Special to WorldTribune.com By John J. Metzler, April 22, 2026 A hundred days have passed since the carnage. Those dark days in early January when a rolling crescendo of massive pro-democracy demonstrations took to the streets of Teheran and Iranian cities to demand not only political freedoms, but the most basic choice of social and […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By John J. Metzler, April 16, 2026 Splashdown! After a successful nine-day mission around the Moon, including the planet’s rarely seen Far Side aka the Dark Side, the Artemis II astronauts returned to earth with a textbook landing in the Pacific Ocean just off San Diego, California. Manned Lunar spaceflight has returned! […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By John J. Metzler, April 6, 2026 NATO is again in the rhetorical cross hairs as the Trump Administration has called out some European members for not allowing American aircraft transit through U.S. European bases. Nor have the Europeans rallied to politically help the United States confront Iran’s blockade of the strategic […]
Special to WorldTribune.com Commentary by John J. Metzler, March 31, 2026 As embattled Ukraine faces its fifth Spring of war there’s an unsettling reality that the central European country’s conflict is clearly overshadowed and sadly overlooked since the U.S./Israeli war against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Indeed, both the urgency and economic downstream effects of […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By John J. Metzler, March 23, 2026 Many readers probably don’t remember the oil boycotts of 1973 or 1978. These were defining times which helped bookmark the 70’s. Now in the wake of Iran’s closing Strait of Hormuz, by blocking a key maritime route for petroleum shipments, global markets, economies and consumers […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By John J. Metzler, March 17, 2026 As the Iran War enters its third week of largely aerial and seaborne combat, there’s laser-like focus on the Straits of Hormuz and the wider Persian Gulf. Iran quite predictably has closed the narrow sea-lane to shipping and thus jolted oil markets from the Middle […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By John J. Metzler, March 10, 2026 LONDON — Just a year ago, Sir Kier Starmer, Britain’s Prime Minister was being hailed as a statesman for having defused a nasty political dustup between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky over Ukraine policy. A White House showdown threatened to derail American support for beleaguered […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By John J. Metzler, March 2, 2026 Darkness at Noon has shrouded Iran for nearly half a century. The Islamic Republic of Iran has tried, and somewhat successfully, to turn back the clock in the once secular and prosperous nation. It has since ruined the economy, disenfranchised women, supported terrorist proxies, and […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By John J. Metzler, February 25, 2026 Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s speech “hit the ball out of the park” during the recent Munich Security Conference in Germany. The address provided a policy tour de force which recalled the Cold War, post-communist history and then seamlessly blended the topic into a cohesive […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By John J. Metzler, February 16, 2026 A massive political tsunami swept across the Japanese islands as recent national elections scored a resounding electoral win for the incumbent political party and its maverick leader Sanae Takaichi. Though the outcome was assumed, her stunning triumph was not expected. The snap parliamentary elections reflected […]