Free Republic

Fifty people on the terror watch list have been apprehended at the Southern border so far this year, and there is no telling how many got across without being caught. And now Old Joe Biden’s handlers have opened up a new way for terrorists to get into the United States: Iran International English reported late Friday that “the Biden admin has decided to lift a controversial ban on the entry into US of Iranian men who’d been conscripted into IRGC, a Foreign Terrorist Organization, as part of their compulsory military service, as they don’t ‘pose a national security or public...

Tehran, 17 Jan. (AKI) - One of the five Iranians arrested last week by the US army in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil is wanted in Austria in connection with the assassination of Kurdish leader Andol Rahman Ghassemlu in 1989. Mahommad Jaafari Sharoudi was one of five Iranian officials detained last week in the Kurdish-controlled city on charges of being connected to a faction of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the Pasdaran, that funds and arms insurgents in Iraq. Abdol Rahman Ghassemlu, the historic leader of Iranian Kurds, was killed in an apartment in the outskirts of the Austrian capital...

The Revolutionary Guard Corps has "gained primacy" in Iran since the 2009 presidential election, fueling fears there that the country is becoming militarized, a Pentagon-sponsored study said Tuesday. The study by the RAND Corporation also urged US policymakers to take "great care" in their statements regarding Iran in order not to give the leadership a pretext to divert attention from domestic troubles, like the economy. The disputed election was "a watershed event" in the Islamic republic's history "that has altered elite relationships and solidified the position of the Islamist right and the Revolutionary Guards in Iranian politics," it said. In...

Despite the lingering demonstrations and disorder in Tehran, Iran’s ruling mullahs are confident anew in their country’s ability to surge to a hegemonic position in the Middle East without a major war. The main reason for the mullahs’ confidence is their interpretation of the appeasement policies of the US Barack Obama Administration. Most significant is the undeclared – yet widely projected – profound change in US policy regarding Iran’s nuclear program. Tehran and all other regional governments are convinced that the US now strives to “contain” a nuclear Iran rather than continue the declared objective to prevent the nuclearization of...

No, this is not satire from The Onion. If only it were, we could laugh instead of cry. Laura Rozen reports in Politico: The U.S. has condemned a suicide attack that killed five Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps members today. Five commanders of Iran's Revolutionary Guards were killed in suicide attacks in Iran's southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan province bordering Pakistan, according to reports. The Baluch group Jundullah claimed responsibility for the attack, that killed some 30 people. Iranian authorities have accused the group of receiving funding from foreign countries including the United States. The US has denied supporting Jundullah. "We condemn this act...

Iranian dissidents blow up bridge in protest at President Ahmadinejad's second term By Con Coughlin : August 3rd, 2009 As Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is sworn in for his second term in office today, Iranian opposition groups have intensified their attacks against the regime in protest at the controversial election result. In the latest incident, a leading opposition group is being blamed for blowing up a key railway bridge at Ahwaz in southern Iran. The bridge, which is used by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to transport military supplies, was destroyed in the early hours of Saturday morning. According to reports now...

WASHINGTON — The US Senate has called for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to be officially designated a “foreign terrorist organisation,” a day after the House of Representatives passed a similar measure. The Senate on Wednesday voted 76-22 for the non-binding amendment sponsored by Republican Jon Kyl and independent Joseph Lieberman to place the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, or Pasdaran, on the US terrorist blacklist.

Istanbul, 28 Feb. (AKI) - Retired Iranian general and former deputy defence minister, Alireza Asghari, has gone missing during a private visit to Turkey, Arab and Iranian newsreports said on Wednesday. Asghari arrived in the Turkish city on a flight from Damascus and after checking into the Hotel Ghilan has not been seen since, the reports said. Asghari is a former general in the hardline Pasdaran or Revolutionary Guard, and served in the cabinet of former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami. Baztab, an internet site linked to the Pasdaran, reported that Ashgari may have been kidnapped. Baztab recently reported that Asghari's...

