Free Republic

CAIRO - Bahrain said on Thursday it had recalled its ambassador to Iran, a day after it said security forces had discovered a large bomb-making factory and arrested a number of suspects linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guards. Bahrain's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it had also declared the Iranian charge d'affaires in Bahrain a "persona non grata" and gave him 72 hours to leave the country. In a statement on its website, the ministry said the decision to recall its ambassador had come "in light of continued Iranian meddling in the affairs of the kingdom of Bahrain ... in order...

A huge blaze broke out in Beirut's port on Thursday, just weeks after a massive blast at the same site laid waste to the capital city, killing nearly 200 people. The cause of the fire was not immediately clear, but the Lebanese army said in a statement that it began at a warehouse where oil and tires are kept in the port's duty-free market. Videos taken at the scene showed a warehouse engulfed in flames and a large plume of black smoke rising into the sky. Many Beirut residents sharing clips on social media expressed their dismay that yet another...

The Trump administration announced Wednesday that more than 2,000 troops will be withdrawn from Iraq and the administration is looking to announce a drawdown in Afghanistan in coming days. CENTCOM Commander Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. said the reduction will go from about 5,200 troops in Iraq to 3,000 and happen this month, which he said will 'allow us to continue advising and assisting our Iraqi partners in rooting out the final remnants of ISIS in Iraq,' according to CNN. Reporters first caught wind of the president's plan when a senior administration official discussed it with the press pool on...

Hardline conservative Chairman of Assembly of Experts Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati asserted that Kurdistan’s bid for independence from Iraq is an attempt to “disintegrate” and “create another Israel” in the region, speaking at a session of the Assembly of Experts of Leadership in Tehran, Tuesday. Jannati stressed that “today’s important issue about Kurdistan is the climate that they want to disintegrate there and create another Israel in this region.” He went on to call on the Assembly of Experts to “strongly stand up against them because this situation is the demand of the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel,” which he said...

Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, special aide to the president of the Islamic Parliament of Iran, said on Sunday that the United Arab Emirates had made a “big mistake” in normalizing relations with Israel. In an interview with Iran’s Arabic-language Al-Alam TV, Amir-Abdollahian, formerly Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs, said that establishing relations with “the cancer of the region, the Zionist entity,” was not in the UAE’s interest. The UAE may very well have upset its own security and stability with this move because Israel upsets the stability everywhere it is present, said the Iranian official, who added that...

Recently, I joined with 80 other current and former Iranian athletes and sports figures in signing a letter that urges an international commitment to saving the life of an Iranian national champion in wrestling, Navid Afkari. The 27-year-old is the youngest of three brothers who were arrested in 2018 for taking part in anti-government protests that summer in the city of Kazerun. While the two elder brothers have been handed prison sentences totaling more than 81 years, Navid Afkari was apparently made a scapegoat on the basis of his celebrity, and was given two death sentences along with a sentence...

I realize, it was Biden himself that said that one isn't black if one votes for Trump. But we all know, the idea's root is at AOC, Omar/Tlaib types. Recently, after the Beirut explosion, and Arab Lebanese began criticizing the armed Hezbollah, an Amerucan radical left called these Arabs "sellouts". His name is Ben Norton. Writing at Salon and active at his Grayzone

Senior Israeli official believes announcement will follow the signing of Israel's agreement with the United Arab Emirates. Bahrain is expected to announce the normalization of ties with Israel very soon, a senior Israeli official told Kan 11 News on Wednesday. According to the official, it is believed that the announcement will follow the signing of the agreement with the United Arab Emirates. The United States is interested in holding the signing ceremony before Rosh Hashanah, the report said. Recent reports indicated that, in the wake of the Israel-UAE agreement, Bahrain has signaled that it aims to be the next country...

The blueprint presented by the US to the UN Security Council to re-impose the arms embargo on Iran was ruled out, having 2 ayes, 2 nays, and 11 abstentions as its vote. This led the US to move to plan B, the snapback of all UN sanctions, to prevent weapons from reaching Iran and to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear state. Those opposing this move laid out legal issues and, referring to them, say that as the US withdrew from the JCPOA in May 2018 it has lost its place as a participant. As EuroNews put it, on August...

Eleven people were killed in alleged Israeli airstrikes near Damascus on Monday night, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). Syrian air defenses intercepted missiles over the southern region of the country on Monday near Damascus, state television cited a Syrian military source as saying. The source accused Israel of being behind the attacks. The strikes reportedly killed seven Iranian-backed militants of non-Syrian nationalities and three Syrian soldiers, according to SOHR. A civilian woman was killed by shrapnel in the strikes as well. The state news agency SANA, cited a military source as saying that only two people...

