Free Republic

Cont to make progress; have not reached a pol understanding. @JohnKerry will remain in Lausanne until at least Thurs AM to cont negotiations

The Associated Press ‏@AP BREAKING: US official: Kerry extends stay at Iran nuclear talks for another day as negotiations falter.

Insisted U.S. should trust Tehran as Carter had done with North Korea NEW YORK – Secretary of State John Kerry, currently leading negotiations for the Obama administration regarding Iran’s nuclear program, argued as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee in 2004 that the U.S. should provide nuclear fuel to Iran, trusting, as President Jimmy Carter had done with North Korea, that the Iranians would not use it to make a bomb. Notably, one of Kerry’s top “bundler” fundraisers in his 2004 campaign was Hasan Nemazee, an Iranian-American now serving a 12-year sentence in federal prison for bank fraud. During the 2004...

Agents of the EnemyPosted By Kenneth R. Timmerman On March 31, 2015 @ 12:55 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments If any further evidence was needed to show that the nuclear talks with Iran were a tragic farce, choreographed and orchestrated by Iran, the startling revelations from a former top aide to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani ought to do the trick.“The US negotiating team are mainly [in Lausanne] to speak on Iran’s behalf with other members of the 5+1 countries and convince them of a deal,” he told an opposition television network in London.Amir Hossein Motaghi was Rouhani’s image-maker...

It only seems so appropriate. John Kerry’s Iran nuclear negotiations have been extended to April Fool’s Day. This latest in a series of extensions came after the Iranians once again played Kerry like a Stradivarius by hardening their position and threatening to deny Barack Obama and John Kerry their “Peace in Our Time” photo op. So after years of one-sided “negotiations,” the crack Obama-Kerry negotiation braintrust grants yet another extension to the world’s foremost state sponsor of Jihadist terrorism over its already designated illegal nuclear program. (That point is important, namely that Iran is enriching uranium in violation of international...

The UK Telegraph does an epic job of burying the lede in their story about Amir Hossein Motaghi, a media aide to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani who bailed out of the theocracy and requested political asylum while attending nuclear negotiations in Switzerland. Rouhani’s story is interesting, including his assertion that many of the Iranian “media” people attending the negotiations are actually conduits to their intelligence service and his belief that he faced arrest if he returned to Tehran.  But the most intriguing thing he said is floating at the bottom of the Telegraph story, the very last line in the piece:

As Secretary of State John Kerry frantically tries to reach an appeasement agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran over Iran’s nuclear weapons program, yes it indeed is a nuclear weapons program, the security of Israel and the United States continue to hang in the balance. With tomorrow’s deadline rapidly approaching, ‘agreement at all costs’ appears to be the negotiating tactic employed by the United States negotiating team, led by Secretary Kerry. The Iranians certainly recognize the Obama Administration’s desperation and will exploit to their advantage as much as possible the negotiating weakness on display in Switzerland. Weakness they have...

PM warns of ‘Iran-Lausanne-Yemen axis'; officials say Tehran has agreed to ship out all enriched uranium to Russia Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Sunday against the emerging nuclear deal with Iran, as Iranian and Western officials in Lausanne, Switzerland were rushing to reach a framework agreement by an end-of-month deadline. “After the Beirut-Damascus-Baghdad axis, Iran is maneuvering from the south to take over the entire Middle East,” Netanyahu said at a cabinet meeting, one of the last for his outgoing government. “The Iran-Lausanne-Yemen axis is dangerous for mankind and must be stopped.” Netanyahu told ministers that he had spoken with...

An Iranian journalist writing about the nuclear negotiations between the United States and Iran has defected. In an interview Amir Hossein Motaghi, has some harsh words for his native Iran. He also has a damning indictment of America's role in the nuclear negotiations. “The U.S. negotiating team are mainly there to speak on Iran’s behalf with other members of the 5+1 countries and convince them of a deal," Motaghi told a TV station after just defecting from the Iranian delegation while abroad for the nuclear talks. The P 5 + 1 is made up of United States, United Kingdom, Russia,...

