Free Republic

Some Iranian leadership is being surprisingly honest about the dire state of the country’s economy, with one of the most senior security officials in Tehran warning that the Islamic Republic is going through one of the most difficult periods in its history.Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, delivered the assessment during a high-level government meeting on Saturday, October 3, attended by President Masoud Pezeshkian and senior ministers.Iranian state media did not publish Rezaei’s comments in full, but said the security chief described the country’s current economic circumstances as among the most difficult it has ever faced.

Yemen-based Ansar Allah, widely known as the Houthis, continues to have a profound impact on global security. The group’s ongoing operations in the Red Sea affected an estimated US $1 trillion worth of maritime cargo between October 2023 and May 2024, and despite periodic kinetic attacks, its operations show no signs of abating. Moreover, evidence suggests the Houthis enjoy the financial and military backing of Russia and China, in addition to their established ties with Iran. This Insight explores the Houthis’ financing mechanisms, including leveraging technology to evade sanctions and the involvement of foreign facilitators with demonstrable and plausible ties...

Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s mayor, set off a firestorm of criticism Wednesday morning with a social media post ostensibly intended to commemorate the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of Israelis. It devoted a brief paragraph to condemning Hamas and commiserating with its victims. The rest was a much longer denunciation of Israel’s “ongoing genocide in Gaza,” a “world in which occupation and apartheid continue” and a situation in which “our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment.” In response, Ammiel Hirsch, the president of the New York Board of Rabbis, said the statement was “so offensive to so...

Hamas is generating as much as $5 million a day from goods entering Gaza while rebuilding tunnels, accumulating weapons, and planning possible attacks on Israeli troops, including attempts to kidnap soldiers, according to separate Israeli television reports this week citing security officials. Neomi Neumann, a former head of research at Israel’s Shin Bet security agency, told the Kan public broadcaster on Thursday that Hamas continues to exercise effective control over Gaza’s population through a decentralized system of taxation, aid distribution, and covert enforcement. Neumann, now an adjunct fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, estimated that Hamas earns...

It’s been three years since the savage Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas terror attacks, which killed 1,200 people, often in barbaric, inhuman ways.As we reported, Democratic Socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani celebrated the occasion by firing off an incendiary statement accusing Israel of committing war crimes and genocide in Gaza. (See: Morally Bankrupt Mamdani Spits on October 7 Victims to Demonize Israel.)If he wanted to stoke a response, he succeeded, because anti-Israel, pro-Hamas protests broke out throughout the Big Apple Wednesday. Not surprisingly, Columbia University and NYU once again played their part in the twisted response to the anniversary...

You can’t open a newspaper or watch cable news these days without seeing a story about the pain and suffering Americans are feeling at the pump, with scary headlines such as “no relief in sight” and “the worst is yet to come.” Actually, when it comes to gas prices, the worst has come and gone – three times – all while Democrats were in the White House. Not that you’d ever know that from the mainstream media. Shortly after those headlines ran, gas prices started to moderate. AAA says they are down by about 10 cents a gallon from a...

Israel was reportedly just 90 seconds away from a 9/11-style catastrophe when an alleged plot to crash a passenger jet carrying 174 Israelis was stopped. On the third anniversary of October 7, this update looks back at the atrocities that launched the war, the dramatic transformation of Israel’s security landscape, and the major losses suffered by Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. It also examines a secret regional meeting involving Israel and Arab nations, growing antisemitism inside the church, and why current events continue to point believers back to Scripture.

Russia has finalized preparations to provide a $1 billion loan to Iran, with the funds ready for transfer once Tehran provides bank account details, Iranian media reported Tuesday. Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency said the payment process had been finalized but disagreements among Iranian government bodies over how the money should be spent have delayed the transfer. The loan was first reported in June and was described as the first installment of a planned $20 billion Russian loan to Iran, according to Fars.

Hezbollah has received $200 million from Iran to help Lebanese people displaced by this year’s war with Israel, say two people with direct knowledge of the transfer, the first significant aid from the group to supporters who bore the brunt of the conflict. Asked for comment, a Hezbollah official says an amount has been secured and a plan for distributing it will be announced in the coming days, without elaborating on the source of the funds. Iran has maintained financial support to Hezbollah through years of crippling US sanctions: it transferred $1 ​billion to the group in the first 10...

If you are booking a flight on United Air, maybe you should think twice. This is the caliber of people they have flying your planes. VIDEOS AT LINK............... So, this pilot defended Hamas killing innocents in Israel. Rightfully, United Air removed him from the cockpit. The ridiculous pilot's union defended him so he got his job back. We just saw what happened with another pilot who has terrorist sympathies last week. Thank God the passengers were able to subdue him. What if this guy goes off the rails and the passengers aren't as savvy next time? It gets worse. When...

