Free Republic

A “major” cyber attack targeted at least two unspecified Iranian government agencies recently, announced Iran’s National Computer Emergency Response Team (Maher) on Wednesday, according to Iranian media. “The announcement was made after reports of a large cyber attack spread on social media. The team stressed that the relevant authorities are investigating the incident,” reported The Jerusalem Post. Maher denied that there was a widespread attack on any agencies so far, outside of the two that were mentioned. No party has claimed responsibility for the attack, and Iranian government officials have not said whether it was domestic or foreign.

With increasing pressures of Coronavirus Pandemic, which according to government estimates led to unemployment of 5 million Iranians, equivalent to 20% of the country’s labor force, the government resorted to selling government assets on the stock market to finance itself. In countries with stable economies, stock market can have a profound impact on their economy and consumers. Normally the stock market index is directly related to country’s economic growth. In other words, the country’s economy cannot have a negative growth and at the same time its stock market index flourish. Iran’s stock market has been severely affected by recent economic...

SANTIAGO, Chile, October 20, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Two Catholic churches were destroyed in Chile’s capital city Sunday in the wake of riots marking the one-year anniversary of anti-government protests that called for a new constitution. “Television images from Santiago on Sunday showed masked protesters filming with their smartphones and cheering as the spire of the burning La Asunción church crashed to the ground,” the Wall Street Journal reported. “Demonstrators also set fire to San Francisco Borja church, which dates from the mid-19th century.” The Church of St. Francis Borgia is regularly used for law enforcement ceremonies. The Church of the...

This Sunday, October 18, there were several “peaceful” protests and mobilizations in Santiago de Chile as a result of the commemoration of the first anniversary of the beginning of the social unrest in Chile. A group of hooded men violently attacked two churches in the vicinity of Plaza Italia: one of them was San Francisco de Borja, where police officers celebrate their institutional ceremonies, and the other was the church of La Asunción. one of the oldest in Santiago. The first of the sanctuaries, in addition to being attacked, was looted and some of the religious images were burned in...

Chile has been in chaos since October 2019. Roiled by mass protests and looting, the government of Chile has declared a state of emergency and imposed curfews in many cities across the country: About 20,000 soldiers are patrolling the streets, over 2,300 people have been injured and thousands have been arrested and at least 23 have been killed - the worst unrest Chile has faced since Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship three decades ago. To make matters worse, the Chilean authorities have begun advancing an increasingly authoritarian message implying that the conflict must be solved with repression. The government of President Pinera...

...The two attacks on opposite sides of Africa are among the scores of violent episodes to shake the continent in what experts are calling a breakout year for extremist groups affiliated with al-Qaeda or the Islamic State. .... The spike in terrorist attacks mirrors a steady, if less dramatic, increase in Islamist violence in parts of Syria and Iraq, driven by Islamic State fighters who slipped away after the caliphate’s defeat and have now regrouped.... The resurgence threatens to undermine one facet of President Trump’s reelection pitch to voters: his oft-repeated claim of victory over the Islamic State. ...The rise...

Dwight Eisenhower, the 34th U.S. president and a decorated war general, once said: "Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin." If Europe wants to preserve peace, it should find it paramount to deliver justice against an Iranian diplomat soon to be prosecuted on terrorism charges. Moreover, from a political perspective, European nations need to send a powerful message to Tehran's terrorists that the age of terror campaigns is over. Tehran's 2018 bomb plot was the stuff of detective novels, yet there was nothing fictional about it. It could have led to an astounding level of carnage.In June...

A poster at a shop in Madinah announces its boycott of all Turkish products. RIYADH/JEDDAH: The popular campaign boycotting Turkish products in Saudi Arabia has gained further momentum over the past few days, attracting the support of commentators and businesses. “Turkish political mess-ups and interference in countries of the Middle East is the real reason behind this popular boycott of Turkish products,” said Dr. Hamdan Al-Shehri, a political analyst and international relations scholar. “Turkish President Erdogan changed his previous policy of minimizing Turkish problems and instead exported it to the outside. Turkey has been threatening the region just as Iran...

US President Donald Trump announced Monday that Sudan would be removed from the US list of State Sponsors of Terrorism in exchange for paying compensation to families of American terror victims. "GREAT news! New government of Sudan, which is making great progress, agreed to pay $335 MILLION to U.S. terror victims and families. Once deposited, I will lift Sudan from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list. At long last, JUSTICE for the American people and BIG step for Sudan!" Trump wrote on Twitter. The Sudanese government has sought to be de-listed as a state sponsor of terror since former President...

Isn’t there something incongruous about a human rights organization providing a platform to a journalist who has whitewashed human rights abuses? Next week, an online event organized by the human rights group “3 Generations” will feature New York Times op-ed columnist Roger Cohen, who sparked an international furor in 2009 when he visited Iran and announced that the oppressed Jews there were not really so oppressed, after all. Cohen’s assertion that Iranian Jews were “living, working and worshiping in relative tranquility” was met with scorn across the political spectrum. Jeffrey Goldberg, in The Atlantic, called him “credulous.” The Anti-Defamation League...

