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The hours of congressional testimony, the speeches and the press conferences this week were all, nominally, about Iraq. But another, equally explosive question - what to do about Iran - loomed over the presentations by Army Gen. David Petraeus, the American military commander in Iraq, over U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and over U.S. strategy for the Middle East. Petraeus and Crocker, arguing that there has been progress in stabilizing Iraq since President Bush ordered a troop build-up there last year, fingered Iran's support for Shiite militias in Iraq, which they called "special groups," as the No. 1 threat...

ISIS set four captured Iraqi men on fire by hog-tying them upside down, hanging them from a pole, then burning them alive. Once again, the savage execution was captured on video and shared on social media accounts friendly with the terror group as part of its propaganda and fear campaign. The four men in orange jumpsuits introduce themselves on camera and are made to watch videos of other ISIS executions before they’re marched out to the desert, with chains around their wrists and ankles, to their fate. After a man wearing camouflage and a mask explains how the men must...

Many of his foreign fighters come from Afghanistan -- men like Murad, who is now being held in Aleppo as a prisoner-of-war... All he had wanted was an Iranian residence permit, he says... he found himself fighting as a mercenary in the Syrian civil war on the side of the Bashar Assad regime... When a violent explosion caused the house he was in to collapse, he found himself thinking about his daughters, he says. "I screamed and thought I was suffocating. And then, everything around me was quiet." Men arrived and pulled Murad, who was still screaming, out of the...

<p>Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. When ISIS began its attack on Ramadi last week, the Iraqi government threw in its elite units, hoping to stem the tide of the radical Sunni advance and the overall targeting of Baghdad proper. Instead of pushing ISIS back, what transpired was a repeat of the flight from Mosul and other former Iraqi strongholds — a disorganized rout.</p>

A column of Shi'ite militia fighters arrived at a military base near Ramadi on Monday as Baghdad moved to retake the western Iraqi city that fell to Islamic State militants in the biggest defeat for the government since last summer. An eyewitness described a long line of armored vehicles and trucks mounted with machine guns and rockets, flying the yellow flags of Kataib Hezbollah, one of the militia factions, heading towards the base.

Saudi Arabia said today that it foiled a suicide bombing plot against the U.S. Embassy in the kingdom’s capital of Riyadh. In an announcement carried by the Saudi Press Agency today, Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki said authorities uncovered the plot by a militant cell involving at least two Syrian citizens and a Saudi citizen to attack the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh in mid-March. The Saudi national, who had a criminal record according to the Interior Ministry, was arrested April 18 when authorities searched his car and found pipes, batteries, mobile chargers and a few electric wires, officials...

<p>Interesting, not because it’s a surprise that Ron Paul’s son feels this way — remember this? — but because this is a subject that every Republican in the field, Rand included, would probably prefer to avoid during the primaries.</p> <p>Or am I wrong about that? Could this be a smart play for Paul, especially given how it’ll make Jeb Bush squirm?</p>

The Obama administration gave the parents of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl extraordinary insider access to the military’s hunt for their son by having them take part in a series of secure video conferences with senior commanders as well as White House and State Department officials. A former government official involved in American hostage issues said he had never heard of giving a family such access and questioned whether sensitive information could have been conveyed to Robert and Jani Bergdahl and somehow leaked out. A family spokesman said he knows of no such breach. Soon after Sgt. Bergdahl went missing in...

A former commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which the FBI says played a role in a 1996 terrorist attack that killed 19 U.S. servicemen, accompanied Iraq’s prime minister to the White House on Monday, attending an event at which President Obama trumpeted the end of the Iraq War. Hadi Farhan al-Amiri, transportation minister in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government, was part of the delegation that visited the White House to discuss Iraq’s future and Iran’s influence there, among other topics. -excerpt - Louis J. Freeh, who served as FBI director in the Clinton administration and the early months...

NEW YORK, USA (UPI): Relatives and friends said the four men arrested in an alleged plot to bomb jet fuel tanks at Kennedy International Airport in New York were wrongly accused. "The man is no extremist," Rudy Thorne, a lifelong friend of Abdel Nur in Guyana told the Friday's Miami Herald. Another suspect, Kareem Ibrahim, told a friend in Trinidad that his Shiite branch of Islam meant peace, not overthrowing governments, Wendell Eversley, the friend, told the newspaper. The Herald said the four suspects -- Nur, Ibrahim, Abdul Kadir, and Russell Defreitas -- are black converts to Islam and three...

A television network owned by Yemen's Shiite rebels says a total of 137 people were killed and 345 injured in quadruple suicide bombings that hit a pair of mosques controlled by the rebels in Sanaa, the Yemeni capital. Al-Masirah TV raised the death toll on Friday hours after the attacks, making it the deadliest violence to hit the fragile war-torn country.

