Free Republic

There is an shocking amount of misinformation and misunderstanding going on right now regarding Iran and Israel, and what brought us to this situation. We need to unpack this and be brutally honest as this is much bigger than you think and affects literally the whole world.You need to sit down and read this the entire way through and share widely — because this affects your life whether you want to admit it or not.To understand what is going on, we need to go back 46 years, to 1979, when Ruholla Khomeini established the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) during...

“America can’t do a damn thing against us,” Ayatollah Khomeini bragged while holding our hostages. The Carter administration had undermined the Shah’s government in favor of the Islamists who seized power and then prevented the embassy’s Marine guards from defending the facility and the people inside against the Muslim ‘student’ groups who claimed to be coming in peace. The “peaceful” student activists took over our embassy and held our people hostage. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei taunted President Trump with the same slogan in June after being asked to give up Iran’s nuclear weapons program. “Our response to the US nonsense...

For 40 years, Iran’s relentless hostility toward the U.S. has fueled proxy wars, terror attacks, and nuclear ambitions. Now, after diplomatic overtures were rejected, America’s decisive strike on Iran’s nuclear sites signals a historic turning point in the Middle East power struggle. For 40 years, Iran has reverberated with the menacing chant of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” a rallying cry born from the 1979 Islamic Revolution under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Last night, Saturday, June 21, 2025, that decades-long hostility faced a decisive response when President Donald Trump authorized a U.S. military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities at...

Run time 13 m ( retired Green Beret, not the clown in the intro clip )

Iran should have signed the “deal” I told them to sign. What a shame, and waste of human life. Simply stated, IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. I said it over and over again! Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!

Carter owes the people of Iran an apology. ... Carter's critics always point to his handling of the Iran hostage crisis as the most glaring flaw in his time in office. During the course of that 444-day nightmare, a student mob held 52 U.S. diplomats and civilians hostage, and no amount of negotiation—or attempted military action—could get them released. Thankfully, that sad chapter finally ended on Jan. 20, 1980, the day President Ronald Reagan took the oath of office at the U.S. Capitol. But Carter's true transgression—the original sin that has complicated and shaped U.S. policy in the Middle East...

As the country with the second-largest gas and fourth-largest oil reserves in the world, Iran is a crumbling ruin, the legacy of 42 years of Islamic fundamentalism. The theocratic dictatorship ruling Iran has been a disaster for its 80 million mainly young citizens, the majority of whom have known no other government. Young Iranians are predominantly secular and non-religious, but they are tech-savvy and envious of the freedoms they recognize in the West. Yet they are chained to the diktats of a fascist, clerical regime, led by the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who believes he is God's representative on...

The Houthi rebels of Yemen have launched numerous attacks using drones and even missiles on Saudi Arabia in the months leading up to Saturday morning's attack on two Saudi oil installations. The attacks coming from a southerly direction where the Iranian backed rebels have been fighting a Saudi military coalition backed by the United States and United Kingdom in a brutal war widely condemned with the United Nations recently saying that all sides in the conflict and those nations behind them may be guilty of war crimes. Now the United States says that based on: "data" and "satellite images" Iran...

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Thursday tweeted a warning to US President Donald Trump. "Misconceptions endanger peace," he warned. "Sanctions aren't alternative to war; they ARE war. 'Obliteration'=genocide=war crime. 'Short war' with Iran is an illusion." Last week, Trump sent Iran an ultimatum, setting a deadline for the start of negotiations and warning that if Iran refuses to talk, the US will attack for the downing of an American surveillance drone.On Monday, Trump announced additional sanctions against Iran, which he said were retaliation for the downed drone, and on Tuesday he warned that "any attack on anything American...

A spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry said in a tweet Tuesday that the new U.S. sanctions that target Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other officials close any channel for diplomacy between the two countries "forever."...Trump said the sanctions “will deny the supreme leader and the supreme leader's office and those closely affiliated with him and the office access to key financial resources and support.”

For all the concessions President Obama offered Iran for his "nuclear deal" – $150 billion, for instance – Iran treated the U.S. with contempt, harassing and even taking into custody U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf. The adage that weakness is provocative was proven true (via the Daily Caller): During the final years of the Obama administration, Iranian gunboats regularly harassed U.S. ships, with three dozen such interactions occurring in 2016. The worst incident occurred in January 2016, when the Iranians captured two U.S. Navy riverine patrol boats and 10 sailors.

