Free Republic

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told U.S. President Donald Trump that Israel does not consider itself bound by the Lebanon clause in the emerging agreement with Iran, Israeli officials said, making clear that Jerusalem will not accept any arrangement that limits its freedom to act against Hezbollah. The understanding among ministers in the Security Cabinet is that Israel is standing firm on its interests in Lebanon, and that Netanyahu received full backing in the cabinet meeting for his position. The dispute comes after Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Trump and Iran all announced that a U.S.-Iran agreement had been reached. According...

An adviser to Iran’s supreme leader said Tehran would teach the attackers a “regrettable lesson” in defense of Lebanon after Israel struck Beirut’s southern suburbs on Sunday. “Neither the American diplomatic smile is trustworthy, nor is Israel’s savagery tolerable!" Mohammad Mokhber said on X. "We will teach the aggressors a lesson they will regret,” he added.

A Canadian man accused of plotting a terrorist attack on New York is being held in custody overseas, an FBI source knowledgeable about the investigation said Friday. This suspect is one of eight people — three of them in custody — who, investigators say, were planning to bomb heavily used commuter tunnels leading to Manhattan with the aim of flooding the financial district at the south end of the island. A version of the alleged plot was revealed Friday morning in a New York daily newspaper, prompting the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security to hold...

An accused intelligence operative has escaped from a secret Hezbollah detention facility in Beirut, utilizing the chaotic aftermath of a major Israeli air strike to vanish into the diplomatic quarter. A high stakes espionage scandal has thrown the political leadership in Beirut into profound disarray following the successful escape of an individual accused of operating a sophisticated intelligence network for the Mossad. The individual, identified as Khaled al-Aidi, managed to exploit the immense structural chaos caused by a heavy Israeli aerial bombardment against the Dahiya district of Beirut. As surrounding buildings collapsed and security personnel fled the impacts, al-Aidi broke...

By opening up to Western audiences and calling for a reconsideration of Islamic rhetoric and principles, Hizbullah is attempting to reintroduce itself as a representative of a moderate Islam of the future, distant from the atavism and political agendas of other fundamentalist groups. In a recent speech he gave in the Bekaa last week, the party’s secretary-general, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, said that it was unacceptable to make “generalizations and categorizations that would involve millions of Europeans who preceded the Islamic world in rejecting a war waged against it.” He said that opening up to millions in Europe and America should...

BEIRUT: Salam Hassoun is thrilled by the new flat Hizbullah has built for her to replace the one Israeli bombs destroyed during the 2006 summer war. The war ravaged Beirut's southern suburbs, a Hizbullah stronghold that includes the teeming neighborhood of Haret Hreik, where a mammoth Hizbullah-orchestrated reconstruction drive is under way. The deafening explosions of Israeli bombs have been replaced by the grinding cacophony of earth-movers and cement mixers contracted to rebuild 241 of the 282 buildings destroyed in the bombing. The project, dubbed Waad (pledge in Arabic), has won the heart of Hassoun but has also raised a...

ALBAWABA- Unconfirmed reports circulating on social media and in several regional media outlets claim that Ahmad Vahidi, commander-in-chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was killed in recent Israeli airstrikes targeting sites in or around Tehran. On Sunday afternoon, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) carried out an airstrike allegedly on a Hezbollah command centre in the Dahiyeh district of Beirut, following earlier rocket fire launched into northern Israel by Hezbollah. In response, Iran declared that Israel had “crossed all red lines” in Lebanon and launched multiple waves of ballistic missile strikes targeting Israeli territory late on Sunday, June 7...

he Khatam al-Anbiya Command, the body that coordinates between Iran’s military and the Revolutionary Guards, announced Monday that the military operation against Israel has ended, but at the same time issued a new threat that any further Israeli strike in Lebanon could lead to a harsh Iranian response. In the official statement, it was claimed that Iran’s strikes came in response to Israel’s activity in southern Lebanon and in the Dahieh neighborhood of Beirut. “Following the acts of aggression and evil by the cruel Zionist regime in southern Lebanon and in the Dahieh area, which were carried out with the...

Israel conducted strikes on military targets in western and central Iran early Monday local time, the Israeli military announced, escalating a conflict that had already broken through the ceasefire just hours earlier when Iran fired multiple waves of missiles at Israel on Sunday. The strikes came despite a direct phone call from President Trump to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, urging him not to retaliate immediately for the Iranian missile attack. A senior U.S. official told the Associated Press, on condition of anonymity to describe a private call, that Trump believed he had convinced Netanyahu to wait. Israel struck anyway....

A Boeing 727 cargo plane which caused panic among US intelligence agencies after mysteriously disappearing from Angola's main airport turned up last week in Guinea, the Guardian can reveal. The plane, which was feared to be in the hands of international terrorists, was spotted on June 28 in Conakry, Guinea's capital, by Bob Strother, a Canadian pilot. It had been resprayed and given the Guinean registration 3XGOM. But at least the last two letters of its former tail-number, N844AA, were still showing. The plane, which was recently converted into a fuel tanker, was said to be owned by a member...

