Free Republic

Beirut / Baghdad -- One of the most powerful men in Iraq isn't an Iraqi government official, a militia leader, a senior cleric or a top U.S. military commander or diplomat. He's an Iranian general, and at times he's more influential than all of them. Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani (51) ( pictured) commands the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force, an elite paramilitary and espionage organization whose mission is to expand Iran's influence in the Middle East . As Tehran's point man on Iraq , he funnels military and financial support to various Iraqi factions, frustrating U.S. attempts to...

Revolutionary Guards Quds Force's notorious chief Qassem Suleimani severely injured in clashes south of Aleppo For nearly 5 years the Revolutionary Guards Quds Force’s notorious chief Qassem Suleimani has been spearheading Iran’s full-pledged support for the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. This shadowy figure has been the symbol of Tehran’s infamous plots in Syria, and reports have also indicated Suleimani was running the show and issuing orders to senior Syrian generals and political officials, and at times, even Assad himself. Enjoying the full support of and reporting only to Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei, Suleimani had unimaginable authority in Syria. That...

"An act of God" was responsible for U.S. Navy sailors entering Iranian waters, leading to their arrest at gunpoint, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Sunday told Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) members who detained the Americans. "Your job was excellent, interesting and timely and, in fact, we must consider this incident as an act of God, who brought Americans into our waters so they would be arrested through your timely action and in that manner with their hands held above their heads," Khamenei told the group in a face-to-face meeting, according to a report on the supreme leader's...

TEHRAN, Jan. 13 (MNA) – Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi said IRGC Navy will decide about detained US marines who illegally entered Iran waters once chain of command passes down its orders. “All vessels must give prior notice if they want to sail through another country’s waters, especially if they are military,” said Ali Fadavi, Commander of the IRGC (the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps) Navy, referring to the two American riverine command boats that had illegally crossed into Iranian territorial waters around Farsi Island in the Persian Gulf. “In the world of international relations, there is only one instance of innocent...

Iranian troops retreating from Syria, Western officials say Special to WorldTribune.com With scant few battlefield victories and the deaths of key military leaders, Iran appears ready to cut its losses and withdraw from Syria, Western officials say. The failed Russian-initiated offensive to retake Idlib province from anti-Assad rebels supported by the West and Gulf Arab states has led to the retreat of large numbers of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) troops, officials say. Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon said at the recent Saban Forum in Washington that Russia had planned to seize Idlib and other rebel-controlled areas within three months....

It hasn't made much noise worldwide, but Iran's rapidly deteriorating relationships with several African countries is huge news across the continent. On February 16, the Nigerian Federal High Court in Lagos began the prosecution of an alleged member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Azim Aghajani, and a Nigerian associate, Usman Abbas Jega. They are accused of arms smuggling. This video link is in Arabic, but is very self-explanatory. It is of the opening day of the court proceedings.The story is a classic, just one of many on the Dark Continent nowadays: In late October 2010, Nigerian intelligence officials...

BEIRUT – The former head of an elite unit in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as well as another top general have been killed in Syria, days after one of the country’s leading officers was killed in the war-torn country. “General Farshad Hasounizad, defender of the Sayyeda Zeinab Shrine and former commander of the Saberin Brigade, was killed in Syria,” a reporter in the state-controlled Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) wrote in a post on his Instagram account Tuesday afternoon. The Saberin Brigade is a special forces unit of the IRGC formed in 1998 to serve as a...

EMET praises legislation by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a recognized, foreign terrorist organization. (Washington, DC, October 8, 2015) – Today, the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET) strongly endorsed Senator Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) legislation, S. 2094, which urges the U.S. State Department to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization. Similar legislation was proposed in the U.S. House by Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX). The passage of this legislation would limit the benefits the IRGC is set to receive from the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA)...

WASHINGTON -- New York County District Attorney Robert Morgenthau left his home turf and came to the nation's capital on Tuesday to sound the alarm about a "blossoming relationship" between Iran and Venezuela. Comparing the situation to the lead up to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, Morgenthau warned of growing threats--involving missiles, nuclear ventures and terrorist training--that Iran and Venezuela are now cultivating, together, "in our backyard." "Axis of unity" is the label that Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez have themselves chosen for their alliance. The rise of this partnership, according to Morgenthau, dates from Ahmadinejad's...

Survivors of a 1996 terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 U.S. servicemen are offendedthat an Iraqi official with ties to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was welcomed to the White House this week. “Outrage at the visit to the White House really doesn’t describe what I feel,” said William M. Schooley, who survived the June 25, 1996, bombing of the Khobar Towers. “I watched outstanding airmen die that night and witnessed horrific carnage. The survivors of Khobar Towers have been swept under the rug and now have received the greatest insult,” he added. The Washington Times first reported...

