Free Republic

It is happening in slow motion, to be sure. But we are witnessing how a nuclear armed Iran is changing the face of the Middle East. For years, US leaders, including President Barack Obama warned that a nuclear armed Iran would spark a regional arms race. And this is happening. As the Wall Street Journal's Bret Stephens noted this week, Turkey signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with Japan that includes "a provision allowing Turkey to enrich uranium and extract polonium, a potential material for nuclear weapons." Saudi Arabia has long had a nuclear cooperation deal with Pakistan, whose nuclear weapons...

A top commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards boasted Saturday that his forces have plans in place to attack the United States from within, should the U.S. attack the Islamic Republic. “America, with its strategic ignorance, does not have a full understanding of the power of the Islamic Republic,” Brig. Gen. Hossein Salami said in a televised interview. “We have recognized America’s military strategy, and have arranged our abilities, and have identified centers in America [for attack] that will create a shock.” Reports indicate that terrorist Hezbollah forces — allies of Iran — have infiltrated the U.S. and have mapped out...

Twitter comments by Iran’s President boasting victories over the idiot countries of the world got me thinking. What if Hitler could have tweeted his thoughts after his conference with Chamberlain at Munich? Hmmm. Perhaps he would have said something like hashtag/Peace in our time. Sure, Right, LOL, or hashtag/Gotta love those Brits. Or maybe hashtag/Look out Jews ☺. However, I was quickly plagued by the thought that had Hitler tweeted his intent, would the world have cared or paid attention? Judging from the reaction to Iran’s tweets, apparently not. Hashtag/Oh those Mullahs, what kibitzers! I will refrain from Brits-bashing in...

Syria Crisis: Geneva Peace Talks End In Recriminations The Syrian government and opposition have traded insults after a week-long peace conference in Geneva ended with no firm agreement. Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said the opposition were immature, while the opposition's Louay Safi said the regime had no desire to stop the bloodshed. However, UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said he had seen some "common ground", and scheduled more talks for 10 February.

I called a hardheaded realist, a Harvard trained PhD who has been watching the Middle East professionally for decades, to ask him about Obama's Iran deal. This is what he told me. It's done. Iran will get a bomb. They want a bomb and they will not be denied unless somebody stops them. Obama does not want to stop them. He does not want a friendly regime in Iran. He wants Iran as a counterforce to America and Israel. Obama is not a Muslim, but he is a radical. He sees the U.S. and Israel as imperialistic and oppressive. He...

Iran now has all the technical infrastructure to produce nuclear weapons should it make the political decision to do, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper wrote in a report to a Senate intelligence committee published Wednesday. However, he added, it could not break out to the bomb without being detected. In the “US Intelligence Worldwide Threat Assessment,” delivered to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Clapper reported that Tehran has made significant advances recently in its nuclear program to the point where it could produce and deliver nuclear bombs should it be so inclined. “Tehran has made technical progress in...

Iran now has all the technical infrastructure to produce nuclear weapons should it make the political decision to do, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper wrote in a report to a Senate intelligence committee published Wednesday. However, he added, it could not break out to the bomb without being detected. Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign up! In the “US Intelligence Worldwide Threat Assessment,” delivered to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Clapper reported that Tehran has made significant advances recently in its nuclear program to the point where...

In a shocking declaration on her 1 p.m. ET hour MSNBC show Tuesday, host Andrea Mitchell asserted that one of America's fiercest enemies was actually a friend to the U.S. before George W. Bush came along: "Up until that moment, Iran was cooperating with the United States on the border of Afghanistan, it was post-9/11, Iran was more or less an American ally. By being included in the Axis of Evil, it turned the Iranian government in a completely different direction." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] The topic came up when The Washington Post's...

An apparent delay in Iran’s building of a nuclear conversion plant suggests its stockpile of low-enriched uranium (LEU) gas will grow for a while longer, despite Tehran’s deal with world powers to curb its disputed atomic activity. Among other steps, Iran agreed under the six-month accord—which took effect on Monday—to limit its LEU reserve. The new plant is meant to achieve that by turning the material into oxide powder that is not suited for further processing into high-enriched—or bomb-grade—uranium. …

Two years after Obama declared that the administration has decimated Al Qaeda worldwide, Al Qaeda has delivered the most devastating blow to the United States since the 9/11 attacks that precipitated America’s war on Islamic terrorism. "We gather tonight knowing that this generation of heroes has made the United States safer and more respected around the world," Obama told us in his 2012 State of the Union speech. "For the first time in nine years, there are no Americans fighting in Iraq. For the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country....