WASHINGTON (CBSDC) — Secretary of State John Kerry warns U.S. ambassadors that they will be dealing with “climate refugees” in the not-too-distant future. Kerry told U.S. ambassadors at the Global Chiefs of Mission Conference in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday about the threat climate change poses around the world. “There’ll be climate refugees that all of you will be coping with at some point, if not now, in the not-too-distant future,” Kerry said. “Ninety-seven percent of all the scientists for 20 years tell us unequivocally that this is happening and happening now, and humans are causing it, and we have a...

— The United States is considering letting Tehran run hundreds of centrifuges at a once-secret, fortified underground bunker in exchange for limits on centrifuge work and research and development at other sites, officials have told The Associated Press. The trade-off would allow Iran to run several hundred of the devices at its Fordo facility, although the Iranians would not be allowed to do work that could lead to an atomic bomb and the site would be subject to international inspections, according to Western officials familiar with details of negotiations now underway. In return, Iran would be required to scale back...

With an end-of-March deadline days away, Secretary of State John Kerry is heading back into negotiations with Iran, hoping to seal a framework deal to roll back its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Speaking Wednesday morning to U.S. ambassadors, Kerry assailed opponents of a deal. "What happens if, as our critics propose, we just walk away from a plan that the rest of the world were to deem to be reasonable?" Kerry asked. "Well, the talks would collapse. Iran would have the ability to go right back spinning its centrifuges and enriching to the degree they want... And...

You could tell by his body language and the look in his eye that John Kerry, appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, wanted to say to Marco Rubio: "Listen, punk, I was testifying before this committee before you were even born." And Kerry, the secretary of state and former veteran Massachusetts U.S. senator, would have been right. Kerry is 72. Rubio, the Republican U.S. senator from Florida, is 43.

Jake Tapper ‏@jaketapper 3h3 hours ago Kerry: "I believe we have all the (HRC) emails...let me check on that when I actually have time to pay attention to such an important issue" 0 replies 63 retweets 44 favorites

Secretary of State John Kerry said today he stands by his statement that Americans are facing fewer daily threats, even though he's received heavy criticism for his remarks. In an exclusive interview with ABC News' Martha Raddatz on "This Week," explained the rationale behind his claims to Congress earlier this week, which came at the same time Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, said this has been the most lethal year for global terrorism. "Well, I understand," he said. "Of course I understand it, Martha, because people are thinking about the day-to-day vision of what is happening on the...

Two days before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to speak to a joint session of Congress, Secretary of State John Kerry said the prime minister is welcome to speak in the U.S. but worries it injects far too much politics into the relationship. “The prime minister of Israel is welcome to speak in the United States, obviously,” Kerry said today in an exclusive interview on ABC’s "This Week." “I talk to the prime minister regularly, including yesterday." But, Kerry added, "we don't want to see this turned into some great political football.” Kerry echoed frustrations expressed by the...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday tried to calm tensions with Israel before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's congressional address, yet insisted the Obama administration's diplomatic record with Iran entitles the U.S. to "the benefit of the doubt" as negotiators work toward a long-term nuclear deal.

Recently I was sampling documentaries about ISIS on YouTube. An early scene in one of them takes place at an ISIS-manned checkpoint on a long, straight highway in the Syrian desert. Several large commercial trucks approach the checkpoint, and are forced to stop by the Islamic State thugs. The documentary filmmaker captured what happened next, as if it was just an ordinary day in the caliphate. Three truck drivers are ordered out of their cabs, and they are interrogated while standing there in the road in the hot sun. Their identification papers are scrutinized, and as they plead that they...

The State Department issued a little noticed statement on Saturday warning of an “imminent complex attack” on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, telling Americans to avoid the area around the embassy. “As of February 2015, militants are preparing an imminent complex attack against the U.S. Embassy compound in Kabul City, Afghanistan, from a location near Massoud Circle. The U.S. Embassy is taking this threat seriously and advises American citizens to avoid the area.” Massoud Circle was the location of a deadly suicide bomb attack last September claimed by the Taliban. ... As the Kabul Embassy staff prepares for an...

U.S. Embassy Marines in Yemen handed over their M-9 pistols and M-4 carbines before evacuating the chaotic country with diplomatic personnel, the Pentagon said Wednesday. The Marines also left behind several vehicles at the airport in the capital city of Sanaa before departing on a civilian flight, said Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman.