Free Republic

The illusion of Iranian power was kept alive for decades by American engagement with the would-be lords of the Middle East. Now the spell is broken, and the ‘Axis of Resistance’ is shattered. A billboard with the "doomsday clock," counting down the days until Israel's destruction, is pictured in downtown Tehran, Iran, on November 4, 2024. Israel bombed the clock on Monday. A few months before he was buried under the rubble of his Beirut bunker, the late leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, repeated to his followers, as he had done many times before, his famous line that Israel was...

An even better question: Why are Hezbollah leaders still meeting in Beirut?The Israelis launched another massive attack on a building complex "on the outskirts of Beirut," the New York Times reports this morning. This apparently refers to Dahiyeh, the suburb controlled by Hamas Hezbollah [corrected], and where Israelis killed longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah a few days ago. Reportedly, Nasrallah's presumed successor had gathered with what's left of Hezbollah's command, and ... well ...Israel bombed a meeting of Hezbollah’s senior leadership around midnight on Thursday, a gathering that included Hashem Safieddine, the presumed successor of Hassan Nasrallah, the group’s longtime...

In the early morning hours of Thursday, Syria’s al-Tala’i military research facility located in Masyaf was reduced to ash and flames. The Jerusalem Post reports that contemporaneous with the strike on al-Tala’I, a Hezbollah weapons convoy in the vicinity was also hit and destroyed. According to Western intelligence sources, al-Tala’i is a center for the production of chemical weapons. Syria blamed Israel and claimed that at least two regime soldiers were killed in the attack. The regime issued a banal and somewhat hypocritical warning of the “dangerous repercussions of this aggressive action to the security and stability of the region.”...

Federal authorities said the Brown University assistant professor and doctor deported to Lebanon despite having an H-1B visa expressed support and attended the funeral of a slain Hezbollah leader responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans. Rasha Alawieh, a 34-year-old physician specializing in kidney transplants who was most recently living in Rhode Island, was detained at Boston Logan International Airport on Thursday while coming back from a trip to Lebanon. Alawieh was questioned by CBP and allegedly told federal agents she had attended the funeral of Nasrallah, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Sady reportedly wrote in a new filing Monday....

BOSTON — Federal authorities say they deported a Lebanese doctor holding an American visa last week after finding “sympathetic photos and videos” of prominent Hezbollah figures in a deleted items folder on her cell phone.Rasha Alawieh, a physician specializing in kidney transplants and professor at Brown University, also told Customs and Border Protection agents that while visiting Lebanon last month she attended the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and followed his teachings “from a religious perspective” but not a political one, according to an official report on her interrogation by an immigration officer.“CBP questioned Dr. Alawieh and determined that...

A Brown University assistant professor and doctor was deported over the weekend from Boston to Lebanon after federal agents found photos of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Iran’s supreme leader on her cell phone, a source familiar with the case told CNN. Following Dr. Rasha Alawieh’s return Thursday from a visit to Lebanon, federal agents at Boston Logan International Airport found the photos, the source familiar said. It was not immediately clear why officers were examining her phone. The existence of the photos was outlined in a court filing Monday obtained by CNN affiliate WCVB. “In explaining why these multiple...

They died in their own beds. Hossein Salami and Ali Shamkhani—Iran’s most senior military officers and the stewards of Iran’s nuclear weapons program—had spent years threatening Israel with destruction. They issued taunts, organized terrorist attacks, and orchestrated, since October 7, the encirclement of the Jewish state in a ring of fire of their terror proxies. And they knew—without the slightest illusion—that Israel had the capability and resolve to kill them. This cohort saw the Israeli air force bury Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah in his bunker, hundreds of meters beneath the streets of Beirut. They saw Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh vaporized in...

Astonishing news out of Israel today and confirmed by at least one Israeli TV network that Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Gen. Esmail Qaani, commander of the crack Quds Force, is in Jerusalem after being identified as an Israeli intelligence asset.There's no doubt that Qaani was under suspicion. On Sept. 27, 2024, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, one of the most well-guarded people in the world, was killed when at least 80 bombs were dropped on a bunker in Beirut, where Nasrallah was meeting with top aides. Qaani was placed under house arrest and interrogated, according to Middle East sources. Qaani...

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah became depressed and was emotionally changed by Israel’s exploding pager attack on his operatives as well as by strikes that decimated the group’s leadership, his family told Lebanese media. His son said Nasrallah was noticeably no longer the same man, and his daughter revealed that he cried after the beeper attack. Nasrallah’s son, daughter, and three grandchildren spoke to Al-Manar television for interviews that were broadcast on Friday. On September 17, 2024, thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah across Lebanon suddenly exploded, killing dozens of operatives and maiming thousands, marking the beginning of Israel’s escalation against...

CCTV Footage was released today, from Israel’s Precision-Airstrike against Hezbollah’s Central Command Bunker in the Dahieh Suburb of Southern Beirut on September 27th, which resulting in the elimination of the Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah as well as several… pic.twitter.com/SLzTYiG0WW— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) February 7, 2025VIDEO AT LINK.........................

