Free Republic

Economic sanctions against Iran are having an effect, experts who spoke with The Epoch Times agreed. Yet views diverged on the nature of the impact and on how big of a role sanctions have played in the Islamic regime’s reluctance to escalate after the assassination of a top general. Gen. Qassem Soleimani was killed in Baghdad on Jan. 3 by a missile fired from a U.S. drone. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the strike a preemptive move to keep Soleimani from executing an “imminent” attack on American assets. In retaliation, Iranian leaders ordered ballistic missile strikes that on Jan....

Liberals are always claiming that radical Muslims pose no real threat to the Western world. We all know that’s not true. We are being sold out by the political class, importing the world’s trash will be the destruction of our nation. With all due respect for the immigrants that come here legally no matter the religion, but we have a huge problem with illegal immigration and with radical Muslims. Here we are not even 20 years after the largest Islamic terrorist attack in US history thanks to dangerous immigration policies by George W. Bush and Barack Obama. We are at...

In the West, it’s an amusing meme people will repeat whether they think it’s true or not. Bashar al-Assad is obviously taking it very seriously. Speaking of — can someone please explain to the humorless slobs in the media how memes and jokes are supposed to work? They’re taking things WAY too seriously. (Even though we do concede thare there are a helluva lot of weird, unanswered questions clouding Epstein’s death.) So it looks like the Epstein Didn’t Kill Himself meme has gone global and now the guy who gassed his own people has something to say about what ‘connects’...

US Ambassador to the United Nation Kelly Craft slammed Iran and supported Israel at the United Nations Security Council debate on the Middle East last Tuesday, as reported by the Jewish News Syndicate. She urged council members to focus on Iran instead of Israel. “While the world criticizes Israel, Israel is making the world a better place. The council should not lose sight of this fact,” she said. “Our failure to address Iran’s central role in destabilizing the region sends a powerfully damaging message to those seeking lasting peace and prosperity in the region.” Craft urged the council to “focus...

CTH held off reporting on this explosive story until we could see if a tell-tale consequence surfaced; perhaps it has. On Friday the National Security Council senior director for European and Russian affairs, Andrew Peek, was escorted from the White House grounds and is currently under a security investigation. There are few details about why Peek was physically removed and is under a very serious investigation; however, some of Andrew Peek’s professional background details tell a story. The connection to Gen. John Allen is a MASSIVE warning flare. Andrew Peek, the senior director for European and Russian affairs at the...

A new poll shows Americans are more likely than not to support President Donald Trump’s decision to order a drone strike that killed an Iranian general, even amid widespread skepticism about his foreign policy overall. The poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research was taken about two weeks after the Jan. 3 strike that killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Iraq. It found that 41% of Americans approved of the action while 30% disapproved of it. The rest didn’t express an opinion either way. …

The US Embassy Warns of Serious Consequences in the Event of Getting Close to it Thursday 23 , January 2020 Baghdad (NINA) - The American Embassy warned of grave consequences in the event of getting close to it. The Embassy wrote on the walls of the external checkpoints warnings of approaching them without official approval, threatening serious consequences if they crossed them. The warning came with the launch of a million demonstration on Friday to expel foreign forces from the country. / End

Iran was dealt a severe blow with the strike that killed Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani. Yet because of Iran’s core interests, the danger to U.S. servicemembers in Iraq is far from over. Instead of playing politics, Washington must realize that risking the lives of American forces in a gamble to reduce Iranian influence in Iraq isn’t worth it and may be self-defeating. Just look at the history of America and Iran.Many Americans view this history as starting in 1979 when, during the Iranian Revolution that overthrew the shah, Islamic radicals stormed the U.S. embassy in Iran and held...

The US Central Command announcing on the first day of the impeachment trial opened in Washington that more US troops serving at the Al-Asad Air Base in Iraq when Iranian missile struck the base earlier this month have been taken to Germany for treatment of concussion related injuries.... A former inspector with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) told the UN Security Council that the group's report about an alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria in April 2018 ran contrary to the findings of its own fact finding mission....... Speaking to the UN Conference on Disarmament...

The Iran deal was never meant to stop Iran from building a bomb—it was supposed to delay it until disaster happened on someone else’s watchIn the wake of the targeted killing of Iranian terror master Qassem Soleimani, an interesting fight has broken out—after Donald Trump failed to brief them in advance of the strike, Democrats began fulsomely criticizing the president. This led Republican lawmakers to accuse their counterparts across the aisle of pro-terrorist sympathies. Maybe Republicans are still sore that Barack Obama compared them to Iranian hardliners like Soleimani for denouncing his signature foreign policy initiative, the Iran nuclear deal,...

