Free Republic

In a stunning bi-partisan “Congressional Letter” from over 353 out of 435 U.S. congresspersons to US Secretary of State John Kerry, the 353 U.S. representatives issued a stark warning that, “As you wrote in the Washington Post earlier this summer, if Iran’s nuclear program is truly peaceful, “it’s not a hard proposition to prove. The only reasonable conclusion for its stonewalling of international investigators is that Tehran does indeed have much to hide.” The Congressional Letter’s signatories included almost all of both parties’ leaderships, and was greatly aided by Republican Congressman Peter J. Roskam (R-IL-06) of Illinois, a stalwart, and...

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, launched a scathing attack on a United Nations organization from the podium of the UN itself when he denounced its Human Rights Council as a “terrorist rights council”. […] In a controversial address to the General Assembly, he contended that the council’s treatment of Israel was “biased” and rooted in a global upsurge in anti-Semitism. Mr. Netanyahu argued that it was Hamas, the faction that controls the Gaza Strip, that should be investigated for war crimes as it used civilians as human shields and fired missiles at Israel from batteries planted by mosques and...

Iran says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "baselessly" associated the Islamic world with the Islamic State group during his address to the United Nations General Assembly. In a reply to the Monday speech, Iran also said Netanyahu continued a policy to "sabotage and disrupt" Iranian negotiations with world powers over the country's nuclear program. The Israeli leader told the United Nations Iran is trying to trick the world into accepting an agreement to end sanctions while still allowing it to develop nuclear weapons. Iran has long declared its nuclear program to be for peaceful purposes. Netanyahu said Iran is on...

The US State Department said Monday in a press conference that it disagrees with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's assertion during his UN speech on Monday that "ISIS and Hamas are branches of the same poisonous tree." "Obviously, we’ve designated both as terrorist organizations, but ISIL poses a different threat to Western interests and to the United States," said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki. "And that’s just a fact." Later on in the speech, Netanyahu said that Iran is still a great threat to Israel's existence. He also warned that Iran is not actually willing to give up nuclear weapons but...

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Friday that six-power talks with Iran being held at the United Nations had failed to yield progress on curbing Tehran’s nuclear program. “At this time as I speak, there is no significant progress,” Fabius told journalists on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. “We were due to have a meeting this morning of the P5+1 on one side and the Iranians on the other but because of a lack of progress, this meeting (had) to be called off,” Reuters quoted him saying. Israel, meanwhile, voiced vociferous objections to a reported American proposal to...

Republican lawmakers are raising alarm that Secretary of State John Kerry is putting too much on the table in talks over Iran's nuclear program -- as Tehran reportedly tries to leverage its cooperation in the Islamic State crisis in return for nuclear concessions from the U.S. and its allies. The White House denies that any such trade-off is in the works. "The United States will not be in a position of trading aspects of Iran's nuclear program to secure commitments to take on ISIL," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Monday, using an alternate acronym for the Islamic State....

(Reuters) - Iran told six big powers on Friday it would not accept their "excessive demands" after the latest talks on lifting sanctions against Tehran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear work yielded no breakthrough, with a deadline for a deal just a month away. U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman said it was Iran that would need to shift its position: "What is still unclear is if Iran is really ready and willing to take all the necessary steps to assure the world that its nuclear programme is and will remain exclusively peaceful." The...

A senior Russian diplomat says Moscow may change its stance in the Iranian nuclear talks amid tensions with the West. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted Wednesday as saying by the Interfax news agency that Russia didn’t want to use the Iranian nuclear talks to “raise stakes,” but may have to do so in response to the actions by the United States and the European Union. The statement is the most serious threat of retaliation by Moscow after the U.S. and the EU announced sanctions against Russia over the Ukrainian crisis.

Wendy Sherman, undersecretary of state for political affairs and the head of the American negotiation team to the nuclear talks between Iran and six world powers (P5+1), said Saturday that the goal is to reach a permanent agreement with Iran by July 20. Sherman was speaking to reporters in Jerusalem, where she arrived in order to brief the Israelis on the latest round of talks between Iran and the P5+1 in Vienna. In what appeared to be a warning to Israel, she said the United States hopes no one will interfere with the talks. "We don't enter these talks with...

U.S. President Barack Obama declared this week that he would come down “like a ton of bricks” on firms that violate the sanctions that have been placed on Iran, but the Iranians do not appear to be threatened by the comments. In fact, a host on an Iranian television program mocked Obama’s threat on Thursday, and suggested that the American president take “one brick and knock it against his head.” […] Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali, Khamenei recently threatened the United States, suggesting that the Americans “exercise self-restraint,” after Secretary of State John Kerry said the military option was still...

The only way to deter Iran's quest for regional dominance should diplomacy fail is the threat of force. Mr. Gates essentially took that off the table when he told CNN that "there is no military option that does anything more than buy time." If Tehran does not think diplomacy is backed by the threat of force, there is no credible way to make the nation reconsider its ambitions.

U.S., Iraq, Iran plan security committee By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer BAGHDAD - The United States, Iran and Iraq have agreed to set up a security subcommittee to carry forward talks on restoring stability in Iraq, the U.S. envoy said Tuesday at the end of a second round of groundbreaking talks with his Iranian counterpart. "We discussed ways forward, and one of the issues we discussed was the formation of a security subcommittee that would address at an expert or technical level some issues relating to security, be that support for violent militias, al-Qaida or border security," Ambassador Ryan...