Free Republic

Among the world’s present-day religions, Zoroastrianism, founded more than 3,000 years ago, is one of the most ancient and historically influential. Yet even though its adherents maintain vibrant communities on four continents, they acknowledge their numbers are dauntingly small — perhaps 125,000 worldwide. Starting Friday, about 1,200 attendees from 16 countries will be assessing their faith’s prospects during the four-day World Zoroastrian Congress in New York City, the first one held in the United States since 2000. The agenda reflects a keen awareness of the challenges facing their religion. Prospects for growth are limited, given that Zoroastrians don’t seek to...

Persian-language thriller running on Iran’s state television accused of blurring lines between fiction, realityA popular television series, purportedly based on real-life stories, has stirred controversy in Iran after the country’s top diplomat slammed it as a “complete lie.” The rebuke came after an episode aired last week was reportedly censored following the intervention of a senior government official, according to local media reports. Gando, named after a rare species of crocodiles found in the country’s southeast, features Iranian intelligence sleuths and foreign spies as main protagonists in different episodes – stories that the makers claim are based on true incidents....

Inside the government, some officials called her “Wayward Storm.” Her real name was Monica Elfriede Witt, an exemplary Air Force counterintelligence agent who had studied Persian and carried out covert missions in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. But by mid-2013, Ms. Witt had become disillusioned with the government — why, exactly, remains a mystery — and had left the military. Thoughts of betrayal consumed her, federal prosecutors now say, until she finally acted on them at the Iranian Embassy in Kabul, where they say she “told all.”

Iran's Health Ministry said on Monday nearly the whole country was on a coronavirus red alert as cases and deaths rose to record levels, with a member of the state task force's warning field hospitals might be needed if people flout the rules. Ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari told state television that 26 of Iran's 31 provinces were "red" zones, the highest alert level, while four were at the next "orange" level. Authorities registered a record high 3,902 new cases in the past 24 hours, with the total number of identified cases in the worst-hit country in the Middle East...

President Donald Trump's top Russia expert on the National Security Counsel is reportedly on leave pending a security investigation. Andrew Peek, the NSC’s senior director for European and Russian affairs, was escorted from the White House grounds on Friday, two people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. Peek had been in the NSC role for just two months, after most recently working as a deputy assistant secretary of state with responsibility for Iran and Iraq. Peek had been expected to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland next week with Trump and other top aides. However, he is currently...

Peek went on to major in international politics at Princeton, study Persian, and pursue a master's in international relations at Harvard before heading to D.C. as a foreign policy researcher for the conservative Heritage Foundation. He then became a foreign policy adviser to Oregon Senator Gordon Smith, a Republican. When Smith lost his next election, Peek went on to work for another Republican senator, Mike Johanns of Nebraska, on Syria and Lebanon policy, helping to draft a bill expanding sanctions on Hezbollah. In 2008, he enlisted as a reserve officer in the Army and spent a year in Afghanistan at...

President Trump's tweet in Farsi expressing his support for Iranians protesting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has already earned over 200,000 likes, making it the "most liked Persian tweet" in the social media giant's history, according to a leading think tank adviser. On Saturday, protesters in the country called upon Khamenei to step down after Iran admitted to shooting down a commercial airliner on which dozens of Iranian citizens were traveling. That evening, the president sent out a tweet in Farsi, saying that he stands with their efforts. “To the brave and suffering Iranian people: I have stood with you...

“To the brave and suffering Iranian people: I have stood with you since the beginning of my presidency and my government will continue to stand with you. We are following your protests closely. Your courage is inspiring.”

The United Kingdom defended the actions of the Trump administration in Iran, saying the United States is “entitled to defend itself” against Iranian aggression and deploying the Royal Navy to the Persian Gulf to protect shipping vessels flying the British flag. The Secretary of State for Defence, Ben Wallace, expressed support for America’s decision to take out Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qasem Soleimani, citing the violence committed in Iraq by Iran-backed militias. “During the last few months U.S. forces in Iraq, who are based in Iraq at the invitation of the Iraqi government, have been repeatedly attacked by Iranian-backed...

Caption -- Borobudur: hardly Chinese The author is former foreign secretary of India sibalkanwal@gmail.com The West has built a lot of myths about China which others, including in India, have accepted without challenge. That China was for centuries the dominant power in Asia and is now on the way to recovering that lost status is one such myth. This historical distortion is serving to legitimize China's hegemonic ambitions, as if China has the right to recover its natural position in Asia and any resistance amounts to denying the Chinese their due. This explains why even when China is aggressive...

