Free Republic

When Bashar al-Assad’s regime collapsed in December 2024, Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa declared that he would embrace a “zero problems” foreign policy, in the hopes that would help break the country’s isolation and solve some of its economic problems. The prospect of a stable Syria enticed at least $28 billion in investment deals from Middle Eastern countries in 2025, and even more has been secured so far in 2026. The continuation of that trend amid the current war with Iran has amplified Syria’s central geopolitical and economic pitch—that it can be a potentially transformational corridor for energy flows, commercial...

Syria’s transitional government said on Tuesday it has recovered “remnants” of the secret chemical weapons program created by deposed dictator Bashar Assad and have arrested 18 suspects who were allegedly involved in the program. Assad was overthrown in December 2024 and sought refuge in Russia, one of the nations that propped up his rule during the long and brutal Syrian civil war. He was replaced by a “transitional government” run by an alliance of insurgents and jihadis and presided over by a former member of al-Qaeda named Ahmed al-Sharaa. The new Syrian government turned against Assad’s old patrons of Russia...

Adam Hamawy’s past relationship with terrorist mastermind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman has loomed over his rapid rise in the race to succeed retiring Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ). Their relationship spanned a 1991 road trip the two took together to Detroit, Hamawy’s service as the sheikh’s translator for a press conference in which Abdel-Rahman denied any role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and Hamawy’s testimony on the sheikh’s behalf at his 1995 trial, where the Islamist leader was convicted of plotting to carry out a campaign of terrorist attacks in New York City. But just one year before Hamawy...

Israel has killed two top Hamas military chiefs in 11 days, demonstrating near-total surveillance, air supremacy, and intelligence capabilities across Gaza and the Middle East.What is so shocking about Israel's achievement of assassinating two Hamas military chiefs, Izz-al-Din al-Hadad, and his successor, Mohammed Ouda, within 11 days of each other, is that no one is even shocked anymore. Depending on the country or area, from drones to fighter jets, to the navy, to satellites, to Mossad, Shin Bet, and IDF Unit 504 agents, Israel has its enemies' leaders covered and in its crosshairs practically on demand, including: Iran, the Yemen...

Israel is condemned for surviving a massacre while regimes guilty of actual ethnic cleansing and mass slaughter escape outrage and scrutiny. Since October 7, we have been lectured nonstop about the supposedly singular sins of Israel. The campuses, the left-wing media, and the new Democratic Socialist officials, both federal and state, following the cue of student activists and professors from the Middle East, have painted Israel and their Jewish supporters as Nazis, fascists, and among the worst murderers in today’s bloody world. This is nonsensical. The medieval-style massacre of 1,200 Jews in their homes on October 7, during a time...

Newly released FBI documents say a 15-year-old boy who stole a plane and crashed it into a skyscraper might have originally targeted MacDill Air Force Base in his suicide mission. An FBI review of Charles Bishop's Internet activity showed the teen sought maps of the base and information about it. He also sent an e-mail to a classmate asking where Central Command was located on the base. Bishop died on Jan. 5, 2002, when he flew a Cessna stolen from a flight school into the Bank of America building in downtown Tampa. He left a note expressing sympathy for Osama...

May 21 (Reuters) - Syria will attend the G7 summit in France next month as ‌a guest nation and be represented by President ‌Ahmed al-Sharaa, three sources familiar with the matter said, marking Syria's ​first participation in a summit of the group since the forum was founded in 1975. An invitation to Sharaa to attend the June 15-17 summit in Évian-les-Bains, southeastern France, ‌was hand-delivered to Syrian ⁠Finance Minister Yisr Barnieh, who attended the group's financial talks earlier this week in ⁠Paris, one of the sources said. The source, a Syrian official, said Syria's participation in the talks would likely...

A Russian cargo vessel suspected of carrying components for two nuclear submarine reactors, possibly destined for North Korea, sank in the Mediterranean Sea under mysterious circumstances in December 2024, according to a CNN investigation published today. The Ursa Major (also known as Sparta 3), a heavy-lift ship linked to Russia’s “shadow fleet” and previously used in military operations in Syria, went down approximately 60 miles (about 100 km) off the coast of Spain near Cartagena on December 23, 2024. The sinking followed a series of explosions that killed two crew members and left 14 others rescued by Spanish authorities. Spanish...

President Donald Trump has been compared to many historical figures, by opponents (who claim he’s another Adolf Hitler) and by boosters (who cite Andrew Jackson or Teddy Roosevelt). With his blockade of Iran, though, maybe we should start comparing him to Gen. Winfield Scott. In the mid-19th century, Scott was America’s preeminent military mind, the architect of victory in the Mexican War and the “Grand Old Man of the Army.” As the Civil War loomed, he developed a plan to defeat the Confederacy with the smallest number of casualties possible. He called it the Anaconda Plan — and like its...

0:00: There's a fascinating news item that um that was released in Israel just yesterday and it came out on Khan News 0:088 seconds: in Hebrew. Khan News is one of the major mainstream news outlets in Israel. And I want to read this to you. It I only saw 0:1717 seconds: it in Hebrew, so I translated it into English. And I want to read it to you in full and talk about the implications of this and what I think of this news story 0:2525 seconds: because I think it has huge implications if it's true for not...

