Free Republic

United States Secretary of State John Kerry called his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on Thursday to express concern about a visit to Moscow by the commander of Iran’s covert forces, a senior State Department official said, according to AFP. General Qassem Soleimani, head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ foreign operations, reportedly visited Russia late last month despite being subject to UN-backed international sanctions. […] Soleimani is one of several Iranian officials targeted by a 2007 United Nations travel ban because of their alleged links to Iran’s nuclear or ballistic missile programs, but the sanctions against him are due to...

Kerry also stated that the US walking away from the deal would remove any legitimacy for a potential military strike against Iran should it pursue nuclear weapons. If the United States walks away from the nuclear deal struck with Iran last month in Vienna and demands that its allies comply with US sanctions, the dollar may soon cease to be the world's reserve currency, the top US diplomat said on Monday. "If we turn around and nix the deal and then tell them, you're going to have to obey our rules and sanctions anyway, that is a recipe, very quickly...

The sister of a leading Iranian nuclear physicist widely believed to have been assassinated by Israel as part of an effort to derail the Islamic Republic’s drive to create nuclear weapons says her brother was murdered by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (IRI) because he wouldn’t cooperate with the effort to divert nuclear activities from peaceful purposes. When Iranian scientist Dr. Ardeshir Hosseinpour was killed in February 2007, the cause of death was reported to be “gassing” and most presumed the act was carried out by Israel. That belief stood largely because of Iranian accusations to that effect, and because of Israeli...

Hamas is able to fire missiles into Israel because Tehran provided weapons technology to the militant group to defend itself against Israeli attacks, a senior Iranian official said Monday. Officials from Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards have said in the past that Fajr-5 missiles are part of Hamas’ Gaza Strip arsenal, whose technology has been supplied by Iran and produced locally without needing direct shipment. “Palestinian resistance missiles are the blessings of Iran’s transfer of technology,” the Secretary of the Expediency Discernment Council, Mohsen Rezaei, was quoted as saying by Al-Alam, the Arabic channel of Iran’s state TV. “We need to...

Prosecutors Sunday accused deposed president Mohammed Morsi of leaking state secrets to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as part of a plot to destabilize Egypt, at the second hearing of his trial for espionage. The trial, one of three that are under way against Morsi, is part of a relentless government crackdown targeting him and his Muslim Brotherhood movement since his ouster by the army in July. …

Even before the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the 5+1 world powers ended in Geneva early Sunday with no deal, an Iranian general lashed out at America Saturday and warned both the U.S. and Israel that they will be attacked. According to Fars News Agency, the regime’s outlet run by the Revolutionary Guards, Gen. Massoud Jazayeri, deputy chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, said “America’s interests and all of Israel are within the range of the Islamic Republic and there is not the slightest doubt among Iran’s armed forces to confront the American government and the Zionists (Israel).” Jazayeri...

A former CIA spy who had once been embedded inside the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and maintains contacts within the regime today says that a highly placed source inside the Iranian intelligence apparatus has said that the Islamic Republic of Iran is responsible for the bombings at the Boston Marathon that took the lives of three people and injured 176 more (many of the injured suffering traumatic amputation.)

The London-based Arabic newspaper Asharq al-Awsat reported Friday that Hush Husam Nawis, also known as Hassan Shateri, a senior Revolutionary Guard official who was killed in Syria on Thursday, was in fact named Hassan Shateri, while Nawis served as his alias. Shateri was a general in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and headed the Iranian operation to rehabilitate the war-scarred country. He reportedly also served as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's personal emissary to Lebanon. The paper quoted a source involved in the issue, who claimed that Shateri, 58, was one of the leading commanders of the elite Quds Force within the...

BEIRUT -- A high-ranking member of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps was assassinated this week while traveling from Syria to neighboring Lebanon, Iranian media reported Thursday, in the strongest indication to date that senior Iranian military commanders have been dispatched to Syria. Gen. Hassan Shateri was killed Tuesday by "unknown gunmen," described as "suspected Israeli agents," as he was on the road between the Syrian capital of Damascus and Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, various Iranian news agencies reported.

Former Revolutionary Guard tells 'Post' that such a blow to Fordow nuclear facility would harm Iran drastically. ranian dissident-turned CIA operative Reza Kahlili told The Jerusalem Post on Monday that an alleged blast at the Fordow nuclear installation in Iran is "the largest case of sabotage in decades." Although it has not yet been verified, a report by Kahlili, according to which a massive blast rocked Iran's key Fordow nuclear installation last week, continued to spread on Monday.

