Free Republic

Iranian regime loyalists displayed a taped-together cardboard cutout of their new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who was reportedly injured in recent strikes and has not been seen since his elevation. The makeshift stand-in appeared at a pro-regime rally in Tehran, where organizers brought the life-size cutout of Khamenei onto the stage, according to Israeli journalist Amit Segal. Regime loyalists hailed and swore allegiance to the cutout, which appeared crudely assembled and held together by strips of tape, Segal reported. Khamenei has not appeared in public or issued a statement since being selected as Iran’s new supreme leader on Sunday following...

Iran’s Assembly of Experts has selected Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of Ali Khamenei who was eliminated in US-Israeli strikes, as the next Supreme Leader of Iran, according to a report by Iran International on Tuesday evening. According to the report, Mojtaba’s selection was made under heavy pressure from the Revolutionary Guards. Mojtaba, 56, lost his wife in the strike in which his father was eliminated. Earlier, the Assembly of Experts’ building in the city of Qom was bombed while votes were being counted to determine Khamenei’s successor. Due to fears of targeted eliminations, the 88 members of the Assembly of...

On Saturday, after weeks of failed negotiations, the US and Israel unleashed ‘Operation Epic Fury’ on the wicked Iranian regime. The successful military strike took out the top officials of the Iranian regime, including: Ali Khamenei (Supreme Leader). Ali Shamkhani (Defense Council Secretary / senior advisor). Mohammad Pakpour (IRGC commander). Aziz Nasirzadeh (Defense Minister). Abdolrahim Mousavi (Chief of General Staff / Armed Forces Chief of Staff). There are reports that the coordinated hit took out 40 top level officials from the radical Islamic regime. Three Americans were killed in retalitory strikes by Iran, five more are in serious condition. Iran...

Turkish autocrat Recep Tayyip Erdogan is coming to Washington, DC, on May 16 loaded for bear.  He has an ambitious agenda and apparently feels he can achieve it all because he holds “trump” cards against the President of the United States. Erdogan and his proxies have publicly said they want to convince the United States to jettison its budding alliance with the Syrian Democratic Union (PYD) and its armed wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Kurdish group that has become the tip of the spear in the fight against ISIS in Syria. On this point, they will encounter resistance...

With the nation watching, the host on Iranian state television asked the question that so many people in Iran — from the political elite to people on the street — were wondering. “People are very worried about the supreme leader,” the host said to an official from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s office on Tuesday. “Can you tell us how he is?” He noted that viewers had sent a flood of messages asking the same thing. But the official, Mehdi Fazaeli, the head of Mr. Khamenei’s archives office, did not give a straight answer. Instead, Mr. Fazaeli said that he, too, had...

Reza Pahlavi said he prepared a 100-day transition plan for establishing democratic rule, "by the Iranian people and for the Iranian people." Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the last Shah of Iran, urged the country’s security forces and state employees to rise up against the Islamic regime, whose “fall has begun” in an “address to the Iranian nation” on Tuesday. “My fellow countrymen, the Islamic Republic has reached its end and is in the process of collapsing,” Pahlavi said in remarks in Farsi that were posted on his social-media channels. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, “like a frightened rat, has...

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed on Monday that protests inside the country were the work of Israel and the United States. At least 92 people have been killed in protests over the death of 22-year old Mahsa Amini after her arrest by the morality police. Amini was pronounced dead on September 16 after she was detained for allegedly breaching rules requiring women to wear hijabs and modest clothes. Her death sparked Iran's biggest wave of popular unrest in almost three years. Khamenei spoke about the protests this week for the first time since they began, telling an audience...

The Lockerbie bombing was ordered by Iran and carried out by a Syrian-based terrorist group, a former Iranian intelligence officer has admitted. Abolghassem Mesbahi, a defector to Germany, said Pan Am flight 103 was downed in 1988 in retaliation for a US Navy strike on an Iranian commercial jet six months earlier, in which 290 people died. He claims the Ayatollah Khomeini, who was Iran’s Supreme Leader, ordered the bombing “to copy exactly what happened to the Iranian Airbus”. …

For six months, Suki Kim worked as an English teacher at an elite school for North Korea's future leaders -- while writing a book on one of the world's most repressive regimes. As she helped her students grapple with concepts like "truth" and "critical thinking," she came to wonder: Was teaching these students to seek the truth putting them in peril? This talk was part of a session at TED2015 .

A senior cleric said that supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei will not accept any threat or intimidation from enemy. Tehran Friday Prayers’ substitute Leader Ayatollah Mohammad Emami Kashani made the remarks in his sermons to a large number of worshipers in Tehran University campus. 

