Free Republic

JERUSALEM, Israel -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shrugged off Iran's purported agreement to stop enriching uranium above 5 percent. Speaking before Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper addressed the Knesset, Netanyahu told parliamentarians the Islamic Republic will resume uranium enrichment at a time of its choosing. "The agreement in Geneva did away with the 20 percent stop, but left the train on its track and enables Iran to upgrade the locomotive by developing new centrifuges so when the day comes, it can leap in a very short time to the final stop on an express track, without stopping at an...

In the spring of 2006, a veteran Democratic senator visiting Boston was asked at a small gathering what the Democratic Party’s strategy was to address the advancing specter of Iranian nuclear capability. “I don’t know,” he confessed. “With any luck Israel will do something about it and the rest of us will publicly blame Israel.” The senator was not being snide. He was being candid: For many Democrats, the Iranian nuclear issue is suffused with, if not dominated by, wishful thinking. For the Democratic left, economic sanctions on Iran have been regarded with ambivalence. In late 2007, as the Democratic...

President Obama urged Congress on Monday to "give diplomacy a chance," imploring lawmakers to hold off on additional sanctions against Iran as negotiators seek to take advantage of a six-month interim deal. "It's going to be difficult, it's going to be challenging, but ultimately this is how diplomacy should work," Obama said, adding that the negotiating window formalized over the weekend should give world powers "the time and space" they need to formalize a permanent deal with Tehran. "My preference is for peace and diplomacy, and this is one of the reasons why I've sent the message to Congress that...

Hours after the announcement of former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon’s death, a Twitter feed associated with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday tweeted quotes from the Shiite leader critical of the general-turned-statesman. Sharon had been in a coma for almost exactly eight years since suffering a massive stroke, and died Saturday afternoon at age 85. Quoting from previous speeches by the supreme leader, @Khamenei_ir variously called Sharon a “vampire” and a “vulture” and Israel’s “last hope.” While world leaders voiced sorrow at the loss of one of Israel’s greats, Iran stood out in its criticism of the...

Palestinians hurled two improvised grenades at Israelis in Bethlehem on Monday evening in two attacks, injuring one civilian. An explosive was thrown at Rachel's Tomb, causing injuries to one man, who was evacuated to hospital by paramedics. Earlier, an explosive was thrown at an IDF base in the area. No injuries were reported in that attack. Monday's events are the latest indication that Palestinian violence is on the rise, though Israeli policymakers and defense experts remain doubtful that we are on the cusp of a third intifada. Last week, news outlets learned of a secret report by one of the...

The bomb that was used to blow up a Dan bus in Bat Yam last month was remarkably similar to the bomb that was used in the Boston Marathon terror attack in April of last year. The bomb that exploded last month on an evacuated public bus in central Israel closely resembled the type used in the Boston Marathon attack. The explosive in Bat Yam was enclosed in a pressure cooker and was activated by a cell phone, according to the Shin Bet security service.  ... The bomb, which was placed in a black backpack with wires sticking out,...

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – A senior Iranian military commander reiterated that the country's military might has prevented enemies from launching military attack against Iran, and stressed that the country is fully capable of targeting US and Israeli interests in the region. “The enemy is aware that the Islamic Republic has the power to destroy the US and Israeli illegitimate interests in the region and can deliver them serious and crippling blows,” Deputy Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri said on Monday. He dismissed the US war rhetoric against Iran, and said due to Iran's high...

DUBAI - Iran resumed technical talks with world powers in Geneva on Monday, a vital step in implementing a nuclear deal signed last month which suspends key elements of Tehran's nuclear program in exchange for limited sanctions relief. The talks between expert teams from Iran and six world powers are meant to translate the political deal into a detailed implementation plan by the end of January, Iran's state news agency, IRNA, quoted an unnamed source as saying. A key sticking point appears to be how much advance information Western governments will get so they can verify that Iran is meeting...

Federal agents who detained a college student after an airport screener found him carrying Arabic-English flashcards with such words as “bomb” and “terrorist” cannot be sued for their actions, a U.S. appeals court said Tuesday. Reversing a lower court ruling, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia said three Transportation Security Administration agents and two FBI agents were entitled to qualified immunity over Nicholas George’s five-hour detention at Philadelphia International Airport on Aug. 29, 2009.

Hardline Iranian lawmakers are seeking to increase the nation's uranium enrichment to 60 percent to “provide fuel for submarine engines.” The bill is expected to give Tehran an upper hand if the Geneva deal, which limits enrichment to 20 percent, fails. Some 100 lawmakers have introduced the bill under a “double urgency status,” which means it may be debated in the Iranian parliament within a week, the official IRNA news agency reported. If the bill is approved, it will oblige the government “to enrich uranium to 60 percent in order to provide fuel for submarine engines if the sanctions are...

