The Diversity Armed Forces of Canada

"As a result of these changes, CFLRS [Canadian Forces Leadership and Recruit School] is experiencing significant changes in candidates' basic capabilities and increasing pressures on staff and instructors." 

"For many candidates it is the first time that they have lived with members of a different sex and for some it is also the first time they have been expected to treat women as their peers."

"Older candidates from certain cultural backgrounds are also more likely to experience friction when responding to younger CFLRS instructors due to cultural hierarchies based on age." 

"[An early foreign-origin-heavy French platoon was] plagued by allegations of racism from candidates against staff but equally candidates against other candidates and constant infighting between cultural blocks within the platoon -- i.e., Cameroonian candidates against those from Cote d'Ivoire."

"[On the English side, platoons with heavy permanent resident members] suffered from low fitness levels."

National Defence, Canadian Forces Leadership and Recruit School report 

 

"[The military is currently working on an] onboarding tool [to explain the institution's ethos and culture to candidates'."

"On French [officer] platoons, where permanent residents have made up 50 - 80% of all candidates, there have been more emotional responses, with francophone staff openly raising the question of whether it is appropriate for officer commissions to be granted to non-Canadian citizens."

Commodore Pascal Belhumeur, spokesman, Department of National Defence 

Recruits on a field course sweep for dropped belongings during basic military training (BMQ) at the Canadian Forces Leadership and Recruit School in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., on April 29, 2024. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)

 

Through Canada's recruiting of non-citizens for the Canadian Military enabled by an experimental drive to increase the active participation of Canadian Armed Forces personnel, a January internal report highlights that the lowering of entrance standards has brought with it somewhat predictable complications, where recruits fail at greater rates, reflecting those changes to recruit practices dated from late 2024. 

 

New changes to the Canadian Armed Forces recruitment process:

• Restrictions on candidates with certain health and mental health issues lifted;
• More permanent residents permitted to join;
• Security screening reduced
• Old aptitude test  dropped

The tight restrictions of 2022 which permitted permanent residents to join the Armed Forces were relaxed in 2024, resulting in close to 800 recruits, in months following the change; in 2025, 1,400 permanent residents were recruited. Among permanent resident candidates instructors note poor English and French skills, along with problems emerging with new male recruits accepting the presence of women as military peers. In basic training surveys included complaints of "inter-candidate cultural frustration", the major concern linked to a lack of respect for women.

 

"That sort of behaviour is absolutely not tolerated in the Canadian Armed Forces"; any members engaging in such behaviour are removed "if it comes up", according to Commodore Pascal Belhumeur. A higher attrition rate is viewed as an assurance that preventive mechanisms are in play. Overall, the rate of basic training completion dropped from 85 percent to 77 percent in the first three quarters of 2025, according to the report.

 

Greater numbers of candidates are ordered to repeat a course, where previously the numbers were lower, ranging from four to eight percent, whereas in 2025 that repeat-course number was 15 percent. In 2023, 62 percent of candidates retaking a course saw medical reasons as the cause; another 15 percent for failing practical evaluations (i.e., drills, weapons and fitness); while another two percent retook a course for failing academic evaluations on topics from sexual misconduct to navigation theory. 

 

New recruits carry duffles full of kit during basic military training (BMQ) at the Canadian Forces Leadership and Recruit School, in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., on May 1, 2024. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)

 

Only 45 percent of candidates ordered to retake courses in the 2025 fiscal year saw medical reasons as the cause, with 27 percent for failing practical evaluations, and seven percent for academic failures. A higher number of mentally unwell recruits who signed as a result of the lowered entry bar, are mentioned as well in the report. As well, 15 percent of permanent resident candidates failed the initial fitness test; that number was 8 percent among citizen candidates, including newly naturalized citizens. 

 

The basic training success rate for citizens among officer candidates is 85 percent, and 88 percent for permanent residents. One early French officer platoon was comprised 83 percent of permanent residents, half of which were foreign-born recruits. Non-citizen enrolment in the average French officer course is 57 percent ,while amongst English officer platoons permanent residents take up about 30 percent typically, comprising about 25 percent on average, of course enrolment. 

 

More troubling, according to the report, some candidates had been resident in Canada for a mere three months, finally corrected with the imposition of a three-year residency requirement for all candidates. Despite the higher attrition rate among candidates and the increase in cultural and competency problems, the new standards for recruitment, according to the military still resulted in a net-positive impact, since recruitment numbers have increased notably. 

