Free Republic

Four US Senators, including Ted Cruz, penned a letter on February 6 to Jack Dorsey asking him to ban Iranian leadership from using Twitter as part of the US sanctions against Iran. Republican senators led by Ted Cruz in a letter Thursday suggested Twitter may be violating U.S. sanctions by letting Iranian leaders maintain accounts, which they asked company CEO Jack Dorsey to ban. The big picture: Twitter has become a major political target for Cruz and other Republicans, who claim the company and other Silicon Valley giants are biased against conservatives and the Trump administration. "While the First Amendment...

When Syria’s civil war erupted, Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) recruited, trained, and deployed thousands of Shi’ite fighters to prop up the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Among them was the Fatemiyoun Brigade, comprised mainly of Afghans from the country's Shi'ite Hazara minority. From 2011, the IRGC recruited thousands of Afghan migrants and refugees within its own borders and covertly drafted hundreds of Shi'a inside Afghanistan. The majority of Muslims in Afghanistan are Sunni, but around 15 percent of its population -- mainly Hazara -- are Shi’a with religious links to the Shi'ite majority in Iran. With the...

President Trump has just laid out a visionary plan for achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Rather than trying to reconcile the fundamentally conflicting priorities of the two sides, he came up with a practical solution that reflects realities on the ground in the fairest way possible. Every American president since Lyndon Johnson has tried — and failed — to resolve the conflict, usually by sitting down with Israeli and Palestinian leaders to negotiate toothless agreements that have done nothing to ease tensions or prevent bloodshed. These well-intentioned efforts all made the same fatal mistake: they treated the Israeli...

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced on Saturday that he has decided to severe all relations with Israel and the US in protest against President Donald Trump’s recently unveiled plan for Mideast peace. “We have informed the Israelis and Americans of this decision through two letters,” Abbas said in a speech at an emergency meeting of Arab League foreign ministers in Cairo.

Go back over 40 years, to the start of Iran’s long conflict with the United States. On April 1, 1979, the theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran was proclaimed. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who had returned to Iran from exile to assume command of the revolt, became Supreme Leader in December of that year. His rise was accelerated by the seizure on Nov. 4 of 52 American diplomats and citizens, and citizens of other countries, at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. The hostage crisis became the means by which the Ayatollah crushed political opponents in Iran. Dealing with the hostage taking became...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was one of a number of top Democrats to rip into President Trump’s decision to expand the travel ban to include six more countries on Friday -- with Pelosi describing it as “discrimination disguised as policy.” “The Trump administration’s expansion of its outrageous, un-American travel ban threatens our security, our values and the rule of law," she said in a statement. "The sweeping rule, barring more than 350 million individuals from predominantly African nations from traveling to the United States, is discrimination disguised as policy." [cut] The initial seven countries have restrictions on both immigrant and...

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s president stepped in to appoint a new prime minister after the Parliament failed to do so for two months, leaving the country largely rudderless at a time of multiple political crises. The premier, Mohammed Tawfiq Allawi, is hardly a new face — he is a former member of Parliament and former minister of communications. But he is not tarnished by the corruption allegations that dog many other Iraqi political figures. In his first comments upon accepting the nomination, Mr. Allawi paid homage to the anti-government protesters who have been out on the streets since October and he...

Former Israeli diplomat Abba Eban once said the Palestinians “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” Within minutes of President Trump proposing his Middle East Peace Plan, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas had rejected the plan with “a thousand no’s” coupled with a string of epithets rarely seen in international diplomacy.This abject lack of vision and leadership by Palestinian President Abbas is tragic, for the children and grandchildren of Palestinians and Israelis alike.The state of Israel comprises a minuscule portion of land in the Middle East, yet it has become a global center of democracy, culture, commerce, and innovation....

The United States is working to get the Iraqi government's permission to put Patriot missile defense systems in the country to protect U.S. forces there from possible Iranian attacks, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Thursday. “One of the things we need to do is make sure we have permission from the host government, and that’s one of the matters we have to work on and work through,” Esper told reporters at a Pentagon press conference. “We need the permission of the Iraqis.” The U.S. military did not have Patriots deployed at al-Asad airbase in Iraq, which houses American troops, during...

The six countries being added to the list are Burma, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Tanzania and Sudan. Those are added to the current seven included in the ban: Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen.

