Free Republic

During a speech on the occasion of Friday prayers in the Iranian city of Mashhad which commemorated this week’s second anniversary of the US killing of IRGC General Qassem Soleimani, the top commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force (who was Soleimani’s replacement) vowed to take vengeance “from within the US”. Iranian state and other foreign regional media featured Brigadier General Esmaeil Qaani’s ultra-provocative words, translating them as follows: “We will prepare ground for the hard revenge against the US from within their homes, as we do not need to be present as supervisors everywhere.” IRGC Quds...

Rabbi Hamnami Lalehzar tells PressTV that eliminated general "played key role ..."

Brig. Gen. Terryl Schwalier was stunned when he read the account of the June 25, 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia that appeared in my recent book, Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran. I was writing many years after the fact, drawing on sources from inside Iranian intelligence but also on published U.S. government reports. It was those U.S. reports that prompted General Schwalier to contact me a few months ago. “You paint a picture of significant government awareness that “Iran was up to something” in the months prior to the Khobar Towers attack,” he wrote...

The mastermind of the 1996 Khobar Towers terrorist attack that killed 19 Americans has been captured, U.S. and Saudi officials said on Aug. 26. The arrest of Ahmed al-Mughassil, who was described by the FBI in 2001 as the leader of the armed wing of the Saudi Hizbullah group, was one of the FBI’s most-wanted terrorists. The arrest concluded a nearly two-decade manhunt.

Khobar Towers June 23, 2006 The Wall Street Journal Louis J. Freeh Ten years ago this Sunday, acting under direct orders from senior Iranian government leaders, the Saudi Hezbollah detonated a 25,000-pound TNT bomb that killed 19 U.S. airmen in their dormitory at Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The blast wave destroyed Building 131 and grievously wounded hundreds of additional Air Force personnel. It also killed an unknown number of Saudi civilians in a nearby park. The 19 Americans murdered were members of the 4404th Wing, who were risking their lives to enforce the no-fly zone over southern Iraq....

According to an inside source, the military collaborations between Iran's Revolutionary Guards and the Gaddafi government date back to 2006.In an interview today on the Al Arabyia news network, an informed source within the Revolutionary Guards Corps revealed that Iran has several military bases in Libya. The source, who requested anonymity due to his sensitive position within the Guards, elaborated further that the Iranian military bases are located mostly along Libya’s borders with the African countries of Chad and Niger. From there, he said, the Guards actively smuggle arms and supply logistical assistance to rebellious groups in the African countries.According...

Israel shared three cell phone numbers used by Qasem Soleimani with U.S. intelligence in the hours before American drones unleashed Hellfire missiles on the Iranian general last year, Yahoo News reported Saturday. The revelation sheds new light on the role that Israel played in the killing of Soleimani, who the State Department says was responsible for hundreds of U.S. troop deaths as the head of the Revolutionary Guard's elite Quds Force. The drone strike occurred shortly after midnight on Jan. 2, 2020, as Soleimani and his entourage were leaving Baghdad's international airport. As three Delta Force sniper teams monitored Soleimani...

The three sniper teams positioned themselves 600 to 900 yards away from the “kill zone,” the access road from the airfield, setting up to triangulate their target as he left the airport. One of the snipers had a spotting scope with a camera attached that livestreamed back to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, where the Delta Ground Force commander was based with support staff. Long-range marksmanship involves contesting with a variety of environmental factors, including wind, but the Delta teams didn't rely on guesswork. A member of the Counter Terrorism Group (CTG), an elite Kurdish unit in northern Iraq with...

A new propaganda music video paying tribute to Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Gen. Qassem Soleimani, depicts Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) forces destroying the U.S. Capitol building in Washington D.C. On Sunday, Kasra Aarabi, an Iran analyst for the Tony Blair Institue tweeted a clip of the video, depicting an explosion at the Capitol, which was aired on Iranian state tv ahead of a speech by Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. “Today pre-Khamenei talk, Iran state TV aired this clip depicting an IRGC attack on #Congress Yes, it’s propaganda. But it shows the anti-US ideology of #IRGC, which...

The raids took place after government spokesman Ali Rabiei had stated that Iran’s intelligence ministry was investigating the source of a recently-leaked interview with Zarif. The IRGC Intelligence Unit is a rival organisation to the Ministry of Intelligence, which is the country’s equivalent of the CIA and the FBI. In the recorded interview, which was leaked to Iran International last weekend, Zarif had told journalist and economist Saeed Leylaz that he believed Iranian diplomacy had been "sacrificed" to the regime's military interests. He described alleged efforts by former IRGC Quds Force commander Ghasem Soleimani and Russia to sabotage the Joint...

