Free Republic

ran’s nuclear chief said Friday the country has started making more efficient models of centrifuges for nuclear program by early 2011. The official, Vice President Ali Akbar Salehi, said Iranian scientists are still testing the more advanced models before they will be put to use at Iran’s enrichment facilities. The statement underscores Iran’s defiance to U.N. demands to have Tehran halt its controversial enrichment program — a defiance that has not wavered amid recent signals of possible new sanctions over the issue. Tehran has been saying since April that it is building more advanced centrifuges capable of enriching uranium with...

"President Obama promised last week that America will speak out on behalf of those who live under the “dark cloud of tyranny.” Okay. That’s nice. So, thousands of those people living under the dark Iranian cloud of tyranny are protesting in Iran today. What exactly will Obama do to speak out on their behalf?... OBAMA AT WEST POINT: "” And we must make it clear to every man, woman and child around the world who lives under the dark cloud of tyranny that America will speak out on behalf of their human rights, and tend to the light of freedom,...

It was late February 2003, a few weeks before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and President George W. Bush's administration still lacked a real strategy for the would-be regional hegemon next door. As the Iran desk officer in the office of the secretary of defense, I felt desperate. We were about to invade Iraq without a definitive policy toward its most bitter foe. I feared a repeat of Vietnam and saw in Iran a new Ho Chi Minh Trail -- the enemy lifeline that snaked through Laos and Cambodia and helped dash U.S. hopes for Southeast Asia. I knew that...

No, this is not satire from The Onion. If only it were, we could laugh instead of cry. Laura Rozen reports in Politico: The U.S. has condemned a suicide attack that killed five Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps members today. Five commanders of Iran's Revolutionary Guards were killed in suicide attacks in Iran's southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan province bordering Pakistan, according to reports. The Baluch group Jundullah claimed responsibility for the attack, that killed some 30 people. Iranian authorities have accused the group of receiving funding from foreign countries including the United States. The US has denied supporting Jundullah. "We condemn this act...

When a tyrannical regime dies, you can see the symptoms in the little things. Late Friday afternoon, after millions (yes, millions–this according to Le Monde, France 2, and L’Express, with the BBC saying that the demonstrations were bigger than those at the time of the Revolution) of Greens mobbed the streets and squares of more than thirty towns and cities to call for the end of the regime, there was a soccer game in Azadi Stadium in Tehran. It holds about a hundred thousand fans, and it was full of men wearing green and carrying green balloons. When state-run tv...

Sources close to Iraqi Shi'ite leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim say the cleric has died. Hakim was being treated for lung cancer at a hospital in Iran, and those close to the man said his health was deteriorating. A family member and an aide to Hakim, speaking on the condition of anonymity, separately told reporters Wednesday that he had suffered a setback. Hakim was known for his close links with Iran, and he led the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, one of Iraq's most powerful Shi'ite groups. In June, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani visited Hakim in Tehran, where the ailing cleric was...

While the Western & Official Islamic Iranian Media ignores the story, a Turkish lawyer has claimed that his Iranian client, Esmail Safarian-Nasab, has transferred an $18.5-billion treasure from Iran to Turkey through "courier services" - reportedly two truckloads as opposed to the original story of just one. The TWO container-TRUCK loads of "courier services" of US dollars and gold bullion was delivered to Ankara Customs last month. (Watch video below for visuals only unless you speak Turkish) but efforts have been made by Turkey (even denying any money arrived) and some Mullah friendly Press, to confuse/misdirect it with a smallish,...

TEHRAN/BAGHDAD - On Tuesday, Iraqi soldiers and riot police stormed Camp Ashraf, where Mojahedin Khalq Organization members had been based, triggering violent clashes that left at least 260 people injured. Iraqi officials say clashes broke out as they were trying to establish a police post in the camp. “After the failure of negotiations with the Mojahedin (Khalq) to enter peacefully, the Iraqi army entered Camp Ashraf with force and it now controls the interior and all entrances to the camp,” an Iraqi military source said. An Iraqi army spokesman in Diyala said two battalions of 400 soldiers each plus 200...

AN Iranian student arrested in protests against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election has died in jail, a newspaper said today, the second such death reported in recent days. Amir Javadifar, "a student of industrial management in Qazvin (city) died in prison", the reformist Etemad newspaper said, adding that his family has been asked to come for the body this morning. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians poured into Tehran streets after the disputed June 12 re-election of Ahmadinejad to protest their "stolen votes" before a crackdown by security forces. Iranian official reports say at least 20 people died and more than 1000...

