Free Republic

"Azerbaijan thwarts terror attack against Israeli, Jewish targets Security official in Baku links Iran to planned operation; three men detained." SNIPPET: "Three men were detained last week after planning to attack two Israelis employed by a Jewish school in Baku, the Azerbaijan Ministry of National Security has revealed. Meanwhile, an Azeri commentator considered close to the republic's president has launched a scathing indictment of Iran. The Azeri ministry said it had arrested a cell that planned to "kill public activists," before it became apparent that the intended victims were two Israeli Chabad emissaries, a rabbi and a teacher employed by...

A military source tells Fox News the strange incident on the tarmac Wednesday at Camp Bastion that occurred moments before Defense Secretary Leon Panetta arrived via C-17 was an attempted attack.

SNIPPET: "Azerbaijan has arrested 22 people on suspicion of plotting attacks on the US and Israeli embassies in Baku on behalf of neighbouring Iran, the national security ministry said Wednesday." SNIPPET: ""On orders of the Sepah they were to commit terrorist acts against the US, Israeli and other Western states' embassies and the embassies' employees," it said. The ministry said that the suspects were recruited from 1999 onwards and trained in the use of weapons and spy techniques at military camps in Iran to enable them to gather information on foreign embassies, organisations and companies in Azerbaijan and stage attacks,...

..Urges Them to “Hate It in Their Hearts” Below is my translation of an Arabic-language paper published by the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA) in 2007, and presented at their 2008 careers conference in Houston, which provides guidelines for American Muslims on what they can and cannot do vis-à-vis infidel legal systems. The paper makes clear that according to Islam, the only legitimate law is that which comes from Allah, and in fact authority to make laws rests with Allah alone. This renders every other legal system—including the American system—illegitimate. Since the fact nevertheless remains that many Muslims...

Nicolas Sarkozy received £42 million from Muammar Gaddafi in funding for his 2007 presidential election campaign, it was claimed on Monday. The “terms” for handing over the money were agreed in a meeting between the two men in Libya two years before Mr Sarkozy’s election, documents published by a French investigative website suggest.A memo obtained by the Mediapart site and handed to a judge alleges that the meeting on Oct 6, 2005 resulted in “campaign financing” of “NS [Nicolas Sarkozy]” being “totally paid”. At the time Mr Sarkozy was France’s interior minister with well-documented ambitions to succeed Jacques Chirac. Political...

A state-owned Chinese bank that had agreed to finance the Pakistani section of a gas pipeline from Iran that is opposed by the United States is no longer interested in the project, a Pakistani finance ministry spokesman said Wednesday.

Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah met with senior Hamas figures on Monday to discuss regional developments, Lebanese newspaper Al-Sapir reported. According to the report, published Wednesday, Hamas' delegation was headed by Deputy Politburo Chief Moussa Abu Marzouk. The meeting in Lebanon focused on the latest round of violence between Israel and Gaza, the uprising in Syria and the Muslim Brotherhood's ties to Hezbollah and Iran.

The United States has warned that the six-nation negotiations on Iran's nuclear program in April would be the last chance for Tehran to prevent a U.S. attack, the Kommersant daily said on Wednesday. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the sidelines of a UN Security Council meeting in New York on Monday to relate this point to the Iranian authorities, the paper said.

The United States has asked Russia to deliver an ultimatum to Iran, warning the Islamic Republic that it has one last chance for talks before a military strike, the Kommersant daily quoted Russian diplomats as saying on Wednesday. According to the Russian newspaper, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in New York on Monday to tell Tehran that it has one last chance to solve the conflict peacefully by making progress in the talks with the P5+1 group - United States, Britain, France, Russia, China, and Germany. Otherwise, an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities...

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was summoned to parliament on Wednesday for an unprecedented grilling by lawmakers who accused him of economic mismanagement and making "illegal" appointments. Less than two weeks after a drubbing in parliamentary elections, Ahmadinejad became the first president in the Islamic Republic's history to be called before the legislature which has the power to impeach him if unsatisfied with his answers. Traditionalist factions who express complete loyalty to Iran's most powerful figure, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have been trying to summon Ahmadinejad for months over what they say are repeated challenges to the supreme leader's authority. Emboldened by...

The decision by the Iranian people to vote for deputies loyal to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei -- the staunchest anti-Western political camp in the country -- in last week’s parliamentary elections showed they are preparing for an assumed attack on their country as a result of Iran’s alleged nuclear enrichment program, political observers have argued. The Khamenei loyalists’ religious faction, which includes the Iranian elite Revolutionary Guards in its ranks, won a big victory in last week’s Iranian parliamentary elections over incumbent President Mahmud Ahmedinejad’s party, taking 75 percent of Iran’s 290 parliamentary seats. Speaking to Sunday’s Zaman last week, Hasan...