A linguist for the Department of Defense pleaded guilty on Friday to passing classified information about U.S. human intelligence sources to an individual with ties to Hezbollah, a Lebanese terrorist organization, the Department of Justice said. Mariam Taha Thompson began sending the information after the U.S. killed Qassem Soleimani, a top Iranian military commander, in an airstrike in early 2020, according to court documents. Thompson, who held a top secret security clearance, had been stationed at a Special Operations Task Force facility in Iraq from mid-December 2019 until her arrest a few months later. Years before she began passing classified...

Colin Kahl opposed sanctions on IRGC, condemned killing of Iranian terror chief Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee are meeting privately on Tuesday morning to discuss their growing policy concerns about Colin Kahl, President Joe Biden's nominee for undersecretary of defense for policy at the Pentagon, according to sources close to the committee. Kahl, a former Obama State Department official, was a key architect of the Iran deal and has been at the forefront of a number of controversial moves, including, reportedly, the decision to remove a statement affirming Jerusalem as Israel's capital from the 2012 Democratic National Convention...

President Joe Biden's administration is moving to revoke the designation of Yemen's Houthis as a terrorist group, citing the need to mitigate one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters.President Donald Trump's administration had branded the Iranian-backed Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization, a move that limited the provision of aid to the beleaguered Yemeni people, who have suffered under a yearslong civil war and famine.A senior State Department official confirmed the move Friday after members of Congress were notified of the administration’s plans. The official, who wasn't authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the removal...

Multiple air traffic controllers in New York heard a chilling threat Monday in audio obtained exclusively by CBS News: "We are flying a plane into the Capitol on Wednesday. Soleimani will be avenged." The threat refers to Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian general killed last year in a U.S. drone strike ordered by President Trump. It was made on the one-year anniversary of Soleimani's death, for which Iranian officials have long vowed revenge. It's unclear who sent the threat. While the government does not believe the warning of an attack is credible, it is being investigated as a breach of aviation...

Iran’s state media has alleged that in addition to the United States, several countries, including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Germany and Britain, had played a role in the assassination of its senior military leader Qassem Soleimani. Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike on January 3, 2020, while visiting Baghdad. According to DEFA Press, more countries would be added to the list once the investigation into Soleimani’s killing is completed. “We must learn from this experience, which came at a great price, and we must make every effort to preserve national unity and cohesion that was achieved...

The protest will go on as planned tomorrow against the coronavirus restrictions endorsed by the incoming Governor of Utah Republican Spencer Cox. The protest to be held as Cox's motorcade heads to an ampitheater in southern Utah for his inauguration... Court hearings for two Washington restaurants opened in spite of COVID-19 restrictions imposed by Democrat Governor Jay Inslee set for Tuesday... The British police crackdown on protests opposing the coronavirus lockdowns and restrictions in the country continued this weekend... British Prime Minister Boris Johnson pushing tighter controls and restrictions in the coming weeks... Restrictions that have been imposed in the...

On Jan. 3, 2020, at 12.47 AM LT, a U.S. drone strike killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force, along with members of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), including Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Iraq’s PMF militias. The attack occurred just outside Baghdad International Airport, in Iraq, where Soleimani had just arrived (from Lebanon or Syria) to bring Iran’s response to a letter that Iraq had sent out on behalf of Saudi Arabia in order to ease tensions between the two countries in the region, according to Iraqi prime minister Adil Abdul Mahdi....

The global anti-American alliance is now on full display in the Middle East, with Iran at the lynch point. The headlines have told us about the coordination of Iranian/Iraqi/Syrian/Russian/Chinese activities, and of course there is a division of labor. That was all worked out in recent weeks in a series of Iranian visits to Moscow (General Suleimani, who commands the Revolutionjary Guards’ foreign ops, twice traveled to Russia in open defiance of existing sanctions). Basically, the Russians are sending some crack troops and their favorite heavy weapons (tanks, big guns). It goes via an Iranian air bridge and thence across...

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani declared that President Donald Trump will be dead ''in a few days'' during a speech to his Islamic nation’s cabinet as the first anniversary of the killing of a general in the country’s military approached. Rouhani’s Wednesday speech, excerpts of which were posted in English on the Iranian presidential website, called Qasem Soleimani a ''martyr'' and ''moderate leader with tact.''

Trump Tweets Surprise Threat To Iran After Latest Attack On Baghdad Embassy President Trump in a surprise late Wednesday tweet has directly blamed Iran for the Sunday rocket attack on the US Embassy in Baghdad, which according to prior reports involved eight ground-fired rockets targeting the compound. It comes as the USS Georgia nuclear submarine is currently deployed to the Strait of Hormuz in very open signaling that the Pentagon is prepared to react to any possible escalation form the Islamic Republic. Trump cited intelligence chatter in his latest statement on Twitter, saying, “Our embassy in Baghdad got hit Sunday...