Free Republic

World leaders weigh in after Egypt's army commander announces that president had been removed The Egyptian army's suspension of the constitution and removal of President Mohamed Morsi has drawn mixed responses from world leaders: European Union The EU has called for a rapid return to democracy in Egypt. EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said: "I urge all sides to rapidly return to the democratic process, including the holding of free and fair presidential and parliamentary elections and the approval of a constitution, to be done in a fully inclusive manner, so as to permit the country to resume and...

With violence raging across the Middle East (which is nothing new), the threat of Islamic jihads grows ever stronger. For decades, most of the countries in the Middle East were ruled by dictators or strongmen. While some of them sponsored terrorism, they did manage to keep a lid on jihadist groups, but that situation has now changed dramatically. Since Obama promoted the "Arab Spring", we have seen multiple countries thrown into turmoil and ruling strongmen toppled. While Obama and the progressive left naively believed that this would lead to pro-democracy and pro-Western governments, the result has been anything but. Just...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Syrian tanks were closing in on the rebel-held town of Qusair last month when a Kuwaiti sheik named Hajjaj al-Ajmi and his money machine roared into action. In a series of urgent messages on his Twitter account, Ajmi appealed for cash to help save the town’s defenders. “I hope that we can be a means for helping them and relieving them,” the young cleric wrote to his 250,000 Twitter followers on May 25. He gave a phone number for making donations and asked readers to “kindly spread it.” The appeal came too late for the...

There was a huge outpouring an faith and devotion as more than 8,500 worshippers from across the United Arab Emirates celebrated the first Mass at the emirate’s new Catholic church on Friday the 14th June 2013. It was one of the biggest ever turnouts, with residents travelling from across the country despite the summer heat for the consecration of the Saint Anthony of Padua Church in Jazirat Al Hamra. Residents from Dubai and Abu Dhabi, many of whom had taken the bus with family and friends, arrived an hour before the 10am mass to find a place in the 1,200-seat...

Even if we have often reported the presence of the F-22 Raptors at Al Dhafra, satellite imagery showing five radar evading planes parked at the main airbase in the UAE has been made publicly available for the first time recently. The aircraft, parked next to an F-15E Strike Eagle, are five of the six F-22 that had (more or less secretely) deployed in South East Asia from Holloman New Mexico, via Moron, Spain, on Apr. 20, 2012. The image is not only interesting because it shows the main U.S. Air Force plane about 100 miles from Iran, but also because...

MANAMA, Bahrain (AP) — The U.S. Navy is putting underwater drones through wartime-style drills as part of international mine-clearing exercises in the Persian Gulf following similar maneuvers by Iran. The U.S.-led exercises, which began last week, include operations by the unmanned SeaFox devices, which are equipped with sonar and an explosive charge designed to shoot and destroy mines. It is part of the Navy's plans to increasingly deploy automated surveillance and protection systems, including aerial drones. Navy commanders insist the exercises, comprising more than 41 nations, are not intended solely against possible Iranian threats. But Iran has previously warned it...

Ahwazi Organization: Iran is Planning to Attack the Gulf Countries; Iran is Producing Chemical Weapons and Burying the Waste in Ahwaz On October 5, 2009, Alarabiya.net posted an interview with an Arab Ahwazi man who was presented as a former undercover agent for the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The man claimed that 40,000 well-trained operatives, mostly Shi'ites, are in the service of Iran in the ArabGulf states - 3,000 of them in Kuwait alone. He stated that the cells formed by these operatives were trained to collect intelligence, sabotage installations in the Gulf region, and assassinate senior officials. He...

United Arab Emirates said they would break ties if Saudi Arabia did...now its only Pakistan which has ties with the Taliban...they are running out of friends quicker than Saddam did in 1991.

British newspaper reports Israel will agree to joint effort with regional powers to counter Iran, "fundamentalist crescent". Israel has been working toward a cooperative agreement in compliance with Turkey and three Arab states to implement an allied system of detection technologies to defend against Iranian ballistic projectiles, British newspaper The Sunday Times reported. The initiative, termed "4+1", reportedly proposes joint efforts to be taken by Israel along with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan to share access to radar and anti-missile technologies, according to the Times. Under the initiative, Israeli technicians would gain access to data from...

A U.S. female sailor beat a bus driver and would-be rapist into submission when she was on a 24-hour shore leave in the United Arab Emirates. Court records from Wednesday show that the woman, age 28, hopped on the bus at Dubai’s Mall of the Emirates shopping center on Jan 19. “I noticed he did not take the main road and when I asked him he told me not to worry,” she said the Daily Mail reported, according to The Washington Times. The Times report continued: He then stopped where several other buses were parked and tried to kiss her....

