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MUNICH - Speaking during the Munich Security Conference Saturday morning, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called out European leaders and others for claiming the West is “westless,” pushed back on allegations that the United States “rejects the international community” and explained that the NATO alliance has been bolstered, not weakened, by President Trump’s demands on allied countries to properly budget for defense.  "I saw the topic for this weekend’s gathering, this idea of 'westlessness' as the core theme for this year’s conference. And I am sure, too, there are many of you who would call yourself here realists, but let me...

Russian-controlled forces in Syria have been roaming deeper into U.S.-held territory, raising the risk of conflict in an apparent effort “to challenge our presence in the northeast,” according to a senior State Department official. “These are not daily occurrences, but they have been increasing in number,” James Jeffrey, the State Department’s lead negotiator for the Syria crisis, told reporter

Dear FreeRepublic Compatriots: There is a SPECIAL EVENT on Iran that is going to be held on February 11th in California. The program is called "From a Great Civilization ... IRAN .. To the Axis of Evil?" and the speakers will be LARRY ELDER, KENNETH TIMMERMAN, and BIJAN KIAN. Because most of us won't be able to attend we are urging everyone interested to email C-SPAN at events@c-span.org and see if we can't get them to give coverage to this program! Let C-SPAN know that this is a very important and timely event and will get MANY viewers! Lets see...

China and Russia declare “solidarity” with Iran after Gulf tanker attacks “Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed solidarity with Iran…even as the U.S. Navy revealed evidence the Iranians were behind the terrorist attack on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman.” The two oil tankers were Japanese and Norwegian. The U.S. military released a video it says “shows Iran’s Revolutionary Guard taking an unexploded mine from the hull of one of two oil tankers attacked in the Gulf of Oman.” Tehran’s usual response was denial, and it also accused the U.S. of “waging...

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is a busy man these days. He’s logging enough frequent flyer miles book free vacations for the rest of his life. Today he’s in Brussels to push back on the European Union as they prepare to try to salvage the Iran nuclear deal without America’s support. By the way… remind me again why we’re so worried about offending the EU anymore? It’s not as if they’re really coming down on the right side of history in a lot of current debates. (Washington Post) Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday arrived Brussels in an unplanned...

Martin said U.S. officials started noticing more "heated rhetoric" from Tehran in April, when the U.S. declared the Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization, but it escalated after the Trump administration said it intended to bring Iranian oil exports down to zero by ending waivers that allowed a few countries to keep buying their petroleum products. Officials told Martin that U.S. intelligence began picking up "chatter" about Iranian-backed Shiite Muslim militias in Iraq attacking Americans in the country, where there are still about 5,200 U.S. troops deployed. On Friday, the U.S. Maritime Administration issued a fresh warning to commercial shipping companies,...

A new bloc is emerging in the greater Middle East with the declared objectives of dominating the entire Arab world, confronting and containing the US and its allies; and controlling and benefiting from the entire hydro-carbon economy, from production to transportation. The leading members of the new bloc are Turkey, Iran, and Qatar; with Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan submitting to the new bloc. Russian experts call the new bloc “the Middle Eastern Entente”. The key to the success of the bloc is the emerging correlation of influence of the great powers in the af-termath of the wars in Syria...

Economist Paul Krugman warned of a new “axis of evil” this week that includes Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the U.S. Former President George W. Bush once spoke of Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an “axis of evil” due to the actions of dictatorial regimes, long trains of humanitarian abuses and gulags. The new trifecta of evil, Mr. Krugman says, earn the designation for resisting reports on the severity of climate change. “There’s a new axis of evil: Russia, Saudi Arabia — and the United States,” the New York Times columnist tweeted Monday while sharing a piece by The Washington...

When a mob of left-wing Antifa activists descended Wednesday night on Fox News personality Tucker Carlson’s D.C. home, it signaled a new phase in the political violence and angry confrontations that now are targeting the news media.Political violence has been rising in the U.S. since 2012, according to the Global Terrorism Database. Increasingly aggressive activists have pushed political confrontation to the limit since 2016, accosting Republican lawmakers and Trump administration officials in restaurants and in the halls of Congress. And now they’re going after conservative journalists at their homes.“Tucker Carlson, we will fight. We know where you sleep at night!”...

Members of an opposition party running for office outside Moscow have reportedly been beaten and had their cars torched before regional elections scheduled for Sept. 9. Voters in 22 different regions across Russia, including Moscow, will elect mayors and local legislative assembly deputies on Sunday. Seven regions will also be holding special elections for seats in the State Duma. Parnas opposition party member Sergei Balabayev was beaten by a masked assailant who was allegedly plastering Parnas-branded flyers calling for an election boycott, the party said. “As soon as the deputy entered the vestibule, he was immediately kicked and punched in...

