Free Republic

The Iran lobby is digging deep in an effort to drum up support from anyone and anywhere to preserve the Iran nuclear deal including circulating a letter from members of the French, British and German parliaments addressed to the U.S. Congress.The letter is rife with the same common misperceptions that the Iran lobby has worked hard to foist on an unsuspecting world. None have done as much spadework in engineering this plethora of fake news than the National Iranian American Council.Among the common misperceptions in the letter are:“The only reason we were able to achieve this breakthrough is that we stood...

The US Department of Justice will investigate claims that the Obama administration shielded the Lebanon-based Shi’ite terrorist group Hezbollah from criminal prosecution for its drug-trafficking and gun-running operations, as part of an effort to curry favor with Hezbollah’s patron, Iran. Last week, Politico released an investigative report citing Drug Enforcement Administration and former Treasury Department officials who claimed that the previous administration blocked the prosecution of Hezbollah officials known to be involved in the smuggling of illegal narcotics and weapons – including chemical weapons – in an effort to bring Hezbollah’s patron state, Iran, to the negotiating table. In 2015,...

Among the many things they have in common, President Trump and John Bolton, his newly designated national security adviser, both have traded insults with North Korean leaders. After Bolton called Kim Jong Il, the father of the current leader, a “tyrannical dictator” during the George W. Bush administration, Kim labeled the then-State Department official the “envoy of evil” and “rude human scum.” Trump and Bolton also have volatile tempers and a tendency to want to fire those who challenge them. In recent months, Bolton has echoed Trump’s use of Twitter for pithy statements about complicated issues. The Iran nuclear deal...

‘Trump’s dangerous shift on Iran’ author received approval from Foggy Bottom.' The U.S. State Department under former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson vetted and approved the publication of fiercely anti-Trump news articles written by a current State Department official, Conservative Review has learned. On October 13 in the White House, President Trump announced that he had ordered a complete strategic review concerning the United States’ Iran policy. “Today, I am announcing our strategy, along with several major steps we are taking to confront the Iranian regime’s hostile actions and to ensure that Iran never, and I mean never, acquires a...

In what really could only be described as a completely bonkers conspiracy theory, The Nation magazine editor Katrina vanden Heuvel suggested Sunday that Rex Tillerson was fired from the secretary of state position because his replacement was funded by the Koch brothers and because the administration wanted a war with Iran. If youÂ’re confused, donÂ’t worry, the rest of the liberal panel on ABCÂ’s This Week didnÂ’t seem to be able to follow her convoluted mess either. The ridiculousness began when a conversation about the firing of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was derailed by vanden Heuvel, who decided...

The media’s real business is ‘story laundering’. "The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns," Ben Rhodes gloated. "That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.” Rhodes, the White House’s “Obama whisperer”, was explaining how he had pulled the wool over the media’s eyes on the Iran Deal to a journalist. The media responded to the story by attacking the journalist who reported it, not Rhodes for viewing them as easily manipulated useful idiots. The media knew that it knew nothing. And it didn’t care. It just...

A top White House national security adviser and key proponent of the Obama administration's diplomacy with Iran is the focus of a congressional inquiry following disclosures the FBI may have denied him top-level security clearances, according to communications exclusively obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. Ben Rhodes, a White House deputy national security adviser who led the administration's efforts to mislead Congress about the terms of the Iran nuclear agreement, is under scrutiny in the wake of disclosures he was declined interim clearance status by the FBI in 2008, when the administration was moving into the White House. Since that...

President Trump has been careful in recent months to properly vet members of his inner- circle after being repeatedly stabbed in the back, but he had no idea that his very own National Security Adviser and top military General, H.R. McMaster has been an Obama plant this entire time. McMaster has been working secretly with Obama for months, even authorizing illegal surveillance on President Trump. Just when we think the level of treachery involving this man couldn’t get any worse, this Obama-era military general has just done something absolutely unbelievable to not only Trump, but our entire country. Anyone with...

A new report suggests that President Donald Trump’s national security advisor H.R. McMaster is rushing to save the deeply flawed nuclear Iran deal, which was seen as a hallmark of former President Obama’s legacy, ahead of Friday’s deadline for recertification. “According to multiple sources, H.R. McMaster is reprising the role he played last fall: removing a legislative irritant from Trump so that the president can quietly remain in the deal,” wrote the Daily Beast. President Trump has promised he would terminate the Iran nuclear deal. On Friday, President Trump must decide whether he will waive — or extend — sanctions...

Let us be clear on what the “insurance policy” was. The insurance policy was, in totality, the entire fraudulent Russian Conspiracy Narrative; and all of the accompanying –and subsequent– FBI and DOJ collaborative actions that were taken, under the auspices of an FBI counterintelligence operation, in order to generate an entirely false premise. The goal of using the “insurance policy” was to destroy, and possibly impeach, President Trump.

