Free Republic

Iranians gather at Azadi (freedom) square to mark the 27th anniversary of Iran's Islamic Revolution, as they carry a placard in support of Iran's nuclear technology in Tehran February 11, 2006. REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi Iran continues to treat us like suckers because we behave like suckers born every minute: "I made it quite clear that when they argue that their nuclear facilities are genuinely for peaceful purposes the burden of proof is on their side," he said. Ahmadinejad said Friday his country has complied with requirements to inform the IAEA six months before a new enrichment facility becomes operational, and was...

TEHRAN, Iran – Opposition political activists and protesters stood trial in Tehran Saturday on charges of rioting and conspiring against the ruling system in the country's first trial following the disputed presidential election, Iran's state media reported.

Given the turmoil unfolding around him, the soothing call for peace and harmony seemed to belong to an alien planet. But if Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sensed anything untoward in his words, he didn't show it. "Everybody should be patient," he told a televised gathering yesterday evening convened to discuss last week's disputed presidential election. "Tolerance is very difficult, whether for he who has won, or the one who is defeated. Increase the capacity for defeat in yourself." Khamenei's entrance into the centre of the crisis triggered by the biggest mass protests since the 1979 revolution seemed to...

polls Friday to choose their president. The country is bitterly divided between the backers of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and those who support his biggest rival, Mir-Hossein Mousavi. A week of feverish campaigning has left both sides worried the other will somehow steal the victory. When reform-minded Mohammed Khatami stormed to power unexpectedly in 1997, it was said the streets were full of excited youth. But this week in Tehran, the enthusiastic crowds, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, were said to be greater. It was dawn Thursday, and the early morning call to prayer had already sounded before the...

TEHRAN, June 9 -- Three days before Iranians go to the polls to elect a president, one of the country's most powerful clerics, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, issued an open letter on Tuesday complaining that the country's supreme leader has remained silent in the face of "insults, lies and false allegations" by incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The unusual letter reflects the intensity of the Iranian election campaign, laying bare the deep political rifts and sore feelings within the country's leadership. It is rare for senior Iranian clerics to publicly criticize the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Rafsanjani's letter came a...

Equating Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad with Adolf Hitler, top Israeli leaders have said they will not allow Holocaust deniers to repeat a genocide against Jews. "It is hard to fathom why despots such as Hitler - the Nazi, Stalin - the Bolshevik, and Ahmadinejad - the Persian, chose the Jews as the main target for their hatred, their madness and their violence," president Shimon Peres said in a speech at a ceremony to commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day. Peres, who was speaking at Holocaust Museum 'Yad Vashem', vowed to prevent genocide against the Jews and denounced Ahmedinejad for his strong rhetoric...

While it was gratifying to see some members of the EU walk out on his speech, the fact remains Ahmeddinejad was also heavily applauded. But… what was the upshot of the walk out? What did it really mean? And did Ahmedinajad advance the course of the Palestinians? While the EU has been very sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, while for years it has been negotiating with Iran over its nuclear plans, the putrid little maggot may have overplayed his hand this time. Perhaps… The Shiite Muslim President of Iran, Ahmadinejad, is deeply committed to the Islamic Messiah, al Mahdi… Ahmadinejad...

The West fears progress towards atomic weapons as President Ahmedinejad celebrates his country's big leap forward A triumphant President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad opened Iran's first plant for producing nuclear fuel today, marking a significant leap forward for his controversial nuclear programme and sparking international fears that the Islamic Republic may be closer than ever to acquiring an atomic weapon. Just two months before crucial elections in which he is pitted against a powerful moderate candidate, the hardline Iranian leader celebrated the breakthrough in his country's pursuit of nuclear technology, saying that Iranian scientists have tested two new types of enrichment centrifuges...

When Iran's Mahmoud Ahmedinejad was running for President of Iran, he was fawned over in Iranian and regional media as a simple man, a man of the people, and a real populist. In short, no critical examinations of his policies or beliefs occurred, much to the later dismay of the Iranian people and the the international community. Rather than pursue policies to build an effective Iranian state, Ahmedinejad pursued funding international terrorism, a spewing virulent anti-semitism directed towards Israel, and the jewish community in general. He turned out to be hostile to the West, and posing a serious threat to...

