Free Republic

When anti-regime protests spread like wildfire throughout Iran in mid-October of 2022, the regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was quick to lay the blame on the usual foreign suspects. “I say explicitly that these riots and this insecurity were a design by the U.S. and the occupying, fake Zionist regime and those who are paid by them,” he told a class of cadets at a police college in Tehran. He suggested that the ultimate goal of the U.S. and Israel was regime change in Iran. This elicited a response on Twitter from Iranian rapper Hichkas, who defended foreign support for...

EDITED EXCERPT An Iranian businessman accused by the US government of violating sanctions on Tehran donated money to the Clinton Foundation, The Daily Beast has confirmed. Vahid Alaghband’s Balli Aviation Ltd, a London-based subsidiary of his commodities trading firm tried to sell 747's to Iran, despite a US federal ban. The company pleaded guilty to two counts of criminal information. The hefty sum imposed was “a direct consequence of the level of deception used to mislead investigators," Thomas Madigan, a top DOJ official, said at the time. Balli Aviation agreed to pay a $2 million criminal fine, serve five years...