Free Republic

Iran's supreme leader has for the first time publicly acknowledged that thousands of people were killed during recent protests. In a speech on Saturday, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said thousands had been killed, "some in an inhuman, savage manner", and blamed the US for the deaths. A violent response to the unrest has claimed 3,090 lives, according to US-based Iranian Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), with some activist groups putting the death toll far higher. An internet blackout has made it extremely difficult to get clear information. US President Donald Trump recently urged Iranian demonstrators to "keep protesting" and threatened...

Recep Tayyip Erdogan is the Turkish President, and the rude-and-crude master of all he surveys from the 1,100 room “White Palace” that he had the government build for him in Istanbul, at a cost to the Turkish taxpayers of $615 million. But when a man like Erdogan comes along only once a millennium, why should the national exchequer skimp? In Istanbul, having announced to the world that he will not be running for office again (the hundreds of journalists he has imprisoned in Turkish jails must now be breathing proleptic sighs of relief), just to make sure we do not...

While the US has donated, over the years, billions of tax dollars to the Palestinians, and has been their largest donor, Palestinian leaders still “don’t trust America”, who they see as the “enemy.” Vladimir Putin and Russia, on the other hand, are seen as allies and supporters. In his recent meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in Kazakhstan, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas made his sentiments quite clear..

Talks between Moscow and Kyiv to put an end to nearly two months of Russia’s military campaign in pro-Western Ukraine have stalled, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday. “They [negotiations] have stalled now,” Lavrov said after talks with his Kazakh counterpart, adding that Moscow has still had not received an answer to its latest proposal sent around five days ago.