Free Republic

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is a man in a hurry. His president expects him to produce foreign policy success stories. Success stories are desperately needed as post-Afghanistan, the superpower has become a laughing stock universally. The trans-Atlantic alliance is seriously disoriented and Russia is on the prowl in the heart of Europe with natural gas to sell. The Iranians are yet to give a date for the resumption of talks on the US return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear accord. As for China, the less said the better. The chairman of the US Joint...

Islamabad apparently bought peace with the TLP. As in its frequent mobilisations over the last few years, the TLP has once again forced the Pakistani state onto the backfoot and enhanced its own political clout. A relatively new phenomenon, the TLP, was founded in 2015 by Khadim Hussain Rizvi, a firebrand cleric who died in November 2020. It now has a strong following among Pakistan’s Barelvi sect. At the heart of TLP’s ideology is the protection of the Prophet’s honour and a vigorous defence of Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws. In Pakistan, anyone deemed to have insulted Islam or the Prophet...

The B-1B Lancer bomber flew Saturday over the Strait of Hormuz... the Red Sea, its narrow Bab el-Mandeb Strait and Egypt’s Suez Canal. Bahrain, Egypt and Saudi Arabia also took part. The B-1B came from the 37th Bomb Squadron based at Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota.

President Joe Biden warned that the United States would respond to drone strikes by Tehran or any other hostile act that the Iranian regime took against American interests, The Jerusalem Post reported. "With regard to the issue of how we’re going to respond to actions taken by them against the interests of the United States — whether they’re drone strikes or anything else — is we’re going to respond, and we’re going to continue to respond," Biden said. The president made the comments following discussions with European powers over the weekend about what steps to take in order to prevent...

Few areas of public policy lend themselves less easily to big-picture doctrinal sorting and various "-ism" labeling than does foreign policy. That is perhaps now truer than ever, as America's two major political parties continue their already ascendant realignment, with Democrats abandoning their working-class roots in favor of a professional-managerial ruling class and Republicans ditching the libertarian-inspired corporatism of yesteryear in favor of a "deplorable"-inspired populism. Foreign policy is an inherently nuanced subject, and speaking in broad strokes about it during a once-in-a-generation political realignment can risk analytical error. Those caveats aside, we should still feel comfortable making what may,...

Joe Biden, his spokeswoman Jen Psaki. and others in their orbit want foreign producers to drill more fossil fuels because for some reason we don't have enough energy over here. Here's a humorous but sad statement from an "energy advisor" in the White House, as reported by the Daily Signal: Nation in ‘Energy Crisis,’ White House Adviser Says A top White House official said there was an “energy crisis” in the U.S. and urged foreign fossil-fuel producers to ramp up production to quell it. “We see this as an energy crisis because this is not just natural gas prices that...

Source: Official White House Photo by Delano Scott The international community's patience is growing thin as the Iranian regime's nuclear defiance and regional terrorism intensify. At the same time, credible accusations that the regime's President, Ebrahim Raisi, was involved in the massacre of thousands of political prisoners in 1988, are making it harder for other countries to engage and negotiate with a genocidal president. The Iranian regime is dealing with a multitude of crises and challenges. The economy is in shambles, COVID-19 is wreaking havoc, the unemployment rate continues to set new records, and the official inflation rate is now...

Human rights usually feature prominently in America's political rhetoric but fade insignificance when it comes to concrete action. That trend can take a historic turn when it comes to Iran, where a genocidal madman has taken the presidency. That the presidency of Ebrahim Raisi in Iran hasn't galvanized governments in the West and in the U.S. in particular to pursue his prosecution is still a mystery. Human rights groups, UN experts, Nobel laureates, scores of elected officials, lawmakers, and journalists have already expressed outrage over Raisi's rise to power. And justifiably so. In 1988, Raisi was one of the members...

Tunisia’s Central Bank is in “advanced talks” with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to obtain financial aid for the cash-strapped country, a senior banker has confirmed. Abdelkarim Lassoued, the head of financing and foreign transactions at the Tunisian regulator, told local Shams FM radio on Friday that an agreement with the two Gulf states may be reached soon. He added that talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were also ongoing, without giving details on the amount of aid being discussed. The North African country has seen years of political deadlock since its 2011 revolution, with fractious...

Javaid Rehman, the UN independent investigator on human rights in Iran, said Monday that more than 250 Iranians were executed in 2020, including nine women and four child offenders. More than 230 executions have been carried out this year already. Rehman said that Iran was carrying out state-sponsored executions “at an alarming rate,” and “the absence of official statistics and lack of transparency around executions means that this practice escapes scrutiny, resulting in serious abuses [and] preventing accountability.” ... Iran was the top executioner in the Middle East last year, accounting for more than half the region’s 493 executions, followed...

