Free Republic

Beirut / Baghdad -- One of the most powerful men in Iraq isn't an Iraqi government official, a militia leader, a senior cleric or a top U.S. military commander or diplomat. He's an Iranian general, and at times he's more influential than all of them. Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani (51) ( pictured) commands the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force, an elite paramilitary and espionage organization whose mission is to expand Iran's influence in the Middle East . As Tehran's point man on Iraq , he funnels military and financial support to various Iraqi factions, frustrating U.S. attempts to...

This weekend, the US and Iran will hold their first semi-direct talks in years, despite the previous insistence of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in barring such talks. What changed? First, the Iranian security situation has degraded rapidly over the last few months, thanks to their stupidity in attacking Israel directly as well as indirectly through their proxies. That has left the mullahs more exposed than ever before in their 46-year run as theocratic tyrants in Iran. That's not the only reason, the New York Times reports today. The Iranians may have finally realized that Donald Trump returned to office with the...

Whoever steered President Trump into removing of the security teams protecting former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and others facing Iranian death threats was way off-base — and the prez should reverse that dangerous call at once. Pompeo tops Tehran’s hit list for his part in taking out Iranian Gen. Qassem Suleimani in January 2020, a massive strategic win for Trump in his first term. The threats are neither hypothetical nor vague: In 2022, Supreme Leader (and Grand Ayatollah) Ali Khamenei’s website published the video “Revenge is definite” that showed animated versions of Pompeo and Trump being scoped out by...

As a radical Islamic army marches across Iraq, America is making a deal with the devil. Qassem Suleymani, the head of Iran’s secretive Quds Force, is allied with us in Baghdad — but he’s plotted to kill Americans elsewhere. As Kenneth R. Timmerman reveals in his new book, “Dark Forces,” Suleymani was even the shadowy figure behind the killing of Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Benghazi, Libya. He’s the Wizard of Oz of Iranian terror, the most dreaded and most effective terrorist alive. He is Qassem Suleymani, the head of the Quds Force, an organization that acts as a combination CIA...

Nature might abhor a vacuum, but empires love them. The busy empire-builders in Tehran have spent the last two decades extending their reach into power vacuums in Iraq and Syria as part of their attempt to recreate at least part of the old Persian Empire that once covered almost the entire Middle East. Funding the Houthi rebels in Yemen keeps the Saudis conveniently distracted, too, as well as giving Tehran a way to attack the shipping that Western economies rely upon. Hamas and Hezbollah in Gaza and Lebanon respectively are Iran's imperial outposts even further west — and the Arab...

So says Al-Hurra, which is interesting of itself, but we'll get to that in a moment. According to Open Source Intelligence Monitor, Arab countries have sent back-channel approval for an Israeli strike on Iran in response to the ballistic-missile attack earlier this month. They understandably want the attack to remain focused and disciplined to prevent a wider war, and they want a heads-up before the attack to prepare a common defense. In fact, OSINT notes that this appears to be a case of getting the Nasrallah-hit band back together again: Al-Hurra is reporting that several Arab Counties have recently sent...

The bravest man in the land of cedars today - the Lebanese who tried to flip the picture of Qassem Suleimani from the Beirut book fair and was beaten. This is how it sounded after the incident: (Clip translated) We said "Beirut is free" At the end I reached the door outside, and he slapped my head on the floor, put his foot on my head, kicked me and said to me, "We ran over you."

The past year was very good security-wise. The low number of attacks and victims gave Israelis a relatively high feeling of security, and the intensive focus on coronavirus (and elections) pushed aside other issues that in normal times would have made headlines. But the security challenges are here to stay. The new government, when it is formed, will not be able to avoid them, and top of the list is Iran. Behind the scenes, preparations are already underway for these marathon discussions, which take place mainly within the IDF, and specifically in the new unit formed last year to deal...

I first met Qassem four years ago, at the height of the European refugee crisis. The BBC had sent me to capture the stories of Mideast migrants, thousands of whom would daily wash ashore on the Greek isles. He was around 15, malnourished and clearly traumatized. As we sat together in a cabin at a ­migrant camp on the island of Lesbos, his hunched body rocked backward and forward. His marginal life amounted to a speck of dust amid the geopolitical earthquakes that were remaking the region at the time. Yet the story he told opened a window onto the...

By any conventional evaluation the United States clearly came out on top in the recent imbroglio with Iran. Put simply, had a Democratic president been in power, the print media, airwaves and internet would have been awash with paeans to the chief executive and his advisors. The series of incidents would be depicted as admirable, an example of balancing restraint and force to achieve national ends. The only reason this is not the accepted narrative in the media, and especially among Democrats is that the impresario of this victory was Donald Trump. The current “crisis” with Iran began with the...

