Free Republic

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was among the targets of an investigation in Turkey into suspected bribery and money laundering in connection with a scheme to help Iran evade sanctions, a former Istanbul police officer has testified. The officer, Huseyin Korkmaz, told a New York court on December 11 that the Turkish investigation that he led in 2012-2013 initially focused on Turkish-Iranian businessman Reza Zarrab, who U.S. prosecutors have said was the mastermind behind the Iran sanctions evasion scheme, but later grew to include dozens of others. He called Erdogan the "No. 1" target in a group that also included...

Three days after declaring victory over the Islamic State group, Iraq’s prime minister warns that the group’s extremists might “erupt again somewhere else” without international cooperation in combatting the militants. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi told reporters Tuesday that “we have managed to break them” in Iraq, but added that it’s a worry for everyone that IS has “this unfortunate ability to recruit young people very quickly.” He said there must be an effort to “remove their grassroots in the region.” …

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Hamas' new leader in the Gaza Strip said Monday his group has repaired relations with Iran after a five-year rift and is using its newfound financial and military aid to gear up for new hostilities with Israel. The announcement by Yehiyeh Sinwar came as U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was visiting Israel. At a meeting with the U.N. chief, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu complained about what he called rising anti-Israel activity by Iran and its allies in the region. Iran was once the top backer of Hamas, an Islamic militant group that seeks Israel's...

Blair re-elected to Socialist International post amid protests SAO PAULO (AFP) - Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) was re-elected vice president of the Socialist International, drawing protests from delegates who said his support of the US-led war in Iraq (news - web sites) made him ineligible. Socialist parties in Argentina, Chile, Panama, Mexico and Nicaragua sought to derail the re-election of Britain's Labour Party leader. "It is necessary to make a distinction between the Labour party and its place in history and the leadership of Tony Blair, which has been so horrible for world peace," said Hernan...

A federal judge was aghast over the Trump administration’s assertion it could indefinitely detain a U.S. citizen as an enemy combatant without providing access to a lawyer, saying the Justice Department’s defense of the practice amounted to “an end run” around the man’s Constitutional rights. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan is weighing a request by the American Civil Liberties Union to allow the group access to the man in order to provide him legal representation. “He wants counsel, which is an assertion and a request that I don’t think I can ignore,” Judge Chutkan said Monday, adding that she plans...

U.S. ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley knew exactly how to respond to CNN anchor Jake Tapper's depressing assessment of the U.S. embassy move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem during their interview on Sunday. "President Trump is supposed to be a master negotiator," Tapper noted. "Isn't this just cashing in a chip and getting nothing for it? How does this move the peace process forward in any way?" Watch Video HereIn addition to leading questions like that, Tapper quoted the Arab League calling the move a "dangerous development," then played a clip of the PLO Secretary-General declaring that Trump had...

The EU foreign policy chief says Europe does “not see eye to eye” with the Trump administration on major issues such as trade, climate change and funding of U.N. agencies, but can “easily” work with the U.S. on Syria and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Federica Mogherini spoke Saturday during a regional gathering of the World Economic Forum. Mogherini warned that threatened U.S. cuts in funding U.N. agencies “would create a major security issue worldwide, including in Europe.” …

"I strongly condemn any attack on Jews anywhere in the world and on Israeli citizens," the EU foreign minister said...

The EU's diplomatic chief Monday bluntly rejected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's suggestion that Europe would follow the US in recognising Jerusalem as the Jewish state's capital, saying there would be no change to its stance on the holy city. Netanyahu said the controversial announcement by US President Donald Trump -- which prompted diplomatic alarm and street protests across the Islamic world -- had "put facts squarely on the table". As he arrived for talks in Brussels, Netanyahu said he expected "all or most" European countries would follow the US -- but the 28-nation bloc's foreign policy head Federica Mogherini...

For the last several years, Russian security services have driven Islamist radicals and others out of the North Caucasus and other regions of the Russian Federation under paid of jail or death to fight for ISIS in Syria, Israeli expert Avraam Shmulyevich says. Now that the last redoubts of the Islamic State in that country have fallen, these same services, exploiting Chechens in Syria, have begun to extract these same people back to Russia, an action that strongly suggests, the president of the Israeli Eastern Partnership Institute says, that Moscow plans to make use of them elsewhere – and may...