Visiting former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder criticised on Saturday Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for casting doubt over the Holocaust, saying the slaughter of 6 million Jews by Nazis was a fact. Since coming to power in 2005, Ahmadinejad has provoked international condemnation for saying the Holocaust was a "myth" and calling Israel a "tumour" in the Middle East. "The Holocaust is a historic fact and there is no sense in denying this unparalleled crime," Schroeder told the Iranian Chamber of Industry and Commerce. "Iran needs to take responsibility and respect international rules, if it wants to be taken seriously as...

TEHRAN, Jan. 28 (ISNA)-Iran hails fundamental and righteous changes in the US policy, said Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in its provincial tour to the western Iranian city of Kermanshah on Wednesday. Iran will look into the US words and actions and any fundamental change is hailed by Iran, he said. If the new US administration talks of change, it should end support for Zionists who are uncultured, murderer and forged and let Palestinians decide on their own fates, he continued. If the change will be only a superficial one which includes changes in tactics, literature and using new words, its...

TEHRAN (AFP) — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday congratulated president-elect Barack Obama on his success -- rare praise between the two countries which are archfoes, state agency IRNA reported. "I congratulate you on being able to attract the majority of votes of the participants of the election," Ahmadinejad said in a message to Obama carried by IRNA. "You know the opportunities bestowed upon people by God are short-lived," he said. "I hope you make the most of the chance of service and leave a good name by preferring people's real interests and justice to the insatiable demands of a...

American Jews have good reason to be ashamed and angry today. As Iran moves into the final stages of its nuclear weapons development program - nuclear weapons which it will use to destroy the State of Israel, endanger Jews around the world and cow the United States of America - Democratic American Jewish leaders decided that putting Sen. Barack Obama in the White House is more important than protecting the lives of the Jewish people in Israel and around the world.On Monday, the New York Sun published the speech that Republican vice presidential nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin would...

Continuing his string of absurd assertions against Israel and the Jewish people at large, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad on Tuesday stated that Israeli pharmaceutical companies are developing and exporting mystery diseases so they can then profit from selling the cures.

Here's how I envision how Obama speaking with President Ahmadinejad without a ateleprompter: "Everybody knows that it makes no sense for you to want nukes when there is lots of oil … and ... and cheap oil, too. I mean, you can get oil everywhere, so why the nuclear power, and you don't want nukes. You don't, do you? Would you tell me if – if you want nukes, because y'know nukes are a big deal with the American public. Making nuke material, people are – they think that, 'Hey, you want to build a nuke to wipe Israel off...

Iran has resumed work on constructing highly sophisticated equipment that nuclear experts say is primarily used for building atomic weapons, according to the latest intelligence reports received by Western diplomats.

CNSNews.com) - As the U.S. election campaign revisits the question of whether an American president should meet unconditionally with heads of hostile regimes, a drive to haul the Iranian leader before an international court may be picking up steam. More than two years after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad began publicly calling for Israel's demise and questioning the veracity of the Holocaust, at least one government says it is looking seriously at the legal options that may be available. Last week, Ahmadinejad stepped up his rhetoric, greeting the Jewish state's 60th birthday commemorations by declaring on state television that "death and annihilation" awaited...

A well-known art group has ruffled the Catholic Church’s feathers by portraying John Paul II as a paedophile. Artist group Surrend has again achieved its goal of provoking the establishment through two displays on a Polish website depicting the late Pope John Paul II as a paedophile, reported public broadcaster DR last week. The webpage, placed on the vaticansex.pl website, shows an image of the late pontiff lifting the gowns of two alter boys while saying: ‘I’m against homosexuality, but all for paedophilia.’ The second image is of the former pope burning in the flames of hell. The webpage was...

