Free Republic

It’s impossible to exaggerate the importance of the elimination of the Iranian al Quds commander Qasem Soleimani. He was killed by a US airstrike which targeted him at Baghdad airport, where he had been met by his close henchman Abu Mahdi al Muhandis and who was killed alongside him in a vehicle convoy with five others. This was America’s response to Iran’s escalating aggression, including an attack on US forces at an Iraqi military base on December 27 that killed a US contractor and wounded several others, and after an Iranian-backed mob attacked the US embassy on December 29 scrawling...

Seyed Hossein Mousavian is an ex-Iranian diplomat whose tenure in Germany coincided with the regime’s assassination of four dissidents on German soil. Yet he currently lives in comfort in the United States. Does he belong here? That’s the question raised by a number of prominent Iranian-Americans in a recent letter to Attorney General Bill Barr. The details are grim. Late evening on Sept. 17, 1992, four men were dining together in the backroom of the Mykonos restaurant, a Greek eatery in central Berlin. They were Iranian exiles who had gathered to meet a prominent Kurdish opponent of the Tehran regime....

Paramilitary groups who have been protesting against U.S. air strikes in Iraq began to withdraw from the perimeter of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad on Wednesday, although some supporters remained. By Wednesday afternoon many had left the embassy and started setting up a protest camp in front of a nearby hotel. A small group of protesters remained and said they would not leave till U.S. forces were expelled from Iraq. This protest as led by Badr Corps chief Hadi Ameri.

Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi on Monday condemned U.S. air strikes on Iranian-backed Iraqi militia bases, a move that could plunge Iraq further into the heart of a proxy conflict between Washington and Tehran. The United States military carried out air strikes on Sunday against the Kataib Hezbollah militia in response to the killing of a U.S. civilian contractor in a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base, officials said. Iraqi sources said at least 25 militia fighters were killed and 55 wounded. "The prime minister described the American attack on the Iraqi armed forces as an unacceptable vicious...

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Miley traveled to Mar-a-Lago today to brief President Trump on issues around the middle-east. The three leaders also held a press briefing this evening about U.S. military strikes that took place earlier today. At the beginning of his remarks Secretary Pompeo stated “we came to Florida today to brief the president on activities that have taken place in the Middle East over the course of the last 72 hours.” Additionally Pompeo said he would let Esper discuss “the military aspects but I wanted to...

BEIRUT, LEBANON (10:00 P.M.) – A base housing U.S. military personnel near Baghdad was reportedly targeted by several rockets this evening, the AFP News Agency reported. “4 rockets target base housing US personnel near Iraq capital,” the AFP reported, citing a security official.

WASHINGTON/BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The U.S. military has carried out “defensive strikes” in Iraq and Syria against the Kataib Hezbollah militia group, the U.S. Pentagon said on Sunday, two days after a U.S. civilian contractor was killed in a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base. The Pentagon said it targeted three locations of the Iranian-backed Shi’ite Muslim militia group in Iraq and two in Syria. The locations included weapons storage facilities and command and control locations the group had used to plan and execute attacks on coalition forces. [snip] “In response to repeated Kata’ib Hizbollah attacks on Iraqi bases that...

The US has carried out air strikes against a pro-Iran militant group in Iraq, killing 19 fighters, two days after a rocket attack that killed an American civilian contractor. The Pentagon said on Sunday it targeted weapons caches or command and control facilities linked to Kata'ib Hezbollah (KH) in Western Iraq, as well as Eastern Syria, in response to a barrage of 30 or more rockets fired on Friday. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said "we will not stand for the Islamic Republic of Iran to take actions that put American men and women in jeopardy". Four US service members...

VICE's Gianna Toboni reports on the aftermath of Trump’s announcement to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.

235,000 people who have fled air strikes and shelling elsewhere in Idlib province in recent weeks. The exodus was triggered by ramped-up Syrian and Russian attacks on some of the most densely populated areas of the country’s last-remaining rebel bastion... Earlier this month, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president, told the EU to prepare for a “new wave” of Syrian refugees, saying his country “will not carry the migration burden alone.” Civilians in Idlib say they feel abandoned by Turkey, which has been the opposition’s main backer during the uprising against the government. Turkey has been strengthening its alliance with Russia,...

