Free Republic

The bravest man in the land of cedars today - the Lebanese who tried to flip the picture of Qassem Suleimani from the Beirut book fair and was beaten. This is how it sounded after the incident: (Clip translated) We said "Beirut is free" At the end I reached the door outside, and he slapped my head on the floor, put his foot on my head, kicked me and said to me, "We ran over you."

The past year was very good security-wise. The low number of attacks and victims gave Israelis a relatively high feeling of security, and the intensive focus on coronavirus (and elections) pushed aside other issues that in normal times would have made headlines. But the security challenges are here to stay. The new government, when it is formed, will not be able to avoid them, and top of the list is Iran. Behind the scenes, preparations are already underway for these marathon discussions, which take place mainly within the IDF, and specifically in the new unit formed last year to deal...

I first met Qassem four years ago, at the height of the European refugee crisis. The BBC had sent me to capture the stories of Mideast migrants, thousands of whom would daily wash ashore on the Greek isles. He was around 15, malnourished and clearly traumatized. As we sat together in a cabin at a ­migrant camp on the island of Lesbos, his hunched body rocked backward and forward. His marginal life amounted to a speck of dust amid the geopolitical earthquakes that were remaking the region at the time. Yet the story he told opened a window onto the...

By any conventional evaluation the United States clearly came out on top in the recent imbroglio with Iran. Put simply, had a Democratic president been in power, the print media, airwaves and internet would have been awash with paeans to the chief executive and his advisors. The series of incidents would be depicted as admirable, an example of balancing restraint and force to achieve national ends. The only reason this is not the accepted narrative in the media, and especially among Democrats is that the impresario of this victory was Donald Trump. The current “crisis” with Iran began with the...

So long as the world is entertaining worst-case scenarios, the media does Americans no favors in omitting that Iran-Hezbollah has for years prepared to strike in their own hometowns. Weirdly absent from much of the professional speculation about where and how Iran will exact its promised “severe revenge” for the U.S. drone strike killing of Quds Force Gen. Qassem Suleimani is mention of the dead man’s highly suggestive hint. During a time of intense saber rattling between Iran and President Donald Trump in July 2018, Suleimani gave a speech during which he called out the American president: “Mr. Gambler, Trump!...

Senate Democratic leadership is urging President Trump to declassify the official war powers notification he submitted to Congress regarding the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani via a drone strike. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Bob Menendez wrote a letter Sunday to Mr. Trump asking him to release the notification that was transmitted to Congress this weekend. The letter to the president was made public on Monday. “It is critical that national security matters of such import be shared with the American people in a timely manner,” Mr. Schumer and Mr. Menendez wrote. “An entirely classified notification is simply not...

On Friday morning the United States killed General Qassim Soleimani, a top commander of Iran’s al-Quds Force, in an airstrike at Baghdad’s International Airport. The strike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iran-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces. Seven people were reportedly killed in the airstrike. The Iraqi Parliament will hold an emergency session on Sunday to discuss the US airstrike in Baghdad that killed Iranian terror leader Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. Iran has promised revenge for the death of their terror leader.

On January 3, 2020, near Baghdad's airport, a U.S. air raid targeted Qasem Soleimani, commander of Quds Force, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (“IRGC’s”) terrorist arm. He was killed instantly. To understand how important this is, one needs to understand who Qasem Soleimani (1957-2020) was. Soleimani, a one-time construction worker and weightlifter, joined the IRGC after the 1979 revolution and soon headed one of the IRGC’s main cadres. Khomeini assigned Soleimani to suppress a Kurdish movement in Mahabad, Western Azerbaijan. Soleimani's brutality earned him command over a Quds Guard Corps unit in Kerman. The Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) gave Soleimani opportunities...

That President Trump had to make this call, how, and the mortal danger to American assets it presents, illustrate exactly why U.S. forces should not spend a day longer in Iraq. President Donald Trump’s order to kill Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad was the right call. At the same time, that he had to make this call, how he had to make it, and the mortal danger to American assets it presents, illustrate exactly why U.S. forces should not spend a day longer in Iraq than necessary to end our long-dwindling interests.Iran needed to learn a hard, swift lesson....