Between his meetings in Jerusalem last Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recorded a short address for the Republican National Convention in which he discussed many of the Trump administrationÂ’s foreign policy accomplishments. By the time his remarks were broadcast in the United States on Tuesday night, Pompeo had already landed in Khartoum, Sudan, the second stop on his week-long shuttle diplomacy mission aimed at expanding the circle of normalization between Israel and the Arab states of the region. Aside from the fact that it was nice to hear PompeoÂ’s warm remarks about Jerusalem, his address was significant...

The normalization agreement between the UAE and Israel has effectively ended the racist BDS movement. A Palestinian man walks by a grafitti sign calling to boycott Israel seen on a street in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on February 11, 2015. (photo credit: MIRIAM ALSTER/FLASH90) With the recent developments between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, it’s become clearer than ever that there’s no future for the discriminatory and racist Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. From its inception, the movement was rooted in a desire to destroy the State of Israel as we know it. While cleverly presenting itself...

Devout Shiite pilgrims were left covered in blood as they struck themselves with swords and chains during the mourning procession to mark the day of Ashura in the holy city of Najaf. Ashura, on the 10th day of the mourning month of Muharram, commemorates the killing of the Prophet Mohammed's grandson Hussein at the Battle of Karbala in 680 AD - the defining moment of Islam's confessional schism. Typically, millions of Shiites from around the world flock to the golden-domed shrine where Hussein's remains are buried, to pray and cry, shoulder-to-shoulder. But with coronavirus numbers spiking across the globe, this...

The massive explosion in Beirut on Aug. 4 has been traced back to a cargo ship, the Rhosus, that arrived in the city’s port in 2013 carrying 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate. The owner of the Rhosus has now been linked to the Lebanese bank used by Hezbollah, according to an investigation by Der Spiegel and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. The Beirut blast killed 172 people, injured 6,000 and left 300,000 homeless.

By: Hassan.Mahmoudi Drowning in a miscellany of crises, the Iranian regime and its administration under Rouhani is clutching at straws as a tool of survival. On August 9, 2020, one could hear Rouhani crying ‘Eureka! Eureka!’ at a session of the administration’s headquarter for Economic Coordination. And what precisely was this brilliant discovery; his administration planned to pre-sell 220 million barrels of oil to the ordinary people and the private sector for $42 a barrel and then return the money to them in two years’ time with 19% interest! Wow! With such a decision Rouhani is trying to confront the...

While Israelis have been celebrating the new potential ties with the United Arab Emirates, the Turkish ruling party is angling across the Mediterranean in Istanbul to become a much larger challenge to the Jewish state in the coming years. Ankara’s current regime under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been increasingly hostile to Israel for the last decade, comparing the country to Nazi Germany and vowing to “liberate” Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. Now reports indicate that intelligence and military assessments in Israel see Ankara as a challenge and threat. A recent article in The Times noted that Mossad head Yossi Cohen...

In a March 9 interview with the Lebanese channel NBN TV, Lebanese cleric and imam of the Al-Quds Mosque in Sidon Sheik Maher Hamoud said that according to various calculations, based on the Quran, the Torah, and astronomy, the end of Israel would come in 2022. Following are excerpts: Maher Hamoud: We have seen the cowardly Jew in Southern Lebanon, in Gaza, and elsewhere. The cowardly Jew fears death – unlike our youth whose [religious] conviction makes them go to their death whole-heartedly. […] The end of Israel is inevitable and, Allah willing, imminent. Interviewer: Allah wiling. Maher Hamoud: This...

Every summer for several years, a delegation of British MPs and human rights advocates have attended an international gathering in Paris organized by the foremost Iranian pro-democracy opposition group. Sadly, the event had to be cancelled this year, another victim of the coronavirus pandemic. However, that did not stop the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) from providing an international platform for those critical of the theocratic regime in Tehran. Nor did it prevent British supporters of the NCRI contributing to those calls. As with the prior gatherings, the virtual event - dubbed the Free Iran Global Summit -...

Hillary Clinton used her time at the DNC Convention to warn of President Donald Trump trying to “sneak or steal his way” to a second term—but she did so covering up yet another scandal that ties her to alleged sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. OK! has exclusively learned Clinton, a former Presidential candidate and First Lady, hired Maxwell’s nephew, Alexander Djerassi, to work in her office at the State Department when she served as Secretary of State. Alexander Djerassi, the son of Ghislaine’s sister Isabel Maxwell, was gifted a very powerful and prestigious position within her State Department and the US...

It took approximately 20 seconds for former Secretary of State John Kerry to drop the first flagrant lie in his Democratic National Convention speech on Tuesday, when he claimed that the Obama administration's so-called Iran deal had "eliminated the threat of an Iran with a nuclear weapon." It didn't get any better from there. Kerry knows well that sunset provisions in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action provided Iran's government with a pathway to building nuclear weapons in a few years. He knows well that Israel uncovered a giant cache of documents with instructions on how to jumpstart a program...