Free Republic

Primo Levi, a Holocaust survivor of Italian origin who led a distinguished life, was at the Auschwitz concentration camp hospital one day due to high fever caused by an infectious disease. He later wrote in his memoirs that when confronted with Soviet soldiers: "They neither greeted nor smiled; they seemed to be tormented by the guilt of why this crime had to happen." The trial of one of the perpetrators of another heinous crime, the massacre of 30,000 Iranian political prisoners in 1988, is currently taking place in a Swedish court. What happened in 1988 was a ruthless, bloody, and...

Several Iranian state television channels were hacked yesterday, and viewers were stunned when a ten-second caption appeared on the screen reading "Death to Ayatollah Khamenei" next to a picture of Iran's supreme leader with a red "X" over his face. A man is heard shouting in the background "Salute Rajawi, death to Khamenei." An exiled opposition group called MEK claimed responsibility for the hack. A picture of opposition leaders Masoud and Miriam Rajawi, who live in Paris, appeared on Iranian screens as well, and a sound byte from one of Rajawi's speeches was used during the hack. Iranian state television...

Former Iranian armed forces chief Hassan Firouzabadi, who once accused Western nations of spying on the country using lizards, has died of coronavirus aged 70, local media reported on Friday. Revolutionary Guards chief Hossein Salami praised Firouzabadi's "continuous efforts" to defend "the sacred system of the Islamic Republic of Iran", in a statement published on the Guards' Sepahnews website. A trained doctor, Firouzabadi joined the Basij Islamic volunteer militia during the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88. Serving in administrative roles, he swiftly rose up its ranks before being named head of the armed forces in September 1989 by Iran's supreme leader...

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...

Biden is determined to return to the (to him) halcyon days of Obama's Iran deal — an illegal treaty by which Obama gave Iran money and access to nuclear weapons. The real tragedy of Biden's goal is that, thanks to Trump's relentless pressure, Iran is on the ropes, and Biden has the upper hand — he just doesn't know this or, worse, doesn't want to know it.In Iran and the Middle East, when Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, emerges in public, people say he only speaks evil and issues threats. On Monday, February 22, after Iran and the IAEA reached...

Power struggle at the head of the ruling regime in Iran Since the Iranian revolution in 1979, understanding the structure of the ruling system in Iran and the decision-making mechanism, at times, has sometimes been challenging and difficult to understand and analyze. Although the "Vali-Faghih or the Supreme Leader" is at the top of the system's pyramid of power, the president holds the executive power. Still, the order of decision-making institutions in Iran is not clear, and this has long led to a dispute over authority between leaders of the regime who are at the center of its influence and...

Days ago into last week there were widespread rumors spreading on Mideast social media of the severe health decline of Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The persistent rumors ranged from saying he was in a coma even to some claiming his death.But Khamenei put the unfounded speculation to rest after on Wednesday morning he appeared at an event marking the first anniversary of the death of IRGC Quds Force General Qassem Soleimani. He hasn't made a public appearance in three weeks.But more importantly he emerged to give final high level backing to prior statements of Iranian leaders, most notably President...

Unconfirmed reports from Iran say the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, returned his soul to his maker. According to the same reports, an official announcement will be made only after the transfer of powers to his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, are completed. Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei, 81, was the supreme leader of Iran since 1989. He previously served as the president of Iran from 1981 to 1989. Khamenei is the longest serving head of state in the Middle East, as well as the second-longest serving Iranian leader of the last century, after Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Reports on Saturday suggested that...

Unable to deal with Iran’s growing poverty, economic crisis, and the COVID-19 epidemic that has ravaged the country, the regime’s Supreme Leader has opted to increase suppression to intimidate Iranians into silence and prevent protests. In their Friday sermons, Khamenei’s representatives lashed out against civil liberties, including “lack of hijab” and “dog walking”, once again signaling where the regime’s priorities lie. Ahmad Alamolhoda, Khamenei’s representative in the northeastern province of Khorasan Razavi, and head of Mashhad Friday prayers said Khamenei had ordered the police to crack down on civil liberties. “According to an order issued by the Commander in Chief...

SENATOR Ted Cruz is calling for a criminal investigation into Twitter for potentially "violating US sanctions against Iran." Cruz asked for the investigation in a letter to the Justice and Treasury departments on Friday. In February, Cruz wrote a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to ask him to stop providing social media services to Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. Now, the senator is calling on Attorney General William Barr and Secretary Steve Mnuchin to "take action." In Friday's letter, Cruz wrote: "I believe that the primary goal of (the International Emergency Economic...

