a lion emblem. “We are against them.”
“We do not support the regime,” said Siamak Aran, an organizer with the National Solidarity Group for Iran, as Iranian Americans marched behind him, chanting, “USA! USA!”
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Some Iranian soccer players granted asylum by Australia chose to return home, local official says
Three of the six Iranian women’s soccer players who accepted asylum in Australia are returning to Iran, according to Tina Kordrostami, a councilor for the Australian City of Ryde.
Kordrostami told Fox News Channel’s “Fox Report With Jon Scott” Saturday that the three players are returning, calling it an “upsetting update,” but she could not discuss exact reasons why.
“They are heavily intimidated and being communicated to directly by the regime,” Kordrostami said.
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When asked if the players are being threatened, Kordrostami said, “I don’t think that, I know that.
“I know families have even been detained. I know family members are missing. One thing I really would like for people in the West to understand is that Iranians within the country have in many ways given up on the West, and they are only relying on one another to survive this regime.
“So, when we do offer them a way out, it’s not often that easy for them to understand that it is in fact a way out. They are more so used to relying on one another and this is survival for them.”
Kordrostami added that the women who return face potential severe consequences.
“We are very worried about them. We know for a fact that they will not be safe. I’ve mentioned this before. When you do break a contract as an athlete in Iran, you can face the death penalty. So, I know these women are young. I know that they are making an incredibly difficult decision, and I have the utmost respect for them,” she said.
“Coercion is being used here, intimidation tactics. And we even had an individual amongst the girls within Sydney and Brisbane who was influencing them constantly in their ear, letting them know that whatever Australia is offering them, it will not work.
The team arrived in Australia before Israel and the U.S. launched a joint offensive against Iran Feb. 28. The strikes led to the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
IRANIAN WOMEN’S SOCCER TEAM REFUSES TO SING NATIONAL ANTHEM IN SILENT PROTEST AT ASIAN CUP
Iranian players refused to sing their national anthem before an opening loss to South Korea March 2, which was viewed by some as an act of resistance described by an Iranian commentator as the “pinnacle of dishonor.”
Australian Minister of Home Affairs Tony Burke announced at a news conference Tuesday that another Iranian women’s soccer player and a team staffer had accepted asylum in Australia amid fear of punishment upon returning to Iran after five players accepted asylum on Sunday.
Burke added that almost all the Iranian players and many of the support staff were taken aside individually as they passed through Australian Customs at an airport before they boarded their flight back to Iran.
And they were each given the opportunity to accept an asylum offer without Iranian state officials present, but other players or staff accepted the offer to stay.
The asylum bids came amid increased pressure from President Donald Trump and Iranian groups in Australia.
“Australia is making a terrible humanitarian mistake by allowing the Iran National Woman’s Soccer team to be forced back to Iran, where they will most likely be killed. Don’t do it, Mr. Prime Minister, give ASYLUM. The U.S. will take them if you won’t,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Trump later wrote, “I just spoke to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, of Australia, concerning the Iranian National Women’s Soccer Team.
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“He’s on it! Five have already been taken care of, and the rest are on their way. Some, however, feel they must go back because they are worried about the safety of their families, including threats to those family members if they don’t return. In any event, the Prime Minister is doing a very good job having to do with this rather delicate situation. God bless Australia!”
Iran head coach Marziyeh Jafari was quoted as saying on Australia’s national news agency that the team wants “to come back to Iran as soon as we can.”