Monday October 8, 2007 12:01 PM By YAHYA BARAZANJI Associated Press Writer SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq (AP) - Iran opened on Monday five border crossing points with Kurdish-run northern Iraq, closed last month by Tehran to protest the U.S. detention of an Iranian here, an Iraqi Kurdish official said. Elsewhere, a joint U.S.-Iraqi raid in the Baghdad slum and Shiite stronghold of Sadr City ended in the deaths of two men, officials said. Jamal Abdullah, spokesman for the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq, expressed relief that the crossings reopened at 9 a.m. Monday and added that the decision to reopen them...

If you’re Adolf Hitler’s agent and you’re trying to book a speaking gig, who do you call: Columbia University or the Carolina School of Straight Chiropractic? If you’re looking for a student to slap on a circuit board and Silly Putty and head for the airport, do you ask a drunk coed from the community college or dial MIT? If you want something done that’s really, really stupid, you need to find someone who is really, really smart. Or thinks they are, anyway. I had this epiphany reading reviews of the newest exhibition at the Boston Center for the Arts....

Intolerance in the Name of Tolerance by Cal Thomas I would not be as bothered by Columbia University’s decision to host Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad if Columbia and other universities had a consistent policy toward those they invite to speak and the rules applied equally to conservatives and liberals; to totalitarian dictators and to advocates for freedom and tolerance. Any conservative who has ever tried, or actually succeeded, in speaking on the campus of predominately liberal academic institutions knows it can resemble to some extent the struggle experienced by African Americans when they attempted to desegregate lunch counters in the...

Increasingly, the angry speeches of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reveal a desperate president in need of a conflict. Just a few days ago, he crossed a key rhetorical red line by expressing open hostility towards both Judaism and Christianity. While his rhetoric may seem completely reckless to the western world, in the past, there have been certain limits beyond which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not dare to venture. But this past week, he crossed a line which should be taken as a warning signal. In the past, the Iranian has claimed that his problem is with political ideologies and not religion....

American pressure at this time will not be taken lightly by Iranian regime The fact that Iran stands today able to challenge or even defy the United States in every sphere of American influence in the Middle East attests to the dismal failure of the Bush administration’s policy toward it during the last six years. Feeling emboldened and unrestrained, Tehran may, however, miscalculate the consequences of its own actions, which could precipitate a catastrophic regional war. The Bush administration has less than a year to rein in Iran’s reckless behavior if it hopes to prevent such an ominous outcome and...

Speech of President Yahya Jammeh of Gambia to the Gambian Congress, January 18, 2007 “I call you to this meeting and maybe you will wonder why I called you including the two Ambassadors from Cuba and Taiwan. I called the two Ambassadors and of course Rose Clair Charles because you have a direct link with the health delivery system of this country. You know that Cuba is a key partner in our health sector and Taiwan is the force behind the Medical Team in The Gambia. This is a follow up to what I said on GRTS that I will...

Iran is more vulnerable to external pressure than outsiders tend to suppose Iran’s official reaction to the modest but unanimous UN Security Council resolution passed just before Christmas is yesterday’s defiant pledge to “accelerate” the nuclear programme that has exposed it to UN sanctions. That much was to be expected, not least because of Russia’s insistence on restricting the resolution’s impact by exempting from sanctions the reactor it is building for Iran at Bushehr. The resulting text may make it slightly more difficult for Tehran to build the nuclear bomb it denies intending to possess, but no one is so...

Nazi Prison Break GameHolocaust? What Holocaust??? In this game, you play the part of an evil American agent, caught infiltrating the gentle, peaceful Nazis. You must use your shrewdness and cunning to escape their comfortable detention center. However, if you are caught, the Nazis will lovingly perforate you. (Hope you enjoy it --- I thought it was relevant given Mr. Ahmedinejibjab's assertion that the Holocaust never happened.) Nazi Prison Break Game

US Intelligence has confirmed that Iranian sources are directly supplying Shiite militias with IEDs and other weapons used against US troops, ABC reports. Iranian-made munitions found in Iraq include advanced IEDs designed to pierce armor and anti-tank weapons. U.S. intelligence believes the weapons have been supplied to Iraq's growing Shia militias from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which is also believed to be training Iraqi militia fighters in Iran. Evidence is mounting, too, that the most powerful militia in Iraq, Moktada al-Sadr's Mahdi army, is receiving training support from the Iranian-backed terrorists of Hezbollah. Two senior U.S. defense officials confirmed...