IRAN SENDS BIN LADEN'S SON TO LEBANON ABU DHABI [MENL] -- Iran was said to have sent the son of Al Qaida chief Osama Bin Laden to Lebanon. Islamic sources said Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has released Bin Laden's son, Saad. The sources said IRGC released the 27-year-old Saad and sent him to organize cells in Lebanon. "We have been hearing reports that Saad is no longer under house arrest and is now in Syria waiting to enter Lebanon," a source said. The UAE-based Elaph news agency reported that Iran sent Saad to the Syrian-Lebanese border to build cells...

DUBAI, July 19 (Reuters) - An Iranian general collaborated with al Qaeda to arrange the transit through Iran of nine of the September 11 hijackers, the Arabic newspaper Asharq al-Awsat reported on Monday. "A general in the apparatus (Revolutionary Guard) coordinated with the number two man in al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri, to provide 'safe passage' to around nine of those who carried out the attacks," the London-based paper said. It cited as its source an official in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and said Zawahri, who requested the help, had links with the general going back to the early 1990s. Iranian...

LONDON (from compiled intelligence briefs) - Al-Qaida had extensive contacts with Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security, as well as with an elite military unit which helped the terrorists train and plot attacks against Americans, according to a former intelligence officer who recently fled Iran. Hamid Reza Zakeri, a former inspector and director of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and Ministry of Intelligence, or MOIS, member said models of the World Trade Center, the White House, Pentagon and other United States government buildings "were in our headquarters." In an explosive interview with a London-based Arabic newspaper last week, Zakeri stated that...

Saturday's Washington Post had an article which quotes the usual unnamed intelligence sources saying that they are surprised to discover that al Qaeda has "reconstituted" itself. This surprise derives from, inter alia, the computer data found recently in Pakistan, intelligence sources (both ours and friends'), and simply looking at the range of activities in which the terrorists engage. This surprise is, as usual, unsettling, since it has been quite clear for some time now that al Qaeda and the other major terrorist groups — Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Jamaa, etc. — are all working together, and have been ever since...

The Obama administration is declining to inform Congress about the number of American citizens and troops killed by Iran and its terror proxies, according to a document provided to Congress and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The administration was repeatedly asked by Congress to release figures describing how many Americans and Israelis have been killed by Iran’s military and terror activities since the country’s 1979 revolution. In a series of on-the-record responses obtained exclusively by the Free Beacon, and provided in written form to Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), Kerry sidestepped the questions on all of the three separate...

Israel’s reported strike January 18 on a joint Iranian-Hezbollah convoy driving on the Syrian Golan Heights was one of the most strategically significant events to have occurred in Israel’s neighborhood in recent months. Its significance lies both in what it accomplished operationally and what it exposed. From what been published to date about the identities of those killed in the strike, it is clear that in one fell swoop the air force decapitated the Iranian and Hezbollah operational command in Syria. The head of Hezbollah’s operations in Syria, the head of its liaison with Iran, and Jihad Mughniyeh, the son...

Iran's foreign minister, Javad Zarif, has written an op-ed in the Financial Times which sets forward a distinct sequence for ostensibly resolving the daunting security challenges of the Middle East. First, the P5+1 - the group of powerful nations negotiating with Iran - should come to a deal over its nuclear program. As a result, he argues, Tehran will "open new horizons" and join "the international battle" against "the increasingly brutal extremism that is engulfing the Middle East." The idea that Iran is a partner in the fight against terrorism is not only disingenuous but also absurd. What Zarif is...

Uproar in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has relieved Gen. Qassem Soleimani,the Al Qods Brigades chief and supreme commander of Iranian Middle East forces, of his Syria command after a series of war debacles. He was left in charge of Iran’s military and intelligence operations in Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon. This is revealed by exclusive Iranian intelligence sources. Since Soleimani last visited Damascus on June 2, in the aftershock of the historic town of Palmyra’s fall to the Islamic State, the situation of President Bashar Assad and his army has gone from bad to worse. The Iranian general’s...

Republicans pounced on a report Monday that said top White House adviser David Plouffe took a $100,000 speaking fee from an Iran-tied firm whose technology may have been used to track dissidents, claiming Plouffe's involvement could represent a "loophole" in sanctions against the regime. The White House rejects the notion that anything improper took place. According to The Washington Post, Plouffe was paid for two speeches he made in Nigeria in December 2010 about a month before joining the White House -- and apparently before the company hosting him started coming under heavy scrutiny from the Obama administration. The White...

A leading commander in Iran's Revolutionary Guards has claimed his country's ultimate aim is to turn the United States into "an Islamic Republic," and rejected any possibility of a thawing in relations between Tehran and "The Great Satan." An undated video released by the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran, an Iranian opposition group, shows Commander Hassan Abbasi - who is also a member of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei's inner circle - making the comments during an address, in which he lashed out at unnamed Iranian officials for expressing hope that a nuclear deal with the US could open the door...