Free Republic

An estimated one-fifth of a subset of all applicants for Central Intelligence Agency positions had significant ties to the terror groups Hamas, Hezbollah and al Qaeda, a newly released document from the Edward Snowden collection revealed Monday. The document — released by Mr. Snowden as part of his National Security Agency intelligence dump — said the terrorist groups worked hard to infiltrate America’s top security agencies. CIA officials uncovered thousands of applicants, roughly one in five of a subset, with “significant terrorist and/or hostile intelligence connections,” the document states, as Ynet News reported. The specifics of those ties were not...

An al Qaeda-affiliated group in Lebanon has claimed responsibility for last week’s terror attack on Israel, according to a newly released statement from the group. The Abdullah Azzam Brigades, named after Osama bin Laden’s mentor, released a statement in Arabic late Monday claiming official ownership of the four rockets launched into Israeli territory on Thursday of last week. “This operation comes within the series of our jihadi work directed at the Jews,” read a translation the terrorist group’s statement, which was accompanied by several tweets from group member Sirajuddin Zureiqat, who posted photos of the rockets shot into northern Israel....

For more than two decades, the United States has placed the issue of Eastern Mediterranean maritime ­security on the backburner. But the 2010 discovery of what may potentially be 3,450 billion cubic meters of natural gas and 1.7 billion barrels of oil in the Eastern Mediterranean’s Levant Basin brings that region’s security to the forefront. Turkey and Cyprus have competing interests in tapping the newfound oil and gas and in defending their access to those resources, while Israel and Lebanon continue to dispute their shared maritime boundary and territorial waters. Against this backdrop, political tensions are escalating in Egypt, Moscow...

“The supersonic and long-range anti-ship Yakhont missiles of the Syrian army and the Lebanese Hezbollah (resistance movement) are serious deterrents to a US naval attack by its warships in the Mediterranean Sea,” Dr. Mostafa Zahra, a military analyst and strategic studies expert, told FNA on Monday. He said that Syria’s Iskandar high-precision ballistic missiles and its anti-ship Scud missiles will also target the US warships in case of a US naval invasion of Syria, reminding that the American military vessels are not equipped with any weapons system to intercept or divert the Syrian anti-ship missiles. The P-800 Oniks, also known...

The ouster of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi has enabled Hamas to begin to restore its strained relations with Iran, according to Arab journalist Ali Hashem. .... Hashem noted that not of all Hamas’s bridges were burned in Tehran, despite the rift over Syria, thanks to a few officials in Gaza who decided on their own that relations with Iran shouldn’t halt. One of those, wrote Hashem was Ahmad Jaabari, who maintained strong ties with Iranian officials and had his own lobby within the political bureau. Jaabari was killed by Israel in what started the counterterrorism Operation Pillar of Defense in...

The way the U.S. President talks about terrorism matters. As chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Representative Michael McCaul (R–TX), recently put it, “Great leaders do not tell their constituency what they want to hear; they tell them what they need to know.… The American people deserve to make informed decisions, and they do not deserve to have the real threats against them obscured, or our real efforts to combat them diminished.” Two years ago, the Heritage Foundation released a report, “A Counterterrorism Strategy for the ‘Next Wave,’” which highlighted the need to prevent the emergence of a global...

(WASHINGTON) -- The outgoing director of the FBI gave a sobering assessment Thursday of the current threats facing the U.S. homeland: a biological weapon of mass destruction detonated inside the country and a plane downed in mid-flight are viable scenarios, he said. Mueller added that Americans now traveling to war-torn Syria could bring terrorist tactics home with them. Terrorism has "changed so much since the days after Sept. 11th," director Robert Mueller said in a rare interview with ABC News' Pierre Thomas. In particular, Mueller said, the threat emanating out of Afghanistan and Pakistan has now "migrated" to places like...

High Holy terror warning By Josh Jackman, August 22, 2013 Follow The JC on Twitter Israel has warned its citizens across the world that there are “concrete” indications they will be targeted by terrorists in the coming weeks. The government’s Counter-Terrorism Bureau has warned Israelis and Jews to stay away from dozens of countries in the run-up to the High Holy Days, calling it “a favoured period” for organisations such as al-Qaeda to strike. The Bureau banned Israelis from visiting Algeria, Djibouti, Mauritania, Libya, Sudan, Somalia and Tunisia.

Opposition leader Ahmad Jarba said Syria is now being run by regime allies Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah, with President Bashar al-Assad out of the picture, in an interview published Sunday. Jarba also told Saudi-owned newspaper Al-Hayat that Syrian rebels have seized control of "at least half" of the country, 29 months into an anti-Assad uprising.

