Free Republic

I have not written much about the war in Ukraine lately because so little has changed strategically since the first few months of this conflict, when three overarching facts pretty much drove everything — and still do. Fact No. 1: As I wrote at the outset, when a war of this magnitude begins, the key question you ask yourself as a foreign affairs columnist is very simple: Where should I be? Should I be in Kyiv, the Donbas, Crimea, Moscow, Warsaw, Berlin, Brussels or Washington? And from the start of this war, there has been only one place to be...

We may be witnessing a major realignment of the Middle East. I was Googling around the other day for a factoid: how many Israelis had visited the United Arab Emirates since the signing of their normalization agreement, known as the Abraham Accords. Answer: more than 130,000.Jumping Jehoshaphat, Batman! In the middle of a global pandemic, at least 130,000 Israeli tourists and investors have flown to Dubai and Abu Dhabi since commercial air travel was established in mid-October!I believed from the start that the openings between Israel and the U.A.E., Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan — forged by Jared Kushner and Donald...

I worry about Joe Biden debating Donald Trump. He should do it only under two conditions. Otherwise, he’s giving Trump unfair advantages. ... That is not a good way for Biden to reintroduce himself to the American people. And, let’s not kid ourselves, these debates will be his reintroduction to most Americans, who have neither seen nor heard from him for months if not years. Because of Covid-19, Biden has been sticking close to home, wearing a mask and social distancing. And with the coronavirus now spreading further, and Biden being a responsible individual and role model, it’s likely that...

Round one occurred on Feb. 10, when an Iranian drone launched by a Revolutionary Guards Quds Force unit operating out of Syria’s T4 air base, east of Homs in central Syria, was shot down with a missile from an Israeli Apache helicopter that was following it after it penetrated Israeli airspace. “This is the first time we saw Iran do something against Israel — not by proxy,” a senior Israeli military source told me. “This opened a new period.” It certainly helps to explain why Israeli jets launched a predawn missile raid on the Iranian drone’s T4 home base last...

For those of you confused over the latest fight between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu of Israel, let me make it simple: Barack Obama and John Kerry admire and want to preserve Israel as a Jewish and democratic state in the Land of Israel. I have covered this issue my entire adult life and have never met two U.S. leaders more committed to Israel as a Jewish democracy.

“I think the biggest threats that they face may not be coming from Iran invading,” said Obama. “It’s going to be from dissatisfaction inside their own countries.” While the president’s remarks were mostly overlooked by the U.S. and Western media, the comments received headline coverage in news outlets run by Iran and by the Hezbollah jihadist organization. Obama sat down Saturday with Times’ columnist Thomas L. Friedman, who asked about “protecting our Sunni Arab allies, like Saudi Arabia.” Obama explained he thinks “that our friends in the region, our traditional Sunni states, have some very real external threats, but they...

I’ve never been a fan of global conferences to solve problems, but when I read that the Obama administration is organizing a Summit on Countering Violent Extremism for Feb. 18, in response to the Paris killings, I had a visceral reaction: Is there a box on my tax returns that I can check so my tax dollars won’t go to pay for this? When you don’t call things by their real name, you always get in trouble. And this administration, so fearful of being accused of Islamophobia, is refusing to make any link to radical Islam from the recent explosions...

Agreeing with THOMAS FRIEDMAN: ...<excerpt> ... ... But when it comes to pure, rancid moral corruption, no one can top South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki, and his stooge at the U.N., Dumisani Kumalo. They have done everything they can to prevent any meaningful U.N. pressure on the Mugabe dictatorship.As The Times reported, America’s U.N. ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, “accused South Africa of protecting the ‘horrible regime in Zimbabwe,’ ” calling this particularly disturbing given that it was precisely international economic sanctions that brought down South Africa’s apartheid government, which had long oppressed that country’s blacks.So let us now coin the Mbeki...

....the story made me both laugh and cry, because it reflected something so true — how much, since 9/11, we’ve become “The United States of Fighting Terrorism.” Times columnists are not allowed to endorse candidates, but there’s no rule against saying who will not get my vote: I will not vote for any candidate running on 9/11. We don’t need another president of 9/11. We need a president for 9/12. I will only vote for the 9/12 candidate. What does that mean? This: 9/11 has made us stupid. I honor, and weep for, all those murdered on that day. But...

August/September, 2007An Interview with New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman by Robert S. GreenbergerHow Going Green will make the world safer for Jews—and everyone else. Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman is best known for his views on foreign affairs as expressed in his popular column and in his books, including From Beirut to Jerusalem, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11 and The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. But over the last few years, Friedman has emerged as a leading advocate for...

