Free Republic

The chimpanzee has returned to Tehran, where he is unlikely to have as much fun as he did in New York. Thanks to the New York Post, we now know that in between blaming America for the 9/11 terrorist attack, Ahmadinejad had an unannounced dinner with Black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan. Wouldn’t you love to have a transcript of their conversation? One will get you ten that there were other unannounced meetings as well. One of the supreme leader’s favorite newspapers has announced the arrival in Tehran of a delegation from Oman to facilitate the release of the remaining two...

The Iranian regime loves to boast of its military strength, international clout and hold on domestic power. Much of this is accepted by outside experts, but in fact the regime is in trouble. Iran's leaders have lost legitimacy in the eyes of the people, are unable to manage the country's many problems, face a growing opposition, .... A few weeks ago, according to official and private reports, the Iranian air force shot down three drones near the southwestern city of Bushehr, where a Russian-supplied nuclear reactor has just started up. When the Revolutionary Guards inspected the debris, they expected to...

Last week the president spoke out on behalf of the three American hikers who have been held in Iran for nearly a year. During that time, they have been able to make only one telephone call — to their families back in the U.S. — and write no letter at all. Sarah, Shane, and Josh are in Tehran’s infamous Evin prison, and Sarah is locked in solitary confinement save for once a day when she goes to the prison yard and sees the others. “I want to be perfectly clear,” the president said.  And then he lapsed into incoherence.  “Sarah,...

I’ll bet you haven’t seen very much news about Iran during the past week or 10 days, have you? And yet there’s lots of news: –first of all, there is still no end to the bazaar strike, even though the regime has taken very violent action against the strikers. A large part of the beautiful bazaar in Kerman has been torched ( for that matter, regime thugs have taken to setting ablaze large sections of forest land in the region. Nor will the bazaar strikes end soon, since this week marks religious celebrations that traditionally close the bazaars all over...

The shrinking number of loyalists around the Ayatollah Khamenei are shaken by their failure to break the will of the opposition.Today is the first anniversary of the fraudulent election ... Having failed to recognize the intensity and dimensions of the opposition, many Iran observers performed a neat about-face, concluding that the regime was doomed and would be brought down in the near future. Yet while there have been many demonstrations this past year, the regime has brutally fought back, killing or arresting hundreds if not thousands of real or suspected critics.... So is the new Iranian revolution fizzling? Has the...

Roger L. Simon thinks Obama’s deranged, and Roger’s the son of a good psychiatrist, so he knows what he’s talking about. I don’t doubt that our president has his issues–just look at his nutty mother, consider the impact of being abandoned by dad–but I don’t think that just putting Obama on the couch is the best way to understand him. Put him in the classroom instead. Because he’s the stereotypical American undergrad at a stereotypical Ivy League college in the age of political correctness. He doesn’t much like America or Americans, or the “former colonial powers” like Britain. Like so...

Roger L. Simon thinks Obama’s deranged, [1] and Roger’s the son of a good psychiatrist, so he knows what he’s talking about.  I don’t doubt that our president has his issues–just look at his nutty mother, consider the impact of being abandoned by dad–but I don’t think that just putting Obama on the couch is the best way to understand him. Put him in the classroom instead.  Because he’s the stereotypical American undergrad at a stereotypical Ivy League college in the age of political correctness.He doesn’t much like America or Americans, or the “former colonial powers” like Britain.  Like so...

I wrote this a year ago, and it seems worth repeating. Tonight we Jews read the Book of Esther, and we celebrate the battle our ancestors won against the antisemites in Persia more than two thousand years ago. It could not come at a more appropriate time, as Benjamin Netanyahu organizes an Israeli Government whose main task is the protection of the Jews against antisemites in Persia. Again. Anyone who wants to learn more about the Book of Esther–and its signal importance in the history of political thought–should read Yoram Hazony’s The Dawn. It is one of those stories that...

I think the first time I grappled with this question was in an undergraduate philosophy course. The professor was a Yaley, very very smart, and loved to provoke us. His job, after all. So one day, when a famous person had died, he said in his flippant way, “obviously this man was much more important than Joe Schmoe down the block, and the society should value him more, and try harder to protect him and tend to him if he’s sick, etc etc.” And so we debated, in the way of young students. Who is to say that one man’s...

There has been a lot of ‘expert analysis’ in the past ten days saying that the Green Movement in Iran is all washed up, and that the regime is firmly in control of events there. This follows two earlier periods of ‘consensus,’ the first claiming that there was no chance of a revolution in Iran—this was the conventional wisdom even after the explosion of anti-regime passion following the fraudulent election results announced on June 12, 2009—and then a shorter, more recent, period when the success of the revolution was taken to be inevitable. The first was decisively shattered by the...