Iran has infiltrated a team of Quds Force terrorist leaders into the United States to attack from within in 2013, according to a source. The source within the office of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Islamic regime, said the team is to create instability in America through terrorism should the U.S. fail to accept the regime’s illicit nuclear program, increase sanctions, confront Iran militarily or intervene in the Syrian civil war. Members of the team, no more than 10 Quds Force officers, each lead cells totaling about 50 terrorists already in the U.S. The source is risking...

'There are numerous Revolutionary Guard cells' inside borders Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is alive and well in the U.S. and the country’s law enforcement officials ignore them at their peril, according to former U. S. Air Force officer Steven O’Hern. O’Hern says that the Revolutionary Guard, long an influential factor in the radical Islamic regime in Iran, does most of its surveillance and intelligence gathering through its proxy force, Hezbollah, considered by many to be a terror group. “In the United States, the Revolutionary Guard uses more than one approach. Hezbollah operatives and sympathizers are present in large numbers in many...

This didn't get much play in the media because this is one "outreach" item to Iran Obama would just as soon not be widely circulated; his release of 5 Revolutionary Guard commanders belonging to the elite Quds Force who planned dozens of attacks on Americans in Iraq and who George Bush refused to release. Andrew McCarthy in NRO has the sickening details: There are a few things you need to know about President Obama's shameful release on Thursday of the "Irbil Five" - Quds Force commanders from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) who were coordinating terrorist attacks in Iraq...

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards discovered an electronic monitoring device near the Fordow nuclear site in northern Iran last month, The Sunday Times reported Sunday, citing western intelligence sources. Soldiers were checking on communications terminals at Fordow when they discovered a rock, according to the report. When the soldiers attempted to move the rock, it exploded, presumably self-destructing. The device was reportedly capable of intercepting data from computers in Fordow. The Iranians did not report the discovery, according to the Times. Iran uses the Fordow facility to enrich uranium to a fissile concentration of 20 percent, the part of its work...

Veteran Iranian politician Mohsen Rezaie, who lost to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a disputed 2009 presidential poll that sparked protests, became the first person to declare his candidacy for next year, Iran's ILNA news agency reported on Sunday. Rezaie initially filed formal complaints over the official results of the 2009 vote, but later withdrew them. At the time, he criticized the authorities for their handling of the election and the demonstrations that followed it, saying that the Islamic Republic could face collapse unless it embraced change. "My participation in the upcoming presidential election of the Republic is certain. I'm in it...

It's All About You, Sir! Nooredin Abedian/Intellectual Conservative May 17, 2004 Aytatollah Shahroudi, Iran's Chief Justice, recently ordered a ban on the use of torture, but it remains to be seen whether it will be put into practice. Two weeks ago, Ayatollah Shahroudi, Iran's Chief Justice, ordered a ban on the use of torture which the Islamic Republic's security organizations routinely use to extract confessions. "Any torture to extract confession is banned and the confessions extracted through torture are not legitimate and legal," the Chief Justice said in a 15-point directive to the judiciary. Human rights lawyers and political activists...

A series of recent law enforcement actions indicates the depth of Iranian-tied criminal activity in Mexico may be greater than previously known. In October, a Texas-car salesman was arrested in connection with an Iranian plot to kill Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington. Prosecutors say officials in Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps believed they were dealing with a "large and sophisticated" Mexican drug cartel to carry out the hit. A $100,000 down payment on the hit shows the Iranians were comfortable dealing with the cartel representative, who in fact was a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) informant. Earlier this month, prosecutors in Virginia...

Survivors of a 1996 terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 U.S. servicemen are offendedthat an Iraqi official with ties to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was welcomed to the White House this week. “Outrage at the visit to the White House really doesn’t describe what I feel,” said William M. Schooley, who survived the June 25, 1996, bombing of the Khobar Towers. “I watched outstanding airmen die that night and witnessed horrific carnage. The survivors of Khobar Towers have been swept under the rug and now have received the greatest insult,” he added. The Washington Times first reported...

A former commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which the FBI says played a role in a 1996 terrorist attack that killed 19 U.S. servicemen, accompanied Iraq’s prime minister to the White House on Monday, attending an event at which President Obama trumpeted the end of the Iraq War. Hadi Farhan al-Amiri, transportation minister in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government, was part of the delegation that visited the White House to discuss Iraq’s future and Iran’s influence there, among other topics. -excerpt - Louis J. Freeh, who served as FBI director in the Clinton administration and the early months...

MANAMA, Bahrain (AP) — An alleged Iranian-linked terror cell had contact with the Tehran's powerful Revolutionary Guard and planned attacks against high profile sites, including Saudi Embassy and a Gulf causeway linking Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, authorities in Bahrain claimed Sunday