Free Republic

Close allies of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have been accused of using supernatural powers to further his policies amid an increasingly bitter power struggle between him and the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Several people said to be close to the president and his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, have been arrested in recent days and charged with being "magicians" and invoking djinns (spirits). Ayandeh, an Iranian news website, described one of the arrested men, Abbas Ghaffari, as "a man with special skills in metaphysics and connections with the unknown worlds". The arrests come amid a growing rift...

Images uploaded on the social networking site YouTube showed what is purported to be anti-government protesters in a Tehran street. Reuters is unable to verify the footage as foreign media are banned from covering protests from the streets... Meanwhile, the semi-official Fars news agency reported on Sunday that the daughter of Iran's former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was released after being detained briefly for taking part in anti-government protests. The former president remains a powerful figure in Iran as head of what's known as the Expediency Council.

IDF Northern Command believes regime in Iran may initiate attack if it feels under pressure due to anti-government protests. Talkbacks (10) Tehran could activate Hezbollah forces to attack Israel along the northern border in an effort to stave off domestic pressures within Iran, according to assessments in the IDF’s Northern Command. The concern within the army is that if the regime in Tehran feels under pressure due to anti-government demonstrations it will try to initiate an attack on an Israeli target – either overseas or near the border – to divert attention from its own troubles. Demonstrations picked up speed...

Israel cannot allow ill-advised Western leaders or ill-willed pundits to propagate new myths that make Israel the fall guy for Western fears of a crumbling Middle East. Back to Iran. It’s Iran, not Israel, Stupid by David M. Weinberg BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 130, February 20, 2011 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: An insidious new mythology is being advanced that replaces the Iranian threat with the “Israeli threat” to Middle East stability. This has the scent of incitement against, and demonization of, Israel. Political attention must be redirected where it most urgently belongs: to the Iranian contagion that is inflaming the region....

Green Movement leaders have been particularly incensed by the government's perceived double standards in condemning the Mubarak regime's violent suppression of protests when Iranian security forces used equally brutal tactics to quell mass demonstrations against Ahmadinejad's disputed reelection in 2009, which Musavi and Karrubi say was stolen. The official Iranian line was expressed by the parliament speaker, Ali Larijani, on February 10 when he told Al-Jazeera: "The Egyptians have a peaceful protest. Why are they reacting to them with bullets and violence?"

The Islamic Republic of Iran is run by evil megalomaniacs, starting with the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They are intent on hastening the arrival of the 12th Imam, the latest in the succession of imams believed  by some Islamic Shiite fundamentalists to be the direct descendants of Prophet Muhammad and the carriers of his message on earth. The 12th Imam, named  Muhammad al-Mahdi, is said to have been born in present-day Iraq in 869 AD and is still alive, waiting to come out of hiding at the appropriate time.  Hence, his alternative name: the...

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Sunday called on Muslims to "remove" the US from the Islamic world. "The main problem in the Muslim world is the presence of the United States. It is the biggest problem. We need to address that," he told a gathering of Shiite and Sunni scholars in Tehran for an international conference on Islam. "It is necessary to remove the US from the Islamic world," the all-powerful cleric and Islamic republic's commander-in-chief said, adding that the country's arch-foe was currently weak. Khamenei urged Muslims worldwide to preserve the "people's movement in Egypt," saying it...

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blasted "cancerous" Israel today, a day after its premier Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the planned passage of Iranian warships through the Suez Canal. "The fake Zionist government is a cancerous tumor and the cause of different diseases and political, economic calamity in the region," the commander-in-chief of Iran told officials while marking the anniversary of the birth of the Prophet Mohammed which in the Shiite calender fell on Monday. "The arrogance (Iran's standard term of abuse for the United States) is doing its best to preserve this war-mongering tumor, but today the hatred of regional...

Iran and Bolivia will "stick by each other" said hardline Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Tuesday, in comments sure to provoke concern in Washington. Ahmadinejad's statements came at a joint press conference with leftist Bolivian President Evo Morales in Tehran. He said the two government weren't interested in U.S. concerns about their close ties. "We will stick by each other's side and will be supportive of each other. (I) had extensive talks with Mr. Morales on this," he said. "The geographical distance between the two countries is long but our hearts, thoughts and wills are very close." Ahmadinejad also praised Morales...

Lebanese Labor Minister Boutros Harb has said that the UN investigation on the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri results will be released Monday, Army Radio reported. A UN tribunal investigating the assassination of Lebanese former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri is expected to accuse Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei of giving the order to murder Hariri, according to a Saturday report by news website Newsmax. The report suggested that the investigative body will lay out evidence showing that the murder was committed by Iran's Quds force and their allies, Hizbullah in Lebanon. The order to murder Hariri was...

