Free Republic

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced Tuesday that the Iranian government was behind at least two attacks against the country's Jewish community, The Guardian reported. According to Australia's domestic spy agency, the Australian Security and Intelligence Organization (ASIO), Iran directed the attacks on the Adass Israel Synagogue of Melbourne and Lewis’ Continental Kitchen. Albanese described the incidents as “extraordinary and dangerous acts of aggression orchestrated by a foreign nation on Australian soil.” He added that ASIO assesses it is likely Iran directed further attacks as well. The Prime Minister stated the attacks were “attempts to undermine social cohesion and sow...

Early on the morning of March 16th, 1984, William Buckley left for work at the American embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. Officially, Mr. Buckley, a decorated veteran of the Special Forces, served as the political officer at the embassy. In reality, however, Mr. Buckley was the embassy’s CIA station chief. On his way to the compound, Buckley’s car was stopped by a group of masked men, who forced him from his car at gunpoint. His assailants would later be identified as terrorists from the group Islamic Jihad, which served as an alias for the real perpetrators, Hezbollah. The circumstances surrounding the...

Australian intelligence agencies have discovered the Iranian Government directed at least two anti-Semitic attacks in Australia. Anthony Albanese on Tuesday said the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation had established the Iranian government was behind an October 20 attack on Bondi’s Lewis’ Continental Kitchen, and the December 6 fire bombing of the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne. The Australian government pulled its diplomats from Tehran and has moved to expel Iran’s ambassador to Australia. “ASIO assesses it is likely Iran directed further attacks as well,” the Prime Minister said. “I can also announce the government will legislate to list Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary...

Uprisings in major Iranian cities, protests, lots of footage via phone cameras, some not even covering faces, supporters of regime not helping much, because they don't have food and haven't been paid. Hizbollah is FUBAR, so can't come in and do the Thug (new dance; must become GIF like Happy Dance), people daring to wave original Iranian flag, sing original anthem, both of which are capital offenses, previously bringing summary execution. Parallels with UK are remarkable. Transcript linked below video.

If Iran is in the news because of its nuclear program, the greatest threat to the country’s well-being isn’t economic sanctions or the Sunni-Shiite schism. Rather, the greatest threat to Iran may be that the country is running out of water. The problem is so severe that social unrest, economic dislocation, even out migration can all be imagined. One government advisor recently predicted that as many as fifty million Iranians—seventy percent of Iran’s population—may be forced to leave because of a lack of water. Water problems are a proxy for bad governance, and Iran has water problems galore. By contrast,...

Already prone to droughts, Iran has exacerbated the problem with poor water management policies, which Mr. Pezeshkian acknowledged on Monday. Climate change, too, has played a role; the country has weathered five consecutive years of drought. Now, the crisis has grown so extreme that the government shut down all government offices and services in Tehran and more than two dozen other cities across the country on Wednesday, creating a three-day weekend in an attempt to lower water and electricity usage. Fatemeh Mohajerani, a government spokeswoman, said cities could have similar closures once or twice a week going forward, and suggested...

A social media account affiliated with Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency published a pointed critique Friday of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, accusing him of being unfit to govern due to alleged substance abuse and detachment from public needs. “How can a leader lead when they sleep half the day and spend the other half high on substances?” read the post in Farsi from the @MossadSpokesman account on X, formerly Twitter. It ended with a charged refrain: “Water, electricity, life!” The post, which was automatically translated from its original Farsi, did not name Khamenei directly but was widely interpreted as...

Following the 12-day war, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, spends most days snoozing and getting “high,” an outrageous post from the Mossad’s Farsi social media account mysteriously claimed. “How can a leader lead when they sleep half the day and spend the other half high on substances?” the post asked. The statement came from a bizarre new premium X account that launched in recent weeks, claiming to be the official Farsi-language spokesperson — the official dialect of Iran — for the cunning Israeli intelligence agency, with regular posts trolling the Iranian regime. “Using drugs and speaking to spirits are...

At a United Nations conference in New York this week, the Holy See reaffirmed its longstanding support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, calling it the “only viable and equitable path” to a just and lasting peace. Archbishop Gabriele Caccia, the Holy See’s Permanent Observer to the UN, stressed that peace must be rooted in “secure and internationally recognized borders,” according to Vatican News. He also condemned the terrorist attacks by Hamas, stating that “in the light of the profound anguish and terrible human suffering that has befallen the region,” the Holy See “unequivocally” denounces such violence. “Terrorism...

There has been a spate of mysterious fires and explosions across Iran in recent weeks. Naturally the Iranians suspect, with reason, that agents of Israel are responsible. But Iran doesn’t dare to accuse Israel publicly, because that would then require that Iran respond with an attack on the Jewish state, and then Israel would answer back with a far more devastating attack. In fact, Israel may well be engaging in sabotage in order to prevent Iran from renewing its aggressive campaign against Israel, thus giving Israel all the excuse it needs to renew its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic,...

