Free Republic

Khamenei is buried under the rubble of defeat, yet he still plots new schemes to create chaos and incite war, despite no longer having the power or energy to carry them out. On December 11, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei delivered his first speech following Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s fall, broadcast as a pre-recorded message. Its significance rested solely on the propaganda spread by his supporters. During the 51-minute ramble, he offered no ideas, messages, or meaningful content. His speech was riddled with delusions – a chaotic and unsettling display. Khamenei’s arguments came across as childish and riddled with lies...

Will the White House Learn Any Lesson from Iran’s Attacks?: For the second time in six months, the Islamic Republic of Iran has launched a barrage – this time, 181 missiles – at Israel. Each time, the Biden administration has stood by Israel, lending deployed military capabilities to help Israel neutralize the incoming attack. Administration principals, from Joe Biden himself to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan each stood by Israel unequivocally.

The Houthis likely receive weaponry in three ways. First is by sea, as Iran resupplies the Houthis through the port of Hudaydah. This is why Iranian diplomats both activate their proxy advocacy groups to warn of imminent humanitarian disaster if anti-Houthi forces seize the capital and disrupt supposed aid supplies and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps– Navy mines ships in the Gulf of Oman to signal to the United Arab Emirates a willingness to outflank them should they endanger Iran’s Houthi supply.

The world does not revolve around the American political calendar nor do rogues take a pause because White House aides and Democratic politicos wish a smooth coronation for Vice President Kamala Harris or whomever comes out of an open convention. If Democrats cannot provide a strong commander because Biden chose a vice president based on race and gender rather than ability, so be it. Virtue signaling has a cost. Harris, at least, is cogent. She can make decisions around the clock when a crisis emerges.

Ultra-progressive California Governor Gavin Newsom is in Las Vegas ahead of Super Bowl and is spending his time in Sin City hobnobbing with billionaires and Tom Brady, as speculation mounts that Joe Biden will stand down. On Friday, Newsom, 56, was a surprise guest at Fanatics billionaire Michael Rubin’s hot 100 luncheon at LAVO – a swanky restaurant at the upscale Palazzo hotel. The restaurant, which bills itself as offering ‘authentic Italian flavors and unforgettable experiences’, specializes in seafood – including a lavish $225 ‘plateau grande’ that comes with an entire lobster and kaluga caviar. Other specialties include a $99...

Ultra-progressive California Governor Gavin Newsom is in Las Vegas ahead of Super Bowl and is spending his time in Sin City hobnobbing with billionaires and Tom Brady, as speculation mounts that Joe Biden will stand down. On Friday, Newsom, 56, was a surprise guest at Fanatics billionaire Michael Rubin’s hot 100 luncheon at LAVO – a swanky restaurant at the upscale Palazzo hotel. The restaurant, which bills itself as offering ‘authentic Italian flavors and unforgettable experiences’, specializes in seafood – including a lavish $225 ‘plateau grande’ that comes with an entire lobster and kaluga caviar.

He may want a Nobel Peace Prize, as might Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan or even Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. It is unlikely, but should the Norwegian Nobel Committee oblige, the Blinken prize would herald a humanitarian disaster, as did the Nobel Committee's award to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in 2019.The problems with Blinken's peace plan are huge.Democracies should not bully fellow democrats into conceding to terror in the face of aggression. Nor should the State Department dismantle democracies and force their submission to dictatorship. Most alarming, Blinken actively ignores Aliyev's abuses, even as Aliyev incites genocide and denies...

Iran's currency is in free-fall, falling almost 10% over the weekend, breaking through the psychologically important half-million mark to more than 600,000 rials to the dollar. The plunging currency led the Tehran bazaar to close, an event that preceded the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Just a few dozen miles across the border, Iraqi Kurds were watching developments closely, questioning how quickly the rial rate could fall below 1 million and the consequences.

I once asked a senior American official about why he accepted honoraria from the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, or the MKO, given the group’s cultlike nature and its lack of popularity inside Iran. His response: Even if the group lied about its support, they said the right things about democracy and regime change, and so he saw no harm in collecting the cash. The regime’s fall, he said, would be a moment of truth: Either the MKO would prove itself right, or its political Ponzi scheme would collapse. The problem with engaging in the MKO’s endorsement-for-cash scheme is the impact it has on...