The FBI has opened an investigation into possible leaks of classified information by Democrats or their staffs on the Senate Intelligence Committee, spurred in part by a criminal referral from the National Security Agency concerning the release of one of its overseas intercepts, sources told Just the News. The NSA made the referral last summer concerning reports, including one in The New York Times, earlier that year during Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s confirmation process that quoted information from an intercept of two Hezbollah terrorist figures who claimed Gabbard, during a 2017 trip to Syria, had met with the...

There are moments in American foreign policy when the warning signs are flashing so brightly that failing to act becomes its own form of negligence. This is one of those moments. Senator Ted Cruz and his fellow sponsors of S. 4063 are not engaging in political theater. They are responding to a gathering national security threat that too many in Washington have either underestimated or deliberately ignored for years: the growing cooperation between the Polisario Front and Iranian-backed terrorist networks operating across North Africa and beyond. The Senate should move quickly to advance this legislation. Not because it is politically...

As Hezbollah’s grip weakens and war fatigue deepens, a growing number of Lebanese are beginning to see peace with Israel not as betrayal but as necessity For Hanin Ghaddar, returning to Lebanon would mean more than just going home. It would signal that something once unthinkable may finally be within reach: a country loosening itself from Iran’s grip and edging, however cautiously, toward peace with Israel. A veteran Lebanese journalist from a Shi’ite family in a village in southern Lebanon, Ghaddar was targeted by Hezbollah and forced to leave her homeland in 2016. And despite growing up with her country...

In the Syrian conscience, April is not limited to World Heritage Day celebrated on April 18. Rather, the month unfolds as a full season of cultural rebirth, stretching from the ancient roots of Akitu to the solemnity of Easter and the feast of St. George, as well as the memory of the massacres of 1915 and Syria’s Independence Day. Within this time crowded with memory, the restoration of Syrian icons emerges as an act of safeguarding identity. It repairs the fractures of time and restores to sacred figures the radiance of a history that runs deep, declaring that protecting this...

Donald Trump has told Iran to 'get their act together' over America's demands to stop its nuclear programme and to 'get smart soon.' US President shared an AI-generated image of himself wielding a large gun while surrounded by explosions with the caption: 'No more Mr. Nice Guy!' It was accompanied with a warning to the mullah regime. Trump said: 'Iran can't get their act together. They don't know how to sign a nonnuclear deal. They better get smart soon!' The price of Brent Crude - the international benchmark for oil - has risen to $115 per barrel as talks to...

After two Syrians were accused of stabbing a 28-year-old father to death in the German city of Pulheim, police have confirmed the victim was German national Sebastian H., who leaves behind a 4-year-old daughter, but also has a partner who is four months pregnant with what would have been his second child. The incident occurred just before midnight in a parking lot at the city park in Pulheim, North Rhine-Westphalia. Five men engaged in a physical confrontation, but three individuals were reportedly armed with baseball bats and knives. This encounter proved fatal for Sebastian H., who suffered multiple stab wounds...

Since the start of Israel’s most recent war with Lebanon, the Lebanese state has blamed Hezbollah for plunging the country into war at Iran’s behest. It now seems inclined to pursue a definitive solution to the problem. In initiating direct talks with Israel, Lebanon is hoping not only to end conflict with Israel but also to eliminate the threat Hezbollah wields inside the country.

The US State Department said it is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information on Hashim Finyan Rahim al-Saraji, leader of the Iran-aligned militia Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada (KSS). In a notice issued through its Rewards for Justice program, the department said al-Saraji, also known as Abu Ala al-Wala’i, heads the group, which it accused of attacks on US personnel and facilities in Iraq and Syria, as well as violence against Iraqi civilians. The notice said individuals providing information could be eligible for relocation and financial compensation. Help stop the violence and attacks against U.S. diplomatic facilities and...

Iran’s decades-long bluff—built on terror proxies, nuclear brinkmanship, and Western appeasement—collapsed the moment it faced direct force and a changed geopolitical landscape. How does the supposedly most fearsome regime in the violent Middle East now find itself on the verge of an utter economic and military collapse? Iran’s half-century-long deadly terrorist reputation peaked with the October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel that it helped fund and coordinate. Iran’s terrorist ambitions of running the Middle East had accelerated after witnessing Joe Biden’s cognitive decline and his administration’s distancing itself from Israel. Biden’s humiliation by a series of Chinese slights and the...

Israel on Monday said it had uncovered an ‌Iranian network that had planned to attack a pipeline carrying crude oil from Azerbaijan to the Mediterranean as well as Israeli and Jewish targets in Azerbaijan. In a joint statement, the Mossad and ‌Shin Bet intelligence agencies said a plan by ​Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to attack the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline through Georgia to Turkey several weeks ⁠ago had been thwarted. The cell had also planned attacks ​on Jewish and Israeli targets in Azerbaijan including the Israeli ⁠embassy and a synagogue in Baku, as well as leaders of the Jewish community in...