Tehran, 29 Jan. (AKI) - Iran's Revolutionary Guard, the Pasdaran, have threatened to abduct US troops if Washington does not release five Iranian officials kidnapped in the northern Iraqi town of Erbil in a raid on Tehran's consulate earlier this year. In an article published by the Pasdaran's mouthpiece, Sobhe Sadegh, the director of the centre for strategic studies of the Iranian presidency, Reza Zakeri, also says Iran will retaliate against any further abduction of Iranian nationals. Five Iranian officials were detained in the Kurdish-controlled city on charges of being connected to a faction of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the...

TEHRAN, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Iran is demanding the immediate release of five Iranians held by U.S. forces in Iraq, a foreign ministry spokesman said on Sunday, adding that the five are diplomats. The five were arrested on Thursday in the northern Iraqi town of Arbil and the U.S. military has accused them of links to an Iranian Revolutionary Guard group that provides weapons to Iraqi insurgents. "Americans should immediately release the five Iranians and pay compensation for the damages they caused to our office in Arbil," Mohammad Ali Hosseini told a weekly news conference, adding the five were...

Tehran, Aug. 13: One of Osama bin Laden’s sons, Saad, together with a number of top Al Qaeda commanders, including Seif al Adel, are hiding in Iran and are not in Syria as reported by several Western papers this week, a well informed source said. The source, a top Iranian intelligence official until a few months ago, said Al Qaeda and members of Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard, the Pasdaran, are negotiating coordinated actions against the United States and Israel. The Al Qaeda members had been living for the past four years in a neighbourhood in northern Tehran under the surveillance...

Following the signing of an agreement for $7 billion between Iran’s Oil Ministry and the Khatam al-Anbiya Reconstruction Organization belonging to the elite Passdaran Revolutionary Guards Corps, informed sources have expressed their concerns that the events that had in the past followed the Passdaran’s intrusion into business activities at the expense of murders, imprisonment of investors, suspension of investments, and the flee of managers would be repeated again, and there would be no body to contain the destructive consequences of the trend. The disclosure of the events that led to this large contract, and the purchase of shares of the...

An Iranian military plane crashed in the northwest of the country on Monday, killing 13 people including the head of the Revolutionary Guards ground forces, Iranian news agencies reported. The crash came barely a month after a decrepit Iranian military transport plane crashed into the foot of a high-rise housing block after suffering engine failure. A total of 108 people were killed.

While European negotiators focus on Iran's development of enriched plutonium, U.S. intelligence officials say Tehran already has completed all of the elements required for an atomic bomb. The news has stunned President Bush, according to Geostrategy Direct, an intelligence news service led by national security reporter Bill Gertz of the Washington Times. "It's an incredible piece of intelligence that overshadows everything we thought we knew on Iran's nuclear program," one U.S. intelligence source said.

An agent of Iran's prestigious Jerusalem Force was arrested in Iraq carrying money and planning attacks against U.S. troops, sources said. U.S. Coalition forces arrested members of an underground armed group operating in Iraq's eastern Diyala province Thursday. Among them was a senior member of the Jerusalem Force carrying $150,000 in cash, said the sources.

TEHRAN, IRAN-November 28, 2004 — The 300 men filling out forms in the offices of an Iranian aid group were offered three choices: Train for suicide attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq, for suicide attacks against Israelis or to assassinate British author Salman Rushdie. It looked at first glance like a gathering on the fringes of a society divided between moderates who want better relations with the world and hard-line Muslim militants hostile toward the United States and Israel.

Citing an "unimpeachable source," Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri are in Iran, according to a Fox News analyst. Al-Zawahiri was seen within the last two weeks, and bin Laden was spotted in July, says the network's foreign affairs analyst Mansoor Ijaz. The report dovetails with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's announcement last summer that he had sent his own army into the northern tribal areas near the border with Iran to ferret out bin Laden. "That was an extraordinary admission at the time, one that I could not understand how he could make if bin Laden, in...