The widespread attack came shortly before the second anniversary of the November 2019 nationwide protests against an overnight petrol price rise. At the time, petrol prices as much as tripled, sparking the protests that Amnesty International has said led to the deaths of more than 300 people. Internet access was also shut down across the country for almost a week during the protests. Some areas where protests were still continuing experienced weeks of internet disruptions. Social media videos early on Tuesday showed long queues at petrol stations that were out of commission. Several also showed that digital city monitors were...

An Israeli Foreign Ministry official says the country is sending an envoy to Washington amid a deepening rift with the Biden administration over six outlawed Palestinian rights groups TEL AVIV, Israel -- Israel is sending an envoy to Washington amid a deepening rift with the Biden administration over six outlawed Palestinian rights groups, a Foreign Ministry official said Tuesday. Israel last week designated the prominent Palestinian human rights groups as terrorist organizations, sparking international criticism and repeated assertions by Israel's top strategic partner, the United States, that there had been no advance warning ...Zarka said he personally updated U.S. officials...

AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): Secretary General of World Forum for Proximity of Islamic Schools of Thought detailed his view on the issues challenging the world of Islam and the reason behind naming the 35th International Islamic Unity Conference as “Islamic Unity, Peace and Avoidance of Division and Conflict in the World of Islam.” Sheikh Hamid Shahriari, delivering speech on the 13th webinar of the Islamic Unity Conference 2021 on Friday evening rebuked the US-led world arrogant powers over sparking war and dispute in the world of Islam in order to justify their presence in Islamic countries. He said,” The second...

WASHINGTON — The head of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog says his monitoring program in Iran is no longer “intact” after Tehran refused requests to repair cameras at a key facility, creating the possibility the world will never be “able to reconstruct the picture” of what the Iranians have been doing. In an interview with NBC News, International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi says he’s been unable to establish the type of direct communication with Iran’s government that he had before a new hardline government run by President Ebrahim Raisi was elected in June.

The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco all said in 2020 they would normalize ties with Israel, as Washington under the administration of then-US president Donald Trump made Arab-Israeli rapprochement a foreign policy priority. “Some governments have unfortunately made errors — have made big errors and have sinned in normalizing (their relations) with the usurping and oppressive Zionist regime,” Khamenei says... “It is an act against Islamic unity, they must return from this path and make up for this big mistake,”

The inauguration of an Iranian governor was interrupted by a man walking on stage and slapping him in the face - allegedly because he was furious his wife had to get her Covid jab delivered by a male doctor. Abedin Khorram was appointed as Governor of East Azerbaijan Province in northwestern Iran was slapped by 'a member of the armed forces' during the ceremony, according to the regime-linked Fars news agency. Mr Khorram is a former IRGC provincial commander and has reportedly been kidnapped in the past by Syrian rebel forces. After taking the podium for his inaugural address, the...

A U.S. airstrike in northwest Syria has killed a senior al-Qaeda leader on Friday, the U.S. Central Command announced in a release.U.S. Army Maj. John Rigsbee, a CENTCOM spokesperson, said Abdul Hamid al-Matar was killed in the vicinity of Suluk in northwest Syria.The strike was conducted using an MQ-9 aircraft—an armed, remotely piloted aircraft.There are “no indications of civilian casualties as a result of the strike.”“Al-Qaeda continues to present a threat to America and our allies. Al-Qaeda uses Syria as a safe haven to rebuild, coordinate with external affiliates, and plan external operations. Al-Qaeda also uses Syria as a base...

A military outpost in southern Syria was hit by a coordinated attack on Wednesday, but a U.S. official said no American troops stationed there were injured or killed. The official said the attack appeared to include at least one drone strike and possibly groundfire. It was not yet clear who carried out the attack. U.S. and coalition troops are based at the al-Tanf garrison to train local Syrian opposition forces on patrols to counter Islamic State militants.

#UPDATE Unconfirmed: —A militia contacted the base of the Global Coalition against Daesh in the Al-Tanf area that it should be evacuated. —An hour later five drones attacked the base. —One drone reportedly entered #Syria from #Iraq. —No casualties. pic.twitter.com/JuWVpKM6e3 — Heshmat Alavi (@HeshmatAlavi) October 20, 2021 The US base at Al-Tanf, in Syria’s southern Homs province, has reportedly come under attack by either missiles or a drone. No casualties were reported, and the US Central Command blamed “Iranian-backed militias.” Reports of the attack appeared online around 10 pm local time on Wednesday, initially mentioning a “suicide drone” and multiple...

At least 14 people were killed and several others were wounded in central Damascus on Wednesday morning in an explosion on a Syrian military bus, Syrian state TV reported. According to additional reports from Syrian and Lebanese outlets, the casualties were Iranian officers. Syrian state TV showed footage of the charred bus, reporting that the blasts occurred while people were heading to work and school. As of yet, according to the reports, no organization has claimed responsibility for the blast, which occurred at a main bus-transfer point under the Hafez al-Assad bridge, where vehicles converge and head out to different...