Free Republic

The US campaign against Iran has continued to degrade the Islamic Republic’s military capacity, with thousands of targets struck, including missile infrastructure, air defenses, drone systems, and naval assets, alongside the use of bunker-penetrating munitions against fortified coastal sites near the Strait of Hormuz. Operations by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have complemented the US effort with strikes across Iran, including on missile-related sites and personnel. Strikes have also extended to economic targets, including gas processing facilities in Asaluyeh, which prompted Iranian threats of retaliation against regional and Israeli energy infrastructure. At the same time, the focus of the campaign...

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps spokesperson Ali Mohammad Naini has been killed in ‌strikes ⁠launched by the US and Israel, ⁠Iranian state TV reported ⁠on Friday. Naini, also the agency’s deputy of public relations, was assassinated just days after Israeli forces eliminated the clerical regime’s de-facto leader, Ali Larijani, and its anti-protest enforcer Gholamreza Soleimani. Hours before his death, Naini insisted that Tehran was still able to build missiles despite the US forces’ bombardment from Operation Epic Fury. “These people expect the war to continue until the enemy is completely exhausted,” he said. “This war must end when the shadow...

The Israeli killing of Ali Larijani marks another blow to the Islamic Republic’s capacity for coordination, weakening an already fragmented system and raising the risk of miscalculation under pressure. Iran confirmed on Tuesday that Larijani—Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and one of the regime’s central security coordinators— was killed in a morning strike on Tehran. The strike inevitably recalls the killing of Qassem Soleimani in 2020: another precise removal of a figure who linked diplomacy, intelligence and military power. Soleimani’s death did more than eliminate a commander. It weakened the regime’s ability to calibrate risk. Radical in purpose,...

Israel's Defense Forces said Wednesday that Iran's Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib had been killed in a "targeted strike" in Tehran, marking the third assassination of a high-ranking official in just two days. Khatib played a significant role during the recent protests throughout Iran, including the arrest & killing of protestors and led terrorist activities against Israelis & Americans around the world," the IDF said in a post on social media. "Similarly, he operated against Iranian citizens during the Mahsa Amini protests (2022–2023)," they added. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian confirmed Khatib's death in a post on X. "The cowardly assassination of...

An Israeli official, who did not want to be named, told Iran International that Israeli drones targeted Basij and police patrols that were planning to approach the venues of the Syrian [celebration] on [Wednesday night.] [The Basij were turned back.] He called this action "unprecedented" and added: "For the first time, the people of Iran received active support that paralyzed the repression apparatus and practically provided an air umbrella for the population." [The Syrian or the Chaharbansuri] is one of the ancient rituals of Iran [and has] turned from a celebration to a scene of anger and explosion and confrontation...

Israel says it killed Iran’s top security official Ali Larijani, as America’s European allies reject Trump’s demands for help in the Strait of Hormuz.The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement Tuesday that the commander of Iran’s feared Basij paramilitary force was among the senior leaders killed in overnight strikes in Tehran, and the Israeli defense minister Israel Katz later confirmed that Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, was also “eliminated.” “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and I have instructed the IDF to continue pursuing the leadership of the terror and oppression regime in Iran,” Katz said...

ran has confirmed security chief Ali Larijani and Basij force commander Gholamreza Soleimani have been killed, according to state media. Drone activity has been reported in Baghdad’s Green Zone, and blasts have been heard near the US embassy in the Iraqi capital.

Imagine all of this sturm und drang over someone who may not even be vertical and respiratory. Ever since the death of Ali Khamenei in the opening seconds of the joint US-Israeli military action, Iran has technically been without a head of state. The Supreme Leader in Iran controls all policy and action, as well as commanding all of the armed forces of the Islamic Republic. Ali Larijani and Masoud Pezeshkian can issue orders while hiding in hospital offices, but they do not have the perceived divine and theological authority that the top mullah has in these systems, and that...

Iran's theocratic leadership took a big hit on Saturday, starting with the head goblin himself, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has now assumed room temperature. Our Townhall colleague Dmitri Bolt puts the number of regime bigwigs transformed into former regime bigwigs at over 40.So far, according to Israeli sources, the deaths include Ali Larijani, Khamenei's deputy, and Ali Shamkhani, a top security advisor. Other reported casualties among high-ranking figures include Esmail Qaani, head of the IRGC Quds Force; Mohammad Pakpour, the newly appointed IRGC commander; and Defense Minister Amir Nasirzadeh. However, Iranian officials have denied these reports.Iranian officials, we might note,...

The daughter of one of Iran’s most powerful officials was quietly ousted from her position at Emory University following a wave of public outrage over her employment, The California Post confirmed. Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani, an assistant professor at Emory’s prestigious Winship Cancer Institute, is no longer employed by the prestigious Atlanta-based school, a university spokesperson said Sunday. Ardeshir-Larijani’s father, Ali Larijani, is a top dog in the Islamic Republic’s brutal regime, serving as secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. “A physician who is the daughter of a senior Iranian government official is no longer an employee of Emory,” said Andrea...