Washington (CNN)Ten American sailors are in Iranian custody after two small U.S. naval craft apparently briefly entered Iranian territorial waters, a U.S. senior defense official said Tuesday. The official, however, expects the situation to be resolved quickly. A senior administration official said there is nothing to indicate this was anything hostile on the part of any entity in Iran, adding that the U.S. has received high-level assurances that the sailors will be released promptly. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told CNN's Jake Tapper that President Barack Obama will be in touch with members of Congress about the incident. "Certainly,...

Three Sunni-led countries joined Saudi Arabia on Monday in severing or downgrading diplomatic ties with Iran, worsening a geopolitical conflict with sectarian dimensions in one of the world’s most volatile regions. The diplomatic protests from the three countries — Bahrain, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates — came as Iran accused Saudi Arabia of using an attack on the Saudi Embassy in Tehran two days earlier as a pretext for diverting attention from its problems. Iranian protesters ransacked and set fire to the embassy on Saturday, along with the Saudi Consulate in Iran’s second-largest city, Mashhad, after the Saudis executed...

Over the weekend, a series of dramatic events stemming from Saudi Arabia’s execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr plunged the Mid-East further into chaos. The torching of the Saudi embassy in Tehran prompted Riyadh to cut diplomatic ties with the Iranians and on Monday, Bahrain quickly followed while the UAE recalled its ambassador. Now, the stage is set for a full blown sectarian showdown complete with protests by oppressed Shiites in the Gulf states, anti-Sunni sentiment in Iran and Iraq, and, in a worst case scenario, a direct (as opposed to a proxy) conflict between the Saudis and the Iranians....

Saudi Arabia has announced that it is severing diplomatic ties with Iran following Saturday's attack of its embassy in Tehran during protests. Adel al-Jubeir, Saudi foreign minister, made the announcement on Sunday as the foreign ministry announced that it would ask the Iranian diplomatic mission to leave the kingdom within 48 hours. The Saudi foreign ministry has also announced that the staff of its diplomatic mission have been evacuated, and are now on their way back to Saudi.

BAGHDAD — Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties with Iran on Sunday and gave all Iranian diplomats 48 hours to leave the kingdom, as escalating tensions over the execution of an outspoken Shiite cleric in Saudi Arabia marked a new low in relations between the two Middle Eastern powers. The surprise move, announced in a televised news conference by Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, followed harsh criticism by Iranian leaders of the Saudi execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and the storming of the Saudi Embassy in Tehran by protestors in response. Mr. Jubeir said that the kingdom would not allow...

A series of Iranian officials vowed on Friday to expand Tehran's missile capabilities, a challenge to the United States which has threatened to impose new sanctions even as the vast bulk of its measures against Iran are due to be lifted under a nuclear deal. "As long as the United States supports Israel we will expand our missile capabilities," the Revolutionary Guards' second-in-command, Brigadier General Hossein Salami, was quoted as saying by the Fars news agency. "We don't have enough space to store our missiles. All our depots and underground facilities are full," he said in Friday Prayers in Tehran....

Saudi Arabia's mass execution of 47 prisoners — including prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr — triggered unrest across the Middle East on Saturday, particularly in Iran, where protesters stormed and ransacked the Saudi embassy in Tehran. Photos and video footage posted on Twitter by Iranian journalist Sobhan Hassanvand showed a mob of angry demonstrators smashing windows and setting fire to the Saudi diplomatic outpost in the Iranian capital. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi also condemned the executions. "I'm shocked & saddened at Sheikh Nimr's execution by Saudi authorities," he wrote on Twitter. "Peaceful opposition is a fundamental right. Repression does...

Saudi Arabia has faced global condemnation after it was revealed on 2 January, that 47 people at prisons around the country, including 56-year-old al Nimr, were executed. Most of the detainees had been captured after a series of attacks by al Qaeda between 2003 and 2006. Mr Nimr, who was a driving force behind the anti-government protests, was found guilty of a number of terrorism-related charges in 2014, including incitement of vandalism and sectarian strife, failing to obey or pledge allegiance to King Abdullah (then monarch of Saudi Arabia), calling for the collapse of the state, and insulting relatives and...