Partial election results in Iran on Saturday point to major gains by reformists and moderates who favor expanding freedoms and engaging with the West, and who defended the recently implemented nuclear deal with world powers against opposition from hard-liners. Friday's election was the first since last summer's agreement was finalized, lifting international economic sanctions in exchange for Iran curbing its nuclear program. U.S. officials had hoped the deal would strengthen President Hassan Rouhani and other moderates, paving the way for greater cooperation on other regional issues. Reports in the semi-official Fars and Mehr news agencies showed hard-liners losing ground in...

On February 26, the ayatollahs have scheduled two "elections" in Iran: one for the parliament and one for the Assembly of Experts, a body that is supposed to monitor the supreme leader and choose a replacement when the time comes. Some in the West tout this as the potential start of a new era of moderation. After all it is the first election since the conclusion of nuclear negotiations between Iran and six world powers. But the nuclear deal cannot be the only criteria by which the West determines the prospects for moderation in Iran. Equally or more important is...

Nonetheless, the president told 'The New Yorker' that the Iranian government's behavior was not as extreme as its rhetoric suggests. In his latest attempt to sell the public on the merits of the Iran nuclear agreement, US President Barack Obama told an American news magazine earlier this week that he was not naive about the threats against Israel made by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Islamic Republic's supreme leader. “His ideology is steeped with anti-Semitism, and if he could, without catastrophic costs, inflict great harm on Israel, I’m confident that he would,” Obama told journalist Robin Wright of The New Yorker....

Obama’s peace partner tweeted out a picture today of Barack Obama committing suicide.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s top foreign affairs adviser revealed on Tuesday that despite the nuclear deal sealed last Tuesday, international inspectors will not be allowed to visit Iran’s covert military sites that are said to house its secret nuclear weapons program. The aide, Ali Akbar Velayati, was quoted by the semi-official Fars News Agency saying that world powers “have made some comments about defensive and missile issues, but Iran will not allow them to visit our military centers and interfere in decisions about the type of Iran’s defensive weapons.” His statement raises concerns even higher over the complete...

Sure - exactly with America needs. A theocratic fanatic who wants to wipe Israel off the map and leads the chants of "Death to America" every Friday after prayers. What could have possessed our secretary of state to tell his Iranian counterpart that he wishes the US had a leader like Iran's Supreme Leader? Washington Free Beacon: Secretary of State John Kerry told his Iranian counterpart that he wished the United States had a leader more like Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, according to comments made by a senior Iranian cleric and repeated in the country’s state-run media. Ayatollah Alam...

PRESIDENT OBAMA: With respect to the Supreme Leader, yes, it's a pretty important title. It seems a little more clear cut than president. On the other hand, there may be ways of structuring a final deal that satisfies their pride, their optics, their politics, but meet our core practical objectives. And that's what we've got to give the negotiators room to determine.

President Obama has long known that the real decision maker in Iran is Ayatollah Khamenei, the so-called supreme leader. While other Iranian officials have negotiated with Western powers over the mullahs’ nuclear program, Khamenei’s opinion is the only one that really counts. It is for this reason that Obama began writing directly to Khamenei early in his presidency. Khamenei Earlier today, Khamenei broke his silence on the supposed “framework” the Obama administration has been trumpeting as the basis for a nuclear accord. Khamenei’s speech pulled the rug out from underneath the administration. Khamenei accused the Obama administration of “lying” about...

The Obama administration toed a hard line Monday against Benjamin Netanyahu for his comments about Israeli Arabs and Palestinian statehood leading up to Israel’s election last week, but downplayed concerns over “death to America” remarks Iran’s supreme leader made over the weekend. The White House also seemed to warmly welcome input from 367 House members reiterating Congress‘ role in reaching a final nuclear agreement with Tehran, despite its vigorous attacks on an earlier letter to the Iranian leadership from 47 GOP senators explaining that any deal Iran may strike with the U.S. needs to be submitted to Congress to be...

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has cancer. After him are men even less likely to comply with a nuclear deal. ********************** Negotiators from Iran and the P5+1 powers led by the U.S. are racing against a March 31 deadline to conclude a nuclear deal in Lausanne, Switzerland. Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters on Saturday that negotiators had made “genuine progress” but that “important gaps remain.” Yet what happens if the Iranian leadership that the U.S. and others are dealing with now is not in place to implement any agreement? Two recent developments suggest that the Islamic Republic may be...