Washington Post reporter David Ignatius on NPR 9/6/06 NPR: "You described in one column last week the sense you get in Iran and elsewhere in the region that Iran's star is on the rise in the region." IGNATIUS: "Well, Iranians certainly tell you that. They think this is their moment. They see the United States in retreat. They look at our predicament in Iraq and have almost a kind of contempt. That's one of the dangerous things about this moment is the Iranian devaluation of American power. But they think this is their moment to emerge as the dominant country...

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the United States and Britain should pay for crimes committed by "the Zionist regime," the Fars news agency reported. Ahamdinejad said the United Nations' failure to impose an immediate ceasefire is a "mark of disgrace." (Dudi Cohen)

The week before Hizbullah launched its war against Israel in the country's north, Ha'aretz's chief diplomatic correspondent Aluf Benn wrote an ode to Hizbullah. Entitled, "We need a Nasrallah," Benn romanticized the terror master writing, "Nasrallah hates Israel and Zionism no less than do the Hamas leaders, [kidnapped IDF Cpl. Gilad] Shalit's kidnappers and the Qassam [rocket] squads. But as opposed to them -- he has authority and responsibility, and therefore his behavior is rational and reasonably predictable." Benn continued, "The moment Hizbullah took control over… south [Lebanon] and armed itself with thousands of Katyushas and other rockets, a stable...

Wednesday Canada's National Post published an error correction. Last Friday, the newspaper's lead story reported that the Iranian parliament had approved legislation that would compel Jews to wear a yellow strip, Christians to wear a red strip and Zoroastrians to wear a blue strip on their clothes. The story fomented an international storm. Yet it turned out that the story was untrue - or jumped the gun. The Iranian parliament did pass legislation expressing its intention to install a compulsory Islamic dress code for the country's subjects, but it did not characterize the required attire. On its Web site last...

IRAN: TEXT MESSAGE TELLS PRESIDENT HE SHOULD WASH MORE Tehran, 14 April (AKI) - Iran's hardline president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has apparently been incensed by an anonymous text message suggesting he does not wash enough. Ahmadinejad has taken legal action over the offending text, has fired the president of a phone company and has had four people arrested and accused of colluding with the Israeli foreign intelligence service, Mossad, the anti-government website Rooz Online reports. Poking fun at the president, the regime's senior figures and its policies, has reportedly become a national pastime in Iran. The Iranian authorities are paying particular...

"A war of words over nuclear power has erupted between Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, left, and U.S. President George W. Bush. (AP)"

Iran's hardline president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad on Friday warned that bullying Western powers and Zionists will fall soon, saying Muslims can no longer tolerate their tyranny and harassment. Ahmedinejad said the root cause of challenges faced by the Muslim world can be found in the "hegemonic tendencies" of certain bullying powers, a clear reference to the United States and Europe. "But domination and bullying will not last much longer. Bullies and Zionists beware, you are going to fall," Ahmedinejad said in a public lecture in Kuala Lumpur on the last day of a three-day official visit.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, Islamic leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini and Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah all blamed Israel for the bombing of a Shi'ite mosque in Iraq last week. "These heinous acts are committed by a group of Zionists and occupiers that have failed. They have failed in the face of Islam's logic and justice," Ahmadinejad said in a speech broadcast live on state-controlled TV. "But be sure, you will not be saved from the wrath and power of the justice-seeking nations by resorting to such acts," the Iranian firebrand declared, answered by cries of "Death to Israel" and "Death to...