 

 

"I think the Canadian Armed Forces that we are recruiting is a representation of Canadian society now."

"If you look at the number of Canadians that are foreign-born and the number of people who we're bringing into the Canadian Armed Forces, I think we are representative of the Canadian demographic."

"[Recruitment is competitive -- and the military is] proud to reflect the diversity of Canadian society."

"It's absolutely worth it. We went from 63,000 to over 68,000 people in uniform because of the change that we've done, and we've done this in a way without dropping the training standard."

Commodore Pascal Belhumeur 

 

 

Hitting Russia's Oil Refineries Deep Within

[The Orsknefteorgsintez oil refinery [Orsk in Orenburg region] was hit."

"A strike was recorded, followed by a fire on the territory of the enterprise."

"The facility is involved in supplying the Russian occupation army."

Ukraine Military General Staff

 

"The enemy must understand a simple fact: it no longer has a 'safe rear'."

"Distance no longer guarantees protection -- every region where enterprises support the war against Ukraine is within reach'."

Security Service of Ukraine 

 

"We have to minimize [Russia’s] physical ability to send oil to the vessels and transport it outside of their ports."

"Our main target here is to limit Russia's ability to finance war."

"Prices rose without our participation. It was because of the Iran war initiated by the U.S."

"But for Ukraine it has created additional problems because [Moscow] is getting money for the same volume of oil it exports."

Oleksandr Kharchenko, director, Kyiv-based Energy Industry Research Center  

Ukrainian drone strikes hit oil infrastructure across Russia this week, sparking huge fires. (Reuters: Governor of Krasnodar Region Veniamin Kondratyev)

 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared the success of his military's latest long-range drone attack at an oil facility deep within Russia, causing a huge fire on Wednesday. The oil facility is located in the Ural Mountains, the Perm region of Russia, over 1,500 kilometres from the border with Ukraine. There, a Russian oil pumping station was struck, reflecting Ukraine's military strategy of targeting Russia's energy infrastructure.  

 

Perm Governor Dmitry Makhonin, while admitting a drone had hit, declined to mention details, leaving it as an unspecified industrial facility. The fire that resulted was massive. Yet another Ukrainian success in its counteroffensive to the Russian military's unceasing night time attacks on Ukrainian cities and the country's energy infrastructure. An increasing number of long-range attacks with increasingly accurate, domestically developed drones has infuriated Vladimir Putin, who spits rage at Ukraine's 'terrorism'.

 

Russia's larger army continues to press slowly forward passing four years of an invasion that isn't really war, according to Vladimir Putin, but a 'special military operation' where he has ordered his military to flatten Ukrainian towns and villages, dislocating millions of Ukrainians as he forges on with his brutal mission to occupy more than the 20 percent of Ukraine's geography it currently holds, to add to Greater Russia. 

 

A Panamanian-flagged vessel carrying Russian crude oil is moored of the coast of the Philippines on April 1. The country purchased its first shipment of Russian oil in five years because of the global supply crunch (Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)

 

Ukraine, for its part, continues to have an advantage in refining drone technology, both for attack and for defence purposes. The video that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted showed an immense plume of dark smoke rising into the atmosphere close to an urbanized area. Ukraine, its president explained, was expanding the range of its long-distance strikes. He announced a new phase in efforts to limit Russia's capacity to wage war, by impacting its revenue stream through oil extraction and shipment to willing buyers. 

 

"The straight-line distance is more than 1,500 kilometres. We will continue to increase these  ranges", he promised. 

 

Only the previous day, Ukraine had struck the Tuapse oil refinery and terminal on the Black Sea for the third time in less than two weeks. The attack led to the evacuation of the local population from the area, while creating what President Putin stated could be "serious environmental consequences". Mr. Putin's blinkered vision fails to recognize his own orders to the Russian military create similar conditions in Ukraine.  

 

A satellite image shows smoke rising following a Ukrainian drone attack on an oil pumping station amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict, in Bashkultaevo, Perm Region. (Reuters: Planet Labs BBC)

 

The plan of escalating Ukraine's long-distance strike campaign against Russian oil facilities to put a grinding stop to Moscow's reaping a financial windfall from a U.S. waiver on sanctions in the midst of a global supply shortage caused by the Iran war, appears to be going the way of Ukraine's advantage.  