A Vancouver, Wash., man accused of sending letters containing white powder to members of Congress fell under FBI scrutiny after his wife told an officer that he laced the envelopes with a mixture of celery salt and corn starch. The FBI focused on Christopher Lee Carlson, 39, after a Vancouver police officer told them about a March 4 interview she had with Carlson's wife about Carlson's recent emotional turmoil, The Oregonian reported. --SNIP-- The sender wanted an "end to corporate money and `lobbying,'" an end to corporate "personhood" and a new constitutional convention. The Associated Press obtained a copy of...

The Afghan parliament demanded on Monday that a US soldier accused of killing 16 civilians, including nine children, be put on trial in Afghanistan as a growing tide of local anger added to the pressure on the US-led war against the Taliban. The murders have triggered a new spike in anti-western sentiment just weeks after furious protests erupted after the discovery of burnt copies of the Koran at a US base. US officials have rushed to condemn the killings and pledged that the accused soldier will face justice. The sergeant detained on Sunday is accused of going house to house...

Vladimir Putin was expected to get around 64 percent of the vote for his latest seizure of the Russian presidency, and so he did. And a very nice number it is too, not too little and not too much. These arrangements are simplicity itself. Employees of the state, including the armed forces, are ordered which way to vote. Buses transport all sorts of innocents and dupes from the provinces to vote early and often. Loyalists feed the voting booths with bundles of votes from absentees to create what is jocularly known as the “carrousel” effect — one fellow was actually...

President Obama and Gen. David Axelrod may have thought they had the Afghan war exit strategy tied up in a neat package with U.S. troop withdrawals beginning in time for this fall's American presidential campaign. But a combination of unforeseen recent events have seriously complicated the Democrats' plans and could leave the U.S. exit looking more like an organized retreat, not the images any incumbent commander-in-chief wants in voters' minds come the start of early voting in early October. After more than a decade of post-9/11 war to oust the Taliban and secure Afghanistan from again becoming a safe haven...

Today, at noon Eastern, the storied aircraft carrier Enterprise, aka CVN-65, left its home port of Naval Station Norfolk one final time for its final voyage with a heading: Arabian Sea, aka Iran. There in a week it will join CVN 72 Lincoln and CVN 70 Vinson, as well as LHD 8 Makin Island, all of which are supporting any potential escalation of "hostilities" in the Persian Gulf region.

White House moves to put GOP on defensive over Iran, Israel policiesBy Jeremy Herb - 03/11/12 12:10 PM ET President Obama ramped up his attacks on his Republican rivals last week, pushing back at the idea his polices are anti-Israel. Obama used a speech at the pro-Israel American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference and a press conference to try to put Republicans on the defensive over Iran. He ripped the GOP presidential field for employing overheated rhetoric on the campaign trail about going to war to prevent the country’s nuclear program, and sought to portray himself as supportive of...

Meir Dagan has been described as "hard-charging" and "stops at nothing." For more than eight years, Dagan made full use of those qualities as chief of Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, where he focused on keeping Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. When that job ended, Dagan did something unheard of for an ex-Mossad chief: he spoke out publicly, voicing opposition to Israel launching preemptive airstrikes against Iran's nuclear facilities anytime soon. Dagan believes the Iranian regime is a rational one and even its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - who has called for Israel to be annihilated - acts in a somewhat...

Ex-Gov. Bill Richardson is one of several former top U.S. government officials pocketing large fees to speak in support of an Iranian group that is listed by the United States as a foreign terrorist organization. Richardson, a former energy secretary and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was in Washington, D.C., in January and in Paris in February to call on the State Department to remove the Mojahedin-e Khalq, or MEK, from the terror list. During the ’70s, the MEK killed U.S. military personnel and U.S. civilians working on defense projects in Tehran and supported the takeover in 1979 of...

They say that it’s only in hard times that you really see who your true friends are. What separates opportunistic partnership from genuine alliance isn’t necessarily treaties, but a willingness among both parties to hang onto their relationship when the going gets tough. With Iran’s growing isolation over its nuclear program, China’s ties with Tehran are being put to the test as never before. As the European Union and the United States tighten the noose around Iran’s oil exports – constituting 80 percent of government revenues – and key financial institutions, including the Iranian Central Bank, Tehran is in desperate...