Free Republic

Zoroastrian texts such as the Avesta clearly define the status of Persian women and reveal that at a time when many women in the world were deprived of their basic rights, Persian women enjoyed social and legal freedom and were treated with great respect. Avestan texts mention both genders asking them to share responsibility and make decisions together. They are equally praised for their good deeds rather than their gender, wealth or power. “Whoever, man or woman, does what Thou, O Ahura Mazda, knowest to be the best in Life. Whoever does right for the sake of Right; Whoever in...

Ilhan Omar and Jan Schakowsky managed to get through the House a bill that promises to criticize speech with which Omar disagrees. In his 1925 autobiography, Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler spewed page after page of hatred for the Jewish people, proclaiming what he would do if he rose to power. When the Holocaust ensued, only the most uninformed or disingenuous could claim not to have realized that Hitler meant to eliminate Jews off the face of the earth. Since the end of World War II, anti-Semitism has become more indirect, with attacks upon Jews being blamed on other factors than...

Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi addresses the nation following a drone strike that targeted his residence in Baghdad on November 7. Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi addresses the nation following a drone strike that targeted his residence in Baghdad on November 7. Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi survived an attack by an armed drone on his residence on November 7 amid escalating tensions over the refusal of Iran-backed militias to accept last month's parliamentary election results. The Baghdad residence inside the city's fortified Green Zone was hit by a rocket attack early on November 7, the prime minister’s office said...

Defense chiefs meet after suicide drone apparently targets Israeli-operated vessel near Oman, killing two foreign crewmen; Iranian media say attack was response to strikes in Syria. Israel's defense leadership convened Friday night to discuss what it believes to be an Iranian attack on a ship with Israeli ties that killed two foreign crewmen, as a senior government source accused Tehran of "sowing destruction" and said it was proving itself to be "a global problem." Meanwhile, state-owned Iranian news network Al-Alam citing "well informed sources," said the attack was in response to a reported Israeli strike in Syria that killed "two...

The US could soon begin targeting Iran’s missile and drone programs with a new sanctions campaign in light of the assessment that they pose a more immediate threat than the nuclear- or ballistic-missile programs, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday based on conversations with Western officials. “It’s part of a comprehensive approach so we’re dealing with all aspects of the Iranian threat,” a senior US official told the Journal. According to the report, the apparent shift comes in the wake of a sharp rise in the employment of guided missiles and drones against US assets. “Iran’s drones are becoming...

Iraq’s Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi survived an attempted assassination by drone that targeted his home early Sunday and is “unharmed and in good health,” the Iraqi government said in a statement.There was “an explosives-laden drone that tried to target his residence in the Green Zone,” the statement released by state-run media said, adding that security forces “are taking the necessary measures in connection with this failed attempt.”“The rockets of treason will not shake one bit of the steadfastness and determination of the heroic security forces,” the Iraqi prime minister said in post on Twitter after the attack. “I am fine...

Baghdad, Iraq (CNN)Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi escaped an assassination attempt on Sunday after an explosive-laden drone targeted his residence, the country's military said. Al-Kadhimi went on to Twitter moments after the attack and called for "calm and restraint from everyone.".. ..A source close to the Iraqi leader said Sunday that Al-Kadhimi was returning from overseeing security forces engaged in a stand-off with protesters at the southern gate of the Green Zone, the heavily fortified area of Baghdad where the the Prime Minister's residence and other government and diplomatic buildings are located, around the time of the drone attack. As...

President Joe Biden warned that the United States would respond to drone strikes by Tehran or any other hostile act that the Iranian regime took against American interests, The Jerusalem Post reported. "With regard to the issue of how we’re going to respond to actions taken by them against the interests of the United States — whether they’re drone strikes or anything else — is we’re going to respond, and we’re going to continue to respond," Biden said. The president made the comments following discussions with European powers over the weekend about what steps to take in order to prevent...

Human rights usually feature prominently in America's political rhetoric but fade insignificance when it comes to concrete action. That trend can take a historic turn when it comes to Iran, where a genocidal madman has taken the presidency. That the presidency of Ebrahim Raisi in Iran hasn't galvanized governments in the West and in the U.S. in particular to pursue his prosecution is still a mystery. Human rights groups, UN experts, Nobel laureates, scores of elected officials, lawmakers, and journalists have already expressed outrage over Raisi's rise to power. And justifiably so. In 1988, Raisi was one of the members...

AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): Secretary General of World Forum for Proximity of Islamic Schools of Thought detailed his view on the issues challenging the world of Islam and the reason behind naming the 35th International Islamic Unity Conference as “Islamic Unity, Peace and Avoidance of Division and Conflict in the World of Islam.” Sheikh Hamid Shahriari, delivering speech on the 13th webinar of the Islamic Unity Conference 2021 on Friday evening rebuked the US-led world arrogant powers over sparking war and dispute in the world of Islam in order to justify their presence in Islamic countries. He said,” The second...