"Kyiv is exploiting the vulnerabilities of Russia's large land mass."

"Ukrainian forces will likely continue to exploit the large attack surface of Russia's deep rear and overstretched Russian air defences to launch more frequent and larger strikes against Russian oil infrastructure and military assets."

Institute for the Study of War, Washington  

 

 

Naloxone and Opioid Overdose 'Just the Facts'

"Severe naloxone-induced opioid withdrawal with agitation should be managed as a high-risk agitated delirium, prioritizing patient and staff safety through standardized emergency department protocols, including verbal de-escalation attempt, trained security involvement and judicial use of physical and chemical restrains when necessary."

'Just the Facts' report summary 

 

"It [report] speaks to the increased toxicity of what's circulating on the street right now."

"There's no question: When we use naloxone to reverse patients, they can become very agitated and violent. They're generally incoherent. It's rare that they're like that in the usual state. It's just that in the withdrawal state, they're thrashing, they're throwing punches, they're yelling and it can be very scary for the team, and it can be very disruptive [including for other hospital patients]."

"That's the nature of emergency care. You can have a case like this happening a metre, or a couple of metres away from a 95-year-old who has broken their hip. They're in pain, they're scared and now to have this nightmare scenario playing out just a few metres away. That can't be good for anyone's recovery." 

Dr. Eddy Lang, emergency physician, Calgary

Thrashing, agitated patients put doctors, nurses and other patients in danger in emergency rooms. Photo by Dan Janisse /Postmedia

 

Canada's overloaded emergency rooms are now facing a new reality brought to the fore by an increasingly toxic drug supply, forcing emergency room doctors to make greater efforts to balance reverse of overdoses while at the same time being mindful to avoid users heading into withdrawal sufficiently violent they endanger those making the effort to save their lives. It can now take 10 times the usual dosage of naloxone to restore breathing sufficiently to keep an individual overdosing from dying, given the proliferation of increasingly toxic drugs.

 

Street drugs contaminated with other chemicals, including animal tranquilizers. These are lethally dangerous combinations that people unheeding of the warnings, fixated on reaching that high are grasping at in their captured dependency. Yet the potentially life-saving overdose antidote now poses another potential threat in that one single dose is insufficient against the powerfully drug-intoxicating effects of the contaminated street drugs. Higher naloxone doses run the very real risk of "acute agitated withdrawal", a brief report warns, recently published online prior to print publication in the Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine.

 

 

 

Across Canada, reports of stark increases in opioid-related overdoses are coming in from city after city. Paramedic and emergency staff already under strain by the demands occasioned by an aging population, a population whose increase has been unprecedented through immigration, a migrant crisis, refugee intake and foreign worker programs, as well as large numbers of foreign student visas all impacting on the universal health care system overwhelming medical practitioners, nursing staff and other hospital workers, now face increased demands brought about by drug overdose emergencies.

 

What's more, Emergency Rooms are seeing worsening episodes of violence, leaving those last-resort medical care utilities in a state of chronic disaster situations. Care intensities require a new focus and protocol; more resources, more equipment, more staff, more medication, more emergency department space -- when the ERS are already at bursting point, overcrowded, out of available beds, people ending up being cared for as they lie on cots in hospital corridors, or even on floors.

 

"Previously these patients wouldn't require high levels of critical care and are now requiring admission to hospital or admission to ICU for more intensive care for long periods of time."

"Five years ago, we would have gone with a different dosing strategy."

"Now we go low and slow and take our time, anticipating that the patient may respond in a manner that's unsafe." 

Dr. Taryn Lloyd, emergency and addictions medicine, St. Michael's Hospital, Toronto  

Tested street drug samples turn up the presence of fentanyl containing medetomidine and xylazine, tranquilizers and sedatives used by veterinarian medicine. Those drugs act differently in humans, decreasing blood pressure and heart rate, and slowing breathing. Some contain Valium or other benzodiazepines. A mixture of fentanyl, medetomidine and benzos in the same sample are turning up in some analyses. And then, there is this: naloxone works only for opioids, it is not a treatment for, nor can it reverse the effects of other contaminants.

 

All of which makes overdoses more complex when the toxicity of the contaminants can lead to significant changes in heart rhythms or heart rates, prolonged sedation and brain injuries. It takes longer for the bloodstream to clear them out. People are found in deeper states of coma by attending paramedics. "Unfortunately, sometimes the amount of oxygen deprivation that occurs during these prolonged ingestions is fatal", advised Dr. Lang.