Total, France’s largest energy company, announced on Monday it was pulling out of a $4.8 billion (€4.1 billion) Iranian gas field project, after admitting it was extremely vulnerable to the threat of US penalties against those doing business with Iran. The French group was one of three major energy companies set to help supply the state-of-the-art technology needed to tap into South Pars, the world’s largest natural gas field shared by Iran and Qatar. However, after abandoning the 2015 Iran nuclear accord in May this year, the United States has said it will reimpose sanctions on Iran in two phases,...

The United States on Monday blocked the adoption of a UN Security Council statement that would have called for an independent probe of deadly violence on the Israel-Gaza border, diplomats said, according to an AFP report. "The Security Council expresses its outrage and sorrow at the killing of Palestinian civilians exercising their right to peaceful protest," read a draft of the statement, a copy of which was seen by the news agency.

At a potentially pivotal moment of diplomacy with North Korea, the Pentagon said Monday that annual U.S.-South Korean military exercises that had been postponed for the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics will begin April 1. In a brief statement, the Pentagon said Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and his South Korean counterpart, Song Young-moo, agreed to go forward with the maneuvers, known as Foal Eagle and Key Resolve, “at a scale similar to” that of previous years. North Korea has been notified of the schedule “as well as the defensive nature” of the exercises, the Pentagon said. The timing and size of the...

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper gave sobering assessment of North Korea's efforts to advance its nuclear and missile capabilities during an interview with CNN on Tuesday. "That train left station a long time ago," Clapper said of North Korea's willingness to halt its weapons program. "The North Koreans are not going to denuclearize." Clapper's comments stood in contrast to a fiery warning from the US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who said on Tuesday that the US would not take talks between South Korea and North Korea seriously after South Korea proposed holding high-level talks between...

Assad replaces top Syrian brass after losing military base to US- and al-Qaeda-backed fighters PUBLISHED : Monday, 01 January, 2018, 11:01pm UPDATED : Tuesday, 02 January, 2018, 4:20am President Bashar al-Assad reshuffled his government on Monday by replacing the ministers of defence, information and industry, while heavy fighting erupted between the military and insurgents near the capital of Damascus. State news agency SANA did not give a reason for the government reshuffle, which comes after two years of gaining ground with the help of Iran-backed fighters under the cover of Russian air strikes.

With tensions continuing to build between the United States and North Korea, there’s growing talk by politicians and TV pundits that we are on the brink of war. In truth, we shouldn’t be anywhere close. This increasingly hot war of words — including loose talk about the probability of war — does nothing to bring us closer to where we need to be on North Korea, especially when military options short of war remain on the table. In fact, with millions of lives at stake, waging a war of words is a distraction from the serious task at hand. Any...

Sen. Lindsey Graham says North Korea is pushing the U.S. closer to military conflict and he believes it’s time to start moving the families of American military personnel out of South Korea. The South Carolina Republican said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” he is also going to urge the Pentagon not to send any more dependents to South Korea. […] About 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea to deter potential aggression from the North. …

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has expressed his gratitude to the supreme leaders of Iran and North Korea in two recent letters thanking them for standing behind his government, which has been accused by the West of perpetrating human rights abuses throughout a six-year war against jihadists and other insurgent groups. In a letter sent Thursday to Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Assad thanked the leading Shiite Muslim cleric for providing crucial support to the Syrian military as it advanced against the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) toward the eastern city of Deir Ezzor, where a three-year siege by the militants was...

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is saying that the sinking of a South Korean warship blamed on North Korea was not terrorism, and not enough by itself to put the Pyongyang back on a U.S. terror blacklist. The State Department said Monday that the March sinking of the frigate Cheonan was a "provocative action" and a violation of the truce that ended the Korean war. But it added that the sinking by a reported North Korean torpedo strike was the act of one state's military against another.

GOOD MORNING/AFTERNOON Fellow Zimbabweans, following the address we made on 13 November 2017 which we believe our main broadcaster, ZBC and The Herald were directed not to publicise, the situation in our country has moved to another level. Firstly, we wish to assure the nation that His Excellency, The President, of the Republic of Zimbabwe, Head of State and Government and Commander in Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, Cde R.G Mugabe and his fa,ily are safe and sound and their security is guaranteed. We are only targeting criminals around him who are committing crimes that are causing social and...