In a rare public challenge to the Iranian regime, the country’s highest-ranking cleric has warned that prisoners’ confessions are invalid, signalling a deepening gulf between the political establishment in Tehran and clerical establishment in the holy city of Qom. “Confessions of prisoners have no validity and if a judge uses confessions for issuing verdicts that judge is no longer qualified,” Grand Ayatollah Hossein Vahid Khorasani told students this week, according to domestic websites including Parlemannews, which is run by reformist parliamentarians. His statement is not only a religious decree that his followers must obey but a warning from the country’s...

Iranian students burn Koran Amirkabir University - Tehran, Iran December 7, 2010 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zv4r_zKVTVo

A U.N. investigative body is expected to ignite tensions in the coming weeks when it releases its report on the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Sources familiar with the investigation tell Newsmax that the United Nations Special Tribunal for Lebanon will accuse Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei of giving the order to murder Hariri, and will lay out evidence showing that the murder was committed by Iran's Quds force and their allies, Hezbollah in Lebanon. The order to murder Hariri was transmitted to Imad Mugniyeh, Hezbollah's military leader, by Quds force chief Qassem Suleymani, sources familiar with the...

Iranian filmmaker and journalist Mohammad Nourizad has written an open letter to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei arguing that the United States does more to protect religious freedom and moral values than Iran, RFE/RL's Radio Farda reports. Nourizad -- who has been in Tehran's Evin prison since August --- wrote in his letter on October 10 that since Iran's disputed 2009 presidential election, violations of people's privacy has become more common. He said religious mobs have attacked the home of Ayatollah Yusef Sanei, a critic of Khamenei. In the United States, by contrast, he said personal privacy is strictly protected...

The hangman of Tehran may soon get a taste of his own medicine. Over the last decade, Saeed Mortazavi has jailed dozens of journalists and reformist politicians and was instrumental in squashing the opposition Green Movement after last year's presidential election. He was openly associated with some of the regime's worst post-election abuses. But in August he was stripped of his judicial immunity, and a Tehran prosecutor named him as the lead person accused in the abuses at Kahrizak prison, a notorious detention facility where at least three people were killed and a handful of others claimed they were raped.

BBC Persian is reporting that opposition figure Mehdi Karroubi has made a pointed intervention with a letter to former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, in Rafsanjani's capacity as the head of the Assembly of Experts. Karroubi's letter, sent to Rafsanjani just before this week's bi-annual Assembly meeting, called on the Assembly to exercise its powers to "monitor the functions and institutions under the auspices of Iran's Supreme Leader". Karroubi cited problems such as "a lack of independence of the judiciary and courts", the interference of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps and Basij militia in political issues, and the IRGC's expanded involvement in...

Mir Hossein Mousavi, Iran’s opposition leader has accused the government of the Iranian President Ahmadinejad of suspending government projects believing in the superstition of the arrival of the last Shiite Imam Mohammedi Mehdi, reported by several local and regional Media outlets last week. “Some government officials have predicted the coming of Mahdi soon. Therefore, the government has halted working on several important projects,” said Mousavi. Mousavi, leader of Iran's so-called Green Movement, lost last year’s highly disputed presidential elections to Ahmadinejad. Since then, he as well as many others have not recognized Ahmadinejad as president believing that election results where...

The Islamic Republic supreme leader's office issued one of the most important orders issued by the country's second leader. In sum, the order states that everyone must obey Mr. Khamenei. The order to obey Mr. Khamenei is issued by himself while in recent days political activists have sent multiple letters to ayatollah Khamenei questioning his credentials and qualifications for leadership. Most prominently, imprisoned journalist Isa Saharkhiz listed charges against the leader in court. According to the text published on ayatollah Khamenei's website, responding to a question about how one must obey the leader, he referred to himself as a "branch...

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Wednesday called on Muslims to fight the "blind and savage terrorism" fueled by U.S. and Britain, whom he blamed for deadly bombings of an Iranian mosque.

Hi waitress, I’ll take a well-done hamburger with a side order of Xanax, please. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has out-crazied Ahmadinejad, who only wrote letters to the Hidden Imam in the Jamkaran well and said he was guided by God in preparing the way for the Imam’s intervention. According to a senior cleric, Khamenei is telling his inner circle that he has actually met the Hidden Imam and that he promised to appear during Khamenei’s tenure as Supreme Leader. Yikes. I can only think of three reasons that Khamenei would tell his advisors this: 1) He’s lying, and he’s...