 

Dr. Lang describes situations where someone barely breathing, unable to be roused suddenly turns around "to now they're thrashing, jumping up in bed and their arms flailing in a way that is really scary to see and can be very traumatizing to the staff". Dr. Lang points out that despite concerning opioid overdoses, alcohol and crystal meth seem to be more emphatic sources of violence than opioid overdose withdrawal.  

 

Purple crosses commemorate those who died of toxic drug overdoses on International Overdose Awareness Day. (Carmen Groleau/CBC)

 

"It's such a powerful addiction. They're in this warm cloud of happiness that is just so addictive. They have to go back and back, even if it means they're homeless, they're involved in crime, they've alienated their families."

"So imagine, you're in this state of warm cloudiness and suddenly you are abruptly and violently woken up by naloxone."

"Any pain you may have been covering up with the opioid use is now heightened, and your whole body is aching." 

Dr. Eddy Lang, Calgary 

Canadian Universities Captured By Woke Totalitarianism

"Universities are in serious trouble because they've been seriously impacted by equity, diversity and inclusion ideology."

"That's the idea that in order to be inclusive you need to stop certain ideas from being discussed."

"This is across the board in universities in Canada. There's some obviously that are worse than others, but the University of Lethbridge is the worst of all of them."

"There's a lot of self censorship going on and a lot of direct censorship where universities take a political position and they make life difficult for anyone who challenges that position."

"My ultimate objective is to make universities academic spaces once more. I'm trying to sound the alarm about how important universities are for democratic societies." 

Professor Frances Widdowson

 

Professor Widdowson, a former associate professor in the department of economics, justice and policy studies at Mount Royal University in Calgary, is viewed by most Canadian academic institutions as a social/academic disrupter and by extension a health and safety risk. This view has tainted her value as an academic to those committed to practising DEI as a fulcrum around which all university departments are expected to operate.

 

In 2021 Professor Widdowson's position at the university was terminated. The university's own faculty association claimed alongside Professor Widdowson that her dismissal represented a breach of academic freedom, while an arbitrator ruled that the termination represented a disproportionate response from Mount Royal University. For her part, the professor views the University of Lethbridge which had raised a trespass notice over her presence, as hopelessly infected with the oppression of woke ideology's totalitarianism. 

"In recent years, Canadian universities have drifted from their core purposes — education and discovery — toward a divisive program of redistribution and social change."

"Ottawa bears significant responsibility for this shift. The federal granting councils for science and engineering, health and the social sciences have weaved “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI) into their rules for access and adjudication."

"In practice, DEI now means: mandatory self‑identification questionnaires for applicants and reviewers, compulsory bias‑training modules, equity targets tied to eligibility for marquee programs, and grant criteria that reward conformity to identity‑based frameworks over scientific promise."

Mikko Packalen, Financial Post 

Aristotle Foundation

 

Professor Widdowson, in contravention to the accepted ideology of DEI and the effects of 'imperial colonialism', made herself persona non grata with-a-vengeance at Canadian universities when she pushed back in her politically incorrect observations  relating to the May 2021 assertion by the Tkemlups te Sewepemic Nation, when it declared that ground-penetrating radar had revealed the presence of hundreds of unmarked graves of First Nations children attending the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. 

 

Canadian flag at half-mast

That stunning 'revelation' that shocked the nation and made international headlines, and which led the-then prime minister to declare a genocide had been perpetrated on Canada's Indigenous communities, while ordering the Canadian flag at half-mast for six months was not related to reality. The contractor who had used the ground-penetrating radar had made it quite clear in his report that the anomalies registered were not those of dead bodies; they could have been anything, from buried and long-forgotten signage, to logs or any kind of discarded objects buried by time.

 

Millions in federal funding went out to the First Nations claiming such previously unknown graveyards of aboriginal children, to pay for deeper investigations into identifying whether there were human remains buried where they were said to be, or merely random anomalies within the soil. The years passed, the funds disappeared, but there were no startling revelations reflecting reality. Despite which no questioning of the fully accepted claims were to be countenanced. And Professor Widdowson did her share of  questioning.  "I argue that there's no evidence at this time for the existence of clandestine burials at Kamloops."