YAOUNDE, CAMEROON - Cameroon says it has again closed more than 60 schools on its northern border with Nigeria to protect children and teaching staff from increasing Boko Haram attacks. Many people have fled the region and are now displaced. The Islamist group has stepped up its use of suicide bombers, even as the country’s military has drastically reduced the jihadists’ firepower. The central African country has deployed its military to assure the safety of the remaining civilian population in the affected regions. Ousmanou Garga, Cameroon’s basic education official on the northern border with Nigeria, says recent Boko Haram attacks...

A joint American-Israeli delegation landed in Bahrain Sunday, where officials will be signing a number of bilateral agreements following an announcement last month to normalize relations. U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's national security adviser, Meir Ben-Shabbat, led the delegation that flew out of Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport on Sunday morning. Ben-Shabbat said ahead of departure the visit will ‘translate plans to actions and concrete agreements’ with the signing of a range of deals involving finance, investment, trade, tourism, communications, technology and agriculture.

INSIGHT-Has Iran ended Israel's Begin Doctrine? By Dan Williams JERUSALEM Nov 7 (Reuters) - Menachem Begin did not pull his punches. In 1981, as work neared completion on an Iraqi nuclear reactor that Israel believed would produce plutonium for warheads, the Israeli prime minister dispatched eight F-16 bombers to destroy the plant. Begin later said that the raid was proof his country would "under no circumstances allow the enemy to develop weapons of mass-destruction against our people". The event defined a strategy that became known as the "Begin Doctrine" and is best summed up by the phrase "the best defence...

Fourteen soldiers killed in jihadist attack (Nigeria) ISIS fighters launched an assault on a military base in the northeast of the country on Saturday. Several soldiers are also missing. Jihadists linked to the Islamic State (IS) organization killed 14 Nigerian soldiers in an attack on a military base in the northeast of the country, military sources said on Saturday. Several soldiers are missing. Two sources, who requested anonymity, told AFP that fighters from the Islamic State in West Africa (Iswap) group attacked the Jakana military base on Friday with machine guns and grenade launchers, a offensive followed by intense fighting....

Iran’s security forces shot and killed two civilians, including a 17-year-old boy, in western and southern Iran. Ashkan Azizi who was driving a car along with Borhan Azizi was shot and killed by Iranian police in Kermanshah, western Iran on October 15. Borhan, also 17, was severely wounded. According to Hengaw Organization, Borhan is currently in a coma at the hospital. The two minors are residents of Dareh Deraz region, on the outskirts of Kermanshah. 17 year old Ashkan Azizi after being shot by security forces. The police claimed they opened fire on the car because it did not have...

Former President Barack Obama said in an interview with on the “Pod Save America” podcast on Wednesday that President Donald Trump didn’t “have the patience and the focus to really substantially change a lot of U.S. foreign policy.” Tommy Vietor asked, “You spent countless hours with Vice President Biden talking about national security. What did you learn about how he thinks about diplomacy and counterterrorism and the use of military force that others would not have seen?”

An array of Iran-backed Iraqi militia groups have agreed to suspend rocket attacks on U.S. forces on condition that Iraq's government presents a timetable for a withdrawal of American troops, one of the groups said on Sunday. "The factions have presented a conditional ceasefire," said Mohammed Mohi, spokesman for the Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah group. "It includes all factions of the (anti-U.S.) resistance, including those who have been targeting U.S. forces," he told Reuters.

According to new official figures, half of Iran’s population live in absolute poverty. The report published by the Statistical Center of Iran also said that Iranians were not able to buy basic groceries. Average Iranians eat 52% less red meat, while those with lower incomes eat 65% less red meat compared to last year, the report said. Iranians are also eating 34% less rice, the country’s staple food. Nine years ago, in 2011, only 18% of the population lived in absolute poverty. Last year, this figure increased to 35%. Currently, 1 USD is trading at 29,750 tomans, an all time...

...Northwestern University received more than $340 million from the country of Qatar from 2012 to 2019 as it operated a campus in the Middle Eastern country and continued a years-long collaboration with Al Jazeera, a media outlet owned by the Qatari government. That’s according to a 2019 Clarion Project report, which found that Al Jazeera and Northwestern University formed a relationship in 2008 when the Qatar Foundation, which the Clarion Project alleges of being linked to terrorism, funded a Northwestern campus in Qatar. Northwestern, one of the top journalism schools in the U.S., partnered with Al Jazeera in an agreement...

An organized campaign is under way against US targets. Who is responsible? The ongoing, steady tempo of rocket attacks against US and official targets in Iraq continued this week. On Monday, two Katyusha rockets fell on the Jadriya neighborhood of Baghdad, close to the fortified Green Zone. There were no casualties.Earlier, on September 27, five civilians (two women and three children) were killed when a Katyusha aimed at Baghdad airport fell short and fell on a private house. The five were members of the same family. On September 30, in an additional escalation, four rockets were launched at the Iraqi...