Free Republic

George Logan, call your office. That’s my reaction to news that former Secretary of State John Kerry has, by his own account, been meeting privately with Iranian officials to try to save the nuclear deal. Logan was the Pennsylvania politician whose unauthorized efforts to end the Quasi-War between France and America led to the Logan Act of 1799, which outlaws freelance diplomacy. The New York Post has called Mr. Kerry’s conniving a “textbook violation” of the law. President Trump, after all, has pulled out of the nuclear accord and decided on a different course. Iran’s leaders, at least for the...

The head of the UN’s atomic watchdog said Thursday that Iran continued to abide by the nuclear deal reached in 2015 with major world powers that aimed at preventing Tehran from building atomic weapons in exchange for economic incentives. Speaking at a board meeting Thursday in Vienna of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Director General Yukiya Amano reiterated the agency’s findings in a report distributed to member states earlier this month that “Iran is implementing its nuclear-related commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.” The issue has grown more complicated since the US withdrew unilaterally in May from the...

TEHRAN: One of Iran’s top foreign policy officials has called for negotiations with “anti-Trump movements” in the US to dampen the impact of sanctions, local media reported Saturday. “America is not Trump,” said Heshmatollah Falahat-Pisheh, a conservative lawmaker who heads parliament’s influential national security and foreign policy commission, according to reformist newspaper Arman. “There is a new diplomatic atmosphere for deescalation with America and it is fitting that Iran follows negotiation diplomacy and lobbying anti-Trump movements in America,” he added. He said this would help alleviate pressure caused by Washington’s “extensive sanction-focused force.” The US pulled out of the 2015...

Intercepted conversations between representatives of the Iranian and Argentine governments point to a long pattern of secret negotiations to reach a deal in which Argentina would receive oil in exchange for shielding Iranian officials from charges that they orchestrated the bombing of a Jewish community center in 1994. The transcripts were made public by an Argentine judge on Tuesday night, as part of a 289-page criminal complaint written by Alberto Nisman, the special prosecutor investigating the attack. Mr. Nisman was found dead in his luxury apartment on Sunday, the night before he was to present his findings to Congress. In...

LONDON — The United States pressed Argentina to end its investigation of Iranian complicity in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in which nearly 100 people were killed. Western diplomatic sources said the administration of President Barack Obama urged Argentina on several occasions to either stop or limit the investigation into the bombing of the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association in Buenos Aires. The sources said the U.S. appeals marked one of the demands by Iran for a reconciliation with Washington. “Argentina had hard evidence against at least one Iranian leader, which prevented him from traveling abroad,” a source said.

In March, State Department veteran and former adviser to Barack Obama, Frederic Hof, bid farewell to public life with a stunning admission. Amid a confession regarding his failure to prevent the expansion of the Syrian civil war into a regional crisis, Hof laid the blame for that all-consuming conflict (as well as a notable uptick in Russian aggression) at the feet of Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. The administration sacrificed Syrian civilians and American credibility for the mistaken notion that Iran required appeasement in Syria as the price for a nuclear agreement,” Hof wrote. Today, with 500,000 dead, millions...

US President Barack Obama continues to receive heavy flak for defending the nuclear deal he initiated with Iran, and then enlisting the support of his allies in the Senate to prevent rival Republican leaders from blocking its implementation. Now, Obama will likely face more criticism after Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner revealed in a speech before the United Nations General Assembly on Monday that a former Obama administration official tried to convince Argentina to provide nuclear fuel to Iran sometime in 2010. In her remarks witnessed by world leaders, Kirchner recalled how Gary Samore, who once worked as the...

Argentine President Cristina Kirchner was formally accused on Friday due to alleged cover-up of Iranian officials over a 1994 bombing at AMIA, Buenos Aires Jewish center, prosecutors said. The prosecution move advances the case against Kirchner that was being pursued by late prosecutor Alberto Nisman before he died mysteriously on the eve of congressional hearings on his accusations. The prosecutor who inherited a high-profile case against Argentine President Cristina Fernandez is reaffirming the accusations.

BUENOS AIRES (AFP) - Ex-Argentina president Cristina Kirchner was charged with corruption as a judge asked that her parliamentary immunity be lifted so she can be detained, reports said Monday. She is accused of having accepted tens of millions of dollars in bribes in the notorious "corruption notebooks" scandal that has rocked Argentina's political and business elites. As a senator, Kirchner is protected by parliamentary immunity from imprisonment, although not from prosecution. Unless that immunity is lifted, she cannot be jailed, even if found guilty. However, last month the Senate did vote to partially lift her immunity so that investigators...

Former Secretary of State John Kerry won't rule out a run for the White House in 2020, but talking about it now is just a distraction, he tells "Face the Nation" anchor Margaret Brennan. The interview will be featured September 2 on CBS' "Sunday Morning" and on "Face the Nation." Kerry (whose new memoir is titled "Every Day Is Extra") also talks with Brennan about his role in politics today, the current political environment, his relationship with the late Sen. John McCain, and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry. Now in private life, the former Massachusetts senator and Secretary of State...

