Free Republic

In a significant shift in the Middle Eastern power dynamics, Iranian officials have admitted that their once-loyal proxy force, the Houthis in Yemen, is increasingly defying Tehran's orders. Reports indicate that the Houthis, who have long served as Iran's strategic arm in the ongoing conflicts against the United States and its allies, are now acting independently, much to the dismay of their former benefactors. A senior Iranian official disclosed that the Houthis have distanced themselves from Iran. “They have gone rogue for a while and are now really rebels,” the official stated, reflecting concerns within the Iranian regime as they...

Experts warn drought and water mismanagement have made the city's development unsustainable Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has suggested his country's capital will need to be moved from Tehran due to ecological unsustainability in the city. Speaking at a meeting in Qazvin, the president warned that relocating the capital would become unavoidable given the overcrowding and water shortages in the city of 9.7 million. His government has proposed the underdeveloped Makran region in southeastern Iran as a possible new location. "When we proposed relocating the capital, we lacked the budget - otherwise it might have happened," Pezeshkian told officials. "People said...

Water, and its absence, has become Iran’s national obsession. In the mosques of northern Tehran the imams have been praying for rain, while the meteorologists count down the hours until the weather is forecast to break and rain is finally due to fall from the sky. Forecasts of “rain-producing clouds” are front-page news. More than 50 days have passed since the start of Iran’s rainy season and more than 20 provinces have not yet had a drop. The number of dams that have less than 5% of their reservoir capacity had increased from eight to 32, and the crisis has...

Amid a deepening ecological crisis and acute water shortage, Tehran can no longer remain the capital of Iran, the country’s president has said. The situation in Tehran is the result of “a perfect storm of climate change and corruption,” says Michael Rubin, a political analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. “We no longer have a choice,” said Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian during a speech on Thursday. Instead Iranian officials are considering moving the capital to the country’s southern coast. But experts say the proposal does not change the reality for the nearly 10 million people who live in Tehran and...

Moving administrative capital from Tehran due to collapse of water supply. Starting up nuclear program again, arming up for battle against...against (da Jooos!) and exiting non-proliferation treaty, arresting "spies" everywhere, military gradually defecting to Reza Pahlavi, currency imploding. Transcript linked below video.

Inside Tehran’s newest metro station, Iranians who can be imprisoned for owning bibles will soon walk past a plaque that declares, “the message of Jesus Christ was the salvation of humans from darkness, ignorance, corruption, depravity and discrimination.”Elsewhere in the Maryam-e Moqaddas station, or Holy Mary station, a relief of Christ walking on water decorates a vestibule, and his mother Mary is depicted, larger than life, praying among flowers. Estimates of Iran’s Christian population varies widely but a 2020 survey from the Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran (GAMAAN) reported 1.5 percent of respondents identified as Christian. That...

Madani, who has long warned of environmental mismanagement in Iran, said the current water crisis across the nation was predictable. "The water bankruptcy situation was not created overnight," he said. "The house was already on fire, and people like myself had warned the government for years that this situation would emerge." President Masoud Pezeshkian warned that without rainfall before winter, Tehran could face partial evacuation, according to The Associated Press. Iran is facing its worst drought in decades, raising fears of evacuations in Tehran while threatening the regime’s stability and nuclear ambitions, according to a leading environmental expert. Kaveh Madani,...

An even more devastating terrorism charge could be laid on Iran's doorstep if intelligence reports linking Iran to al-Qaeda are confirmed. Insight has learned of new links between top Iranian intelligence officials and the al-Qaeda leadership that suggest direct Iranian government involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. mainland. Documents and information provided to this magazine by a recent Iranian defector, if confirmed as authentic, could open a new front in the war on terror. The defector, Hamid Reza Zakeri, says he worked in the intelligence office of Supreme Leader Ali Khameini and personally handled security at two...

The Obama administration recognizes that Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi “has to reach out to his neighbors,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said Thursday in response to queries about Abadi’s meetings with Iran’s top leaders. During his visit to Tehran, Abadi appears to have been accompanied by a man named by the U.S. government during the Iraqi war as responsible for attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces. […] On the Iranian president’s website, one of the photographs of his meeting with the Iraqi prime minister shows Rouhani greeting a man—apparently a member of the Iraqi delegation—identified by the Foundation for...

The illusion of Iranian power was kept alive for decades by American engagement with the would-be lords of the Middle East. Now the spell is broken, and the ‘Axis of Resistance’ is shattered. A billboard with the "doomsday clock," counting down the days until Israel's destruction, is pictured in downtown Tehran, Iran, on November 4, 2024. Israel bombed the clock on Monday. A few months before he was buried under the rubble of his Beirut bunker, the late leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, repeated to his followers, as he had done many times before, his famous line that Israel was...

