Free Republic

Jimmy Carter authored the single greatest foreign policy betrayal in modern human history. His cowardly abandonment of the Shah of Iran directly birthed the world’s most dangerous state sponsor of terrorism. President Ronald Reagan famously exposed this catastrophic blunder with unyielding fury. Reagan identified the betrayal of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as a permanent stain of shame upon the American record. The Shah had stood as a formidable, reliable pillar of regional stability in the Middle East for three solid decades. He built modern infrastructure, distributed agricultural land to millions of impoverished farmers, and funded affordable housing across his nation. His...

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the clerical regime in Tehran and its proxies have committed a range of attacks against Americans. This memorandum provides select documentation of these assaults. While the list is not comprehensive, it demonstrates that Tehran continues to pose a threat to U.S. forces in the Middle East, the American homeland, and Americans residing across the globe. November 1979-January 1981: Iranian students — with the backing of Tehran — take 66 Americans hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. April 1983: A suicide car bombing kills 63 people, including 17 Americans, at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut....

A fascinating piece by Andrew Higgins and Alan Cullison recently appeared in The Wall Street Journal [July 2] with the title: “How a Secret, Failed Trip to Chechnya Turned Key Plotter’s Focus to America and bin Laden.” The key plotter in this case was 9/11 mastermind and bin Laden’s Egyptian lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The article’s title suggests that Zawahiri’s failure to settle in Chechnya (due to his “detention” by the KGB/FSB in 1996-97) led him to Afghanistan and an alliance with bin Laden. But according to ranking U.S. terrorism expert, Yossef Bodansky, Egyptian Jihad leader Zawahiri was preparing a massive...

Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega said the Central American country would no longer hold elections, further closing off any potential path for the opposition to challenge the government he leads with his wife, Rosario Murillo. Ortega, Nicaragua’s longest-serving leader, has remained in power since 2007 after previously governing during the 1980s. His current presidential term is scheduled to run through 2027. “There won’t be any more elections here for them to try to seize the government and seize power,” Ortega said. He delivered the remarks Sunday during a speech commemorating the 1979 Sandinista revolution, in which Ortega participated in the overthrow...

A decades-old television interview featuring a young Donald Trump has resurfaced after the US President launched strikes on Iran. The 1980 interview reveals Trump was calling for US military intervention during the height of the Iranian hostage crisis. In the exchange with TV host Rona Barrett, Trump sharply criticised the US government’s handling of the crisis. The crisis saw 52 American diplomats and citizens being held captive following the 1979 Iranian Revolution. “That they hold our hostages is just absolutely and totally ridiculous,” Trump said at the time. “That this country sits back and allows a country such as Iran...

The Supreme Court on Monday reinstated a murder conviction in the 1979 disappearance of 6-year-old Etan Patz, whose case shocked New York City and changed the way parents watched over their kids. The justices, by a 6-3 vote, granted an appeal from New York prosecutors who had urged them to undo a federal appeals court decision that overturned the verdict. The three liberal justices dissented. Prosecutors had been preparing to try the man, Pedro Hernandez, for a third time. His first trial ended in a mistrial. The unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed...

A Swiss judge has issued an arrest warrant for the former head of Iran's secret police for his role in the killing of a leading Iranian dissident 16 years ago. Ali Fallahian is charged with masterminding the assassination of Kazem Rajavi, a renowned human rights advocate, near Geneva in April 1990. According to a report in Lausanne-based newspaper Le Matin Dimanche, the international arrest warrant was issued by Swiss investigating magistrate Jacques Antenen on March 20. It called on law enforcement agencies to arrest Fallahian – who for years headed Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) and is currently...

According to the People’s Liberation Army’s Southern Theater Command (PLA STC), the HNLMS De Ruyter (F804) and its embarked helicopter intruded Wednesday over the airspace of the Paracel Islands, an archipelago under the control of Beijing following its violent seizure from Vietnam in the 1970s.The Dutch frigate was forced away from the Paracel Islands using “necessary measures” and was “in accordance with laws and regulations,” Senior Captain Zhai Shichen, spokesperson for the Chinese PLA STC, said in a news release.China controls the Paracel Islands via a network of 20 outposts and support forces from the mainland. Through its artificial island...

The guise of modern-day terrorism is no longer limited to Palestinian suicide-bombers or the visceral images of the tragedy of 9/11. In a world of ever-increasing ideological disharmony, a new, equally violent terrorist has emerged – the eco-terrorist. Like the purveyors of radical Islamic terrorism, the eco-terrorist uses fear, intimidation, and violence in attainment of its goal, which for the eco-terrorist is simply the reclamation of the Earth to its pre-humanity condition, no matter what the cost. Heading-up this domestic terrorist offensive of radical animal-rights and extreme environmentalism is Paul Watson, who, even amidst the nation’s grief over 9/11, made...