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia - Federal prosecutors moved Friday to dismiss espionage-related charges against two former pro-Israel lobbyists accused of disclosing classified U.S. defense information, ending a tortuous inside-the-Beltway legal battle rife with national security intrigue. Critics of the prosecution of Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee accused the federal government of trying to criminalize the sort of back-channel discussions between government officials, lobbyists and reporters that are commonplace in Washington. AIPAC is an influential pro-Israel lobbying group. The indictment had alleged that Rosen and Weissman conspired to obtain and then disclose to journalists and the...

For this week’s Big Ideas with Ben Weingarten podcast, I had historian, Freedom Scholar at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, former Special Advisor to the Secretary of State and consultant to the National Security Council during the Reagan administration, author of 38 books and most pertinent to today, Iran expert, Michael Ledeen on the podcast to discuss among other things: The impending collapse of the Khomeinist regime and what the U.S. can do to accelerate it The false narrative about alternatives for Iran being either appeasement or war The history of U.S. intelligence failures in Iran How secular...

After Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas failed Wednesday in a bid to restrict President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, the White House decided to give the lawmaker a kick in the pants for good measure. Referring to Mr. Cotton’s amendment to stop the U.S. from purchasing heavy water used by Iran in nuclear production, White House press secretary said, “Senator Cotton is certainly no expert when it comes to heavy water. I’m confident that he couldn’t differentiate heavy water from sparkling water.” He said Mr. Cotton is focused “on undermining the effective implementation of this agreement that prevents Iran...

At the request of two domestic uranium producers, the US Department of Commerce (DOC) has launched an investigation into whether “the present quantity and circumstances” of uranium imports threatens national security. However, the US nuclear energy industry has warned that a suggested quota on imports would have a significant financial impact on the country’s reactor operators........ In their petition, Ur-Energy and Energy Fuels noted that US uranium production met just 5% of domestic reactor requirements last year. This year, domestic producers are projected to fulfil about 2% of US reactor demand...... “In 2016, the combined uranium imports from three geopolitically...

Republican lawmakers were left shaking their heads after President Trump’s Monday’s press conference with Russian president Vladimir Putin, in which Trump declined to endorse the American intelligence community’s assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election. Senator John McCain (R., Ariz.) called it “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory” and a “tragic mistake” in a statement. “No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant,” McCain said. “The damage inflicted by President Trump’s naiveté, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate.” House speaker Paul Ryan also...

You gotta love Mossad. Agents snuck into a warehouse smack in the middle of Tehran last January and, in a 6 1/2-hour operation, managed to steal 100,000 documents that Israel says prove Iran was lying about their nuclear weapons program. Wall Street Journal: The Israeli team secretly reached the warehouse holding the materials and broke in during a tight time window when it knew the building would be unguarded, the officials said. To avoid drawing attention to the nondescript facility, Iran hadn’t posted full-time guards, they said, but rather relied on alarm systems that the Israeli agents disabled. The Israeli...

As the families of U.S. hostages currently held in Iran have struggled for years to rally the determination to bring their loved ones home, newly released emails from the former secretary of State reveal the infuriating truth that those with connections get their case raised to the top. In 2009, Iason Athanasiadis was covering the protests of the disputed election win of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over Mir-Hossein Mousavi for the Washington Times. The Greek citizen was detained by Iranian authorities on June 17, 2009, as he tried to fly out of the country. Athanasiadis was thrown in Evin prison and released...

Today’s Campaign Update (Because The Campaign Never Ends) CNN and MSNBC will demonize him for violating traffic laws.: Eric Trump caused panic among his Secret Service security detail on Monday when he rushed into New York City rush hour traffic to wave down a passing ambulance. He took this action in an attempt to aid a woman who had passed out near a train station. No word yet if Maxine Waters will now urge New York City’s drivers to run down anyone named Trump who rushes into a street to save a potentially dying woman, but it seems only a...

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama love statists, Islamists, and dictators. Barack Obama routinely gave away the store to thugs for nothing in return. Most of the world is either Socialist or Communist and it’s nearly impossible to negotiate and maintain peace unless it’s with someone in those groups. Some are far worse than others. The Castro brothers, the Mullahs, many African dictators, Maduro, and Kim Jong-un are among the worst. The media raved over Obama’s and Hillary’s efforts to deal with, some would say cater to, the thugs of other nations, but not so with President Trump.

The Iran Deal was “so corrupt” we’re still learning about it, noted Mark Levin on his nationally syndicated radio program on Wednesday. ... “Members of congress don’t know all the facts, and we the people don’t know all the facts. And that’s one of the reasons you run this sort of thing through the treaty provision of the Constitution, so members of the Senate can get all the facts, so there aren’t all these side deals and secret side deals, and illegalities.” Mark Levin’s comments stem from an ABC News report written by Connor Finnegan, June 6, 2018, regarding the...