With some fatwas (religious decrees) from the most senior ayatollahs declaring the Ahmadi-Nejad election AND government as illegitimate and an increasing rift among the Mullahs, the latest gambit of the Supreme Leader's Ali Khamenei clan is to scapegoat Ahmadi-Nejad as behind all the troubles of the country and have him killed/murdered or killed/executed for the deaths of the demonstrators. It's all his fault. In addition while Mullah Khamenei Sr. has the top boss TITLE, he has NO respect among the other clerics who consider him an usurper, who took away Ayatollah Montazeri's job by stealth and deceit, by issuing a...

Another eyewitness account, emailed to us from a very close friend. Made my way down the west side of Laleh Park, large crowd was gathered around a radio listening to Rafi give the sermons, moved down to Keshavarz Blvd, where people had already started to taunt the bassijis who look like teenagers with Darth Vader helmets that was one size too big for them. The main slogans were “Baradar’e basiji chera Baradr Koshi” (”Brother basiji, why do you kill your brother?”, the speaker after Rafi was urging people to shout “death to America” and “death to Israel” people responded in...

Iranians prepared for another violent day of confrontations between demonstrators and security forces on Friday, after riot police used tear-gas against hundreds of demonstrators who defied government warnings and swarmed the streets to commemorate the anniversary of a student massacre in 1999.

The young Islamic revolutionaries of the late 1970s are now middle aged, and do not wish to slaughter their neighbors. That is why the mullahs have imported killers from abroad: the five thousand or so Hezbollahis who, according to Der Spiegel, have been brought in from Lebanon and Syria. Dissidents on Twitter report clashes with security forces who do not speak Farsi, and there are even some rumors suggesting that Chavez has sent some of his toughs from Venezuela. Who knows?

MEXICO CITY, Mexico (CNN) -- The United States may have been behind the killing of Neda Agha-Soltan, the 26-year-old Iranian woman whose fatal videotaped shooting Saturday made her a symbol of opposition to the June 12 presidential election results, the country's ambassador to Mexico said Thursday. "This death of Neda is very suspicious," Ambassador Mohammad Hassan Ghadiri said. "My question is, how is it that this Miss Neda is shot from behind, got shot in front of several cameras, and is shot in an area where no significant demonstration was behind held?" He suggested that the CIA or another intelligence...

As we watch the horrors in Iran, it makes us wonder if anything like that could happen in America. In Iran, the mullahs control everything and feel justified in any injustice they commit because of a belief in the rightness of their own actions. Is there anyone like that here? In an answer to that question, Frank Schaeffer wrote a column for the Huffington Post entitled “The Real Lesson of Iran — Beware America’s Republican Mullahs.” Reading it and the comments to it, I came to a realization: people who think the religious right are just like Iranian mullahs are...

As we watch the horrors in Iran, it makes us wonder if anything like that could happen in America. In Iran, the mullahs control everything and feel justified in any injustice they commit because of a belief in the rightness of their own actions. Is there anyone like that here? In an answer to that question, Frank Schaeffer wrote a column for the Huffington Post entitled “The Real Lesson of Iran — Beware America’s Republican Mullahs.” Reading it and the comments to it, I came to a realization: people who think the religious right are just like Iranian mullahs are...

We are told that President Barack Obama has said relatively little over the past 10 days because he does not want to feed perceptions that America is "meddling." Fine. He's being overly cautious, in my view. But let's assume his expressed concerns are genuine. Why does he seem to believe that he has only two choices: American meddling or virtual silence? Obama ran for president promising to end the unilateralism of the Bush administration. He ran as a liberal internationalist, a multilateralist of the first order--reaching out to everyone, at all times and with no preconditions. What about a global...

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be sworn in for a second term sometime between July 26 and August 19, state-run media reported Tuesday. Many Iranians who have disputed the official outcome of the June 12 vote have taken to the streets to protest the results. The Guardian Council -- Iran's election authority -- declared Ahmadinejad the winner with 62.63 percent of the vote. His closest rival, Mir Hossein Moussavi, received 33.75 percent, according to official results that surprised experts who expected him to win. The Iranian parliament's board of directors announced Tuesday that Ahmadinejad will be...

The widespread protests in Iran, even in the improbable event they deliver presidential challenger Mir-Hossein Mousavi to power, are unlikely to dramatically change the country's nuclear ambitions or the strategic complications the West faces in countering Tehran's political gambits across the Middle East. Iran's nuclear program, which Washington alleges is intended to produce atomic weapons, is ingrained in the national psyche. It was begun decades ago and is embraced across the Iranian political spectrum. Its future rests more on the wishes of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the ruling clerics than it does with hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or...