Earlier this month, House Democrats sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, urging sanctions relief for Iran. Among other things, they criticized "the designation of Iran's Central Bank under terror authorities," arguing that "the efficacy of sanctions is questionable." An organization long described as a front group for the Iran regime sponsored the letter and has embedded staffers with many of the letter's supporters in Congress, including Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.). “Is Iran’s regime quietly infiltrating Congress?” M. Hanif Jazayeri, news editor at Free Iran, asked on Twitter. He pointed out that...

In interview ahead of Likud primary, PM refuses to answer questions on whether he will seek immunity from prosecution or what he’ll do if High Court rules he can’t form government Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed Wednesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin told him the two countries could have found themselves at war had it not been for the close relationship between their leaders.“Putin told me that were it not for our relationship, we could have found ourselves in the midst of a military clash… Only because we meet every few months has this been avoided,” Netanyahu said in an...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks at the Kuala Lumpur Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Muslim nations looking to fight back against future sanctions are exploring an age-old approach — using gold dinar and bartering. Leaders from Qatar, Iran, Malaysia and Turkey met during the Islamic summit in Kuala Lumpur to discuss the matter this week. “With the world witnessing nations making unilateral decisions to impose such punitive measures, Malaysia and other nations must always bear in mind that it can be imposed on any of us,” Malaysia’s 94-year-old Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad told Reuters. “I have suggested that...

In response to the U.S. Senate recognizing the Armenian Genocide, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to close two military bases (one American and one NATO) on its soil. This led U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper to openly question Turkey’s commitment to NATO. Two days later, The Telegraph broke a story that Hamas uses Turkey’s territory to plot attacks on Israel, which included plans to assassinate the then-mayor of Jerusalem and the chief of police, as well as a well-known advocate of Jews’ rights to pray on the Temple Mount. These two developments are part of a larger pattern...

75 years ago, in the darkness of the Nazi barbaric world, a huge wave of arrests broke out, followed by horrific torture and fraudulent trials and death sentences that in many cases was a gradual death of convicts by being hanged with piano strings. Even those who provided refuge and shelter for the escapees were facing death sentences. Hitler, who had fierce anger and an endless thirst for the elimination of the opposition, urged Himmler and Colten Brenner to make every effort to identify anyone who dared to oppose him. He himself determined how to eliminate those who opposed him....

South Carolina’s U.S. Rep Jim Clyburn was among nearly six dozen Democrats who boycotted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s warning to a joint session of Congress not to strike a deal that puts Iran on the path to nuclear weapons.

Last week, Rep. James Clyburn (Dem-SC) sat down with Voice of America host Carol Castiel and network congressional correspondent Cindy Saine. When asked about the Iran deal Clyburn said, “It’s one thing to review it. It’s something else to veto. I don’t think that Congress ought to have any right to circumvent the president. And this foolishness that has been going on up here, it’s just foolishness. And we have to be very, very careful and for people to not see … Look, I am old enough to have seen and paid close attention to many presidents, all the way...

RUSH: I mentioned that James Clyburn, the former head honcho, the Congressional Black Caucasians in the House of Representatives, he was on the Voice of America last Friday. The correspondent there, Cindy Saine interviewed James Clyburn. He's a Democrat, South Carolina. And they were talking about Obama's nuke deal with Iran. And the correspondent said, "Are you in favor of the nuclear deal with Iran and the right of Congress to review it?" CLYBURN: I will say to my friends, be very, very careful how you treat this president because the turnabout is fair play. And I think that this...

Last week, Rep. Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) 6% sat down with Voice of America host Carol Castiel and network congressional correspondent Cindy Saine and offered a warning to President Barack Obama’s Republican opposition while discussing the nuclear deal the president is pushing for with Iran. When asked about the Iran deal Clyburn said, “Well yes, I think so. It’s one thing to review it. It’s something else to veto. I don’t think that Congress ought to have any right to circumvent the president. And this foolishness that has been going on up here, it’s just foolishness. And we have to...