Another nice tactical video from Syrian tank corps vs Obama cousins.

One of Lebanon's most powerful Sunni politicians accused the leader of the Shiite militant group Hezbollah on Saturday of dragging the country further into neighboring Syria's civil war.

A Sunni group claims it was behind the car bomb attack in a Hezbollah stronghold, issues warning to the group's chief. A Sunni Islamist group took credit on Thursday for the car bombing in a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut which killed at least 20 people. Shortly after news of the attack broke, an online video surfaced showing three masked men, two of them holding rifles, in front of a white flag inscribed with the Islamic profession of faith, reported AFP. "You, the pig Hassan Nasrallah, we send you our second powerful message because you haven't understood yet," said one member...

Blast occurs close to Sayyed al-Shuhadaa complex, where Hezbollah leader Nasrallah often addresses his followers; Sunni Islamist group claims responsibility for explosion, but Hezbollah officials blame "Zionists." At least 20 people were killed and more than 212 were injured on Thursday when a car bomb went off near a Hezbollah stronghold in southern Lebanon, a security source in the country said. While a Sunni Islamist group claimed responsibilty for the bombing, Hezbollah and Lebanese officials said it bore the markings of a Zionist attack and served the interests of Israel.

Brig. Gen. Hossein Dehghan, nominated to be defense minister by Iran’s new president Hassan Rouhani, was a commander in Lebanon overseeing Hezbollah operations during the time of the 1983 bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. According to a report by Brig. Gen. (ret.) Dr. Shimon Shapira, a senior research associate at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Dehghan was sent to Lebanon and served as a commander of the training corps of the Revolutionary Guard in Syria and Lebanon. He joined the Revolutionary Guard after they were formed in 1979 and spent his entire military career there....

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah emerged from hiding on Friday to deliver his first major speech in years, addressing a rally in his southern Beirut stronghold in support of the Palestinian conflict against Israel. "Israel poses a danger on all people of this region...including Lebanon, and removing it is a Lebanese national interest," Nasrallah told hundreds of supporters in his half-hour speech. The charismatic Shi'ite cleric has lived mainly in the shadows, fearing assassination, since Hezbollah fought an inconclusive month-long war with Israel in 2006... Hezbollah emerged in the 1980s as the most prominent Lebanese faction fighting Israel's occupation of...

We may be in the era of Facebook and fracking. But 2013 is still beginning to look a lot like the cataclysmic century we just left behind.Victor Davis HansonVictor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a recipient of the 2007 National Humanities Medal.

Israeli navy seeks to counter Russian ship-killer Israel's navy is installing the Barak-8 air-defense missile system aboard its combat vessels to protect them against Syria's new supersonic Russian-built Yakhont anti-ship missiles which the Jewish state views as a potent threat to its long-held naval supremacy in the eastern Mediterranean. HAIFA, Israel, July 30 (UPI) -- Israel's navy is installing the Barak-8 air-defense missile system aboard its combat vessels to protect against Syria's new supersonic Russian-built Yakhont anti-ship missiles, which the Jewish state views as a potent threat to its long-held naval supremacy in the eastern Mediterranean. The medium-range Barak-8 was...

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency warned Lebanese officials last week that al Qaida-linked groups are planning a campaign of bombings that will target Beirut's Hezbollah-dominated southern suburbs as well as other political targets associated with the group or its allies in Syria, Lebanese officials said Monday. The unusual warning -- U.S. government officials are barred from directly contacting Hezbollah, which the U.S. has designated an international terrorist organization -- was passed from the CIA's Beirut station chief to several Lebanese security and intelligence officials in a meeting late last week with the understanding that it would be passed to Hezbollah,...

Hizbullah’s armed wing wired almost $100,000 (€75,000) to two men wanted over a bomb attack that killed five Israeli tourists in Bulgaria last year, a local newspaper reported Friday, according to the AFP news agency. According to the 24 Hours daily, the money was to help organize the blast at Burgas airport on the Black Sea on July 18, 2012, and to carry out reconnaissance in other countries. The attack on the tourist bus also killed the vehicle’s Bulgarian driver—a Muslim—and left 35 people injured. It was the deadliest attack on Israelis abroad since 2004. Israel immediately blamed Hizbullah for...

European Union foreign ministers agreed on Monday to blacklist Lebanese militant group Hezbollah’s armed wing, holding it responsible for terror attacks in Europe including a bus bombing in Bulgaria in which five Israelis were killed. The European Union put the military arm of Hezbollah on its terrorist list on Monday, in a major change to its policy on the region, fuelled by concerns over the Lebanese militant group’s activities in Europe. The decision was reached unanimously at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday after some member countries, which were resistant to the blacklisting, were persuaded by...