... There are about 150,000 Christians living in Iran, most of them Armenians, who celebrate Christmas in churches and at home. As children are attracted by the tradition, many Muslim families have adopted some of the customs and buy presents for the kids as well as Christmas trees...

How the Jihad ravaged Christian Byzantium for 800 years, and how valiantly the Byzantine Christians held back the Arab and Turkish hordes, saving Europe from Islam. [ Full title ]. While the Zoroastrian Persians were defeated and were being subjugated, the Muslim hordes turned on their other neighbor the Christian Byzantines. The two armies met at the battlefield of Heiromyak. Lessons from the Battle of Heiromyak (Al Yarmuk). At the Battle of the Yarmuk (river), between the Muslim Arabs and the Byzantines, the Muslim Arabs were losing the battle in the initial stages. When the victory seemed certain for the...

The student who said he was attacked, eighth-grader Omid Babakhani, 13, said he was walking with a friend to his locker when a familiar voice behind him said, “Hey, Persian,” then, “Do you want to fight a black man?" Crystal Lake School District 47 Superintendant Kathy Hinz said the incident happened in the school hallway as the boys were walking out of lunch. She said there is supervision at all times in the lunchroom and in the hallways.

(Reuters) - Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei controls a business empire worth around $95 billion - a sum exceeding the value of his oil-rich nation's current annual petroleum exports - a six-month Reuters investigation shows. The little-known organization, called Setad, is one of the keys to the Iranian leader's enduring power and now holds stakes in nearly every sector of Iranian industry, including finance, oil, telecommunications, the production of birth-control pills and even ostrich farming. Setad has built its empire on the systematic seizure of thousands of properties belonging to ordinary Iranians - members of religious minorities, Shi'ite Muslims,...

WASHINGTON - A nearly 2,600-year-old clay cylinder described as the world's first human rights declaration is being shown for the first time in the United States. The Cyrus Cylinder from ancient Babylon ... The cylinder carries an account, written in cuneiform, of how Persian King Cyrus conquered Babylon in 539 B.C. and would allow freedom of worship and abolish forced labour. The account also confirms a story from the Bible's Old Testament, describing how Cyrus released people held captive to go back to their homes, including the Jews' return to Jerusalem to build the Temple.

Isn’t this cute. Obama is sucking up to the Mullahs in Iran with a special ‘Nowruz Message’ translated into Persian. I wonder how much tax payer money was wasted on this latest version of Obama pandering to radical Islamists? The Nowruz message to Iran was released shortly before Obama popped onto Air Force One and headed to the Middle East.

Iran is rapidly gaining new capabilities to strike at U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf, amassing an arsenal of sophisticated anti-ship missiles while expanding its fleet of fast-attack boats and submarines, U.S. and Middle Eastern analysts say. The new systems, many of them developed with foreign assistance, are giving Iran’s commanders new confidence that they could quickly damage or destroy U.S. ships if hostilities erupt, the officials say. Although U.S. Navy officials are convinced that they would prevail in a fight, Iran’s advances have fueled concerns about U.S. vulnerabilities during the opening hours of a conflict in the gulf. Increasingly...

Underscoring its desire to keep U.S. aircraft carriers from the Persian Gulf, a senior Iranian military commander today announced his possible plan to ambush the American fleet. Chalk this one up to more bluster, or part of a mounting back and forth rhetoric headed nowhere good, either way - Tehran plans to rely on its subs. Lieutenant Commander of the Iranian Army's Self-Sufficiency Jihad, Rear Admiral Farhad Amiri told Fars that Iran has the finest electic diesel submarines in the world, and that while the U.S. has focused on Tehran's "astonishing surface capabilities," it has forgotten about the underwater threat....

"He's been trying to play the Persian nationalist card, for instance, which is very, very popular in Iran, particularly among those who despise the Islamic Republic," Parsi says. "Whether he will be successful in that, of course, is a different matter. But it shows that he is himself aware that he needs to have a stronger platform and constituency in order to continue this effort of his."

TEHRAN -- Natural environmental factors have been added to the perils threatening the Shush Castle, a historical monument that is a storehouse of many ancient Iranian inscriptions and artifacts. Heavy rainfalls and strong winds have dealt devastating blows to the castle, the Persian service of the Mehr News Agency reported on Monday. The Shush Castle is located on a hill in Shush near the ancient sites of Susa in Khuzestan Province in southwestern Iran. The construction of the Shush Castle was started in 1897 by the French civil engineer, geologist, and archaeologist Jacques Jean-Marie de Morgan (1857-1924), who had come...