From the early days of Iranian Revolution four decades ago, the Iranian regime has tried to spread its theocratic doctrine to the rest of the Middle East. The regime has, in the process, successfully made substantial number of Iraqi and Lebanese ‘civilians’ and ‘armed groups’ its core external support bases. The Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who spearheads the regime, had maintained his charm among these external civilian and armed support bases for almost three and a half decade. However, the situation has been changing in the Middle East for last half a decade and the Iranian regime appears to...

Four US Senators, including Ted Cruz, penned a letter on February 6 to Jack Dorsey asking him to ban Iranian leadership from using Twitter as part of the US sanctions against Iran. Republican senators led by Ted Cruz in a letter Thursday suggested Twitter may be violating U.S. sanctions by letting Iranian leaders maintain accounts, which they asked company CEO Jack Dorsey to ban. The big picture: Twitter has become a major political target for Cruz and other Republicans, who claim the company and other Silicon Valley giants are biased against conservatives and the Trump administration. "While the First Amendment...

Iran’s supreme leader said President Donald Trump is a “clown” who only pretends to support the Iranian people, as he addressed Friday prayers In Tehran for the first time since 2012. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says Trump will “push a poisonous dagger” into the nation’s back. He said the outpouring of grief at the funeral for Iran’s top general, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike earlier this month, shows that Iranians support the Islamic Republic.

Since December 2017, deeply aggrieved Iranian citizens have publicly denounced two blatantly linked injustices perpetrated by the corrupt ayatollah regime: the clerical dictatorship's hideous corruption and Iran's acute economic deterioration. Iran's Islamic revolutionary dictatorship is a case study in repeated failure, incompetence, corruption and mass murder. I estimate that since 1990, I've written over two dozen essays examining the failed Iranian regime's murderous Islamic global revolution, the mass domestic Iranian disappointment with the regime's governance and the Iranian public's evident disgust with governmental corruption. The internet documents my claim. If your mainstream media sources didn't notice Iran's domestic discord, henceforth...

On Saturday, protesters with Iran's MEK Freedom Movement took to the streets in Tehran to protest after Iran's government admitted having shot down a Ukrainian plane by mistake, killing 176 people on board. Iran's government claimed that the U.S. airstrike killing Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani had united the country, but the protests disproved that narrative."Protests erupt against the Revolutionary Guards at Amir-Kabir University in Tehran due to authorities' incompetence and negligence after the recent plane crash that killed more than 176 people," Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad reported on Twitter. "Some people had claimed Iranians were united after [Soleimani]'s death....

‘Whistleblower’ calls out John Kerry, says he ‘knows for fact’ Obama admin sent multiple letters directly to Soleimani Middle East expert Michael Doran slammed former Secretary of State John Kerry in a series of tweets exposing the Obama administration’s dealings with Iran. “I must become a whistleblower,” Doran, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute specializing in Middle East security issues, tweeted Friday in response to a self-serving opinion piece by Kerry published by The New York Times. Doran called out Kerry for his op-ed and the “ludicrous and reckless contention” that “diplomacy” with Iran and the nuclear deal negotiated...

Over the last three years, these lunatics have tried to fake it, but their mask is off. We have watched them express outright hate for the Founding Fathers, the police, law and order, the rule of law, the Constitution, election results, and, most recently, the electoral college. When I thought they had reached their wits ends, they put the pedal to the metal with their recent reaction to the killing of Iran’s top military General Qasem Soleimani. I never thought I would see the day when Americans would be so full of hate toward their own country that they would...

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, the country’s elite military force, is sending assets to infiltrate the United States and Europe at the direction of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, according to recent Farsi-language comments from an Iranian military leader. The IRGC “will be in the U.S. and Europe very soon,” according to the Iranian military commander, who said that these forces would operate with the goal of bolstering Iran’s hardline regime and thwarting potential plots against the Islamic Republic. “The whole world should know that the IRGC will be in the U.S. and Europe very soon,” Salar Abnoush, deputy coordinator...

It is hard to understand Iran Supreme Leader Khamenei’s blunder in attacking the US Embassy in Baghdad. He either believed Trump was weakened by his impeachment, as western liberal Media breathlessly and continuously reported, or he might have been misled by John Kerry’s incompetent advice (apparently Kerry met again with Khamenei’s emissaries in Paris just few weeks ago). Whatever the reasons, his goal of triggering a limited war with America to rally his people around the regime has failed miserably. (my emphasis.)

Khamenei, now you know how the families of soldiers who died fighting in the Middle East felt when their loved ones died trying to stop the evil Soleimani was producing. Now you understand the grief. Yet, your attitude remains unchanged. It is only YOUR sorrow that matters, damn all of the rest. Every time you want to cry out, remember the families of soldiers here whose loved ones died. Think of that, you monster.