Despite its cool Green parties and ambitious wind and solar agendas, Europe remains by far the world’s largest importer of oil and natural gas. Oil output in the North Sea and off the coast of Norway is declining, and the European Union is quietly looking for fossil fuel energy anywhere it can find it. Europe itself is naturally rich in fossil fuels. It likely has more reserves of shale gas than the United States, currently the world’s largest producer of both oil and natural gas. Yet in most European countries, horizontal drilling and fracking to extract gas and oil are...

Iranian authorities last week arrested Fatemeh Mohammadi, a woman who converted to Christianity, and was transported to a secret location. The Persian-language news agency HRANA first reported on Mohammadi’s arrest. According to the website Article 18, which seeks to promote religious freedom, “The 21-year-old, who after her conversion now prefers to be known as Mary, was reportedly arrested on Sunday near Azadi Square, where protests were taking place following the Iranian government’s admission of guilt in the downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane.” Article 18 said, “A number of protesters were reportedly arrested on Sunday evening, as protests took place...

In April 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took over Iran; months later 52 American diplomats and citizens, as well as citizens of other nations, were kidnapped and held hostage for 444 days in the US Embassy in Tehran. How far has America fallen in just 41 short years? We have fallen so far that the most popular Democratic candidate for president in 2020 is a hardcore Socialist Communist who sided with Iran and against America during the 1979 Iranian Hostage Crisis. That same man in 2020 displays an open hatred for Israel and is still siding with Iranagainst America. Of course,...

President Donald Trump's top Russia expert on the National Security Counsel is reportedly on leave pending a security investigation. Andrew Peek, the NSC’s senior director for European and Russian affairs, was escorted from the White House grounds on Friday, two people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. Peek had been in the NSC role for just two months, after most recently working as a deputy assistant secretary of state with responsibility for Iran and Iraq. Peek had been expected to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland next week with Trump and other top aides. However, he is currently...

President Trump shocked the world — and mortified Democrats — when he authorized a lethal drone strike against Iranian General and super-terrorist Qassem Soleimani. The real surprise, however, wasn't that Trump suddenly found the gumption to target a high-profile Iranian — it was that it took America so long to rid the world of a man with so much American blood on his hands. Previous U.S. administrations, afraid of “escalation,” allowed the agents of Iran free rein in their murderous plots. Sooner or later, America had to push back. What's odd, though, is that the entirely justifiable U.S. strike on...

He put the fat in fatwa. A morbidly obese ISIS fanatic dubbed “Jabba the Jihadi” has been captured by Iraqi forces — who loaded him onto a flatbed truck because he couldn’t fit in a police car. The 560-pound mufti Abu Abdul Bari, also known as Shifa al-Nima, was nabbed Thursday by an elite SWAT team of the Nineveh regiment in the city of Mosul, according to Stars and Stripes. The jumbo jihadist was known for “provocative speeches against the security forces” and is considered one of the top leaders of “ISIS gangs,” Iraqi security officials said in a statement....

A year and a half into Donald Trump’s presidency, Henry Kissinger set out a theory. “I think Trump may be one of those figures in history who appears from time to time to mark the end of an era and to force it to give up its old pretences,” he told the Financial Times. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that he knows this, or that he is considering any great alternative. It could just be an accident.” A term has been coined to describe this notion: Ryan Evans of War on the Rocks calls them “Trumportunities.” It is the idea that,...

New guidelines rolled out today for foreign military personnel training in the US following the December 6th terrorist attack at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida. A Saudi Arabian air force officer killed three and wounded eight..... The US now acknowledging 11 injuries in the Iranian missile attacks last week on US bases in Iraq..... "The day the missiles of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps crushed the US base is one of the days of God" In Tehran today the words of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei speaking at Friday prayers..... Ukraine's government demanding that Iran hand over the...

President Trump is expected to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, next week, as his impeachment trial in the Senate begins, several senior administration officials told CBS News. And he is expected to have a handful of one-on-one meetings with world leaders while he's there. On Thursday, Mr. Trump had indicated he was likely to go, telling reporters, "I will probably be going to Davos. I've been invited. We have tremendous world leaders, and we also have the great business leaders. And we want those business leaders all to come to the United States." The administration is currently...

He put the fat in fatwa. A morbidly obese ISIS fanatic dubbed “Jabba the Jihadi” has been captured by Iraqi forces — who loaded him onto a flatbed truck because he couldn’t fit in a police car. The 560-pound mufti Abu Abdul Bari, also known as Shifa al-Nima, was nabbed Thursday by an elite SWAT team of the Nineveh regiment in the city of Mosul, according to Stars and Stripes.