Iraq, in short, could be experiencing what Lebanon did decades ago as Hezbollah fighters took the Bekaa Valley. In this case, the land in question is Mesopotamia and the forces are PMUs, but the result will be the same: a swath of land in which the government is gradually ceding ground to powerful paramilitary factions with strong terrorist connections.

For USA in Tikrit, Hope Is The Only Plan The U.S. has no real options if the Shiites forces, backed by Iran, decide to go on a killing spree against Sunnis in Saddam Hussein’s hometown. The American outlook for the battle of Tikrit is a triumph of hope over experience. U.S. military officials hope that Iranian-backed forces eject fighters from the self-proclaimed Islamic State from Tikrit—giving both the U.S. and Iran a victory—but stop short of using that win to carry out sectarian reprisals against Sunnis there. U.S. officials said publicly throughout the week that if Shiite forces, many of...

A horrific video has emerged claiming to show a nine-year-old child being brutally murdered by members of a Shia militia who accused him of being a supporter of the Islamic State terror group. The footage was purportedly filmed near the Iraqi city of Tikrit, where a coalition of 30,000 Iraqi Army soldiers and private Shia armies launched a campaign to oust ISIS militants earlier this week. The horrific film has not been independently verified and could easily be just the latest piece of propaganda to be released by the terrorist organisation. Nevertheless the sheer brutality of the clip calls into...

The New Shiite CrescentPosted By Majid Rafizadeh On February 27, 2015 @ 12:10 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 1 Comment While the Obama administration’s agenda and policies with regard to fighting the Islamic State have been counter-productive, the administration is ignoring other larger threats in the region.The profusion of Iran-trained Shiite militias in the region (particularly in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen) is unprecedented and represents the height of Iran’s support to militia groups. The incentives to recruit Shiite fighters can be either driven by financial means or religious/sectarian motives.The emergence of this new Shiite Crescent has unintended consequences for regional and global powers. Currently, an estimate of...

The United States is closing its embassy in Yemen amid political deadlock and deteriorating security conditions after the takeover of the country by Shiite rebels, two U.S. officials said. The officials said diplomats were being evacuated from the country on Tuesday and the embassy will suspend operations until conditions improve. Yemen has been in crisis for months with Iran-linked Shiite Houthi rebels besieging the capital and then taking control. The U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the closure publicly on the record.

Houthi Yemen coup moves Iran’s Middle East hegemonic ambitions forward - upheld by Washington"The strings of the pro-Iranian Houthi rebels’ coup which toppled the Yemeni government in Sanaa were pulled from Tehran and Washington. US intelligence and shared US-Iranian support helped the Houthis reach their goal, which is confined for now to parts of central Yemen and all of the North.... Friday, Feb. 6, the rebels dissolved parliament and seized power in the country of 24 million. They propose to rule by a revolutionary council. ... debkafile’s Saudi intelligence sources reveal that the dominant figure of the uprising was none...

The FBI is looking for Ghazi Nasr Al-Din and believes he could be in South Florida. He was just added to the bureau’s seeking information terrorism list. The agency wants to talk to him about his fundraising efforts with Hezbollah contributors. Hezbollah is an Islamic militant group. Nasr Al-Din is 5 foot 7 and weighs about 175 pounds. He has black hair, brown eyes and an olive complexion. He speaks Arabic and Spanish and he has dual citizenship in Lebanon and Venezuela. If you see him call the FBI’s toll-free tip line at 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800- 225-5324) or contact your local...

The FBI has added a former Venezuelan ambassador to Lebanon and Syria to their Terrorism “Seeking Information” list, after evidence indicated that Ghazi Nasr al Din was using his position to help fundraise for the Shiite terror group Hezbollah. Nasr al Din, a dual Venezuelan and Lebanese citizen, served both of his terms under socialist leader Hugo Chávez before his death and has also served at the head of the Shi’a Islamic Center in Caracas, Venezuela, according to the United States Department of Treasury. The Treasury designated Nasr al Din a “supporter” of Hezbollah in 2008, with Adam J. Szubin,...

(IraqiNews.com) Today Human Rights Watch reported that gunmen from the so-called the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria carried out the systematic execution of about 600 male inmates from a prison on the outskirts of the city of Mosul in northern Iraq on June 10 according to accounts of the survivors. The overwhelming majority of the dead were Shiites. After seizing Badush prison near Mosul, the militants ISIS separated the Sunnis inmates from the Shiites, and then forced the latter to kneel at the edge of a valley and shot them from assault rifles and automatic weapons, according to what...