SHANGHAI, China - China and Iran are close to setting plans to develop Iran's Yadavaran oil field, according to published reports, in a multibillion-dollar deal that comes as Tehran faces the prospect of sanctions over its nuclear program. The deal is thought potentially to be worth about $100 billion. According to Caijing, a respected financial magazine, a Chinese government delegation is due to visit Iran as early as March to formally sign an agreement allowing China Petrochemical Corp., also known as Sinopec, to develop Yadavaran. The Wall Street Journal also reported in Friday's editions that the two sides are trying...

Vienna, Feb 12 (AP): Inspectors from the UN nuclear watchdog agency have stripped most surveillance cameras and agency seals from Iranian nuclear sites and equipment as demanded by Tehran in response to its referral to the UN Security Council, diplomats said. The diplomats, who demanded anonymity in exchange for revealing the confidential developments, said yesterday that the move was part of retaliatory measures announced by Iran that have left the International Atomic Energy Agency with only the most basic means to monitor Iran's nuke activities. It came as Iran's president suggested his country might even pull out of the Nuclear...

In response to Tehran's foolish decision to restart its nuclear enrichment program, the U.N. Security Council finally got serious about dealing with the Iranian threat. If Tehran does not accept Moscow's offer to enrich uranium for Iran on Russian soil, a U.N. censure of Iran seems likely. Anything less will affirm the assessment of hard-liners in Tehran that the United States is too weak to achieve its basic foreign policy objectives regarding Iran.

I almost forgot to recognize a very important anniversary. This past Friday was the 25th anniversary of the release of 52 Americans held hostage in Iran for 444 days by Islamic terrorists. It's especially important because one of their mad captors is now the mad leader of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, today. While our State Department claims he was not one of the captors, the surviving hostages, today, remember him. And I believe them. Not the liars and enablers at the State Department who are most often America's enemies fondest allies. Times Haven't Changed: U.S. Hostages in Iran Released 25 Years...

Tehran, Iran, Jan. 21 – A senior commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards who once vowed that “no part of the Islamic world is going to be safe and secure for America” was named as the new head of the Guards’ Air Force. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a decree on Saturday, appointing Brigadier General Hossein Salami as the new commander of the Air Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Another senior Guards commander, Brigadier General Mohammad-Reza Zahedi, was put in charge of the IRGC Ground Forces. Salami is known as the father of the IRGC’s “asymmetric...

ISRAEL'S armed forces have been ordered by Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, to be ready by the end of March for possible strikes on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran, military sources have revealed. The order came after Israeli intelligence warned the government that Iran was operating enrichment facilities, believed to be small and concealed in civilian locations. Iran's stand-off with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over nuclear inspections and aggressive rhetoric from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, who said last week that Israel should be moved to Europe, are causing mounting concern. The crisis is set to come...

VIENNA, Austria -- Iran's newly elected president, already accused of taking American diplomats hostage 26 years ago, played a key role in the 1989 execution-style slayings of a Kurdish opposition leader and two associates in Vienna, an exiled Iranian dissident said yesterday. Austria's daily Der Standard quoted a prominent Austrian politician as saying authorities have "very convincing" evidence linking Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the attacks in Vienna, in which the Kurds were killed

Iran's president-elect Mahmoud Ahmedinejad said Saturday his country needs a strong army to form a great resource for the country and its people. The official Islamic Republic News Agency said Ahmedinejad, the Tehran conservative mayor who won an overwhelming victory in last month's presidential elections, made his comments to the leadership of the armed forces. He said Iran was pivotal in bringing security to the Islamic world, adding the country's policy was based on consolidating peace, justice and openness to the world. The Bush administration and other Western governments have accused Iran of pursuing a nuclear weapons force. Meanwhile, outgoing...

Not many would see the undercurrents of the election of Ahmedinejad as the surprise winner of the Iranian Presidential elections. We would be told by the Islamist and pro-Islamist media that he was elected as a result of a free and fair election, so he is the democratically elected leader of a free country that allows adult franchise. And so we need to hail him as a legitimate leader, more so as he can stand up to the only mega-power in the world today. In this deliberated created euphoria meant to mislead all sensible and natural viewers and reader, we...