Secretary of State Clinton is quite right to say that Iran is now a military dictatorship. A note on Twitter last week put it succinctly and accurately: [The Revolutionary Guards, [aka “Sepah”] & its Commander in chief have taken over & have no intention of letting go. [Next year’s regular Army] budget is not even quarter of Sepah’s budget. - Basij is totally integrated in Sepah now. - From National police to Central command, all Sepahi & Basijis. - The Ministry of Intelligence is run by Sepah Intelligence. - [State broadcasting] & most print media are run by Sepah. -...

Khamenei, whose public statements should be taken seriously, is promising some sort of devastating “punch” against the West on Thursday the 11th, the same day as the Green Movement is calling for a monster protest against his regime. What might he have in mind? I don’t know; they say a lot of things just for effect, but threats/promises from the supreme leader have a certain standing. If I were an Israeli official, I’d recheck my information on Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad. Some think he’s preparing some kind of attack against Israel. Surely there has been no shortage in...

In their desperate search for a way to quell the growing revolt of the Iranian people against the Islamic Republic, the regime’s storm troopers are arresting, beating and assassinating the families of the leaders of the Green Movement. Sunday, as millions of Iranians took the opportunity of the Ashura mourning day to take to the streets, a hit team gunned down the nephew of Mir Hossein Mousavi. Seyed Ali Moussavi Habibi was witnessing a 4WD Neissan Patrol car running over a few people in front of his house before being shot and killed with the same people in the car....

The secretary of defense let off some steam on his airplane, warning of the terrible consequences of leaking information about internal government policy debates. He’s “appalled.” Navy Times tells us that Gates said that “disclosures of sensitive information on any ‘options under consideration’ does not serve the nation well. Nor are they in the military’s strategic interests..” When I first came to Washington, and for many years thereafter, I thought leaks were just awful. How dare they? Among other things, I thought–and this I still think–that it has a chilling effect on internal debate. Because if you’re afraid that your...

Turkish prime minister Erdogan has flown back home after a 2-day visit to Tehran. It was a big deal in all senses of the term. He went to Iran with a large delegation, including three ministers, many businessmen, leaders of Parliament, scads of reporters, and television crews. He met with Iranian Foreign Minister Mottaki, “President” Ahmadinejad, and other ministers. According to Iranians who were involved in the meetings, the two countries reached agreement on many issues, the upshot of which is a considerable tightening of the working alliance between them: –The creation of a joint airline; –The creation of a...

Speaking publicly about the role of Iran in Afghanistan--which is substantial, and about which we have considerable information--seems to be taboo for our current leaders. This is neither new nor surprising. Iranians, and Iranian-trained terrorists from organizations such as Hezbollah, have been killing Americans for years. The Bush administration, for example, had similar information about Iran's role in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and top officials did their best to suppress it. According to reporter Bob Woodward, a top State Department official knew that Iran had committed "acts of war" against our troops in Iraq and kept that information from the...

Perhaps it will help put things in context by looking at the supreme leader’s recent movements. On October 5th he went from Tehran to Now Shar, where he visited a naval base and academy. Later that day he went to the city of Chaloos, preached a sermon, delivered a speech and returned to Now Shar. On the 6th he traveled by automobile to Ramsar, a very beautiful resort city, and which is graced by a palace of the late shah. Khamenei was supposed to spend three days there, but he wasn’t feeling well, and complained of difficulty in breathing. He...

Friday evening, Mark Levin spoke with Michael Ledeen about Iran and his new book 'Accomplice to Evil: Iran and the War Against the West.' Ledeen says of the situation in Iran, "The Supreme Leader is in a coma ... When an evil man dies, it is never bad." (Audio interview plus links and evidence of Iran's involvement in 9/11 after the jump.)

I suppose it’s a tribute to the president’s tenacity, or perhaps his inability to think outside the box of conventional wisdom, but he seems to be totally unwilling to accept a Divine gift. He’s facing some terrible foreign policy decisions, decisions he doesn’t want to make, and he’s right to want to avoid them, because whichever way he tilts, it’s going to be bad for him. Take Afghanistan. McChrystal and Petreus have told him that if he doesn’t go all in, to the tune of forty thousand or so additional American fighters, he’s likely to see the war there go...

The Obama administration's talks with Iran—set to take place tomorrow in Geneva—are accompanied by an almost universally accepted misconception: that previous American administrations refused to negotiate with Iranian leaders. The truth, as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said last October at the National Defense University, is that "every administration since 1979 has reached out to the Iranians in one way or another and all have failed." After the fall of the shah in February 1979, the Carter administration attempted to establish good relations with the revolutionary regime. We offered aid, arms and understanding. The Iranians demanded that the United States...