So long as the world is entertaining worst-case scenarios, the media does Americans no favors in omitting that Iran-Hezbollah has for years prepared to strike in their own hometowns. Weirdly absent from much of the professional speculation about where and how Iran will exact its promised “severe revenge” for the U.S. drone strike killing of Quds Force Gen. Qassem Suleimani is mention of the dead man’s highly suggestive hint. During a time of intense saber rattling between Iran and President Donald Trump in July 2018, Suleimani gave a speech during which he called out the American president: “Mr. Gambler, Trump!...

Senate Democratic leadership is urging President Trump to declassify the official war powers notification he submitted to Congress regarding the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani via a drone strike. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Bob Menendez wrote a letter Sunday to Mr. Trump asking him to release the notification that was transmitted to Congress this weekend. The letter to the president was made public on Monday. “It is critical that national security matters of such import be shared with the American people in a timely manner,” Mr. Schumer and Mr. Menendez wrote. “An entirely classified notification is simply not...

On Friday morning the United States killed General Qassim Soleimani, a top commander of Iran’s al-Quds Force, in an airstrike at Baghdad’s International Airport. The strike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iran-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces. Seven people were reportedly killed in the airstrike. The Iraqi Parliament will hold an emergency session on Sunday to discuss the US airstrike in Baghdad that killed Iranian terror leader Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. Iran has promised revenge for the death of their terror leader.

On January 3, 2020, near Baghdad's airport, a U.S. air raid targeted Qasem Soleimani, commander of Quds Force, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (“IRGC’s”) terrorist arm. He was killed instantly. To understand how important this is, one needs to understand who Qasem Soleimani (1957-2020) was. Soleimani, a one-time construction worker and weightlifter, joined the IRGC after the 1979 revolution and soon headed one of the IRGC’s main cadres. Khomeini assigned Soleimani to suppress a Kurdish movement in Mahabad, Western Azerbaijan. Soleimani's brutality earned him command over a Quds Guard Corps unit in Kerman. The Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) gave Soleimani opportunities...

That President Trump had to make this call, how, and the mortal danger to American assets it presents, illustrate exactly why U.S. forces should not spend a day longer in Iraq. President Donald Trump’s order to kill Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad was the right call. At the same time, that he had to make this call, how he had to make it, and the mortal danger to American assets it presents, illustrate exactly why U.S. forces should not spend a day longer in Iraq than necessary to end our long-dwindling interests.Iran needed to learn a hard, swift lesson....

Iran Is Weak Suleimani's killing was long overdue. The last time Iran was chastened on the world stage was when the U.S. sank half of the Iranian navy in 1988. The first thing to say about the U.S. airstrike on Thursday night that killed Qassem Suleimani, the longtime leader of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Quds Force, is that President Trump made the right decision.Taking out Suleimani, who was killed as he traveled in a convoy near the Baghdad airport, was long overdue. In a statement, the Pentagon said Suleimani “was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service...

Rose McGowan and John Cusack took to Twitter late Thursday and early Friday with harsh reactions to President Trump's order of the airstrike that killed Iran's top general, Qassem Soleimani. Cusack, 53, spared no time blasting Trump on Thursday night, letting his 1.6 million followers know that he deemed the president clueless for putting United States citizens in danger. John Cusack ✔ @johncusack "Trump in full fascist 101 mode-,steal and lie - untill there’s nothing left and start a war - He’s so idiotic he doesn’t know he just attacked Iran And that’s not like anywhere else" McGowan, 46, known...

Obama likes Suleimani, and admires his work. As the president reportedly told a group of Arab officials in May, the Arabs “need to learn from Iran’s example.”

A Kuwaiti paper reveals another monstrous Obama betrayal. We thought the Obama administration could stoop no lower when it was revealed that the administration transferred $1.7 billion in untraceable cash to the Islamic Republic as ransom for the release of four Americans hostages they were holding. We were wrong. In its twilight weeks, the administration gave its consent to allow the Iranians to receive 116 metric tons of natural uranium from Russia as compensation for its export of tons of reactor coolant. According to experts familiar with the transaction, the uranium could be enriched to weapons-grade sufficient for the production...

New information regarding the September 11, 2012 attacks on the U.S. diplomatic outpost and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya and on the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt has been brought forward by former U.S. military personnel who were on duty that fateful night. These whistleblowers reveal that the attackers in Benghazi were led by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, under the command of Iranian General Qassem Suleimani. “Qassem Suleimani, a fanatical Islamic revolutionary, has rapidly become one of the world’s top terrorist suspects, as well as a powerful and sinister force within Iran” according to The Telegraph. U.S....