 

Critical race theory: 'Diversity' is not the solution, dismantling white supremacy is. Carleton University

 

A proposed address at University of Lethbridge called "How 'Wokism' Threatens Academic Freedom" scheduled by Professor Widdowson was cancelled in 2023. Her presence on the Lethbidge campus for an event in February saw a large protest from students banging drums and shouting abuse. That event persuaded the university to issue a trespass notice against Professor Widdowson. "Safety concerns and significant disruptions" at other universities caused by Professor Widdowson was the reason stated for the trespass notice.

 

When, in April, Professor Widdowson returned to the university she was deterred from  going on campus. She returned again, when she was ordered by security to leave, in recognition of the trespass order. When she protested "they called in the police and put me in handcuffs and dragged me out and put me in the paddy wagon, and then gave me a $600 ticket", she said. Which sounds rather like an action one might expect in a police state. "The University has reasonable grounds to believe that Widdowson's presence would again result in significant disruption that exceeds the University's ability to manage it", was the response to news media. 

 

Professor Widdowson's idea of teaching academic rigour is questioning rationales that do not necessarily make sense, to obtain a well-rounded explanation of why they should be accepted and for that purpose she uses Spectrum Street Epistemology where students are asked whether they strongly agree, strongly disagree or are neutral on positions much like the Kamloops graves controversy. Once a student makes a choice they are then asked for evidence to support their belief. "It's a very good way to get people to be thinking about the evidence that they are using to come to the understanding that they are", she explained.  

 

National Post.com

 

"By putting pressure on the political side, with the politicians, the legal side, and the cultural side, by going in with direct action and exposing the unbelievable totalitarianism which is starting to emerge on these campuses, I'm hoping that I'll be able to put universities in Canada back on an academic footing."

Professor Frances Widdowson 

Antisemitism in Canada -- a National Crisis

2025 Audit of Antisemitic Incidents

"Antisemitic conspiracy theories were disseminated with such frequency in 2025 that it is easier to summarize the totality of the accusations made against Jewish Canadians by simply stating that they were made the scapegoats for all the world's problems."

Antisemitism has become so ubiquitous in our society that the word Jew is now commonly used as a slur to disparage and malign non-Jews. In contemporary Canada, Jewishness itself has become derogatory."

Richard Robertson, Director of Research and Advocacy, B'nai Brith Canada  

The annual audit produced by B'nai Brith Canada through its League for Human Rights documents 6,800 antisemitism incidents across Canada. That would be the equivalent of 18.6 documented incidents occurring each and every day. Needless to say that number would report only those incidents brought to the attention of authorities, or in this instance, B'nai Brith. Not everyone experiencing the scourge of an antisemitic attack will report a verbal assault in person or online. It has become too commonplace, and Jewish resilience shrugs and carries on.

 

The number that was recorded and released in the audit represents the highest volume since the League began its audit production in 1982. Before October 7, 2023's Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel, antisemitism was confined to the underground, when civil society would not countenance it. By 2025, however the incidence of antisemitic slurs had increased by 145.6 percent since 2022. Antisemitism, noted the report, had become so widespread that it appears to grow on its own momentum, no longer linked to events such as the war in Iran.

 

Members of Montreal's Jewish community gathered on April 22, 2026, to celebrate the 76th anniversary of the Israeli state's founding. (Olivia O'Malley/CTV News)

 

"We need to protect Canadians from the dangers that are rapidly increasing and emerging from digital spaces. Whether they are being fuelled by foreign-based entities or by foreign corporations, that shouldn't matter."

"Canada must regulate its online realm and must protect Canadians from the dangers presently existing within it."

Richard Robertson, B'nai Brith Canada 

Pro-Palestinian supporters set up across the street from the Israel Independence Day celebration on April 22, 2026. (Olivia O'Malley/CTV News)

 

The level of documented antisemitic incidents declined somewhat in both Quebec and Alberta in 2025. However, Ontario. the Prairies, Atlantic Canada and British Columbia saw significant increases in the number of antisemitic incidents. Most incidents occurred online, representing 92 percent of those reported, and appears to be part of a continuing trend. Year over year, the prevalence of online incidents of antisemitism have crept ever upward.

 

Listing recommendations for each level of government, the report called for a federal Royal Commission to be struck on antisemitism. Government at the federal level should establish a national antisemitism emergency task force -- should view violent antisemitic attacks as domestic terrorism and -- deploy added national security resources in the protection of Jewish institutions. 

