Free Republic

At first glance, Thursday’s first-ever phone call between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi might suggest the two predominantly Muslim nations are coming together to support Hamas and its war on Israel. But a closer look shows the two leaders were talking past each other. The Saudi prince, known as MBS, wants peace with Israel and his country’s full integration into the world economy, an agenda that puts him fundamentally at odds with Tehran’s drive to destroy Israel and dominate the Middle East through a network of clients and proxies. According to the Saudi readout...

Ali Akbar Velayati, a top adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been infected with the coronavirus and is now in isolation, according to reports in Iran's state-controlled press outlets. Velayati is one of many top Iranian officials to contract the virus since it began spreading across Iran. Several Iranian officials have already died as a result of the illness.

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani traveled to the city of Yazd on Sunday to deliver a speech about Iran’s economy, the oil sector and to express sympathy with earthquake victims. He also revealed massive allegations of corruption. In a rare rebuke, the president attacked the oil minister and demanded to know where $700 million in funds have gone, and slammed the judiciary and the Central Bank over a separate $2 billion corruption case. Rouhani began his speech with good news, arguing that since April, the economy of Iran has stabilized, despite difficult pressures from abroad – a reference to the US...

Round one occurred on Feb. 10, when an Iranian drone launched by a Revolutionary Guards Quds Force unit operating out of Syria’s T4 air base, east of Homs in central Syria, was shot down with a missile from an Israeli Apache helicopter that was following it after it penetrated Israeli airspace. “This is the first time we saw Iran do something against Israel — not by proxy,” a senior Israeli military source told me. “This opened a new period.” It certainly helps to explain why Israeli jets launched a predawn missile raid on the Iranian drone’s T4 home base last...