A backstage struggle among Iran's ruling clerics burst into the open Sunday when the government said it had arrested the daughter and other relatives of an ayatollah who is one of the country's most powerful men. Tehran's streets fell mostly quiet for the first time since a bitterly disputed June 12 presidential election, but cries of "God is great!" echoed again from rooftops after dark, a sign of seething anger at a government crackdown that peaked with at least 10 protesters' deaths Saturday. he killings drove the official death toll to at least 17 after a week of massive street...

(IsraelNN.com) Extremist Moslems have not dropped their allegations that Pepsi Cola is essentially the code name for a Zionist plot. MEMRI has released an English transcript of an address given by a Muslim religious leader in Egypt this past February, in which he explains that PEPSI is actually an acronym for "Pay Every Penny to Save Israel."

12.02 pm. Mousavi tells he's bathed [ritually] for martyrdom

Iranian riot police beat protesters and fired tear gas as violence erupted in Tehran today when thousands of members of the opposition movement took to the streets in open defiance of the country's supreme leader.... The crackdown on supporters of the reformist presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi confirmed fears that authorities would carry out their threat to suppress protests in the aftermath of the disputed presidential election... Eyewitnesses in Revolution Square reported around 20,000 riot police, made up of Basiji militiamen and soldiers, and armed with rifles, tear gas and water cannons, far outnumbering the hardcore of around 3,000 opposition...

There is nothing the MSM loves more, than describing hardline Islamic fundamentalists as "conservatives". Ayatollah Khamenei and Ahamadinejad are often referred to as "conservatives" or "ultra-conservatives". Clay Waters shows the bias in the New York Times in this regard: http://www.timeswatch.org/articles/2009/20090615153200.aspx Simply because the Mullahs are religious, oppose gay rights, and believe in spending more on defence (nukes), does not make them "conservative" in the Western sense. The Iranian regime is a religious socialist regime, that believes in a big government theocratic system. It has no regard for individual rights and free speech, major pillars of Western-style conservatism.

The Iranian government has suffered a serious blow to its legitimacy, but that blow is not fatal. Barring dramatic and unlikely changes in the ensuing weeks, the regime will remain intact, by force if necessary. As much as we might like it to be otherwise, that is the reality Washington faces. Critics, including many advocates of engagement with Iran, who argue that Obama's policy of negotiating with Iran has to be delayed or scrapped entirely misread the situation-as do those calling for rhetorical grand gestures from the White House. Lost in the clamor is sober reflection on how best to...

From Worst President to Worst Ex-President MEET THE TRUE FATHER OF THE ISLAMIC REVOLUTION:JIMMY CARTERbyPaul L. Williams, Ph.D.thelastcrusade.org A man can have sex with animals such as sheep, cows, camels, and so on. However, he should kill the animal after orgasm. He should not sell the meat to the people in the village; however, the selling of meat to people in a neighboring village is permissible. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini Jimmy Carter has devolved from being America’s worst president to being America’s worst ex-president. Earlier this week, Carter met with the Hamas government that gained control of Gaza two years ago,...

A Truth and Reconciliation Commission could smooth the transition. Thirty years ago, millions of Iranians took to the streets to demonstrate for their fundamental rights. They demanded the basic freedoms of Azadi-e Baian, Azadi-e Qalam, Azadi-e Andish-e: freedom of speech, freedom to write, and freedom of thought. They called for independence. And they demanded the end of the monarchy and the establishment of an Islamic republic. But the revolution of 1979, which began with the hope of freedom, has ended in the rule of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Mr. Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust and boasts that he would wipe Israel, a...

What's happening on the streets of Tehran is a lesson in what makes history: It isn't guns or secret police, in the end, but the willingness of hundreds of thousands of people to risk their lives to protest injustice. That is what overthrew the shah of Iran in 1979, and it is now shaking the mullahs. This is politics in the raw -- unarmed people defying soldiers with guns -- and it is the stuff of which revolutions are made. Whether it will succeed in Iran is impossible to predict, but already this movement has put an overconfident regime on...

The turmoil in Iran since last week's election has confused the foreign policy debate here in the United States in interesting ways. Supporters of President Obama, who until very recently had railed against the Bush administration's "freedom agenda" and who insisted on a new "realism," have suddenly found themselves rooting for freedom and democracy in Iran. And in their desire to attribute all good things to the work of President Obama, they have even suggested that the ferment in Iran is due to Obama's public appeals to Iranians and Muslims. If so, this will be one of those great ironies...