The November 2019 uprising of the Iranian people in 191 cities that began under the pretext of protesting rising gas prices showcased the dislike of the Iranian people for a regime marked by repression, discrimination, looting, and corruption. The November uprising was a strategic blow to the regime and was instrumental in cornering it internationally. The killing of Qasem Soleimani, too, was a serious blow to the regime's credibility beyond its borders. The mullahs employed an array of propaganda tactics to portray Soleimani as a national hero and organized funeral ceremonies in different cities. By magnifying Soleimani's loss, the regime's...

For the second straight year, U.S. Navy veteran Michael White spent his birthday suffering in a horrible Iranian prison. The Iranian regime must release all American and foreign hostages!

Audio message from spokesman says focus is now on ‘fighting the Jews and reclaiming what they have stolen from the Muslims’; urges sabotage of Trump peace plan The Islamic State group vowed Monday to shift its focus from the remnants of its “caliphate” toward making Israel the main target of its attacks. It also called to sabotage a peace plan US President Donald Trump is due to unveil, according to a purported audio message from its spokesman. Abu Hamza al-Quraishi said IS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Quraishi encourages the group’s fighters to launch “a new phase” and vowed major operations...

Turkey's leaders have called Israel the "West's spoiled child," and the "bully" of the eastern Mediterranean. When a Tel Aviv soccer team showed up in Istanbul recently for a match, the welcome was less than warm. In September, Turkey kicked out the Israeli ambassador, suspended military and trade deals and threatened legal and naval action to challenge Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip. As roars of approval went up around the Arab world, few noticed another announcement quietly slipped in by Ankara: Turkey had signed off on a plan to host an American X-band radar system as part of a...

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Saturday that National Public Radio reporter Mary Louise Kelly lied to him and broke an off-the-record agreement. “NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly lied to me, twice,” Pompeo said in a statement. “First, last month, in setting up our interview and, then again yesterday, in agreeing to have our post-interview conversation off the record.” Pompeo and his staff said Kelly agreed that an interview with the secretary would be about Iran but that she asked questions about Ukraine and United States Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. Kelly revealed on NPR that Pompeo afterward berated her...

Economic sanctions against Iran are having an effect, experts who spoke with The Epoch Times agreed. Yet views diverged on the nature of the impact and on how big of a role sanctions have played in the Islamic regime’s reluctance to escalate after the assassination of a top general. Gen. Qassem Soleimani was killed in Baghdad on Jan. 3 by a missile fired from a U.S. drone. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the strike a preemptive move to keep Soleimani from executing an “imminent” attack on American assets. In retaliation, Iranian leaders ordered ballistic missile strikes that on Jan....

US Ambassador to the United Nation Kelly Craft slammed Iran and supported Israel at the United Nations Security Council debate on the Middle East last Tuesday, as reported by the Jewish News Syndicate. She urged council members to focus on Iran instead of Israel. “While the world criticizes Israel, Israel is making the world a better place. The council should not lose sight of this fact,” she said. “Our failure to address Iran’s central role in destabilizing the region sends a powerfully damaging message to those seeking lasting peace and prosperity in the region.” Craft urged the council to “focus...

A new poll shows Americans are more likely than not to support President Donald Trump’s decision to order a drone strike that killed an Iranian general, even amid widespread skepticism about his foreign policy overall. The poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research was taken about two weeks after the Jan. 3 strike that killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Iraq. It found that 41% of Americans approved of the action while 30% disapproved of it. The rest didn’t express an opinion either way. …

Iran was dealt a severe blow with the strike that killed Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani. Yet because of Iran’s core interests, the danger to U.S. servicemembers in Iraq is far from over. Instead of playing politics, Washington must realize that risking the lives of American forces in a gamble to reduce Iranian influence in Iraq isn’t worth it and may be self-defeating. Just look at the history of America and Iran.Many Americans view this history as starting in 1979 when, during the Iranian Revolution that overthrew the shah, Islamic radicals stormed the U.S. embassy in Iran and held...

U.S. troops last weekend reportedly found themselves in a standoff with Russian forces trying to gain access to key oil fields in northeastern Syria. The Saturday standoff — first reported by Turkish media outlets, citing unnamed local officials in the Turkey-Syria border region — seems to have ended without any shots being fired or any real risk of violence between the two sides. American military personnel reportedly stopped a Russian convoy near the town of Rmelan, and the Russian forces then apparently turned back and returned to their home base. Still, the near-clash serves as a reminder of the high...