MK Orit Struk of the Jewish Home (Bayit Yehudi) party called on the Israeli government to stop releasing Arab terrorist murderers from jail, following the terror attack Sunday on a bus in Bat Yam, south of Tel Aviv. The release of the murderers has been presented to the public as a “gesture” accompanying “peace talks” with the Palestinian Authority (PA). "The release of terrorists is the fuel on the fire of the terrorism that is returning to our streets,” MK Struk said. “I call on the government to stop the release of terrorists and bring back sanity, responsibility and security...

Iran and the six major world powers have agreed to resume a fresh round of expert-level talks on Iran's nuclear energy program following the Christmas holidays. The agreement came in a telephone conversation between Iran Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton, who represents the six powers in nuclear talks with Tehran, on Sunday. Zarif and Ashton also discussed the latest outcome of recent expert-level talks between Iran and the six countries over the past four days in the Swiss city of Geneva. The Iranian minister and EU foreign policy chief agreed that both sides...

Nero “fiddled,” so they say, while Rome burned. Today, this epigram all too accurately describes President Obama’s approach to U.S. national security. For five years, he has resolutely consigned foreign and defense issues to the bottom of his policy agenda, resulting in increasing disarray both domestically and abroad. The United States needs strategic thinking internationally, and we are getting the opposite. Mr. Obama’s personal Rome, the Affordable Care Act, is indeed self-immolating, and he responds by giving speeches (his version of playing Nero’s cithara) rather than taking command to save his eponymous program before the administration itself is consumed. Domestic...

A USA Today/Pew Poll found that 32 percent of Americans approve of the agreement and 43 percent disapprove, while four refused to answer or didn’t know. A majority of those who have heard about the accord said Iranian leaders aren’t seriously addressing international concerns about their nuclear program, i.e. 62 percent versus 29 percent who said they are.

The good news, if you want to call it that, is that roughly 1.6 million Americans have enrolled in ObamaCare so far. The not-so-good news is that 1.46 million of them actually signed up for Medicaid. If that trend continues, it could bankrupt both federal and state governments. Medicaid is already America’s third-largest government program, trailing only Social Security and Medicare, as a proportion of the federal budget. Almost 8 cents out of every dollar that the federal government spends goes to Medicaid. That’s more than $265 billion per year.

The gunning down of Hajj Hassan Hollo al-Laqqis, a high-ranking Hizballah commander and close crony of Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, raised the stakes of the clandestine war running between Saudi Arabia and Iran, two weeks after two suicide bombers blew themselves up outside the Iranian embassy in Beirut. The Hizballah officer was killed by five shots to the head and throat in the underground parking lot of his home in the Hadath neighborhood southwest of Beirut, when he returned home from work after midnight Tuesday, Dec. 3. The Hizballah statement, which said: “Israel is automatically held responsible for the crime,” described...

Entire sanctions regime ‘will collapse within months,’ unnamed sources tell Israeli TV; US has shown it has ‘no red lines’ on Tehran Unnamed Israeli officials denounced US President Barack Obama on Friday night for presiding over failed negotiations with Iran under which they said the sanctions pressure on Tehran is collapsing and the Islamic Republic has been granted the right to enrich uranium. The entire wall of sanctions, painstakingly constructed over years, is already crumbling and “will collapse within months,” the officials were quoted as saying. In comments reported by Israel’s Channel 2 news and attributed to unnamed senior Israeli...

House Intelligence Committee member Michelle Bachmann said that Iran’s nuclear facilities “must be bombed.” In a speech at a Zionist Organization of America gala on Sunday night, Bachmann said that the Geneva deal reached between Iran and world powers at the weekend will severely limit Israel’s ability to operate freely in the interests of its self defense. Bachmann said, “It may be incumbent upon the Prime Minister to make a decision he has no desire to make, and that would be to bomb facilities, that must be bombed, in Iran.” The former presidential candidate framed the deal as a deliberate...

Riffing on Hanukkah holiday, prime minister says Israel will be a ‘light unto the nations’ in dealing with Tehran should diplomacy fail Melding the Hanukkah holiday and foreign affairs, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu solemnly vowed to serve as a “light unto the nations” and act against Iran’s nuclear program should diplomacy fail Thursday night. Speaking at the Western Wall for a Hanukkah candle-lighting ceremony, Netanyahu compared Iran’s nuclear program to a darkness that would be forced out by Israel, referencing a popular children’s song for the holiday. “We came to drive out the darkness, and the largest darkness that threatens...

JERUSALEM — Just after the signing ceremony in Geneva on Sunday, President Hassan Rouhani of Iran declared that the world had recognized his country’s “nuclear rights.” He was right. The agreement Iran reached with the so-called P5+1 — the United States, Britain, China, France and Russia, plus Germany — does not significantly roll back Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Iran made only cosmetic concessions to preserve its primary goal, which is to continue enriching uranium. The agreement represents a failure, not a triumph, of diplomacy. With North Korea, too, there were talks and ceremonies and agreements — but then there was the...