Free Republic

<p>Two key suspects in last month's suicide bombings in Istanbul met with and took instructions from Osama bin Laden's right-hand man, newspapers reported Tuesday, a day after the government made its strongest statement linking the attackers to al-Qaida.</p> <p>Main suspects Habib Aktas and Azad Ekinci met with bin Laden's top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, several times, Hurriyet newspaper reported, quoting the testimony from another suspect. The two Turks are suspected of planning the Nov. 15 suicide bombings of two synagogues and of the British Consulate and a British bank five days later.</p>

Iran has sent an official protest to the United States over the killing of an Iranian by American troops during a fierce firefight in Iraq on Sunday, the official IRNA news agency said on Tuesday. U.S. troops said they killed 54 guerrillas in a battle to fight off coordinated ambushes on armoured convoys carrying large quantities of banknotes in the tense Iraqi town of Samarra. Police said eight civilians were among the dead, including an Iranian pilgrim.

A majority of Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council has decided to support an American plan to select a provisional government through regional caucuses despite objections from the country's most powerful Shiite Muslim cleric, according to several council members. The council's stance, the result of intense lobbying over the past few days by the U.S. administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, could result in a dramatic showdown with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who has insisted that a provisional government be chosen through a national election. If the council persists in supporting the American plan, many in Iraq's Shiite majority, who regard the...

As far as we know, Iraq has not been a prime sponsor of terrorism under Saddam Hussein in the recent past; Iran was -- and is. As far as we know, Iraq did not have a functioning nuclear weapons program. Iran does. So who did we go to war against? Iraq. Maybe someone in the White House can't spell. Whatever the explanation, the decision to make war on Iraq has cost the United States plenty when it comes to dealing with Iran. In the past month the Bush administration has been repeatedly rebuffed by our European allies -- Germany, France...

MISSTEPS: The U. S. is reordering Iraq and the Middle East, but not in the ways it wants or intends Issues 2004 — The United States invaded Iraq to remove an oppressive dictator and turn Iraq into a model of democracy and economic success in the Arab world. The first objective was achieved in three weeks as one of the most durable of Arab tyrannies crumbled without a real fight. Now, however, the Americans realize that while regime change was easy, model-building is not. In fact, the invasion has shattered the balance of power in Iraq, mostly in ways the...

<p>THOSE making Iraq policy in Washington appear to have found an easy way to explain, and explain away, whatever snag that their changing and contradictory plans may hit at any given time. It consists of one phrase: the Sistani logjam. This refers to Grand Ayatollah Ali Muhammad Sistani, the primus inter pares of Shi'ite clerics in Najaf.</p>

The office of Grand Ayatollah Bashir Najafi is conscientiously bare, reflecting the asceticism of Iraq's most senior Shiite Muslim clergy in this holy city. His lone indulgence is a Persian prayer rug, on top of which sits a mud prayer stone, a Muslim rosary and a comb for his flowing gray beard. But the conversation in his office and those of Iraq's influential clerics these days is anything but modest. The debate revolves around religion and state, secular and sacred, and the part the clerics will play as leaders of the country's Shiite majority. "The grand ayatollahs will always be...

Iran has announced that it plans to retaliate against those countries which voted against Iran at International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board of governers meeting. These nations include Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and United States of America. IAEA's new resolution passed on Wednesday criticizes Iran for what it calls are 'violations' but at the same time praises its new willingness to cooperate. However, IAEA attached harshly worded warnings for any 'further violations.' Similar warnings were given to Iraq just before American led attack on Iraq. "This resolution is a success for Iran and proving the sincerity of...

More than 10,000 Iranian revolutionary militia chanted "Death to America" outside the former US embassy in Tehran on Sunday, wishing defeat in Iraq on the "Great Satan." "The region will only see peace and calm when the occupiers get out," Yahya Rahim Safavi, head of both the elite Revolutionary Guards Corps and the Bassij militia, told the crowd of men and women who had been bussed to the city center compound. "We hope that the US is dealt a humiliating defeat in Iraq, so the US warmonger administration won't get re-elected to send US children to the Iraqi quagmire," he...

The Tehran taxi driver's knowing remark is unsurprising: "The British are behind everything in Iran." After all, we have been riding in Iran's national car, an adaptation of the old Hillman Hunter, past British-built buildings and finally dropped at the vast British embassy compound in Teheran. His remark reflects a national consensus. Everyone, from shoeshine man to entrepreneur, has conspiracy theories to offer about Britain and its influence in Iran over the past 100 years. Ingilis'eh kalak, or Tricky English, is a common phrase. There is a widespread notion among anti-clerical elements, for example, that Whitehall conspires with the Islamic...