Iran is in no position to fight a long-term war with Israel and even asked the US to intervene to prevent a possible large-scale Israeli retaliation to any Iranian attack, according to Mohsen Sazegara, founder of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), in an exclusive interview with The Jerusalem Post. The IRGC was founded shortly after the 1979 revolution in Iran to protect the Islamic Republic’s religious control over the country, and to act as a counterbalance to the regular Iranian Army, many of whose officers were still loyal to the Shah of Iran, and therefore could not be trusted...

In today’s world, there are 193 countries in the UN. The large majority of those countries will vote consistently against the United States on measures that come before the General Assembly. Then again, the international system that counts is not the UN, but rather the U.S.-led commercial and legal order of alliances and trade. Almost all of the 193 UN member countries participate willingly in that system, to their great benefit. They may oppose the U.S. on many issues, and they may have disputes with their immediate neighbors, but they don’t make themselves constant troublemakers threatening to disrupt world peace...

The United States and Iran held several meetings in Geneva, Switzerland, in an effort to ease friction between the two countries, a senior U.S. official said Monday. The meetings focused on a wide range of issues, including postwar Iraq, in which the Bush administration is attempting to deter Iran from trying to influence the formation of a new government in Baghdad. Secretary of State Colin Powell, during a news conference here after a meeting with Egyptian officials, said the administration opposes a fundamentalist regime as not being in the interest of the Iraqi people. Powell echoed a similar statement weeks...

Was this illegal part of a Venezuelan or Cuban military intelligence operation? Why, again, was he let in? Joe Biden's open borders may be about more than just replacing the electorate. The New York Post found that one of the most malevolent of the border surgers, a Venezuelan illegal named Leonel Moreno, who famously urged other illegals to squat in Americans' homes and waved hundred-dollar bills around to boast of his public benefits on TikTok, is being investigated by the feds for his military intelligence work for the Marxist dictatorship back home. According to the Post: Joe Biden's open borders...

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL Public Statement 2 February 2006 IRAN: AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL CALLS FOR RELEASE OF BUS WORKERS Amnesty International is calling on the Iranian authorities to release immediately hundreds of Tehran bus workers who were detained last week apparently to pre-empt threatened strike action. Although some of the workers have been released, hundreds are reported still to be detained without charge or trial at Tehran’s Evin Prison. The arrests began after the executive committee of the Union of Workers of the Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company, which represents workers employed by the United Bus Company of Tehran (Sharekat-e Vahed), called for...

Iranians celebrating the cancelation of visas for Islamic Regime relatives living luxurious lives in the U.S. have warned the seven deported so have are just “the tip of the iceberg.” Shayan Khosravanifarahani, a journalist and activist, praised State Secretary Marco Rubio for taking action against those who have ties to the regime, telling The Post that for too long they’ve living comfortably using money stolen from the Iranian people. He said the families of the regime were ”using American” to platform their propaganda, lobby, get educated and generally live a safe, more comfortable life. On Saturday, Rubio revoked the green...

Since December 2017, deeply aggrieved Iranian citizens have publicly denounced two blatantly linked injustices perpetrated by the corrupt ayatollah regime: the clerical dictatorship's hideous corruption and Iran's acute economic deterioration. Iran's Islamic revolutionary dictatorship is a case study in repeated failure, incompetence, corruption and mass murder. I estimate that since 1990, I've written over two dozen essays examining the failed Iranian regime's murderous Islamic global revolution, the mass domestic Iranian disappointment with the regime's governance and the Iranian public's evident disgust with governmental corruption. The internet documents my claim. If your mainstream media sources didn't notice Iran's domestic discord, henceforth...

Three Iranian nationals were detained after Secretary of State Marco Rubio revoked their residency over ties to figures linked to the 1979 US Embassy hostage crisis. The US Department of State announced on Saturday that three Iranian nationals were arrested following the termination of their lawful permanent resident status by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. According to the statement, Seyed Eissa Hashemi, Maryam Tahmasebi, and their son are currently in the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement pending removal proceedings. The State Department said that Hashemi is the son of Masoumeh Ebtekar, who served as a spokeswoman for the...

Some U.S. lawmakers still take their jobs seriously, especially members of the House Committee on Homeland Security. You see, as a crowning component of his fetish for “normalizing” relations with (embracing and subsidizing) the Terror-Sponsoring Castro-Family-Crime-Syndicate (called “Cuba” by Obama and his lapdog mainstream media) President Obama has given rapid and enthusiastic approval for six U.S. airlines to start flying one hundred direct flights a week from nine airports in Terror-Sponsoring Cuba to fifteen airports in our homeland.In light of this, some members of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security thought it prudent to check on what security measures...

The UN is honoring one of the interrogators of our Americans held hostage for 444 days in 1980. Click on the link above.

The son of a notorious Iranian regime leader is enjoying an affluent lifestyle in Los Angeles, the California Post can reveal. Campaigners are calling for Eissa Hashemi, 43, to be investigated and deported for defiantly refusing to denounce his mother’s sickening past. On Monday, he appeared unfazed by the controversy and defiantly brushed off a reporter’s questions, declining to speak after a workout at his fancy gym. The college psychology lecturer is the son of Masoumeh Ebtekar, known as “Screaming Mary,” who acted as spokesperson for violent militants who stormed the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held 52...