Desperate and facing financial collapse, Hezbollah has developed a detailed plan to seize control of Beirut and silence internal critics of the war with Israel. Intelligence reports emerging from the Lebanese capital suggest that Hezbollah is preparing for a domestic military takeover to shore up its crumbling authority. The terror organization has reportedly finalized a plan to occupy key sectors of Beirut in an effort to marginalize moderate political figures who have become increasingly vocal in their criticism of the group's actions. This move comes as the Lebanese public grows weary of a war that has brought the country to...

There was a time when Beirut was not just a battlefield – it was a movie set. At least that’s how I remember it. In the smoky glow of a flickering television, somewhere between power cuts and generator hum, West Beirut became the stage for a fantasy we desperately needed: Americans parachuting in, motorcycles roaring down runways, and one man – Chuck Norris – restoring order to a city that had long abandoned the idea of it. We didn’t call it escapism. We called it hope. Back then, Delta Force was not just a film. It was a parallel reality...

SAMARITAN’S PURSE TRANSPORTED MORE THAN 51 TONS OF URGENTLY NEEDED RELIEF SUPPLIES TO BEIRUT THIS WEEK TO SERVE DISLODGED FAMILIES. The Samaritan’s Purse 767 aircraft made its third trip to Lebanon in the last two weeks to deliver another 50-plus tons of relief supplies, including medical resources for hospitals and clinics. This most recent load also brought more solar lights, hygiene and kitchen supplies, tents, blankets, and jerry cans. In total, we’ve flown in over 150 tons of aid, which we are providing to church partners to distribute to some of the nearly 1 million people who have had to...

How many countries did Islamofascist Republic of Iran attack via its Islamists: al-Quds or or via its hezbollah terrorists? * Lebanon (killing French and American soldiers 1983; kidnapping and torturing of Westerners in Leabnon as well as Lebanese Jews 1982-1992; series of assassination of Christians including PM R. Hariri in coordination with Syria; clashes in 2007-2008 initiated by Hezbollah) * France (bombing shopping centers in Paris, 1985/6). * Israel (katyusha-missiles attacks on civilians in the 1980s, and the recent use of Lebanese as 'human shields,' when targeting Israeli civilians). * Argentina (1992 Israeli Embassy, AMIA building massacre 1994) * Panama...

Stay up to date with the latest news Saturday on the US and Israel’s war with Iran, as four people were killed when the Israel Defense Forces launched a strike targeting Iranian commanders who were hatching deadly strikes out of a Beirut hotel early Sunday, Israeli military officials announced. Israeli forces said they targeted high-ranking officials from the Quds Force’s Lebanon Corps of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who were plotting attacks on the Jewish state from Lebanese soil, but did not confirm whether they were killed. Israel, who said it killed Iranian Quds Force Lebanon Corps commander Daoud Ali...

The Iranian-backed group Hezbollah has fired rockets from Lebanon into Israel for a second day while the Israeli military has sent troops into the south of the country, as Lebanon is dragged into the war between US, Israel and Iran. Israel has also carried out air strikes that have killed dozens of people, according to Lebanese health officials. On Monday, after the regional conflict spread to Lebanon, thousands of residents fled villages in the south and, in Beirut, displaced families gathered in the city's Martyrs' Square and on the promenade along the Mediterranean.

Rochester, N.Y. (WHAM) — Marine Mike Zawacki of Webster said when Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants attacked the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon on April 18, 1983, it was the start of a different kind of warfare. “And then Sunday, Oct. 23, 1983, Hezbollah drove a truck bomb into the Marine barracks at 6:22 a.m.” Zawacki said the bomb was some 12,000 pounds. On detonation, it took the four-story barracks and blew it "a story and half" in the air. “And then it came down and pancaked with our Marines, sailors and soldiers in it — killing 220 Marines, 18 sailors and...

Iran’s state media delivered the message this way: “To the noble and proud people of Iran: With the ultimate grief and sorrow this is to inform you that following the barbaric attack by the criminal governments of America and the evil Zionist regime, the true example of faith, jihad and resistance, the Supreme Leader of the Revolution Grand Ayatollah Khamenei achieved the blessing of martyrdom.”President Trump shares the following message via Truth Social: “Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead. This is not only Justice for the people of Iran, but for all Great Americans, and...

With brilliant intelligence and close U.S. and Israeli cooperation and coordination, Operation Epic fury is systematically dismantling the terrorist regime of Iran’s ayatollahs. And as if in a game of chess, the war has reshaped the Middle East, (a consistent source of hostilities), into a more peaceful and orderly part of the world. It has also demolished fears of Russian and Chinese intervention on behalf of the regime. (Russia’s too broke and China’s grasp is less than its reach.) Indeed China, which depended on Iran and Venezuelan oil, is unlikely to make good for a while if ever on its...

The first members of what would later become Iran’s fearsome revolutionary guards were trained in a quiet village outside Paris. Those close to the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who was in exile in Neauphle-le-Château, secretly began recruiting Iranian revolutionaries in the West to establish a “people’s army”. One of the group’s founders, Mohsen Sazegara, has told The Telegraph that the aim in 1978 was to gather loyalists prepared to confront the Shah’s regime head-on in Iran. The recruits first studied the theory of guerrilla warfare before being dispatched to Beirut and Damascus for military training. There, they learnt...