Free Republic

Pardon the lengthy excerpt, but this piece from Frederick W. Kagan & Paul Bucala begins with lots of need-to-know information: Iranian officials have labored to conceal the extent of their involvement in the Syrian conflict, repeatedly insisting that they are only training, advising, and assisting Syrian forces. The announcements of Iranian casualties reported by Iranian media and social media tell another story. Careful analysis of the ranks and unit affiliations of Iranians reported as having been killed in Syria demonstrates that IRGC officers are leading soldiers in combat and not merely advising. Comparisons of the casualty data with the dates...

The Obama administration has spent three years engaged in secret talks with Iran that resulted in the payment of nearly $2 billion in taxpayer funds to the Islamic Republic, with more payouts likely to come in the future, according to a recent letter issued by the State Department and obtained exclusively by the Washington Free Beacon. The administration’s disclosure came in response to an inquiry launched in January by Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.), who was seeking further information about the Obama administration’s payment of $1.7 billion in taxpayer funds to Iran, which many viewed as a “ransom payment” for...

With voters in the winner-take-all state of Arizona set to vote next Tuesday, presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) picked up a big endorsement out of the Grand Canyon State. U.S. Rep. David Schweikert, a fellow Republican, represents Arizona's Sixth Congressional District and was first elected to Congress. He is a recognized reform leader in Washington, D.C. "My top priority in Congress has always been to do what the Washington insiders simply refuse to do, and that is to reduce the size and cost of government and save our nation from the crushing debt that the Washington politicians have...

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz said on Sunday that the protesters at rival Donald Trump's rallies are behaving "abusively and wrong," but added that it doesn't help when the GOP front-runner encourages violence. "At the end of the day in any campaign, responsibility starts at the top," the Texas senator said on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday. "And it is not beneficial when you have a presidential candidate like Donald Trump telling his supporters, 'Punch that guy in the face.' We ought to have a president who brings us together, who doesn't seek to divide us." Cruz said on...

Even in the midst of an astounding 2016 presidential campaign that is gripping the attention of most Americans, the U.S. - Iran nuclear deal is back in the news. The IAEA says that, so far, Iran appears to be in compliance. But that is not the whole story. Now we learn that the regime of the Ayatollahs has a new program to support Palestinian murderers of Israelis. Iran has committed to give $7,000 to families of attackers who have used knives, hammers, scissors and other crude implements to kill and maim. For families that have their homes destroyed by Israel...

In open defiance of recent US sanctions on Iran's ballistic missile program, Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan on late Tuesday told local media that Tehran will soon be rolling out an upgrade of its nuclear-capable medium-range Emad missiles. The "next generation of Emad with improved precision" will be unveiled in the next Iranian year which starts on March 20, Dehghan said as cited by the semi-official Fars News Agency. Emad is said to have a 1,700 kilometer range, putting Israel and much of eastern Europe squarely in its sights. [...] In light of an Iranian Emad test on October 10,...

MADISON, Wis. - Former U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold spent part of his first interview of the election year defending President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran - a deal most Americans are leery about, to say the least. The Democrat, who is running against U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson to reclaim the seat he lost in the 2010 Republican revolution, said it's only right to talk about the "great things the president has done." "He has accomplished some foreign policy goals we have had for a very long time," Feingold told Sherwin Hughes, host of "The Forum," Friday on Milwaukee's 860 AM,...

The head of Iran's atomic energy organization announced on Tuesday that the Islamic Republic, with assistance from Russia and China, will move forward on the construction of two new nuclear power plants, according to comments published in Iranian state-controlled media. Ali Akbar Salehi, who heads the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, told Iranian reporters that construction on these new nuclear plants will begin in the "near future," according to Fars News Agency. "Construction of two 1000-MW power plants will start soon," Salehi was quoted as saying. "We will build two other small power plants too in cooperation with China," he...

Saudi Arabia is not ruling out developing a nuclear bomb if its regional rival Iran obtains one, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told the Reuters news agency on Tuesday. Asked if Saudi Arabia had discussed seeking a nuclear bomb in the event Iran managed to obtain one, al-Jubeir replied the country would do "whatever we need to do in order to protect our people". "I don't think it would be logical to expect us to discuss any such issue in public and I don't think it would be reasonable to expect me to answer this question one way or another,"...

We believe, based on comments made by two remarkable experts on this subject, Dr. Peter Pry of emptaskforce.org and Ambassador Hank Cooper of highfrontier.com, the latter of whom worked in the Reagan Administration, that Iran already has the bomb and is working on figuring out how to get it into a vehicle and send it our way. It will not, however deliver annihilation to any single city or cities in the conventional sense. That would be pointless, futile and suicidal. Instead, working together with North Korea, they will seek to take out our electric infrastructure and anything electronic via satellites...

