Free Republic

Ali Nouri Zadeh, Asharq Alawsat: Eight fundamentalist Islamist organizations have received large sums of money in the last month from the Iranian intelligence services, as part of a project to strike U.S military and economic installations across the Middle East Asharq Al-Awsat has learned. The plan, which also includes the carrying out of suicide operations targeting US and British interests in the region, as well as their Arab and Muslim allies, in case Iran is attacked, was drawn up by a number of experts guerilla warfare and terrorist operations, and was revealed by a senior source in the Iranian armed...

The targeted IDF strikes on nine nuclear scientists last Friday, named Operation Narnia, saw the scientists all killed simultaneously while sleeping in their homes, Channel 12 reported on Thursday night.Israel launched Operation "Rising Lion" last Friday, marking a powerful opening strike in its war against Iran. The operation successfully eliminated many senior figures in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and key individuals involved in Iran’s nuclear program.Operation Narnia, a name that reflects the operation’s improbable nature, like something out of a fantasy tale rather than a real-world event. Throughout the operation, Israeli intelligence officials categorized Iran’s nuclear scientists into...

Ho-hum, another day in Tehran, another incident of careless explosive-tank handling. Or so the Iranians want everyone to think, for now. Officials claim that “careless handling” of oxygen tanks triggered an explosion south of Tehran that killed two people in Baghershahr late yesterday. “Human error,” the Iranian regime called it: Two men have been killed in yet another Iran explosion, as officials blamed ‘human error’ for the blast.The explosion rocked the Sepahan Boresh factory in the city of Baqershahr, south of Tehran, in the early hours of Tuesday morning, according to state media.It was caused by ‘workers being negligent...

U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday gave a fulsome endorsement of Israel's strikes against Iran's nuclear and military targets, saying that there was "much more to come" if Iran fails to give up its uranium enrichment program.

Iran is ready to sign a nuclear deal with certain conditions with President Donald Trump in exchange for lifting economic sanctions, a top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader told NBC News on Wednesday. Ali Shamkhani, a top political, military and nuclear adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is one of the most senior Iranian officials to speak publicly about the ongoing discussions. He said Iran would commit to never making nuclear weapons, getting rid of its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium which can be weaponized, agree to only enrich uranium to the lower levels needed for civilian use,...

Russia said Thursday that any attacks on its ally Iran would be unacceptable and illegal, warning of irreversible consequences if the U.S. were to bomb the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities. The Russian Foreign Ministry condemned President Trump’s threat to bomb Iran if a deal on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program is not reached, reiterating its support for Iran’s program.“The use of military force by Iran’s opponents in the context of the settlement is illegal and unacceptable,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said. “Threats from outside to bomb Iran’s nuclear infrastructure facilities will inevitably lead to an irreversible global catastrophe....

Israel should seize the opportunity of the Assad regime falling and the Iranian proxy axis weakening to convince the US to strike Iran’s nuclear program, former IDF Operations Command chief Maj.-Gen. (res.) Israel Ziv told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday. Ziv said that the fall of Bashar Assad, which also has weakened the “Axis of Resistance,” is a historic opportunity and that Washington, especially under President-elect Donald Trump, who will assume office on January 20, might be more ready than ever before to take advantage of Tehran’s moment of weakness. In the past, one reason, among many, that neither American...

Iran intends to "significantly increase" its production of highly enriched uranium, according to a confidential report released Friday by the UN nuclear watchdog and seen by the AFP news agency. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report noted that updates to the design of Iran's Fordow facility would "significantly increase the rate of production of uranium enriched up to 60 percent." The new production rate is expected to exceed 34 kilograms of highly enriched uranium per month, a substantial jump from the previous rate of 4.7 kilograms. In its report, the IAEA urged Iran to allow inspections "as a matter...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that a “specific component” of Iran’s nuclear program was damaged last month after he disregarded the White House’s request to limit retaliatory airstrikes on the Islamic republic. “It’s not a secret, it has been published — there is a specific component in their nuclear program that was hit in this attack,” Netanyahu told the Knesset on Monday, according to The Times of Israel. “The program itself and its ability to operate here have not yet been thwarted,” he added. Netanyahu also said that Israeli officials “cooperate as much as we can” with the United...

(Nov. 16, 2024 / JNS) The Israeli airstrikes on Iran last month destroyed a secret nuclear weapons research facility in Parchin, 19 miles southeast of Tehran, Axios reported on Friday. The clandestine site held sophisticated equipment used for testing explosives needed to detonate nuclear devices, the report read, citing three U.S. officials, one current Israeli official and one former Israeli official. The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security acquired high-resolution satellite imagery of the facility, which showed that it was completely destroyed in Israel’s Oct. 26 attack. Israeli and U.S. intelligence agencies began noticing activity in the Taleghan 2...