The Mujahedin al Khalq, or MKO, is, after the Iranian regime itself, the most hated group inside Iran. It allied with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to enable the Islamic Revolution but, after a falling out, launched a terrorist campaign inside Iran. The MKO also cast its lot with Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Its leader, Maryam Rajavi, rules with an iron fist over the organization and insists upon the same head covering that Iranians risk their lives to shed. Far from supporting women’s rights, the group tells women whom they can marry and forcibly divorces them. In short, it is a cult

How the Situation in Ukraine Could Get Far More DangerousAfter days of a withering Ukrainian counteroffensive, the Russian defense ministry announced that it was withdrawing its forces from two areas in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. In a video statement, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky quipped, “The Russian army in these days is demonstrating the best that it can do — showing its back.” Ukrainians celebrated, and rightly so. While Russian spokesmen said that Russian forces were “repositioning” ahead of a new offensive, reporters on the ground cast doubt on such pronouncements both because they mirror Russian statements as it abandoned its drive...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Islamist ambitions seem to be seeking an international role in post-U.S. Afghanistan in alliance with the Taliban, Qatar, Pakistan and Malaysia. The trouble is, Turkey, among the new sharia alliance in the making, is the only country with institutional ties to the Western world. Biden has weakened himself and his country so badly that the superpower was reduced to the point of being blackmailed by NATO's only Islamist member. Turkey's Defense Minister Hulusi Akar has made it clear: "If the U.S. is to be in the Middle East, it must cooperate with Turkey." Afghanistan is...

The rapid Taliban advance stranded several thousand Americans in Kabul and across Afghanistan. The US Embassy in Kabul has urged Americans first to shelter in place and then to make their way to the airport for evacuation. It warned, however, that it could not guarantee the safety of the routes to the airport. That may be sage advice: The Taliban have shut off access to the airport. Bold Afghans now share videos via social media of Taliban thugs using whips and pipes to beat men, women, and children who try to go to the airport. Administration officials like National Security...

The growing willingness by U.S. Big Tech to censor political debate highlights a hypocrisy that belies any notion that expelling conservative voices is an act of principle rather than something more cynical and sinister. President Donald Trump may have been intemperate, but violence linked to his Twitter account is more debatable. Certainly, he exacerbated America’s political polarization, but no more so than former Office of Management and Budget nominee Neera Tandren and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.). Political polarization is a problem and the tone of American political leaders and cable news pundits neither elucidate nor help, but censorship is not...

The problem with the strike is two-fold, however. First, he hit the wrong target. Despite Bidens’s efforts to emphasize proportionality, the airstrike was not proportional; rather, it was less. A U.S. Embassy or an airport where U.S. forces reside are not the equivalent of a dusty outpost used as a tea stop for militiamen traversing from Iraq into Syria. Nor are U.S. forces the equivalent of an Iranian-backed militia. A proportional response would more directly target Iranian interests or property. The danger is not Iranian escalation, but rather the normalization of rocket attacks on embassies or airports. Iranian authorities might...

Speculation about the possibility of a U.S attack on Iran has reached a fever pitch as President Donald Trump’s administration winds down. Far from signaling the inevitability of an attack, the partisan panic is a last hurrah for those opposed to Trump’s “maximum pressure” in favor of a more incentives-based outreach. Warnings of war are the gift that keeps on giving for a broad progressive array of organizations that fundraise off the scenario. They make for good press and national security clickbait, but there is little indication that Trump will attack Iran anytime soon.

America and the United Kingdom would be wise to let Egypt, France, and Greece take the lead in balancing a dangerous and resurgent Turkey. With Americans focused on the anarchy in Democrat-led cities, a cryptic tweet from French President Emmanuel Macron on July 20 went out relatively unnoticed. Macron tweeted he had a great discussion with “his friend” Donald Trump about Libya.Within hours, the Egyptian parliament declared they had voted unanimous support for Egyptian President Al-Sisi to send in Egyptian troops and armor in support of battered Eastern Libyan forces on their back foot due to Turkish intervention. Anyone keeping...

How does one say “Goodnight, Irene” in Greek? Or “Show Me the Way to Go Home”? Or, if neither of those classic festivity-enders does the trick, “Hit the Road, Jack”? In any case, the message needs to be sent: The party is over, and it is time for Greece to be shown the door, if the Greeks cannot find it themselves, and exit the eurozone. A Greek default appears to be imminent. The question is whether it is to be an orderly default or a chaotic one. At the moment, the odds are about even between those two possibilities. Prime...

There has never been any love lost between Turkey and Greece, but the danger of war between the two NATO members has not been this high since the Cyprus conflict more than forty-five years ago. In the past, Turkey and Greece have gone to the brink, but policies initiated by Turkish President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan may very much push the two neighbors over the edge. reek and Turkish fighter jets engaged in mock dogfights this week over the Greek island of Kastellorizo, just a mile and a half from the Turkish coast, causing tourists to flee. Meanwhile, there is a...

In an indication of their growing estrangement with the Bush administration, neoconservatives are slamming the White House for failing to stop what they describe as an antisemitic campaign to marginalize them being conducted by the CIA and the State Department. This view was outlined in a memo circulating among neoconservative foreign policy analysts in Washington. Obtained by the Forward, the memo criticizes the White House for not refuting press reports on the FBI's investigation of Pentagon analyst Lawrence Franklin that suggest wrongdoing on the part of Jewish officials at the Defense Department. "If there is any truth to any of...