Unlike most of his fellow rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, real estate mogul Donald Trump would not rescind President Barack Obama's nuclear deal with Iran. "I've heard a lot of people say, 'We're going to rip up the deal.' It's very tough to do when you say, 'Rip up a deal,'" Trump said Sunday on NBC's "Meet The Press." Instead, the businessman who is currently leading GOP polls in the race for the White House promised to "police" Iran to make sure the country doesn't break the terms of the agreement.

"Apocalyptic Islam doesn’t want to simply attack us, it wants to annihilate us,” Rosenberg told me during an interview broadcast on my podcast. “Apocalyptic Muslims like the leaders of Iran and the leaders of the Islamic State believe that we are living in the End Times and that it’s their mission from Allah to bring about the end of the world as we know it.” Rosenberg describes Apocalyptic Islam as a subset of Radical Islam. “We’re not talking about 1.6 billion Muslims,” he said. “We’re talking about ten percent or less who are radicals.” But ten percent of 1.6 billion...

Iran has removed the core of its heavy-water nuclear reactor in Arak and filled it with cement, the BBC reported on Monday, citing Iran’s semiofficial Fars news agency. The fate of the reactor was one of the sticking points in nuclear negotiations between Iran and the six world powers, which reached a deal in July of last year. Under the terms of the deal, Iran agreed the heavy-water reactor would be reconfigured so it was not capable of yielding material for a nuclear weapon. Behrouz Kamalvandi, the spokesperson for Iran's atomic energy agency, told the Etemad newspaper on Monday Iran...

Senior Obama administration officials are expressing concern that congressional attempts to tighten laws preventing terrorists from entering the United States could violate the Iran nuclear agreement and prompt Tehran to walk away from the agreement. Congress is considering measures that would tighten the Visa Waiver Program to make it harder for potential terrorists to legally enter the United States by increasing restrictions on individuals who have travelled to countries with prominent terrorist organizations from bypassing security checks upon entering the United States.

Obama Admin: Congressional Crackdown on Terror Will Violate Iran Deal ‘Iran Czar’ tells Congress nuke deal prohibits congress from restricting terrorist visas BY: Adam Kredo December 21, 2015 Senior Obama administration officials are expressing concern that congressional attempts to tighten laws preventing terrorists from entering the United States could violate the Iran nuclear agreement and prompt Tehran to walk away from the agreement.Congress is considering measures that would tighten the Visa Waiver Program to make it harder for potential terrorists to legally enter the United States by increasing restrictions on individuals who have travelled to countries with prominent terrorist organizations...

Iran did work related to developing nuclear arms in the past, the U.N. atomic agency concluded in a report Wednesday that wraps up a near decade of investigations and opens the way to implementing a landmark deal aimed at reducing any future nuclear threat from Tehran. Iran has consistently denied any interest in nuclear arms or past work on such weapons, and Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqhchi told Iranian television that the International Atomic Energy Agency report "confirms the peaceful nature" Iran's nuclear program. But the report contested that view and came down on the side of U.S. allegations,...

President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran took another hit on Tuesday, as word arrived via Reuters that the Iranians have stopped dismantling centrifuges in two of their uranium enrichment plants. The stoppage comes “days after conservative lawmakers complained to President Hassan Rouhani that the process was too rushed.”

Iran's test this weekend of a new surface-to-surface ballistic missile "likely" violated a U.N. resolution, an administration official told CNN on Monday. Based on information the administration has so far, the test appears to be in violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1929, which stipulates that Iran cannot engage in any activities related to ballistic missiles.

Sometime this week, President Obama is scheduled to sign an executive order to meet the Oct. 15 “adoption day” he has set for the nuclear deal he says he has made with Iran. According to the president’s timetable the next step would be “the start day of implementation,” fixed for Dec. 15. But as things now stand, Obama may end up being the only person in the world to sign his much-wanted deal, in effect making a treaty with himself. The Iranians have signed nothing and have no plans for doing so. The so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)...

Hopefully someone will bring this up on conservative radio and cable news. Obama is against us possessing weapons so we can protect our families, yet has no problem allowing Iran to build nuclear weapons that could someday wind up here!, Well? Does this make any sense to you? And we all know that any lunatic thats wants to kill will do so even if he can't find a weapon. Remember that Terrorist Attack In Boston?