Iranian general Qassem Soleymani was a master terrorist who orchestrated atrocities around the world that claimed thousands of lives, including hundreds if not thousands of Americans. That was the default position after President Trump took out Soleymani last week. The Democrats’ furious reaction overlooked realities about the Iranian regime in general and Soleymani in particular. Israel had also targeted the Quds Force commander, but according to the Kuwaiti Al-Jarida, the Obama administration tipped off the Tehran regime. Soleymani emerged unscathed and continued to spearhead the Islamic regime’s military and terrorist operations. Those were funded by criminal activity, and on that...

An Iranian former deputy defense minister who has been missing for nearly three years was abducted by Israeli agents and is now being held in Israel, several Iranian news Web sites reported Sunday. Ali Reza Asgari, a retired general who served in Iran's Revolutionary Guard, disappeared while on a private trip to Turkey in December 2006. In March of this year, a former German Defense Ministry official said Asgari had defected and was providing considerable information to the West on Iran's nuclear program.

University Middle East expert Hussein Mousavian was a former Iranian official A former Iranian official who is a faculty member at Princeton University recently bragged in an interview about how his hardline government’s death threats against a former top Trump administration official had him and his family "trembling" with fear. Hussein Mousavian, a former member of Iran’s nuclear negotiating team who works as a Middle East security and nuclear policy specialist at Princeton University, said in a recent interview that the Iranian regime’s threats to murder Brian Hook, the Trump administration’s special envoy for Iran, have heavily impacted Hook’s family...

A nuclear policy expert appointed to the Department of Energy under the Biden administration in February 2024 previously co-authored an article entitled "queering nuclear weapons" which argued "queer theory" should be used to inform American nuclear policy. Sneha Nair works as a special assistant at the National Nuclear Security Administration, the agency responsible for maintaining the safety and security of America's extensive arsenal of nuclear weapons. On Wednesday Beijing said it was "seriously concerned" after President Biden updated America's Nuclear Employment Guidance to focus on the threat from China, according to The New York Times. Nair co-authored a piece titled...

Whistleblowers have informed top Republican senators that former President Barack Obama’s State Department blocked the FBI from executing arrest warrants against illegal aliens in the U.S. who were financially backing Iran’s efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction. Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) said that for nearly 20 years, Republican and Democrat administrations imposed sanctions on “Iranian individuals, companies, and organizations for involvement in nuclear proliferation, ballistic missile development, support for terrorist groups, and human rights abuses.” They noted that even one of Obama’s executive orders and a law passed during the Obama-era, the Iran Nuclear Agreement...

Republican allies of former President Donald Trump have hammered the Justice Department for leaks after it was reported another country's top secret nuclear information was found in the raid of Mar-a-Lago. The alleged discovery of highly sensitive information was reported by the Washington Post on Tuesday. The report claimed “a document describing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities, was found by FBI agents who searched” Mar-a-Lago last month, citing “people familiar with the matter.” The former president's defenders immediately took aim at the department in the wake of the information making its way into the media. Trump...

Carly Fiorina left the Republican debate Wednesday night with her head held high. Rapid reaction resulted in high praise for the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, but not all the news was positive. During one portion of the debate, Fiorina and Republican front runner Donald Trump spared over their business records. Trump hit Fiorina hard, citing a recent editorial by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, of the Yale School of Management , who referred to her as one of the worst CEOs in recent memory. While how bad Fiorina was as CEO of HP is up for debate, a recent report by Bloomberg points...

Two US officials involved in negotiations over renewing the 2015 Irn nuclear deal have stepped back from the talks and a third has left the team altogether amid internal discord over how firm the White House should be with Tehran, according to a report. Richard Nephew, the State Department's deputy special envoy for Iran who pushed for a tougher approach, has not been part of the talks since early December, Wall Street Journal reported Monday. A State Department spokesman told Reuters late Monday that Nephew was no longer in the envoy role, though he was still at the department. Two...

For three weeks already, US President Joe Biden has not answered Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's request for a phone conversation on the issue of Iran's nuclear program, Channel 13 News reported. The disagreements are believed to stem from a recent conversation between Bennett and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken touched on the issue of construction in Judea and Samaria. During that conversation, Bennett made definite statements regarding Israel's right to expand Jewish towns in the area. On Tuesday evening, a delegation of senior American officials, headed by the US National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, landed in Israel. The...

There have been four wild developments on Wednesday and in recent days which will have major impacts on the future of the Iranian nuclear standoff. 1. Ahmedinejad ‘reveals’ who Mossad recruited within Iranian intelligence to steal nuclear secrets Former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has told Iran International that the Mossad recruited the highest-ranking Iranian counter-intelligence official in charge of catching Israeli spies in order to steal the Islamic Republic’s nuclear secrets. The January 31, 2018, raid altered the region’s geopolitics, leading to the US withdrawing from the JCPOA nuclear deal and setting the International Atomic Energy Agency into a years-long...