'NY Times' reports deal to address Iranian, other regional threats; Israel to be 1st foreign military to receive V-22 Osprey. The US Department of Defense is nearing the finalization of a $10 billion arms deal with Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, The New York Times reported Thursday. The arms sale is aimed at bolstering defenses against possible future Iranian threats, the report said. According to the Times, Israel would be permitted to purchase from American contractors the KC-135 refueling tanker planes, "anti-radiation" missiles that target air-defense radars, new advanced radars for jets and the V-22 Osprey aircraft....

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Defense Department is working out final details of $10 billion in sales of warplanes, transport aircraft and advanced missiles to Israel and two Arab nations amid concerns about the growing threat from Iran and its disputed nuclear weapons program, Pentagon and congressional officials said Friday. The U.S. has spent the past year negotiating with Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on the deals, which come ahead of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel's visit to the Middle East starting Sunday. The officials said the United States will sell to Israel an undisclosed number of KC-135 aerial...

Venezuela Receives 13 Russian Armored Vehicles MOSCOW, March 28 (RIA Novosti) – Armed forces in Venezuela have received a new batch of Russian amphibious combat vehicles, the Moscow-based Center for Analysis of Global Arms Trade said on Thursday. Thirteen BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicles were delivered by sea to the port of Puerto Cabello, the center said. This marks the first report of an arms delivery by sea to Venezuela since the death of President Hugo Chavez in March. Venezuela ordered a total of 123 BMP-3 vehicles in 2009, with the first delivery made in 2011, the center said. It is...

“Promised Land,” the anti-fracking film written and produced by Hollywood stars Matt Damon and John Krasinski, was made in part by a production company owned by the government of Arab oil emirate Abu Dhabi – a state in direct competition with American oil and gas producers. The film is financed in part by Image Nation Abu Dhabi, a subsidiary of Abu Dhabi Media which is owned by the government of Abu Dhabi, one of 13 Arab emirates that makes up the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and serves as that country’s capitol.Abu Dhabi media was created by the Abu Dhabi government...

Essam al-Erian, deputy head of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, called on Egyptian Jews to leave Israel to the Palestinians and return to their own homeland. Their presence in Palestine contributes to the Zionist occupation of Arab lands, and every Egyptian has the right to live in his country — nobody can deny that, Erian said during an interview on the privately operated Dream TV on Thursday. “Why did Nasser expel them [the Jews] from Egypt?” he asked, claiming that Nasser’s decision contributed to the occupation of other Arab lands. "Egyptian Jews should refuse to live under a...

The Bashar al-Assad rule in Syria has come under heavy fire from people who believe that the regime must quit over its atrocities. But any attempt by the US-led West to impose a replacement will backfire soon India’s oil-rich western neighbourhood, extending from the Arabian Sea to the Bosporus, is engulfed in conflicts arising from sectarian and civilisational rivalries, aggravated by the meddling of external powers. With an arsenal of over 100 nuclear weapons, Pakistan is today witnessing a period of internal strife, largely arising from the pernicious role of its military establishment and tensions across its disputed borders with...

The UK , France and Israel showed signs this week of lining up for military action with regard to Syria and Iran as soon as America’s presidential election was out of the way Tuesday, Nov. 6, military sources report. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu spent two days (Oct. 31-Nov. 1) talking to President Francois Holland. As the Defense Minister Ehud Barak landed in London the next day, Prime Minister David Cameron was reported on standby for the dispatch of RAF fighter-bombers to the Persian Gulf. Barak flew to London after US Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of...

A new film starring Matt Damon presents American oil and natural gas producers as money-grubbing villains purportedly poisoning rural American towns. It is therefore of particular note that it is financed in part by the royal family of the oil-rich United Arab Emirates....(Excerpt)

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE urged their citizens Wednesday to leave Lebanon immediately amid threats by members of a Lebanese clan who kidnapped earlier in the day over 30 Syrians, as well as one Saudi and one Turkish national. Saudi Ambassador Ali Awad al-Asiri, who is in Mecca, told the National News Agency he requested all Saudi nationals in Lebanon to leave the country after “the threats have become open.” … The Meqdad clan said Wednesday it abducted over 30 individuals it described as belonging to the Free Syrian Army, which it claims was behind the kidnapping Monday...

Syria will be suspended from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation on Wednesday for its violent suppression of a 17-month uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, a diplomat said on Monday ahead of an emergency OIC summit in Mecca. "The resolution regarding the suspension of the Syrian membership in the OIC is not facing obstacles ... It will be approved," said the diplomat, speaking on the sidelines of a preliminary foreign ministers meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He said the decision was likely to be formally announced at the end of the second day of the summit, which was called by Saudi...