Free Republic

In 1995, former Iranian president Ali Hashemi Rafsanjani made a little-noticed trip to the neighboring country of Georgia. He spent several hours in Tbilisi, the capital, and then instead of returning to Iran, he made a secret side trip to the breakaway region of Adjara to visit President Aslan Abashidze. The purpose of the detour was not to visit the balmy, palm-treed tourist sea port resort of Batumi on the Black Sea. His purpose was more sinister. The Iranian president was looking for black market sources of chemicals to enrich uranium for building a nuclear bomb. He found a willing...

Every August, the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Georgia is accompanied by familiar reflections about missed warning signs, intelligence failures, and a supposedly unexpected turning point in European security. The language has become so standardized that it obscures a far more uncomfortable reality. Georgia did not reveal a new Russia. It exposed a Russia that had been behaving consistently for nearly two decades while much of the West continued searching for evidence that Moscow had fundamentally changed after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Describing the failure to recognize this trajectory as a collection of mistakes understates what actually occurred....

"Intelligence trafficker to the world" sets up shop in the nation's capital. “It [the Cuban embassy opening] is going to be a celebration on our part,” gushed Gustavo Machin, deputy director for U.S. affairs at Cuba’s Foreign Ministry. “Many Americans who have supported the Cuban Revolution will be among the 500 celebrants at the new Embassy.” Despite the innocuous professional title the mainstream media insists on using for Gustavo Machin, he’s actually a KGB-trained Cuban spy who was burnt and booted from the U.S. back in 2003 shortly before the invasion of Iraq. He was among 14 other Cuban spies...

Hezbollah has received $200 million from Iran to help Lebanese people displaced by this year’s war with Israel, say two people with direct knowledge of the transfer, the first significant aid from the group to supporters who bore the brunt of the conflict. Asked for comment, a Hezbollah official says an amount has been secured and a plan for distributing it will be announced in the coming days, without elaborating on the source of the funds. Iran has maintained financial support to Hezbollah through years of crippling US sanctions: it transferred $1 ​billion to the group in the first 10...

Russia has finalized preparations to provide a $1 billion loan to Iran, with the funds ready for transfer once Tehran provides bank account details, Iranian media reported Tuesday. Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency said the payment process had been finalized but disagreements among Iranian government bodies over how the money should be spent have delayed the transfer. The loan was first reported in June and was described as the first installment of a planned $20 billion Russian loan to Iran, according to Fars.

Former President Donald Trump did not hold back his praises to some of the world's authoritarian leaders in a new media appearance. In his interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Trump shared his admiration for the leadership styles of Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. "They're all top of the line," Trump said. The former president described Xi as a "brilliant man" and recalled meeting with him in his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida in 2017. "President Xi is a brilliant man... The look, the brain, the whole thing. We had a...

Secretary Marco Rubio@SecRubioFor more than six decades, the Cuban regime has been the leading sponsor of radical leftism and Third Worldism in the United States.The State Department is exposing the full history of Cuban espionage and subversion in our country.The American people deserve to know.ransomnote: After reading the report Rubio linked, CUBA | THE CAPITAL OF 21st CENTURY COMMUNISM (PDF), I realized that the concluding paragraph (see last paragraph indented below), was likely written for people like me who did not realize just how weaponized CUBA has been. As a failed nation, I did not see its profound success in...

Senate confirms new director for spy agency, cyber command WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate confirmed on Tuesday President Donald Trump’s choice to lead the U.S. Cyber Command and National Security Agency, Army Lieutenant General Paul Nakasone. Nakasone has an extensive background in cyber issues, having held positions including serving as chief of the U.S. Army’s cyber command since late 2016. Nakasone, 54, replaces Admiral Mike Rogers, who is retiring after nearly four years in the “dual-hat” position leading the NSA, the country’s largest spy agency, and the military’s cyber warfare division. During his confirmation hearing, Nakasone said he did...

In direct support of President Donald J. Trump's commitment to election integrity, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has signed a memorandum directing the Department of War to mobilize a comprehensive, whole-of-government defense of our election infrastructure from foreign adversaries. Under the Secretary's directive, U.S. Cyber Command and Combat Support Agencies will prioritize and deploy advanced intelligence and cyber capabilities to identify, disrupt, and neutralize foreign interference in U.S. democratic processes. "Free and fair elections are the foundation of our republic," said Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell. "By working in lockstep with federal, state, and local partners, U.S. Cyber Command and...

In early March, as President Trump basked in the success of a military intervention in Venezuela, he joined Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in the West Wing for a private celebration. A businessman also attended, and brought along a pile of gold. The president looked approvingly at the 10 Venezuelan gold bars stacked in the Roosevelt Room, across from the Oval Office, White House officials recalled. Aides took photos and joked about keeping the gold. Mr. Trump himself had once blacklisted Venezuelan gold, declaring that it destroyed the environment, poisoned people and financed gangsters and corrupt military officials. But after Mr....