The uprising in Iran can only succeed if there are fundamental shifts within the clerical power structure that runs the country. There are now signs that an opposition group is crystallizing within the religious leadership.

...Mr. Ahmadinejad was credited with more votes than anyone in Iran's history. If the results are to be believed, he won in all 30 provinces, and among all social and age categories. His three rivals, all dignitaries of the regime, were humiliated by losing even in their own hometowns. This was an unprecedented result even for the Islamic Republic, where elections have always been carefully scripted charades. Many in Tehran, including leading clerics, see the exercise as a putsch by the military-security organs that back Mr. Ahmadinejad. Several events make these allegations appear credible. The state-owned Fars News Agency declared...

Time for a live thread to keep track of all the news in Iran- it's getting tough to keep up!

On June 4, President Barack Obama declared, "I've come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world." Awed by Obama's rhetoric, many commentators - blogger Juan Cole and MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann, for example - suggested that an "Obama Effect" could usher in a new era of hope and change in the Middle East, and a pro-American outcome in Lebanese elections earlier this month seemed to cooperate with the theory. After Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's reelection in Iran, we can now say with confidence: There is an Obama Effect, but it has less...

The White House is playing it cool lest U.S. support for Mousavi discredit his supporters but U.S. analysts have little doubt. The fix is indeed in: U.S. analysts find it “not credible” that challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi would have lost the balloting in his hometown or that a third candidate, Mehdi Karoubi, would have received less than 1 percent of the total vote, a senior U.S. officials told FOX News.Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini apparently has released a statement calling the results “final” and hailing the election as a legitimization of the regime and its elections…The dominant view among Obama administration...

NCRI - The social headquarters of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) inside the country announced that according to eyewitness reports from 25,000 polling stations across Iran, the real voter turnout was 7.5 million, and more than 85 percent of the 51.2 million eligible voters boycotted the mullahs’ sham presidential election. The theocratic dictatorship, which has never allowed international observers to monitor elections in Iran, usually inflates voter turnout by 4 to 5 times. The Iranian Resistance has exposed this level of vote-rigging in previous election shams. The real level of support for the regime is no more than...

There's no doubt that Iran's election will be a major test for incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But many Iranian women hope the results will also shake the current status of women in the Islamic republic. "Thirty-four million women demand to have female Cabinet ministers; 34 million women demand to be eligible to run for president," Zahra Rahnavard, wife of reformist candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi, told CNN's Christiane Amanpour. Whether her husband wins or loses Friday, Rahnavard has broken barriers for women just by appearing on the campaign trail with her husband, a rarity for political wives in Iran. "We look...

ADDRESS GIVEN BY Reza Pahlavi of Iran "Iran-US Relations At a New Cross Road" University of California – Irvine Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 Members of the faculty, students, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen: I am very happy to be back at UCI today. It is a special privilege for me to have the opportunityof addressing you at this important crossroad in the relationship between our two countries, and the significance it has for the future of peace and stability in the Middle East. Let me begin by saying that a good university where one can study in peace and freedom...

SNIPPET: "Ahmadinejad has made clear his intention to prompt the advent of the Mahdi by initiating an act of apocalyptic violence. It’s not a bad plan from the Imamic perspective. Accelerate the Mahdi’s arrival by bringing about a nuclear cataclysm and reap the reward of either of two outcomes. Israel is destroyed and Iran survives since, as Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani has informed us, Iran can absorb “thirty or forty million martyrs” in its march toward a global Caliphate. Alternatively, Iran is also consumed and very possibly the world along with it, a global conquest to be savored from a position...

As Scott noted (here) Barack Obama has vowed that a hallmark of his foreign policy will be persistence. Scott wrote: From the mullahs' perspective, Obama's philosophy of persistence perfectly complements the mullahs' own. It gives them all they need to succeed in meeting their objective. All they need is a little more time. Obama's declaration of his philosophy is deeply meaningful to them. It tells them that he will leave them undisturbed while they go about their business. Today Secretary of State Clinton (gave the mullahs more reassurance:) Clinton told reporters in Monterrey, Mexico, that the United States will continue...

To celebrate Nowruz, the Persian New Year, President Obama sent a videotaped message to the Iranian leadership expressing his eagerness to have a “new beginning” between the U.S. and the unelected rulers of Iran — one based on commerce, peace, and mutual respect, and not on arms, threats, or division. The mullahs likely celebrated Nowruz with cheers and smiles, knowing their investment in terrorism and nuclear technology are bringing in good returns. The Iranian people, however, spent Nowruz acting in defiance of the regime, challenging their oppressors and trying to win a simple recognition from the West of their struggle....