WASHINGTON — The head of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog says his monitoring program in Iran is no longer “intact” after Tehran refused requests to repair cameras at a key facility, creating the possibility the world will never be “able to reconstruct the picture” of what the Iranians have been doing. In an interview with NBC News, International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi says he’s been unable to establish the type of direct communication with Iran’s government that he had before a new hardline government run by President Ebrahim Raisi was elected in June.

The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco all said in 2020 they would normalize ties with Israel, as Washington under the administration of then-US president Donald Trump made Arab-Israeli rapprochement a foreign policy priority. “Some governments have unfortunately made errors — have made big errors and have sinned in normalizing (their relations) with the usurping and oppressive Zionist regime,” Khamenei says... “It is an act against Islamic unity, they must return from this path and make up for this big mistake,”

At least 14 people were killed and several others were wounded in central Damascus on Wednesday morning in an explosion on a Syrian military bus, Syrian state TV reported. According to additional reports from Syrian and Lebanese outlets, the casualties were Iranian officers. Syrian state TV showed footage of the charred bus, reporting that the blasts occurred while people were heading to work and school. As of yet, according to the reports, no organization has claimed responsibility for the blast, which occurred at a main bus-transfer point under the Hafez al-Assad bridge, where vehicles converge and head out to different...

A military outpost in southern Syria was hit by a coordinated attack on Wednesday, but a U.S. official said no American troops stationed there were injured or killed. The official said the attack appeared to include at least one drone strike and possibly groundfire. It was not yet clear who carried out the attack. U.S. and coalition troops are based at the al-Tanf garrison to train local Syrian opposition forces on patrols to counter Islamic State militants.

#UPDATE Unconfirmed: —A militia contacted the base of the Global Coalition against Daesh in the Al-Tanf area that it should be evacuated. —An hour later five drones attacked the base. —One drone reportedly entered #Syria from #Iraq. —No casualties. pic.twitter.com/JuWVpKM6e3 — Heshmat Alavi (@HeshmatAlavi) October 20, 2021 The US base at Al-Tanf, in Syria’s southern Homs province, has reportedly come under attack by either missiles or a drone. No casualties were reported, and the US Central Command blamed “Iranian-backed militias.” Reports of the attack appeared online around 10 pm local time on Wednesday, initially mentioning a “suicide drone” and multiple...

While much of the international focus has remained on Iran's nuclear program, Tehran has steadily advanced another major instrument of instability, i.e., drones. For over a decade, the regime has sunk billions of dollars into the effort as part of its regional destabilization policy. To avoid more crises in hotspots like Lebanon and Syria, the international community must act now to curb Tehran's massive drone initiative. Let’s start with the facts. Despite crippling economic misfortune, Tehran has invested billions in drone production, in a bid to compensate for its failing Air Force. On October 6, 2021, a sweeping expositionon the...

Something strange is going on. Why is the EU so keen to shoe-horn America back into the nuclear deal with Iran? Former US president Donald Trump ditched the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) deal three years ago and imposed heavy sanctions on the mullahs’ regime under his ‘maximum pressure’ campaign. Since then, the Iranians have boasted about how they have flouted the terms of the deal by accelerating their advanced centrifuge program and enriching uranium to almost weapons grade fissile status. The Biden administration is being ultra-cautious. But the EU’s high Representative for Foreign Affairs & Security, the Spanish...

When President Donald Trump gave the order to kill Iran's Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani, he not only made an arguably proportionate response to the invasion of the U.S. Embassy this week but he also reversed a policy of the Obama administration. According to a report from 2018, Israel was "on the verge" of assassinating Soleimani in 2015, but Obama's officials foiled the plan. In fact, they reached out to Iran with news of Israel's plans. The Trump administration, on the other hand, gave Israel a green light to assassinate Soleimani, according to a January 1, 2018 report from the...

This week, President Donald Trump launched a global round of teeth gnashing when he ordered the killing of the greatest terrorist leader in the modern Middle East, Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani. Soleimani was unquestionably responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans in Iraq and thousands of others throughout the Middle East -- mostly Muslim. His global terror network ran from South America to Europe to Africa to Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq. Soleimani was an unparalleled organizer and a pitiless murderer. His death was richly earned. But for many in the media and on the domestic and international...

The stealth C.I.A. drone that crashed deep inside Iranian territory last week was part of a stepped-up surveillance program that has frequently sent the United States’ most hard-to-detect drone into the country to map suspected nuclear sites, according to foreign officials and American experts who have been briefed on the effort. Until this week, the high-altitude flights from bases in Afghanistan were among the most secret of many intelligence-collection efforts against Iran, and American officials refuse to discuss it. But the crash of the vehicle, which Iranian officials said occurred more than 140 miles from the border with Afghanistan, blew...