According to a former Islamic Republic official, speaking to IranWire through a traveler, Ali Larijani - the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council - has been at the center of the January 2026 crackdown. The source says Larijani is positioning himself for the post-Khamenei era, using his close ties with IRGC commanders and intelligence agencies, along with his family’s connections to senior clerics, to build support across different factions and prepare to lead the system after Khamenei’s death. Larijani comes from a powerful clerical family. His father, Mirza Hashem Amoli, was a well-known Shia Grand Ayatollah and a leading...

So long as the world is entertaining worst-case scenarios, the media does Americans no favors in omitting that Iran-Hezbollah has for years prepared to strike in their own hometowns. Weirdly absent from much of the professional speculation about where and how Iran will exact its promised “severe revenge” for the U.S. drone strike killing of Quds Force Gen. Qassem Suleimani is mention of the dead man’s highly suggestive hint. During a time of intense saber rattling between Iran and President Donald Trump in July 2018, Suleimani gave a speech during which he called out the American president: “Mr. Gambler, Trump!...

The Iranian regime has given the government of Lebanon the go-ahead to reach a ceasefire with Israel on behalf of Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terror group that began the war in October 2023 but has since been beaten badly. The Jerusalem Post reported Friday: Iran will support any decision taken by the Lebanese government and Lebanon’s “resistance” in current talks on a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, Ali Larijani, senior adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, said on Friday. “We are not looking to sabotage anything. We are after a solution to the problems,” Larijani said after meeting Lebanese caretaker Prime...

Provo, Utah - The head of the Iranian opposition group in exile that supplied early intelligence on Iran's clandestine nuclear program says President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has engineered a clever disinformation campaign to convince foreign experts that Iran is eight to 10 years away from developing a nuclear bomb. But in fact, she says, the regime is less than two years away from producing such a weapon, as part of its plan to "create an Iranian empire" in the Middle East. In a wide-ranging weekend telephone conversation from her base of exile in Paris, Maryam Rajavi told me that Mr. Ahmadinejad...

Former Iranian armed forces chief Hassan Firouzabadi, who once accused Western nations of spying on the country using lizards, has died of coronavirus aged 70, local media reported on Friday. Revolutionary Guards chief Hossein Salami praised Firouzabadi's "continuous efforts" to defend "the sacred system of the Islamic Republic of Iran", in a statement published on the Guards' Sepahnews website. A trained doctor, Firouzabadi joined the Basij Islamic volunteer militia during the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88. Serving in administrative roles, he swiftly rose up its ranks before being named head of the armed forces in September 1989 by Iran's supreme leader...

Vali Reza Nasr, a senior Obama administration advisor on Iran, has come to Iran. Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani and former parliament speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel may be behind the visit. "President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was informed well after Nasr entered the country," Tabnak reported on Wednesday. Nasr was appointed senior advisor to Richard Holbrooke -- the special US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Tabnak and Fararu claim the unannounced trip by the US official to be linked to the recent release of Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi.

Green Movement leaders have been particularly incensed by the government's perceived double standards in condemning the Mubarak regime's violent suppression of protests when Iranian security forces used equally brutal tactics to quell mass demonstrations against Ahmadinejad's disputed reelection in 2009, which Musavi and Karrubi say was stolen. The official Iranian line was expressed by the parliament speaker, Ali Larijani, on February 10 when he told Al-Jazeera: "The Egyptians have a peaceful protest. Why are they reacting to them with bullets and violence?"

The speaker of Iran's parliament, the Majlis, has said "massacre" of the people in Libya and Bahrain were taking place on the orders of the US. Ali Larijani, addressing the Majlis open session Sunday, said US officials should be made to pay for their crimes against Muslims. The Islamic Ummah (community) believes the US ordered such "criminal games", Larijani was quoted as saying by IRNA news agency.

Mash’al In Iran: ‘Our Battle Is Your Battle’; ‘Together We Will Liberate Jerusalem’; Iran Will Help Rebuild Gaza; French Leaders ‘Collaborators’ In Zionists’ Gaza Massacres In a speech at the Iranian Majlis, Hamas leader Khaled Mash’al said that Hamas will not stop smuggling weapons, because doing so would be against the armed struggle. He told Iranian MPs: “Our battle is your battle... Your support for the resistance in Palestine is support for yourselves. He called on Europe to adjust its policy vis-à-vis Hamas, and to influence the U.S. to do likewise. He said that Hamas aspires to liberate Jerusalem and...

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Iran's parliament speaker has criticized U.S. President-elect Barack Obama for saying that Iran's development of a nuclear weapon is unacceptable. Ali Larijani said Saturday that Obama should apply his campaign message of change to U.S. dealings with Iran. "Obama must know that the change that he talks about is not simply a superficial changing of colors or tactics," Larijani said in comments carried by the semi-official Mehr News Agency. "What is expected is a change in strategy, not the repetition of objections to Iran's nuclear program, which will be taking a step in the wrong direction."