Free Republic

Turkish autocrat Recep Tayyip Erdogan is coming to Washington, DC, on May 16 loaded for bear.  He has an ambitious agenda and apparently feels he can achieve it all because he holds “trump” cards against the President of the United States. Erdogan and his proxies have publicly said they want to convince the United States to jettison its budding alliance with the Syrian Democratic Union (PYD) and its armed wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Kurdish group that has become the tip of the spear in the fight against ISIS in Syria. On this point, they will encounter resistance...

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...