Has Iran given cruise missiles to Hizballah as well as Yemen’s Houthis? The maiden operational launch of Iran’s Soumar Kh-55 cruise missile was apparently entrusted to Yemen’s Houthis against a UAE target. ... Yemen’s Houthi rebels last week showed on their TV channel video footage of Iran’s most highly advanced Soumar Kh-55 cruise missile, which can carry a nuclear warhead. They claimed to have fired it at the unfinished Abu Dhabi power plant on Dec.3. The United Arab Emirates refuted this claim, saying that any missile reaching their air space would have been intercepted by advanced Emirati air defenses. But...

The Russian Defense Ministry has reacted to statements of the American side that Russian Air Forces allow dangerous rapprochements with the American planes in Syria, invading into airspace to the east from the Euphrates River, Interfax reports. The official representative of the Russian Defense Ministry major general Igor Konashenkov has in reply called the USA to focus on extermination of terrorists of IS group (it is forbidden in Russia) in Iraq, but not to provoke incidents in air. According to Konashenkov, dangerous rapprochements of the Russian and American planes near the valley of the Euphrates River in Syria are most...

BAGHDAD -- Iraq said Saturday that its war on the Islamic State group is over after more than three years of combat operations drove the extremists from all of the territory they once held.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Thursday blasted U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. "We feel that we are facing Balfour Declaration 2," Nasrallah said...." "We all know that the Israeli enemy and the leaders of this entity do not respect international resolutions. This is proven. They do not even respect the agreements they signed. Their interest is the most important for them, they do not care what the Arab countries, Islamic states, European countries, Canada and Latin America say," added the Hezbollah leader. "For those who are interested in a peace agreement, Trump...

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Thursday blasted U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. “We feel that we are facing Balfour Declaration 2,” Nasrallah said. “When we understand the dangers involved in this decision, it will prompt everyone to act and take responsibility — and not to obey the voices that will be heard in the coming days. I expect that we will hear voices in the Arab and Islamic world that will say that what happened is meaningless.” […] Nasrallah claimed that, with Trump’s declaration, “he humiliated a billion and a half Muslims,...

Russia’s unexpected announcement recognizing Israel’s eternal capital of Jerusalem, a dramatic decision that places Vladimir Putin against Donald Trump in a totally new big-power rivalry – the race to Jerusalem. Many American and Israeli Jews have waited with mounting impatience for Trump to keep his campaign promise to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Against an atmosphere of US equivocation, Putin suddenly announced, without preamble or restricting conditions, the recognition of Israel’s capital, to take effect immediately.

In one audio recording, Erdogan was heard ordering his son to get rid of all the cash he kept at home; and his son, after trying for several hours, tells him there are still millions left. Erdogan denied the authenticity of the evidence and claimed this was a coup d'état against his elected administration. He then purged all prosecutors and police officers investigating the charges. Zarrab's testimony as a witness, as well as documents displayed at trial "would show that this conspiracy to launder money for Iran was not a rogue operation. It would show the Turkish government at...

An Iranian-backed militia in Iraq threatened on Thursday to attack US forces in the country over US President Donald Trump recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. "The decision by Trump on Al-Quds [Jerusalem] makes it legitimate to strike the American forces in Iraq," Al-Nojaba militia chief Akram al-Kaabi said in a statement. The group, established in 2013 and supported by Iran's Revolutionary Guards, numbers around 1,500 fighters and is part of the Hashed al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization) auxiliary force that has fought alongside the army against ISIS. Following Trump’s announcement, Iran strongly condemned the decision, saying it threatened a...

(JTA) — The Palestine Liberation Organization office in Washington, D.C., canceled its Christmas reception due to President Trump’s expected announcement that he will be recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

“Whatever Israel wants, we in Ghana will go by that, because that is essentially an internal decision” While the Trump administration has been hit with a barrage of warnings that is stands to throw the Middle East into chaos if it recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the possible move has garnered support among Israel’s allies in Africa.