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration is leaning toward making a major diplomatic overture to Iran before the country's presidential elections in June. This initiative could come in the form of a letter from President Obama to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to two senior European diplomats who have met in recent weeks with key State Department officials crafting a new US policy toward Iran. The letter would be aimed at initiating talks over the Iranian nuclear program and Iran's role in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan, the diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the...

The United States’ best ally in the war against radical Islam is the one that the State Department either refuses to see or chooses to ignore: the people of Iran. Anti-mullah sentiment is widespread in the country, particularly among the women and the youth, who courageously stand up to the regime that can beat, jail, and torture them without fear of reprisal or punishment from the international community. Yet, even when facing the personification of evil, the Iranian people stand strong and are in search of allies in the West to broadcast their message. The recent events at Amir Kabir...

In the realm of foreign affairs, the first ten days of Barack Obama's administration were a disaster. It's hard to believe that even a foreign policy neophyte like Obama could blunder so badly, on so many fronts, in such a short time. We spent the better part of an hour of today's radio show talking about Obama's serial missteps, which I wrote about here, here and here. If I get time, I'll try to podcast that hour. Among other things, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the mullahs are beating Obama like a drum. Obama's misguided criticisms of America's policies toward Muslim...

Iran’s always tyrannical and sometimes apocalyptic mullahs have certainly been busy of late. They’ve been spinning faster than a champion dervish, trying to convince the gullible, at home and abroad, that their Hamas proxies in Gaza won a signal victory against Israel, and that Iran was the reason for their success. Meanwhile, they’ve called for the assassination of Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak, Saudi Arabian King Abdullah, and Israeli Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni, and organized mass rallies against President Obama, complete with ritual burning of his photo. Some of it shows the regime’s comedic skills at their highest pitch, such as...

TEHRAN: Iranian students held a protest Sunday at Tehran University calling for freedom and denouncing the policies of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a pro-reform student group said. The protest amid heavy security was organized by the radical pro-reform Office to Consolidate Unity (OCU) student group to mark National Student Day. "There was tough control, they [authorities] would not let anyone in but students broke the gate and came in," OCU member Mehdi Arabshahi told AFP. "A lot of protests were directed at Ahmadinejad over oppression in universities and the bad economy," he added. "The protesters also demanded academic freedom and respect...

TEHRAN,Iran: Iran's official news agency reports that students at Tehran University damaged public property during a protest. The report, a rare admission by the agency of anti-government activities by students, referred to them as a "militia."

IRAN'S Interior Minister Ali Kordan has admitted to holding a fake Oxford University degree which he thought was valid, coming clean after weeks of controversy, a newspaper reported today. "In a letter to the president on Saturday, Ali Kordan said he had pressed charges against the person who claimed to represent Oxford University in Tehran as soon as he realised his degree was fake," the government daily Iran said.

Barack Obama caused another stir over his ties to Islam on Sunday when he noted that “John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith” in an interview with George Stephanopoulos. Stephanopoulos immediately corrected him, and Obama backtracked to say, “my Christian faith…What I’m saying is that he hasn’t suggested that I’m a Muslim.” A few pundits tried to make something of this, attempting to revive the “Obama is a Secret Muslim” rumors, but there really wasn’t anything more to it than a verbal stumble. Obama is not a Muslim, and there is enough to question about training, experience, ideology,...

Jimmy Carter the Criminal Liar! Carter & the Arab (oil) lobby - (Impeach) Lowlife Jimmy Carter's grudge against the Shah for not paying him money... - Carter's responsibility in the tortue of Americans in 1979 by the Mullahs of Iran - Carter FOR Islamofascism - How Carter brought us 9/11 Islamic massacre - Carter's crimes on Millions of Iranians - The Islamic apartheid that created a myth about (against) democratic Israel - His own admission on Israel's great equality, multi racial, multi culture free for all society - Jimmy Carter the Criminal - Carter's Crimes Against Humanity - 'Palestine'...

The men who ordered the destruction of the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie and the bombings of the Marine Corps barracks in Lebanon, the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, and the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia are pursuing the nuclear program in Iran and with one goal in mind: to obtain The Bomb. And they want to destroy you. After the Iranian Revolution, I was an officer in the Revolutionary Guards. I was also a spy working for the CIA, code name Wally. My position in the Guards gave me access to the Khomeini regime’s deep secrets and a...