Trump wants to preserve relations with Xi, but Iranian customs data show Chinese entities have made thousands of shipments of components used in drones and missiles This summer, when the U.S. and Iran signed a temporary truce, China touted its role in easing tensions in the Middle East. It said its foreign ministry made dozens of calls to nudge peace along, and that President Xi Jinping himself had intervened with suggestions to end the fighting.That same day, a plane from China landed in Tehran. It carried a shipment for Iran’s Ministry of Defense that included electronics components that can be...

A leftist economist connected to liberal billionaire George Soros claimed that the Wuhan COVID-19 virus actually originated in a U.S. lab, feeding Communist Chinese anti-American propaganda. Columbia University Center for Sustainable Development Director Jeffrey Sachs decried the U.S. government’s “very harsh line against China” during a talk at the Madrid-based GATE Center June 15. “I’m pretty convinced [COVID-19] came out of U.S. lab biotechnology, not out of nature — Just to mention after two years of intensive work on this. So it’s a blunder in my view of [U.S.] biotech, not an accident of a natural spillover,” Sachs said. Sachs’s...

Commissioner Ana María Archila was scheduled to meet with Iran’s permanent representative to the United Nations, at 2 United Nations Plaza. The meeting between Archila and Iravani was called off after the State Department—which was not informed ahead of time—met with the Mamdani administration to clarify acceptable conduct. Commissioner Archila allegedly did not inform Mayor Mamdani of the meeting; she was reprimanded for the move and directed to cancel the meeting. The development is a continuation of Commissioner Archila and the Mamdani administration’s ongoing use of public resources to advance an agenda that extends well beyond New York City. On...

North Korea has been found to be dispatching workers to a drone factory in Russia to produce military drones for the country. The Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT), comprising 11 countries including South Korea, the United States, and Japan, released a report today (September 16) titled "DPRK Sanctions Evasion and Violations of UN Security Council Resolutions: Overseas Labor." The MSMT was launched to fill the gap in monitoring sanctions against North Korea following the dissolution of the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee on North Korea Panel of Experts in 2024, and this marks its third report. According to the report,...

A “number of countries” are ready to supply Iran with nuclear warheads following American strikes on nuclear facilities early on Sunday, Russian ex-president Dmitriy Medvedev claimed on social media. In a post on X/Twitter, Medvedev suggested that the United States’ attacks on three sites in Isfahan, Natanz, and Fordow backfired, and led to the opposite result from what US President Donald Trump had set out to achieve. According to Medvedev, “enrichment of nuclear material — and, now we can say it outright, the future production of nuclear weapons — will continue.” -snip- In addition, he said, “A number of countries...

China’s communist dictator Xi Jinping debuted yet another vague plan toward world peace on Wednesday during an official visit to Egypt, one that not-so-subtly suggested Middle Eastern states should consider limiting their ties to America. Xi conducted a two-day visit to Cairo this week following a hectic diplomatic schedule that began by welcoming Jordanian King Abdullah II to Beijing in late August and also included at stop at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. There, Xi held meetings with some of his most important allies, such as Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, though...

There are several ways that wars end. –One side conquers and annexes the other. –One side surrenders and gives up some of their land, treasure, and authority in a peace treaty. –One side has a domestic change of government and the new one befriends the other side. –Things reach a stalemate and the shooting stops in an ongoing, uncomfortable sort of permanent ceasefire. The USA-Iran War has never fit comfortably into such normal classifications. During the first 47 years of the war, the Twelver regime of Iran didn’t just attack the United States, but attacked countless countries and interests all...

Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged continued support for Iran on Tuesday as the United States launched a new round of strikes against Iranian targets, highlighting the increasingly close relationship between Moscow and Tehran as President Donald Trump intensifies military and economic pressure on the Islamic Republic. *** The Post reported that Pezeshkian thanked Putin for Russia's support and urged the two countries to work together to counter U.S. sanctions. Putin said Russia was providing Iran with assistance and essential goods, according to the Post's account of the meeting. The Kremlin's support for Tehran came as U.S. forces launched a new...

Conservatives slammed Gov. Kathy Hochul for wearing a headscarf during a visit to an Islamic center in New York City over the weekend. The Democratic governor wore a charcoal gray suit and a black scarf mirroring those many Muslim women don to symbolize modesty and their religious faith, according to a clip of the appearance at the Islamic Cultural Center of New York in Queens. Hochul addressed the congregants during the weekly Friday Jummah prayer service, giving a shout out to “his excellency” Tareq Albanai — the United Nation’s permanent representative for Kuwait — thanking him for welcoming her to...

The leaders of China, Russia and India gathered with other heads of state in Kyrgyzstan on Monday for the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a group billed as a counterweight to U.S. global influence. Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are attending the events in Bishkek, the capital of the Central Asian nation. Putin met separately with Xi and Modi in two of the many bilateral sessions on the sidelines of the summit, Russian state media reported. Putin affirmed to Xi Moscow’s readiness to make the visa-free regime with China permanent,...