When you watch the violence unfolding in the Middle East today, it is easy to feel that you've been to this movie before and that you know how it ends — badly. But we actually have not seen this movie before. Something new is unfolding, and we'd better understand it. What we are seeing in Iraq, the Palestinian territories and Lebanon is an effort by Islamist parties to use elections to pursue their long-term aim of Islamizing the Arab-Muslim world. This is not a conflict about Palestinian or Lebanese prisoners in Israel. This is a power struggle within Lebanon, Palestine...

I am often asked why I don't just give up on Iraq and pronounce it a lost cause. It would certainly make my job (and marriage) easier. What holds me back are scenes like the one related in last Sunday's New York Times story from Baghdad about the Iraqi parliament's vote to approve the country's new Cabinet. The story noted that during the Iraqi parliamentary session, the Sunni party leader Saleh Mutlaq, a former Baathist, stood up and started denouncing the decision by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to have parliament vote on the new Cabinet even though he hadn't...

The fate of the entire U.S. enterprise in Iraq now hangs in the balance, as the war has entered a dangerous new phase. It is the phase of barbaric identity-card violence between Sunnis and Shiites. In the late 1970s, I covered a similar moment in Lebanon, and the one thing I learned was this: Once this kind of venom gets unleashed – with members of each community literally beheading each other on the basis of their religious identities – it poisons everything. You enter a realm that is beyond politics, a realm where fear and revenge dominate everyone’s thinking –...

Top News Story IRAN: HOLOCAUST CONFERENCE SOON IN TEHRAN Tehran, 5 Jan. (AKI) - Iran has decided to rewrite and revise the history of the Holocaust. Following the repeated declarations by the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and other senior government officials on the need to re-examine the history of the genocide of the Jews during the Second World War, the association of Islamic Journalists of Iran has been tasked with quickly putting together an international conference on the Holocaust. "President Ahmadinejad has placed at the centre of international attention, a very important question on the truthfulness of the version...

Top News Story Iran's "Let's Roll" Beginning? Alan Peters: Special Report Analysts watching Iran on a daily basis were not taken by surprise by the Islamic Regime not showing up at the International Atomic Energy Agency on January 05, 2006, since reports out of Tehran have for the past weeks been mentioning President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad's office privately leaking to the Tehran newspapers that Iran already has four nuclear weapons obtained from the Ukraine. Back in 1991/1992 three nuclear weapon devices the Mullahs had obtained from Kazakhstan were verified on ground in Iran and intelligence further estimates that Iran has...

Top News Story Ynetnews Security forces arrested a 58-year-old Israeli-Arab on suspicion of being recruited by Iran in order to infiltrate Israel's political system. The suspect, Jaris Jaris, resides in the northern Israel village of Fasuta, which is mostly populated by Christians; he even served as the village council’s head. It is suspected that Iranians plotted to have Jaris transfer intelligence information obtained through his political connections in exchange for a hefty sum of money. They hoped he would be able to become an MK and continue to transfer vital information to Iran. Jaris was detained by security forces...

Top News Story IRAN: TEHRAN ISSUES NEW THREAT TO EUROPE Tehran, 4 Jan. (AKI) - The head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, who is also the man behind Iran's foreign policy, has warned Europeans "not to force the Islamic Republic to cut short the dialogue process and to opt for another scenario". Speaking on Tuesday night on state television he said: "We are for a strategy based on dialogue, but if the counterparty Europe plays dirty, then we will pass onto another plan that we have worked out and then there will be problems for the...

Top News Story Secret services say Iran is trying to assemble a nuclear missile Document seen by Guardian details web of front companies and middlemen Ian Cobain and Ian TraynorWednesday January 4, 2006The Guardian The Iranian government has been successfully scouring Europe for the sophisticated equipment needed to develop a nuclear bomb, according to the latest western intelligence assessment of the country's weapons programmes. Scientists in Tehran are also shopping for parts for a ballistic missile capable of reaching Europe, with "import requests and acquisitions ... registered almost daily", the report seen by the Guardian concludes.The warning came as...

Top News Story Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting Iran to Activate Natanz Nuclear Project in Coming Days Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting:Head of Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi said the suspended research works on Iran's nuclear activity will be activated again in the next few days. Attending a meeting here on Monday, Boroujerdi said, "Completion of nuclear fuel process upon international regulations is a part of our policies and we are determined to make Natanz project active after the Isfahan one". He stressed the west has accepted that the job be done in Russia, while...

Top News Story Monsters & Critics Ahmadinejad says Zionist Crimes Same as Nazi Crimes Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Monsters and Critics:Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the crimes committed by Zionists against the Palestinians were the same as the crimes committed by the Nazis in the Second World War, the news agency ISNA reported Sunday. 'One question to be clarified by the West is what crimes did they commit in those days (Second World War) what the Zionists are not doing today,' Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by ISNA. 'Zionism is de facto neo-fascism,' Ahmadinejad added in question and answer session carried...