Free Republic

The president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, called the self-declared interim president and opposition leader Juan Guaido "a CIA agent who serves the interests of the United States and the Zionists" in an interview with the Hezbollah-affiliated Lebanese media outlet, al-Mayadeen... Maduro denied that there are Hezbollah operatives acting in Venezuela. And he accused the United States for trying seize the wealth and oil of Venezuela... The United States, European countries and other world leaders maintain that Maduro's re-election last year was fraudulent and have recognized Guaido as the country's interim leader, as has Israel. The country's military remains loyal to...

Iran on Sunday launched a new locally-made submarine capable of firing cruise missiles, state TV said, in the country's latest show of military might at a time of heightened tensions with the US. "Today, the Islamic Republic of Iran is fully self-reliant on land, air and sea," Rouhani said. "Our defensive power is meant to defend our interests and we have never sought to attack any country," he added. Named the Fateh (Farsi for 'Conqueror'), Fars news agency said the new submarine is Iran's first in the semi-heavy category, filling a gap between the light Ghadir class and the heavy...

Nigeria: Elections postponed after Islamic State murders 42 in attack on governor’s election convoy “The Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), a Boko Haram offshoot, claimed responsibility for a deadly attack this week on a state governor’s election motorcade in Nigeria that may have involved some beheadings days before people in the African country head to the polls on Saturday.” And now the elections have been postponed. Intimidation is at the root of jihad. And this shows why: it works. Last month, the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria issued a security alert for American citizens, warning that Boko Haram and its...

WARSAW, Poland – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office on Thursday released a video of a closed meeting in which senior Gulf Arab officials play down the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, defend Israel's right to defend itself, and describe Iran as the greatest threat to regional peace. The video, bearing the insignia of Netanyahu's office, gave a rare glimpse into the behind-the-scenes contacts the Israeli leader frequently boasts of, but which are rarely seen in public. The video was recorded on a mobile device and it was not clear who took it. Netanyahu's office briefly made the YouTube video available to a...

U.S.-backed fighters are poised to capture Islamic State’s last, tiny enclave on the Euphrates. The remaining militants in a neighborhood of Baghouz village near the Iraqi border, under fire from all sides. Civilians fled the few square miles of hamlets and farmland that remain within Islamic State’s ‘caliphate’, along with defeated jihadists trying to escape unnoticed. Most of the fighters left in Baghouz are foreigners, in an encircled pocket some 700 meters square. Army General Joseph Votel said the end of the territorial caliphate would lead to a more dispersed, harder-to-detect network of fighters waging guerrilla warfare. That should require...

A US Air Force officer has defected to Iran and shared information that could cause "serious damage" to America's national security, officials have revealed. The former Air Force intelligence specialist was charged with espionage and was accused of working for Iran, according to an unsealed federal indictment. The announcement arrived after Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers and other senior officials held a call with reporters to discuss what they called “a national security related action involving Iran”. Mr Demers was joined by US Attorney for Washington, Jessie Liu, FBI Executive Assistant Director for National Security Jay Tabb,...

Reza Pahlavi, the exiled former crown prince of Iran, said in an interview with RFE/RL's Radio Farda that he thinks "we are really close to the fall of the [Iranian] regime." He added that the current situation in Iran is similar to how it was in 1979 when his father left Iran amid violent turmoil and went into exile. That upheaval ended centuries of monarchy in Iran and led to the formation of the Islamic Republic of Iran with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini at its head. "The atmosphere [in Iran] seems to be close to a flash point," he said...

Omar will be speaking alongside a well-known Islamic Relief USA official, Yousef Abdallah, who has openly advocated for violence against Jews and has shared antisemitic sentiments on social media. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar will be a keynote speaker at an Islamic Relief USA emergency fundraising dinner for Yemen in Tampa, Florida, on February 23. Omar will be speaking alongside a well-known Islamic Relief USA official, Yousef Abdallah, who has advocated for violence against Jews and has shared antisemitic sentiments on his social media pages. The Middle East Forum’s Islamist Watch blog highlighted this address, and reported several instances in which Abdallah...

Image: http://indiafacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Galloping-Growth-of-Madrasas-1000x500.jpg Islam is hell-bent on re-conquering India. Post-independence through Madrasa multiplication Darul Uloom Deoband has laid a formidable siege to India. The task was facilitated by secularism-doped Hindus swearing by Pandit Nehru! The quantum jump in the number of madrasas from 88 in 1947 to five lakhs in 2006 across India is a mind boggling narrative of unremitting Islamic aggression. It has the potential to bring about tectonic changes in the future geopolitical developments across India -- including the much dreaded clash of civilizations! Unfortunately the secularism-trapped Indian government never tried to exercise any control over lakhs of madrasas...

Only a few years ago, before the hydro-fracking and shale revolution overturned the economics of U.S. oil production, the United States was the world's largest oil importer by far and prohibited exports of oil by law. Now shipments of U.S. crude into Europe have just hit a new record. January imports were 630,000 barrels per day, still - behind Russia and Iraq but above other OPEC producers including Nigeria and Libya. Higher U.S. crude exports have been helped by lower supplies of Iranian and Venezuelan crude, which Washington has put under sanctions, scaring buyers across the world. In the whole...