Texas Governor Greg Abbott orders US and Texas flags lowered to half-staff to honor the victims of Hamas’ October 7 massacre, on the third anniversary of the attack.

Hundreds of Palestinians reportedly marched in Gaza City on Saturday, chanting against #Hamas after activist Iyad Abu Jendeya was detained following social media posts accusing businessmen and Hamas-linked figures of corruption. Independent journalists and activists said protesters gathered near Ahli Hospital, where they believed Abu Jendeya was being held. The corruption allegations and circumstances surrounding his detention have not been independently verified.

Prof. Chen Kugel says forensic evidence showed systematic killing methods across attack sites; he recalls burned and mutilated bodies, the race to identify every victim and the psychological toll that ultimately left him with PTSD; this article contains graphic images and descriptions that some readers may find disturbing. “Here we see the body of a person who was burned,” he says, pausing over one of the photographs. “We know he was burned alive: When we open his airway, we can see soot inside. That means he inhaled smoke while he was being burned.” Prof. Chen Kugel, director of the National...

John Spencer, an expert on urban warfare and Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, sharply criticized the documentary NAZA on Monday, accusing it of presenting claims about the war in Gaza that go beyond even those made by Hamas. “Worse than Hamas propaganda," Spencer wrote in a post on X after watching the documentary in its entirety. “Over three years, I’ve tried not to be surprised by ignorance, disinformation, and distortions relating to war, but this is at the top for many reasons." Spencer said he intends to publish a detailed analysis of...

Iran’s oil minister, Mohsen Paknejad, has resigned and been replaced by the country’s top oil executive, the president’s office says in a statement, amid a blockade on Tehran’s oil exports by the United States. “Following the acceptance of Mohsen Paknejad’s resignation, Hamid Bovard,” the CEO of the National Iranian Oil Company, “has been appointed as acting Minister of Oil by a decree from the president,” says the statement carried by state broadcaster IRIB. In a news bulletin on the minister’s resignation, state television runs an interview with an official from the Iranian presidential office who says Paknejad initially offered his...

An Iranian man accused of being part of a hacking scheme that breached more than 150 US universities and companies while targeting data worth over $3 billion has been extradited from Montenegro to the US to face criminal charges, police in the European country and a person familiar with the case said Thursday. Amir Barati, 40, is expected to face wire and computer fraud charges in the US Southern District of New York, where he and 16 other Iranian nationals were charged in a superseding indictment in August. Montenegrin police arrested Barati, who is also a Turkish citizen, in June...

The Left’s cries of “genocide” against Israel ring hollow when many of its loudest critics ignore the far bloodier histories of their own ancestral homelands. On October 7, 2023, Hamas killers slaughtered 1,200 people, more than two-thirds of them civilians, inside Israel. For the ensuing three weeks, they refused Israel’s demands to turn over the 251 hostages and to surrender the architects of the massacre. No matter—within a day of the attacks, when Hamas gunmen were still fighting Israeli troops on Israeli soil, the American Left was already screaming “genocide!” They did not mean Hamas’s intended genocide of Jews, a...

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps put out a 25-page letter addressed to Americans urging them to oppose President Donald Trump during the upcoming midterm elections. The IRGC, which as repeatedly tried to sway the Nov. 3 US elections, claimed that the president and his support of Israel were the cause of the war — as they urged voters to reject both in the voting booth. “America’s national security and the lives of its service members are entrusted to someone who is not only an inveterate liar but is also an insanely avaricious man whose only motivation in life ​is the...

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a terrorist organization formally belonging to the Iranian armed forces, published a 26-page open letter to the American people on Tuesday inviting Americans to visit the Strait of Hormuz, insisting “death to America” did not mean Iran wished death on America, and suggesting the September 11, 2001, jihadist attacks were a “false-flag operation.”“It should be fairly obvious that the phrase ‘Death to America,’ which Iranians have been chanting since the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, does not in any way express any ill will toward the American people,” the IRGC officials wrote. “Death to...

To the honorable people of the United States of America—the scholars, the students, and the members of the media, We begin this letter by saluting the noble souls of God’s greatest prophets—Noah, Abraham,Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad, may His peace and blessings be upon them all. … …it should be fairly obvious that the phrase "Death to America," which Iranians have been chanting since the triumph of the Islamic Revolution… is a prayer for the eradication of the diabolical ruling elite whose seat of power is the White House. The men enthroned at the White House oppress both Iranians and Americans....