Israeli PM states Rouhani engaged in ‘campaign of fraud’; also says Israel won’t dismantle Jordan Valley settlements Israel estimates that Iran has spent at least $160 billion on its drive to nuclear weapons, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday At a press conference in Davos, where he is attending the World Economic Forum, Netanyahu dismissed Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s claim that Iran is not seeking the bomb, and said Iran was engaged in a “campaign of fraud” to mislead the world about its nuclear weapons aspirations. Referring to Rouhani’s speech in Davos on Thursday, Netanyahu was witheringly critical: “He said...

Foreign Minister Zarif of Iran said on CNN that the White House is getting the nuclear deal wrong -- and that they don't have to give up anything: Said the Iranian foreign minister, "The White House version both underplays the concessions and overplays Iranian commitment. And I'm not interested in that. I'm simply saying, why don't we all stick to what we agreed? Why do we need to produce different texts?" CNN reporter: "Explain, then, to our viewers, what's different in terms of Iran's commitment to what you agreed to and what the White House says you agreed to?" The...

In a televised interview on Wednesday, Jan. 22, Iran’s foreign minister said that a fact sheet distributed by the White House mischaracterized what Iran agreed to do in the Interim Nuclear Agreement. Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, told CNN’s chief national security correspondent that the Obama administration “tried to create a false impression” by claiming that Iran had agreed to “dismantle” the machinery that enabled it to enrich uranium above five percent. The Iranian diplomat said that he was “not interested” in playing verbal games, while the White House was engaged in “underplaying its concessions and overplaying Iranian commitments.”...

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif insisted Wednesday that the Obama administration mischaracterizes concessions by his side in the six-month nuclear deal with Iran, telling CNN in an exclusive interview that "we did not agree to dismantle anything." Zarif told CNN Chief National Security Correspondent Jim Sciutto that terminology used by the White House to describe the agreement differed from the text agreed to by Iran and the other countries in the talks -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany. "The White House version both underplays the concessions and overplays Iranian commitments" under the agreement that took...

Two Iranian warships set sail Tuesday for the Atlantic Ocean on their navy's first-ever mission there, state TV reported. The voyage comes amid an ongoing push by Iran to demonstrate the ability to project power across the Middle East and beyond. The report said that the destroyer Sabalan and the logistic helicopter carrier Khark will be dispatched on a three-month voyage. "The warships will have task of securing shipping routes as well as training new personnel," the semi-official Fars news agency quoted Iran's navy chief Admiral Habibollah Sayyari as saying.

The White House has been exploring ways to circumvent Congress and unilaterally lift sanctions on Iran once a final nuclear agreement is reached, according to sources with knowledge of White House conversations and congressional insiders familiar with its strategy. The issue of sanctions relief has become one of the key sticking points in the Iran debate, with lawmakers pushing for increased economic penalties and the White House fighting to roll back regulations. While many in Congress insist that only the legislative branch can legally repeal sanctions, senior White House officials have been examining strategies to skirt Congress, according to those...

Even after the secret deals revealed by several outlets including The Washington Times between President Barack Obama and the Islamic Republic of Iran, President Obama continues to urge the international community and American people to place trust in the Iranian regime regarding its nuclear ambitions and economic sanctions. It is crucial to examine some of the recent underlying human rights records in Iran, which have surprisingly not elicited any criticism from the liberal politicians, and have gone untold in the liberal media. This raises an intriguing issue, as President Obama has not mentioned or even condemned the Islamists in Tehran...

WASHINGTON — A great deal of diplomatic attention over the next few months will be focused on whether the temporary nuclear deal with Iran can be transformed into a full-blown accord. President Obama has staked the success of his foreign policy on this bold gamble. But discussion about the nuclear deal has diverted attention from an even riskier bet that Obama has placed: the idea that Iran can become a cooperative partner in regional security. Although they won’t say so publicly, Mr. Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry surely dream of a “Nixon to China” masterstroke. They are quietly...

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...

Documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden conclusively prove that the United States has been ruled by a race of tall, white space aliens who also assisted the rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. These revelations about our alien overlords might not cost you any sleep. But the part that should concern you a tad is that the UFO story was just published by the Fars News Agency, the English-language news service of Iran, a nation that may be very close to acquiring nuclear weapons. This being a crazy conspiracy theory, naturally the Russians are behind it. The alleged...