Did we hit Iran hard enough before we stopped? This is always the question, anytime you engage in diplomacy, warfare, or a combination of the two. When it becomes necessary to do something, the question is “How much?” Israel has led the effort against Iran, as Iran has been the chief aggressor against Israel. For 46 years now, the mullahs who rule that poor country have not only threatened Israel (and the USA too) on a constant basis, they have also funded, trained, and directed numerous terrorist organizations in the region, chief among which are Hamas of Gaza, Hezbollah of...

The ruling elites of the Islamic Republic of Iran are not known worldwide for their friendly, sunny dispositions; in fact, they have a long and ever-growing list of pet hates, including America, Israel, women (at least if their heads are uncovered and they’re out in public), and man’s other best friend, dogs. The ruling Iranian mullahs have now extended a ban that was already in effect in over twenty Iranian cities to the entire country: it is now against the law to walk the dog. That means, of course, that while private ownership of dogs as pets is ostensibly permitted...

All detainees had previously attempted illegal border crossings and are now awaiting deportation proceedings.. A Customs and Border Protection (CBP) spokesman confirmed Tuesday that five Iranians were arrested while attempting to illegally cross the U.S. northern border with Canada. "On July 1, Border Patrol Agents from the Champlain, New York Station, responded to suspicious activity near Mooers Forks, NY," CBP's Swanton Sector said on Facebook. "Agents located a minivan occupied by five citizens of Iran and two citizens of Uzbekistan." The Champlain Station is part of the Swanton Sector. Swanton is a rural town in Vermont near Highway 89 just...

The picture, shared to Instagram, appears to portray two large nuclear explosions with fallout across Israel.

The White House Office of the Press Secretary FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 29, 2019 PRESS BRIEFING BY SECRETARY OF STATE MIKE POMPEO AND SECRETARY OF DEFENSE MARK ESPER Mar-a-Lago Palm Beach, Florida 6:49 P.M. EST SECRETARY POMPEO: Good evening. Myself, with Secretary Esper, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Milley, came here to Florida today to brief the President on the activities that have taken place in the Middle East over the course of the last 72 hours. I will leave to Secretary Esper to talk about the military activity, but I want to put it in the context...

Iraqi security forces were on Friday (June 26) interrogating pro-Iran fighters detained for planning a rocket attack in the first such raid in a country caught in the tug-of-war between Teheran and Washington. Since October, nearly three dozen deadly rocket attacks have hit US military and diplomatic installations in Iraq, with the US blaming pro-Teheran faction Kataeb Hezbollah. Infuriated, Washington has demanded Iraq take tougher action to hold the perpetrators accountable and Thursday's unprecedented raid appeared to be a response to this call. Just before midnight Thursday, the elite Counter-Terrorism Service stormed a base in southern Baghdad used by Kataeb...

Iranian militia leader Hadi al-Amiri, one of several identified as leading an attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday, reportedly visited the White House in 2011 during the presidency of Barack Obama. On Tuesday, a mob in Baghdad attacked the U.S. embassy in retaliation against last weekend’s U.S. airstrikes against the Iran-backed Shiite militia Kataib Hezbollah (KH), responsible for killing an American civilian contractor. KH is one of a number of pro-Iran militias that make up the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF/PMU), which legally became a wing of the Iraqi military after fighting the Sunni Islamic State terrorist group....

A contractor for the Pentagon has been charged with providing classified U.S. intelligence to a Lebanese national connected with terrorist group Hezbollah, the Justice Department announced on Wednesday. The department alleges Mariam Taha Thompson, 61, began transmitting the classified intelligence around December 30, when Iraqi militiamen stormed the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Thompson is a linguist who at the time was working at a U.S. special forces base in Erbil in northern Iraq. The classified “files contained classified national defense information including true names, personal identification data, background information, and photographs of the human sources, as well as operations cables...

A Minnesota woman pleaded guilty today to one count of delivering national defense information to aid a foreign government. According to court documents, Mariam Taha Thompson, 63, formerly of Rochester, Minnesota, worked as a contract linguist at an overseas U.S. military facility where she was entrusted with a top secret government security clearance. ***** In December 2019, while Thompson was assigned to a special operations task force facility in Iraq, the United States launched a series of airstrikes in Iraq targeting Kata’ib Hizballah, an Iranian-backed foreign terrorist organization. These airstrikes culminated in a Jan. 3, 2020, strike that resulted in...

The Obama administration recognizes that Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi “has to reach out to his neighbors,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said Thursday in response to queries about Abadi’s meetings with Iran’s top leaders. During his visit to Tehran, Abadi appears to have been accompanied by a man named by the U.S. government during the Iraqi war as responsible for attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces. […] On the Iranian president’s website, one of the photographs of his meeting with the Iraqi prime minister shows Rouhani greeting a man—apparently a member of the Iraqi delegation—identified by the Foundation for...