The notorious director of Tehran’s brutal Evin Prison, Hedayatollah Farzadi, escaped the compound ahead of Israeli strikes following threats to his life – and an alleged exchange between Jerusalem and his adult son. Israeli authorities reportedly contacted Amir Husseini Farzadi, telling him that if he convinced his father to release political prisoners, his life would be spared in the impending attack. According to a series of WhatsApp messages shared with Fox News Digital by an Israeli intel source, an agent instructed Amir to tell his father to open the prison’s doors, warning that an attack would occur within "a few...

Israeli agents assassinated Al Qaeda's No. 2 official in a shooting in Tehran three months ago, eliminating a mastermind behind the deadly 1998 attacks on American embassies in Africa. Intelligence officials confirmed to The New York Times that two Israeli agents were acting at the behest of the U.S. when they shot Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah from a motorcycle on Aug. 7, the anniversary of the embassy bombings. His daughter Miriam, the widow of Osama bin Laden's son Hamza bin Laden, was also killed.

An Iranian Jewish activist in Los Angeles, who asked that his name be withheld because of his fear that the Iranian regime would retaliate against his family members inside Iran, told JNS the Jewish leadership has shut down all synagogues and cancelled Shabbat services during the conflict. “The Jewish community leaders have told Jews not to come out in public wearing kippahs, they’ve cancelled Jewish religious events and asked the community to maintain a low profile in public right now to avoid any potential issues with the regime or those Muslims who hate Israel,” the activist said. JNS obtained a...

British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer appeared the most willing of America’s allies in Europe to align himself with President Donald Trump’s decision to bomb Iranian nuclear sites, while fellow European leaders stressed for calm and a return to talks. On Saturday evening, President Donald Trump made a surprise announcement that the United States had conducted targetted ariel bombings of three nuclear sites in Iran. In an address to the nation, President Trump said that the facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan had been “completely and totally obliterated.” Trump added that “Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now...

Foreign media are now required to obtain prior military censorship approval before filming missile impact and crash sites. Foreign photographers will no longer be allowed to film at the scenes of missile strikes in Israel without prior written approval from military censors, under new directives issued by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi. ...

Mohammad Saeed Izadi, the commander of the Palestine Corps within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force and the key coordinator between Iran and Hamas, was killed on Saturday, both the military and Defense Minister Israel Katz announced. Izadi, according to reports, helped finance and arm Hamas in the lead-up to the October 7 massacre. He was reportedly behind the "plan to destroy Israel" by coordinating assaults on Israel from multiple fronts. Izadi was killed in an apartment in the city of Qom, south of Tehran, by an attack by Israel Air Force fighter jets following an intelligence-gathering effort, the...

Anti-Israel protester Mahmoud Khalil lamented leaving behind some “incredible men” on Friday as he left a Louisiana detention facility, which he hopes becomes a museum to what he described as “America’s racist policies.” “I leave some incredible men behind me, over 1,000 people behind me, in a place where they shouldn’t have been in the first place,” Khalil told reporters after walking out of the La Salle Detention Facility in Jena, La. “I hope the next time that I will be in Jena is to actually visit this as a museum on America’s racist policies against immigrants,” the former Columbia...

The foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, France, and Germany met with their Iranian counterpart on Friday and after talks ended said discussions had been “serious” and that they’d urged Tehran to agree to talk to the Americans next. Initial peace talks between London, Paris, Berlin, and Tehran to open channels for negotiating an end to the Iran-Israel war lasted for around four and a half hours on Friday. Britain’s David Lammy, France’s Jean-Noël Barrot, and Germany’s Johann Wadephul met with Iran’s Abbas Araghchi in Geneva, Switzerland for face-to-face talks they said after the meeting broke should lead to further...

There are unofficial reports that Israeli strikes hit Tehran’s Lavizan area where Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei is believed to be hiding. Ariel Oseran reported on the reported explosions in the Lavizan area. Local reports of multiple Israeli precision strikes targeting the Lavizan neighborhood in Tehran. pic.twitter.com/UrRRbxtZBW — Ariel Oseran أريئل أوسيران (@ariel_oseran) June 19, 2025 Some unofficial Twitter accounts claim Israeli strikes hit Tehran’s Lavizan area, where Khamenei’s bunker is believed to be. No confirmation of his death yet.#IranVsIsrael #IranIsraelWar #Tehran #Khamenei #Israel #Iran pic.twitter.com/3QXMgMERLq — Ashish Pandey (@aspandey07) June 20, 2025 Explosions were heard at the Imam Hussein University...

Government planes leaving for Oman, Khamenei abdicated in favor of IRGC. IRGC bigwigs defecting to Crown Prince. Trump says well beyond cease fire. Victory is goal now, no nuclear weapons. Transcript linked below video.