Free Republic

Amnesty International director alleged to have links to Muslim Brotherhood & radical Islamists Amnesty’s director of faith and human rights, Yasmin Hussein. A senior Amnesty International official has been found to have private links with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and revolutionary Islamists accused of plotting a coup in an Arab state. Amnesty’s director of faith and human rights, Yasmin Hussein, stayed overnight at the residence of a Muslim Brotherhood advisor during an official visit to Egypt in direct contravention of Amnesty guidelines. Her husband was also named as an alleged Islamist in documents relating to a 2013 sedition trial...

Beirut (AFP) - A formerly US-backed Syrian rebel group on Saturday rejected a deal between Russia and Turkey to avert a large-scale military assault on rebel-held Idlib province. The deal makes way for a demilitarised zone between rebel and regime-held areas in and around the northwestern governorate, Syria's last insurgent bastion. Under the accord reached on September 17 amid mounting fears of a devastating regime offensive, jihadist factions would withdraw their heavy weaponry from the buffer zone. Pro-Turkey rebels have cautiously accepted the deal, but the Jaysh al-Izza faction on Saturday rejected it, saying the zone to be set up...

Palestinian Authority (PA) chief negotiator Saeb Erekat on Thursday evening accused Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of “victimizing the criminal” following the Prime Minister’s speech at the UN General Assembly. “Netanyahu’s speech is a combination of old and well-known talking points that conclude on victimizing the criminal and blaming the victim. His speech further exposes Israel’s systematic denial of our right to exist, to live in freedom and to celebrate our national identity,” said Erekat in a statement. “The reality on the ground in occupied Palestine is a manifestation of what Israel is: a colonial- apartheid state. Despite the oppression, racism...

The deputy head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards warned U.S. and Israeli leaders on Monday to expect a "devastating" response from Tehran, accusing them of involvement in an attack on a military parade in the city of Ahvaz. "You have seen our revenge before ... You will see that our response will be crushing and devastating and you will regret what you have done," Hossein Salami said in a speech before the funeral of the victims broadcast live on the state television. Thousands of people packed the streets of the southwestern Iranian city of Ahvaz to mourn the victims of Saturday's...

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani urged the U.S. to reconsider its abandonment of the JCPOA nuclear deal while accusing the nation of waging “economic war” with sanctions. While speaking at the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday Rouhani warned of rulers who have “xenophobic tendencies resembling a Nazi disposition”, and claimed that “those seeking dominance and hegemony are enemies of peace and perpetrators of war.” “We invite you to come back to the negotiating table you left. If you dislike the JCPOA because it is the legacy of your domestic political rivals then we invite you to come back to the Security...

President Trump on Tuesday took aim at Iran in a defiant address to the United Nations, calling on world leaders to join the U.S. in isolating Tehran over its "aggression." Trump used a large portion of his address to tout his administration's plans to launch a "campaign of economic pressure" aimed at starving Iran of money it would use "to advance its bloody agenda" in the Middle East and beyond. The president noted his decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Obama-era nuclear agreement between Iran and other world powers and stressed that many sanctions would be reimposed on Iran...

The Israel Defense Forces are so much more than the picture of raw power perceived in news stories and war-centered history books. The IDF functions on a daily basis employing stealth and deception in the battle against Israel's unremitting enemies. Pre-1967, the state and military were perceived as underdogs fighting the good fight against all odds. The devastating effectiveness and efficiency with which the IDF knocked out and embarrassed Arab armies changed the perception of the IDF and the Jewish people into a conquering military machine. The success was so decisive that it altered the mindset of the Jewish people...

Russian officials said Syria's outdated S-200 systems weren't sophisticated enough to identify the Russian plane as a friendly one. Monday's statement from Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Russia will send the newer S-300 missile defense systems to Syria within the next two weeks. Earlier in the war, Russia suspended a supply of S-300, which Israel feared Syria could use against it. Shoigu said Russia is now going to go ahead with the shipment because "the situation has changed, and it's not our fault." The supply of S-300s to Syria will "calm down some hotheads" whose actions "pose a threat...

GOMA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO — At least 14 civilians were killed on Saturday in a six-hour attack by rebels on the town of Beni in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, local officials told Reuters, warning the unrest may hamper efforts to quash an Ebola epidemic in the area. The latest outbreak of the deadly disease has been focused in North Kivu and Ituri provinces, which have been a tinder box of armed rebellion and ethnic killing since two civil wars in the late 1990s. Militants believed to belong to the Allied Democratic Forces, a Ugandan Islamist group active in...

"We have made it very clear, we are not going to pay for reconstruction of Syria as long as there is Iranian influence there," Haley said. "We're not going to pay as long as ISIS has not been defeated, which we're almost there. We're not going to pay for reconstruction to help Russia out when this is their problem." Haley added how Russia took responsibility for what is happening in Syria and are now have their hands out asking for money. "What we're saying is there are a lot of things that have to happen before reconstruction is even talked...

Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) Iraqi authorities have deprived Turkish soldiers, deployed in northern Iraq to combat Kurdish militias, from visas to return to their bases as means to cut down the number of troops which Baghdad had repeatedly demanded to pull out. Watheq al-Hashemi, director of al-Nahrain Center for Strategic Studies, an Iraqi government-affiliated think tank, told Almaalomah website that the Iraqi government has unilaterally decided not to grant Turkish soldiers on leave at their homeland visas to return to the Turkish military base in Bashiqa region, north of Iraq. According to Hashemi, the measure, adopted over the past months, has helped...

Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) – A Saudi-owned newspaper has claimed that Islamic State chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has moved to Afghanistan via Iranian territories. Quoting Pakistani security and other extremist group sources, Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported that Baghdadi arrived in Nangarhar Province in eastern Afghanistan after crossing Iranian territories via the eastern city of Zahedan. According to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, IS manages a location to host its fighters in Zahedan in cooperation with the Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Al-Baghdadi has been reported killed or wounded on a number of occasions. Last month, Baghdadi was reported to be...

Nations that struck the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, except for the United States, meet on Monday in what many diplomats fear may prove a quixotic effort to keep the agreement alive after U.S. sanctions targeting Iranian oil exports resume in November. Ministers from Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and Iran will gather in New York at 8 p.m. EDT on Monday (0000 GMT Tuesday) to grapple with U.S. President Donald Trump’s May 8 decision to withdraw from the deal and restore the full force of U.S. sanctions on Iran. Their delicate, and perhaps unrealistic, task is to build a case...

With rising unilateralism challenging its very existence, the United Nations convenes its annual meeting of world leaders Monday and will try once more to tackle problems together as a community of nations, addressing threats ranging from Mideast conflicts to the effects of global warming — and also encouraging the glimmer of hope over the nuclear standoff in North Korea. This year, 133 world leaders have signed up to attend the General Assembly session, a significant increase from last year’s 114. Secretary-General António Guterres called the expected large turnout “eloquent proof of the confidence of the international community in the United...

U.S. President Donald Trump will fail in his confrontation with Iran, just like Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Iranian President Hassan Rohani said on Saturday, referring to the war between the two Middle Eastern powers and vowing that Tehran will not abandon its missiles. Tensions have ramped up between Iran and the United States after Trump withdrew from a landmark multilateral nuclear deal in May and reimposed sanctions on the Islamic Republic last month.

An Israeli veteran of the 1948 War for Independence dissects the revisionist myth of Palestinian innocence To back up its demands for full repatriation to Israel of Arab refugees and their descendants, the Palestinian leadership has—for over fifty years—busily spun the story of their "Naqba," their catastrophic flight from Palestine during 1947-48, in all the media available to them. This version of events—replete with Jewish brutality and Arab victimization—is a lie whose time has come, one now almost universally believed by Gentile and Jew alike. It has become the latest Blood Libel against the People of the Book; and like...

History is recorded daily, whether we like it or not. History isn't what happened, but the stories of what happened and the lessons these stories include. Iran is deteriorating faster than we thought, almost to the point of no return. The Iranian people are aware that after 40 years of complete devastation by the rulers of the Islamic regime, they no longer want the Islamic Republic. In an interview with the Associated Press, Reza Pahlavi remarked, "We all know that regime change is the ultimate formula." Mr. Pahlavi is a harsh critic of the clerical rulers who have dominated Iran...

The U.S. military Tuesday said it supported a plan to establish a demilitarized zone in northern Syria that would separate rebels in their last stronghold from advancing government forces. The agreement to create a buffer zone was worked out Monday in a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held in Sochi, Russia. Russia’s defense minister said that under the agreement, Syria would refrain from launching an offensive on Idlib Province, the last major rebel stronghold.

The trilateral summit in Tehran between the presidents of Turkey, Iran and Russia was one of the most unusual parades of international diplomacy yet. It was televised live. Let’s remember the scenes: All who watched it saw how Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blundered and how Russian President Vladimir Putin ridiculed him. Then it was a rare — if not unique — case of international diplomacy where a trilateral partnership considered detrimental to the interests of the West displayed signs of failure on a burning international issue.What has had the West — the transatlantic security system — worried for some time is NATO-member Turkey’s partnership...

All of this diplomatic traffic is about the impending Syrian military operation into the Idlib province of Syria where around three million are living. The Syrian army, backed by Russia, is aiming to eliminate the jihadist terrorists, which have been controlling the province since early 2017. Turkey has 12 military outposts around Idlib, as part of a three-way agreement with Russia and Iran. Turkey has three main concerns: First, a large-scale operation without distinguishing civilians from terrorists can create a huge catastrophe. Second, it can kick another influx from Syria towards Turkey, complicating the already difficult refugee problem in the...