When police and security forces discovered 19-year-old Ori Ansbacher in Jerusalem’s Ein Yael forest on Friday, she was already dead. Police noted that she was murdered in a brutal fashion having been stabbed at least 12 times in the chest and neck. There were other signs of brutality but in deference to police requests and the dignity of the Ansbacher family, I will refrain from noting them here. Needless to say, this was a barbaric crime even by Palestinian standards of barbarity. Forensic teams scoured the site for evidence and within 24 hours, there was a significant evidentiary breakthrough that...

Two Palestinians died Monday and several others injured after Egyptian troops pumped toxic fumes into a smuggling tunnel stretching into the Sinai Peninsula from the Gaza Strip. The Hamas-run Gaza Interior Ministry was quoted by Wafa news as identifying the two as 39-year-old Hamas officer Abdul Hamid al-Aker, who was killed during a “security mission to inspect the tunnel,” and 28-year-old Sobhi Abu Qarshin. Abu Qarshin was said to have died during a rescue attempt. Several other security personnel were rescued by civil defense teams from inside the tunnel and were rushed to hospital, where they were described as being...

How many times have we heard a politician, opinion blatherskite, news reader or random friend say that “so and so leaving” means that there is no longer an adult in the room with President Donald J. Trump. In the last week or so, that has been blown out of the water. We, those of us with common sense, knew it was never true. Dems have proven now that Trump “IS” the adult in the room. Nancy Pelosi was proud of how her charges behaved. And, the left says that Nancy is the adult in the room: Nancy Pelosi Nope. Just...

Terrorist Arafat Irfaiya, who was arrested on suspicion of murdering Ori Ansbacher near Jerusalem last Thursday, threatened to carry out a terrorist attack two years ago in order to become a Shaheed (martyr -ed.). Channel 13 News on Sunday evening published transcripts of Irfaiya’s interrogation in 2017, after he was arrested by police officers at the entrance to the Temple Mount with a large kitchen knife in his pocket. Irfaiya threatened then that he would carry out an attack again and that he intended to return to Israel with the goal of "becoming a Shaheed" or going to jail. During...

But on January 30, in the aftermath of his discussion on the Wall Street Journal column with Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, Pipes wrote that Trump is “the most pro-Israel president ever A week after raising doubts on President Donald Trump’s “deal of the century” to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a leading Mideast policy expert reversed course and affirmed Trump as “the most pro-Israel president ever.”   Daniel Pipes, founder and president of the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum think tank, had written in a January 23 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that although the specific details of Trump’s peace...

Russia's Embassador to Lebanon warned on Saturday that the US policy in the region could spark a new conflict between Israel and Lebanon. Speaking with the Russian Sputnik news agency, Ambassador Alexander Zasypkin said that the United States' actions are aimed at sowing discord in the region. "As for a conflict between Israel and Lebanon, nothing can be predicted with certainty because the region is at a crossroads. Peoples are demanding the settlement of existing crises, the return to a peaceful life, the development of cooperation. A negative alternative to this is the incitement of new conflicts bt the Americans,...

Responding to congressional efforts this week to sanction Saudi Arabia over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and the kingdom's role in the bloody conflict in Yemen, top Saudi official Adel Al-Jubeir accused legislators of "providing ammunition to the 'death to America' crowd." "I find it very strange that members of Congress would try to curtail allies like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in trying to push back against terrorist organizations supported by Iran and Hezbollah," Al-Jubeir, the Saudi minister of state for foreign affairs, told "Face the Nation" moderator Margaret Brennan as part of an interview that will...

Iran: One of the linchpins of former President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran was that it would be accompanied by a near-ban on Iran having any access to the U.S. banking system. A new congressional report says that, too, was a lie.[snip] Obama sent a clear message to Congress: If you don't block ( this nuclear deal), we will bar Iran's access to our financial system. The deal was clear, unequivocal.[snip]It was also a lie. Obama lied, and so did others in his administration. That's the conclusion of a report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. It alleges Obama...

Despite howls of protest by the Left, the foreign-policy establishment, and European leaders, and contrary to misleading assessments by U.S. intelligence agencies, it is now clear that President Trump’s decision last May to withdraw the United States from the controversial 2015 nuclear deal with Iran (the JCPOA) was the right call and is a huge policy success. Trump’s JCPOA withdrawal did not lead to war with Iran, as many critics predicted. Instead, Iran is far more isolated than it was when President Trump assumed office. The United States has worked to unite its Middle East allies, especially Israel and Saudi...

In a celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei sought to clear the air with Americans who might take offense at the “Death to America” chants that have marked the nationwide rallies there to mark the occasion. The “Death to America” chants, Khamenei said, are directed at the Trump administration, according to multiple published reports, and not the American people. Khamenei, appearing before a group of Iranian air force officers, said the United States was "the embodiment of evil, violence, crisis-making and warmongering.” "The U.S. officials, while insulting the Iranian nation, ask why you...