 

As for the provinces and territories, the report recommends the immediate funding of security protection for Jewish institutions and the establishment of a special prosecution unit tasked specifically to address hate crimes The report recommended that municipalities ban events that incite hate and intimidation, exercise zero tolerance for intimidation expressed in public spaces, and for the prioritization of protecting Jewish neighbourhoods and institutions.

 

More than fifty Toronto police officers receive a morning briefing Sunday April 5 at Sheppard Plaza in North York before ensuring any anti-Israel or pro-Israel protesters remain out of residential neighbourhood streets. (Photo by Ellin Bessner/The CJN)

 

"What we need in Canada is a multi-level approach to fighting antisemitism. This is a national crisis. We need task forces."

"We need consolidated efforts to provide ... the immediate relief that is required, such as security infrastructure, funding and policing."

"But we also need legislative change. And this is something that no government in this country can do alone."

Richard Robertson, B'nai Brith 

The report contains a section on "the demonization of Zionism". What the report does not do is make a record of the apparent lack of interest expressed by various levels of government throughout the country at the viral and all-too-obvious 'protests' against Israel's actions in taking military steps to defend itself from the never-ending perniciously violent actions of Palestinians -- organized terror groups, and ordinary Palestinian civilians as well who have been incited by their governments in the West Bank and Gaza to value martyrdom in the cause of obliterating the Jewish State from the Middle East.

 

A lack of interest in the face of threats against Canadian Jews, the constant vilification of Jewish Canadian institutions by Muslim groups for their support of Israel, the clear civil disruptions that offend Canadian law, a tolerance for hate manifested by repeated statements of globalizing the Intifada, of a 'Final Solution' as coded, but not too-subtle messages of violence against Jews that most municipal, provincial and the federal government tolerate, while decrying antisemitism and linking it to the evil of 'Islamophobia'; a meaningless sop when it is abundantly clear that Islamists within Canadian society are the fount of the avalanche of antisemitic rhetoric and venom of today.  

"It is not OK to subject a minority in this country to unprecedented levels of hate because of the actions of a foreign government."

"The numbers speak for themselves. This is a national crisis, and we have not seen a response sufficient to the moment."

"We need a whole-of government approach. We need the same response to tackling antisemitism that we've seen from our federal government when it comes to other crises in this country."

Richard Robertson, B'nai Brith 

Aleph Bet Judaica, seen after a rock was thrown at its window on Sunday, Apr. 26, 2026. (Courtesy Photographer)

 

The Sting of the I.R.G.C. 'Mosquito Boats'

"The Islamic Republican Guard Corps navy works more like a guerrilla force at sea."

"It is focused on asymmetrical warfare, especially in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz."

"So instead of relying on big warships and classic naval battles, it depends on hit-and-run attacks."

Saeid Golkar, Guards expert, political science professor, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga

 

"When it is very bumpy, they [armed forces onboard] cannot shoot."

"[They are also ill-equipped to go head to head with a ​warship, and would likely suffer] very heavy casualties [​in any direct assault on one]."

"Even if they tried to saturate the ship’s defences by attacking from multiple directions, they would be extremely vulnerable to the air support that would be called in."

"It is going to be ​much harder to eliminate ⁠the small boat threat than it was to destroy Iran’s larger naval vessels, which were big targets that were relatively easy to find and track and, at most, only had a limited ability to defend themselves from air attack." 

Jeremy Binnie, Middle East specialist, defence intelligence company Janes 

The IRGC speed boats are fast, light, and easily replaceable. NurPhoto via Getty Images

It all began when recreational boats were mounted with rocket-propelled grenades or machine guns, when Iran first began using small boats that were fast, maneuverable, and deadly when patrolling the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf. Those recreational craft underwent a  transformation when a range of specially designed small boats, along with miniature submarines and marine drones were built to the IRGC specifications, over the years. That 'mosquito fleet' of small boats has become a real and present threat in the Strait as a consequence of the U.S.-Israeli conflict in Iran.

 

The flotilla of small, fast boats whose purpose by the IRGC has been to harass local and international shipping through the Gulf, has turned now to threatening and firing upon global shipping in the Strait of Hormuz during the recent face-off between the U.S. and the Islamic Republic of Iran -- or what's left of it, aside from the IRGC. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is separate and apart from the regular Navy of Iran, which had been struck a cataclysmic blow in the opening days of the aerial bombardment. 