The Times will accuse DNI nominee Tulsi Gabbard of meeting with then-Lebanese Hezbollah Supreme Leader Hassan Nasrallah in 2017.The New York Times is preparing to publish a deep state hit piece on President Donald Trump’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. The piece is purportedly based on National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance of a pair of anonymous terrorists.Two people familiar with the matter told The Federalist the Times will accuse Gabbard, a former Democrat congresswoman from Hawaii, of meeting with then-Lebanese Hezbollah Supreme Leader Hassan Nasrallah on a Middle East trip in 2017. The paper of “all the...

Israel will begin targeting leaders of Yemen’s Houthi rebel group, Defense Minister Israel Katz said Tuesday, vowing that Israel will not allow missile and drone fire on Israel to continue unchecked. Firing at Houthi leaders would seem to mark an escalation by Israel, which has so far targeted port infrastructure and military sites in a handful of sorties in response to repeated launches of drones and ballistic missiles from Yemen. A missile fired early Tuesday was shot down, but sirens in the Tel Aviv area caused widespread panic and a rush to shelter left one woman seriously injured. It was...

US intelligence assessments before Israel escalated its conflict against the Lebanese Hezbollah terror group in September said that such a move risked sparking an all-out war in which hundreds — if not thousands — of Israelis would be killed, three US officials and one Israeli official told The Times of Israel... ...the US officials said, acknowledging that both countries’ assessments proved wildly inaccurate within days, as the IDF methodically took out much of Hezbollah’s missile and drone capabilities, dismantled its military infrastructure in southern Lebanon, picked off almost every member of its senior leadership and killed or wounded thousands of...

Israel's Oct. 26 retaliatory strike on Iran "destroyed an active top secret nuclear weapons research facility," according to an Axios report. The news outlet spoke to various U.S. and Israeli officials about the strikes, including one on Iran's Parchin Military Complex, a nuclear research facility that was "previously reported to be inactive." "One former Israeli official briefed on the strike said it destroyed sophisticated equipment used to design the plastic explosives that surround uranium in a nuclear device and are needed to detonate it." Iran claims to have brought its military nuclear program to a halt in 2003, and yet...

An official close to the Prime Minister tells The Time of Israel that Defense Minister Yoav Gallant was fired for professional reasons, and not because of coalition politics. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, says that Gallant “functioned as a rubber stamp for the IDF and did not challenge it even once.” The defense minister, claims the official, advocated a diplomatic solution in Lebanon six months ago that would not have diminished Hezbollah’s capabilities, and opposed the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah until the IDF backed the move. On Gaza, claims the official, Gallant resisted the IDF going...

CNN - Hezbollah has named Shiite cleric Naim Qassem as leader, over a month after his predecessor Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike. The group’s Senior Council elected Qassem as secretary-general, Hezbollah’s media office said in a statement on Tuesday, adding that Qassem is committed to prophet “Mohammed’s authentic Islam” and the core principles of the group. Qassem now leads a group once regarded as Iran’s most formidable proxy in its conflict with Israel – a force that, in recent weeks, has been significantly weakened by Israeli strikes, with top leaders killed, thousands of fighters wounded, and missile...

Long-serving deputy secretary-general of the terror group is approved by Hezbollah's religious council after the designated successor of Hasan Nasrallah, Hashem Safieddine is also killed in a targeted strike. Yoav Gallant:The appointment is temporary. The countdown has begun. https://x.com/yoavgallant/status/1851245367720919450

According to a report from Israel’s Channel 12, each Hezbollah pager that exploded was individually set to detonate, with those behind the attack having precise knowledge of their targets’ locations and movements to minimize collateral damage. “Each pager had its own arrangements. That’s how it was possible to control who was hit and who wasn’t,” an unnamed foreign security source told the TV station. The attackers reportedly ensured that only the person carrying the pager was harmed, sparing civilians who may have been nearby at the time of the blasts. Footage from the incident showed one man being killed by...

The Israelis have astounded the world in recent weeks with several unparalleled feats of wartime ingenuity, most notably the explosion of thousands of pagers that belonged to high-level Hezbollah operatives. Topping even that was the elimination of arch-terrorist and media darling Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah, who had been in hiding for nearly two decades and was in a bunker sixty feet underground when the Israelis found a way to take him out. One Muslim cleric in Iran, however, is certain that the Israelis’ success can’t be ascribed to their ingenuity; he thinks they had some help. Help, that is, of...

Jerusalem: Israel's army confirmed Tuesday it "eliminated" Hezbollah's Hashem Safieddine, apparent successor of slain leader Hassan Nasrallah, in a strike in a southern Beirut suburb three weeks ago. "It can now be confirmed that in an attack approximately three weeks ago, Hashem Safieddine, the head of Hezbollah's Executive Council, and Ali Hussein Hazima, the head of Hezbollah's Intelligence Directorate, were killed along with other Hezbollah commanders," the army said in a statement. Hezbollah has not yet issued a statement regarding the CLAIM. On October 8, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the military has "taken out" Safieddine, without specifically...