The White House announced its opposition to a new round of Iran sanctions that the Senate unanimously approved Friday, in the latest instance of Congress pushing for more aggressive punitive measures on Iran than the administration deems prudent. On Thursday, Sens. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Mark Kirk (R-IL) introduced the amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, which the Senate passed 94-0. The new legislative language would blacklist Iran's energy, port, shipping, and shipbuilding sectors, while also placing new restrictions on Iran's ability to get insurance for all these industries. The legislation would also vastly expand U.S. support for human...

Earlier this week Politico Magazine published a story by Josh Meyer headlined "The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook." This copiously sourced piece relates how, "in its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as Hezbollah was funneling cocaine into the United States." The law enforcement program in question is called Project Cassandra, which for eight years "used wiretaps, undercover operations, and informants to map Hezbollah's illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign...

© Courtesy WhiteHouse.gov U.S. and Israeli officials reached a closed-door cooperation agreement on how to deal with Iran, according to Israel's Channel 10 News. The agreement, which was reportedly signed on Dec. 12 at the White House, aims to counter Iran's missile and nuclear programs. According to Channel 10, the agreement would translate President Trump 's Oct. 13 speech decertifying the Iran deal into "steps on the ground." The two countries have reportedly decided to set up joint teams to combat Iran in the region. One joint team would grapple with Iran's ties to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah,...

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., once falsely accused President Ronald Reagan's CIA of all but causing urban cocaine dealing in the '80s. She claimed that Reagan, by working with Nicaraguan drug dealers to defeat the communists running that country, colluded with them to created the urban drug epidemic. Never mind that The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times all debunked Waters' claim. At a town hall meeting about these allegations, Waters shouted, "If I never do anything else in this career as a member of Congress, I'm gonna make somebody pay for what they've done to...

A week after Josh Meyer’s Politico expose,“The Secret Backstory Of How Obama Let Hezbollah Off the Hook,” former Obama officials are still berating Meyer for his 13,000-word article detailing how the Obama administration killed a nearly decade-long DEA effort to stem a global Hezbollah cocaine-smuggling-and-organized-crime ring to help secure its nuclear deal with Iran. “This was a policy decision, it was a systematic decision,” former Defense Department analyst David Asher explained in the article. “They serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down.” Asher helped establish and...

The media seems curiously uninterested in the latest Obama administration bombshell. This past week, Politico published a report that President Obama helped derail an investigation into a drug trafficking ring waged by Hezbollah in order to protect his nuclear deal with Iran. The effort, entitled Project Cassandra, began in 2008 following evidence from the Drug Enforcement Administration. Investigators went under cover to track the alleged drug and weapons trafficking but were slowed by White House officials who were dragging their feet. In their pursuit to ease tensions with Iran, the Obama administration "let Hezbollah off the hook."Politico's reporting was both...

Some lawmakers are incensed, but not wholly surprised by this week's bombshell report from Politico that the Obama administration knowingly derailed an anti-Hezbollah investigation because it would have threatened the nuclear deal with Iran. The Drug Enforcement Administration was so convinced that Hezbollah was amassing $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking that it started Project Cassandra in 2008, an under cover investigation, to follow the money. Yet, according to Politico's sources, the Justice and Treasury departments "delayed, hindered or rejected" requests from project members as they sought answers.Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) expected such meddling from the Obama White...

Did the current administration “collude” with Russia? So far no evidence at all has emerged to support that hypothesis, but Politico’s Josh Meyer digs deep into another curious set of circumstances in the Obama White House and its own operations with a foreign power. Perhaps the media will start asking whether the previous administration colluded with Iran to let terrorists and drug dealers go free in order to score one of the worst deals ever in international relations. Before Barack Obama decided to pursue the nuclear deal with Iran, the DEA had a major operation called Project Cassandra. This operation...

Say it isn't so. Could this actually be the next US Secretary of State (Hat Tip: Barak Ravid)? Egypt's Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry met during his visit to Washington Wendy Sherman, an adviser to the US Democratic Party's presidential primary candidate Hillary Clinton, the foreign affairs ministry announced on Thursday. The Egyptian foreign ministry spokesperson Ahmed Abu Zeid stated that during the meeting Sherman listened to Shoukry's evaluations of political and economic developments taking place in Egypt, the country's regional and international relations, as well as the country's efforts to fight terrorism. "The meeting reflected the mutual wish to...

Speaking at the National Press Club Wednesday, outgoing Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz announced a new “scientific integrity” policy for an agency recently wracked by concerns about how an administration led by President-elect Donald Trump will treat employees who worked on climate change and other sensitive energy-related issues. “It’s part of establishing the environment that allows scientist to do their work, to stay with us, and to recruit new people,” Moniz said in announcing the new policy. Moniz, a physicist, gave an example of his own role in negotiating the Iran nuclear deal. “Seven of our laboratories were providing near real-time...