 

Over 90 percent of Iran's navy's fleet was destroyed, according to U.S. General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They all, including the country's major warships, were sunk and sit now on the ocean's bottom. At the same time, an estimated 50 percent of the fast attack boats belonging to the Guards were sunk. Estimates of the total number of these small ships prior to the U.S. sinking of the fleet ranged from hundreds to thousands. They are still not now in short supply. 

 

Arrival of new shipment of IRGC fastboats. Photo via Mehdi H

 

The size of the boats make them mostly invisible on satellite images from where they're moored alongside piers, where the  excavation of deep caves along the rocky coastline shelters them, prepared for deployment at a moment's notice. During the current conflict, at least 20 vessels were attacked by the 'mosquito fleet', according to the International Maritime Agency. Analysts consider the attacks to have been by drones fired from mobile launchers on land.

 

As for the small boat arsenal which poses a major threat to commercial shipping both in the Gulf and the Strait, "It remains a disruptive force. You never quite knew what they were up to and what their intentions were", commented Admiral Gary Roughead, retired chief of U.S. Naval Operations. "The IRGC navy has always believed that it is at the forefront of the confrontation with the Great Satan", added specialist on the Guards navy, Farzin Nadimi from the Washington Institute think tank.

 

According to experts, these small boats can reach speeds of over 100 knots. Larger, more sophisticated warships were also recently developed by the Guards, and they too were targeted when the U.S. bombardments focused on bombing Iran's naval fleet as well as its fleet of warplanes. The largest drone carrier, the Shahid Bagheri, a converted container ship able to launch anti-ship missiles, was also hit by U.S. air strikes.

 

It is the swarms of small boats that pose an ongoing threat to commercial vessels which have no defences against such attacks. U.S. warships, on the other hand, can counter a potential swam of small boats with their high-caliber cannons and additional weaponry.  

 

60 percent of IRGC fast boats still threaten shipping lanes: WSJ

 

A Pontificate of Peace

"How can we understand that fighters have been operating freely for over two weeks in the same area, attacking village after village, without any effective response from the security forces?... The population feels abandoned to its fate, exposed to massacres while official speeches multiply without any visible action on the ground." 

barnabasaid.org, January 27, 2026, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

"On Jan. 1, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) "released an image of one of the Christian villages in Adamawa State burning, alongside a statement saying that all Christians in Nigeria are legitimate targets, and they have an opportunity to 'spare their blood' by converting to Islam or paying the jizyah tax to ISWAP."

dailypost.ng, January 1, 2026, Nigeria.

 "Iran has an open secret. Persecuting Christians is a booming business in the Muslim-majority nation, and the country is earning large sums of money from arresting Christ followers." — 

persecution.org, January 22, 2026.

"ADF uses abduction, forced conversion to Islam, gang rape, and child soldier recruitment as a deliberate strategy to terrorize and reduce the Christian population in eastern Congo." — 

persecution.org, January 22, 2026, Democratic Republic of the Congo. 

"According to a Jan. 22 report, in 2025, the Islamic-linked Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) intensified their terror against Christian communities by deliberately targeting children. Militants raid Christian villages, kill parents in front of their children, and abduct boys and girls. Captured children are taken to ADF base camps where they are forced to convert to Islam or be killed." 

Raymond Ibrahim, Gatestone Institute 

On January 2, the Allied Democratic Forces, which is linked to the Islamic State, attacked three villages in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a Christian-majority nation, killing at least 14. Since December 2024, Islamic State terrorists have claimed the murder of more than 800 Christians in northeastern DRC. Pictured: Members of the Congolese Red Cross bury the bodies of victims of a massacre in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo at Musigiko cemetery in Bukavu on February 20, 2025. (Photo by Luis Tato/AFP via Getty Images)

 

Following his 11-day trip to Africa, Pope Leo XIV returned to the Vatican to continue his condemnation of the Israel-U.S. conflict in Iran. His Africa trip consisted of visits to Algeria, Cameroon, Angola and Equatorial Guinea, and while there he continued his vocal activism against war, specifically the conflict taking place in Iran. He let it be known he has no intention of pulling back his moral outrage over conflict and the death toll it takes on the lives of the populations involved. 