Iran Is Weak Suleimani's killing was long overdue. The last time Iran was chastened on the world stage was when the U.S. sank half of the Iranian navy in 1988. The first thing to say about the U.S. airstrike on Thursday night that killed Qassem Suleimani, the longtime leader of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Quds Force, is that President Trump made the right decision.Taking out Suleimani, who was killed as he traveled in a convoy near the Baghdad airport, was long overdue. In a statement, the Pentagon said Suleimani “was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service...

Rose McGowan and John Cusack took to Twitter late Thursday and early Friday with harsh reactions to President Trump's order of the airstrike that killed Iran's top general, Qassem Soleimani. Cusack, 53, spared no time blasting Trump on Thursday night, letting his 1.6 million followers know that he deemed the president clueless for putting United States citizens in danger. John Cusack ✔ @johncusack "Trump in full fascist 101 mode-,steal and lie - untill there’s nothing left and start a war - He’s so idiotic he doesn’t know he just attacked Iran And that’s not like anywhere else" McGowan, 46, known...

Obama likes Suleimani, and admires his work. As the president reportedly told a group of Arab officials in May, the Arabs “need to learn from Iran’s example.”

A Kuwaiti paper reveals another monstrous Obama betrayal. We thought the Obama administration could stoop no lower when it was revealed that the administration transferred $1.7 billion in untraceable cash to the Islamic Republic as ransom for the release of four Americans hostages they were holding. We were wrong. In its twilight weeks, the administration gave its consent to allow the Iranians to receive 116 metric tons of natural uranium from Russia as compensation for its export of tons of reactor coolant. According to experts familiar with the transaction, the uranium could be enriched to weapons-grade sufficient for the production...

New information regarding the September 11, 2012 attacks on the U.S. diplomatic outpost and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya and on the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt has been brought forward by former U.S. military personnel who were on duty that fateful night. These whistleblowers reveal that the attackers in Benghazi were led by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, under the command of Iranian General Qassem Suleimani. “Qassem Suleimani, a fanatical Islamic revolutionary, has rapidly become one of the world’s top terrorist suspects, as well as a powerful and sinister force within Iran” according to The Telegraph. U.S....

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...

Syrian rebel sources claimed Saturday night that they had killed Iranian al Qods chief, the commander of Iranian forces in Iraq and Syria, Gen. Qassem Soleiman, in the fighting east of Aleppo. This claim is not confirmed by any other sources. The rebels say they located the Iranian general’s movements by means of intelligence and struck his car with a TOW missile, killing him and three other Iranian commanders with him, Masoud Askari, Mahmud Dahakan and Ahmed Rajai. If this is confirmed it would count as a signal Syrian rebel feat.

An influential Iranian general who has reportedly been near the front line against the Islamic State group was quoted Thursday saying the jihadists are "nearing the end of their lives". General Qassem Suleimani, the once rarely seen commander of the powerful Quds Force, has become the public face of Iran's support for the Iraqi and Syrian governments against jihadists.

The threat of Sunni extremists eclipsing the power of its Shiite-dominated Arab ally presents Iran with the biggest security and strategic challenge it has faced since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. With the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, an offshoot of al Qaeda, rapidly gaining territory, Iran deployed Revolutionary Guards units to Iraq, according to Iranian security officials. Iran has invested considerable financial, political and military resources over the past decade to ensure Iraq emerged from U.S. war as a strategic partner for the Islamic Republic and a strong Shiite-led state. The so-called Shiite crescent—stretching from Iran...

Iran has sent 2,000 advance troops to Iraq in the past 48 hours to help tackle a jihadist insurgency, a senior Iraqi official has told the Guardian. The confirmation comes as the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, said Iran was ready to support Iraq from the mortal threat fast spreading through the country, while the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, called on citizens to take up arms in their country's defence. Addressing the country on Saturday, Maliki said rebels from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) had given "an incentive to the army and to Iraqis to act...

His is not a face familiar to many in the West. But members of the rampaging Iranian mob that last week laid siege to the British Embassy in Tehran knew exactly what they were doing when they held aloft a picture of a grey-haired man, with beard more neatly trimmed than those of his country's religious leaders. Qassem Suleimani, a fanatical Islamic revolutionary, has rapidly become one of the world's top terrorist suspects, as well as a powerful and sinister force within Iran. The crowd of enraged student protesters who chanted "Death to Britain" as they terrorized beleaguered British diplomats,...