 

He waxed eloquently in just condemnation against cupidity, human greed and deliberate oblivion to the human wreckage that war brings through political tyranny, corruption, neo-colonialism, inequality and the extraction of natural resources destroying environmental landscapes. If one was not aware this was the Pope speaking to his 1.4 worldwide followers and beyond, his censorious rebukes could have been mistaken for Critical Race Theory, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, in a fully woke rejection of world affairs.

 

Pope Leo XIV's trip did not include Nigeria, where Christians are under constant threat, nor the Democratic Republic of Congo where Islamist terrorist groups focus on slaughtering Christians who practise a religion offensive to Islam. What Pope Leo did do, was bring to the Vatican library a new initiative in opening an Islamic prayer room. For whose use it has not been clarified beyond the convenience of 'visiting Muslim scholars', but the move did attract some censure from some within the orthodox Catholic clergy.

 

Within the hallowed halls of the Vatican Apostolic Library, a repository of human knowledge that has stood since the mid-15th century, a quiet and unprecedented decision has ignited a firestorm that spans faith, diplomacy, and realpolitik. The library’s administration, under Vice Prefect Fr. Giacomo Cardinali, has allocated a dedicated room for Muslim prayers, a move that has simultaneously been celebrated as a gesture of intellectual openness and condemned as a betrayal of Catholic identity. Catholic Stand

 

The "quiet pope" spoke with moral passion in Cameroon at a "handful of tyrants" and "masters of war" whose exploits have "ravaged" the world while they "pretend not to know that it takes only a moment to destroy,  yet a lifetime is often not enough to rebuild." Pope Leo let it also be known that it was "not in my interest" to debate the president [Trump]; censure is as censure does. 

"I think unquestionably [Leos papacy] has grown in recent weeks']."

"I think Leo remains the Quiet American, but he is also the lion pope who has found his roar."

Vatican watcher and  biographer of Pope Francis, Austen Ivereigh

 

"The perceived change in tone is due to the escalation of events -- the bombings in Iran, the African trip, the head-on-clash -- which have forced [his] words to become more explicit."

"But the vision was already right there, right beneath the surface."

"[Leo's] dilemma lies between diplomacy and prophecy, and it's the same as Francis, who at a certain point surrendered to the idea that he was the last moral voice of global value standing."

"I believe Leo feels the same and is finding his bearings." 

Rev. Antonio Spadaro, undersecretary of the Vatican's Dicastery for Culture and Education  

Israel and the United States have taken on the obligation of ensuring that a theocratic fundamentalist totalitarian Islamist state not gain nuclear armaments with which to threaten the world community. They have, in a tandem of cooperation, decided to respond to the appeal of ordinary Iranians groaning under the persecution of a controlling military doing the bidding of medieval-minded theocrats that threaten the well-being of a population harnessed to a regime whose sole purpose is Islamist conquest. 

 

It is notable that Pope Leo made no public statements that might be taken as regret that the regime he defends has subjected its people to extraordinarily harsh judgments resulting in capital punishment where the Islamic Republic makes use of construction cranes to slowly hang prisoners sentenced to death, to ensure their fate becomes familiar to a public thus warned that the regime will tolerate no level of protest from its citizens. 

 

Several months ago mass protests against the harsh misrule of that ancient country by its ruling ayatollahs saw tens of thousands of civilians slaughtered as punishment, many more imprisoned. Hundreds of Iranians are put to death annually. Women are raped in prisons prior to their executions following trials finding them guilty of such inconsequential 'crimes' as defying regime authorities and calling for its downfall. Drug traffickers are routinely sentenced to death in a country whose regime believes people who interfere with government edicts are disposable.

Below are the 10 most dangerous African countries to be a Christian in 2024:

Rank	Country	Score
1	Somalia	93
2	Libya	91
3	Eritrea	89
4	Nigeria	88
5	Sudan	87
6	Mali	79
7	Algeria	79
8	Burkina Faso	75
9	Mauritania	72
10	Morocco	71

Pope Leo does not appear to have troubled himself over the African countries where Christian lives are threatened, where Islam rules. He appears not to have made any overtures to Islamic leaders in these countries to plead for the lives of Black African Christians where, in fact, Christian belief is on the rise even as it is increasingly threatened by hostile Black African Islamists. So when will the Holy See 'notice' that deadly persecution and break its silence?

 

Global Christian Relief