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Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, addressed a gathering of Iranian teachers on May 6 who repeatedly responded to his address by chanting in unison: “Allah is great! Khamene’i is the leader! Death to the enemies of the leadership! Death to America! Death to England! Death to the hypocrites! Death to Israel!” According to an English-language transcript of the speech published by the BBC, the Iranian teachers interrupted the ayatollah with chants calling for death to America, England and Israel at three points in his speech. “We say that teachers carry out the task of the prophets; this is the...

On MSNBC's Sunday afternoon programming hosted by network anchor Alex Witt, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said "death to America" chants in Iran could be read "in a couple of ways," not necessarily in the literal sense. Schiff argued Ayatollah Khamenei's chants "really plays to the conservative crowd" in Iran. "Or, it could be of course that he really means it," Schiff also argued.

Iran Holocaust cartoon contest receives hundreds of submissions • Over 300 artists from Iran and countries such as France, China sent in entries for controversial competition Hundreds of people from Iran and around the globe submitted entries for the Islamic Republic's Second International Holocaust Cartoon Contest, a competition official announced Monday. "839 artworks have also been sent to the secretariat, 686 of them have been sent to the cartoon section and 153 more are related to caricature section," Secretary Masud Shojaei-Tabatabaii told the semi-official Fars News Agency, marking the second time since 2006 that the country has held the controversial...

The nuclear "deal" with Iran and The Israeli-Palestinian "peace process" The tempest that has recently blown over the US-Israel relations has one unique source, the personality and far-leftist ideology of one man, President Obama: his narcissistic belief and arrogant unilateral acts that are anathema to the American political system; his intolerance to dissenting views that brook no dissent from the other co-equal branch of government, the US Congress or from a foreign Prime Minister such as Netanyahu; his disdain of the US Constitution and his violation of its most cherished tenets; and his vindictive and punishing reactions against those who...

The “open letter” from Senator Tom Cotton and 46 other Republican senators to the leadership of Iran, which even Republicans themselves admit was aimed at encouraging Iranian opponents of the nuclear negotiations to argue that the United States cannot be counted on to keep the bargain, has created a new political firestorm. It has been harshly denounced by Democratic loyalists as “stunning” and “appalling”, and critics have accused the signers of the letter of being “treasonous” for allegedly violating a law forbidding citizens from negotiating with a foreign power. But the response to the letter has primarily distracted public attention...

Iran has selected a new figure to head its national Assembly of Experts, a body that governs the tenure of the Supreme leader, state news agency FARS reported on Tuesday. Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, a cleric who had served as the head of Iran's Judiciary branch between 1989 and 1999, was among other candidates considered for the position, both of whom are senior clerics in the Islamic Republic's regime and hold the title of Ayatollah. Yazdi's selection to this new position comes in light of reports that the current Supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, who suffers from stage four prostate cancer, was...

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has claimed that heightened anti-Israel sentiments across the globe serve as a sign of "divine help" in the Islamic Republic's fight against its arch enemy. "Increasing global hatred of #Israel is a sign of divine help," he wrote late Monday on Twitter.Iran's leading cleric came out against the pro-Israel lobby, American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the group's annual confab on Monday. The premier warned of the existential threat a nuclear Iran would pose to Israel during his speech at the AIPAC conference, which came ahead of his...

Just in time for Purim, the Jewish holiday celebrating the redemption of the Jewish people from plots of genocide in ancient Persia, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was reportedly hospitalized in critical condition on Wednesday. According to Arab media reports cited by Israel Hayom, Khamenei was urgently brought to a hospital in Tehran after several of his bodily systems had already failed. The reports add that the 76-year-old supreme leader of the Islamic regime has undergone surgery and remains in critical condition. Recently it has been reported that he was suffering from prostate cancer which had spread to additional...

Iran’s supreme leader seized on Islamic terrorists’ murder of Christians by asserting this week that since the 1979 Islamic revolution, Muslims in Iran have never committed offenses against non-Muslims. Religious freedom activists consider the Iranian regime to be among the world’s worst persecutors of Christians, Baha’i and other non-Shi’ite Muslim minorities. “In Iran after Islamic Revolution, there is no record of an offense being done by Muslims ag[ai]nst non-Muslims,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei tweeted to his one hundred thousand Twitter followers. …

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has responded to overtures from Barack Obama amid nuclear talks by sending the US president a secret letter, the Wall Street Journal has reported. Citing an Iranian diplomat, the paper said the cleric had written to Obama in recent weeks in response to a presidential letter sent in October. Obama’s letter suggested the possibility of US-Iranian co-operation in fighting Islamic State if a nuclear deal was secured, the paper said, quoting the diplomat. Khamenei’s letter was “respectful” but noncommittal, it quoted the diplomat as saying.

Dem think tank secret email: ‘All hands on deck’ to sell Iran deal to public By Adam Kredo Published November 12, 2014 Washington Free Beacon A leading liberal think tank in Washington, D.C., has begun enlisting its associates in an “all-hands-on-deck effort to support” the Obama administration as it seeks to ink a nuclear deal with Iran by the end of the month, according to emails obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The Truman National Security Project, a nonprofit think tank with ties to the administration, is assembling a “crack team of writers” to flood national and local media outlets...

A top adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei may join talks in Oman between the United States and Iran in the coming days, in a sign that a breakthrough may be imminent in reaching a nuclear deal, Al-Monitor has learned. Ali Akbar Velayati, longtime foreign policy adviser to Khamenei and a former Iranian foreign minister, may join the talks between US Secretary of State John Kerry, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and European Union negotiator Catherine Ashton, in a signal that the Supreme Leader may be preparing to sign off on a deal, sources told Al-Monitor on...

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama secretly wrote Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the middle of last month and described a shared interest in fighting Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, according to people briefed on the correspondence. Mr. Obama stressed to Mr. Khamenei that any cooperation on Islamic State was largely contingent on Iran reaching a comprehensive agreement with global powers on the future of Tehran’s nuclear program by a Nov. 24 diplomatic deadline, the same people say. The October letter marked at least the fourth time Mr. Obama has written Iran’s most powerful political and religious leader since...

President Obama’s reported outreach to Iran to beseech the Islamic Republic to think about shared interests in fighting ISIS is raising eyebrows in Congress, where criticism of the administration is mounting over Obama’s reluctance to bring a nuclear deal before lawmakers.The Wall Street Journal reported [1] that Obama secretly wrote to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last month, with the dual purpose of getting help on fighting ISIS and paving the way toward the Nov. 24 P5+1 nuclear-deal deadline.Khamenei has declared that Iran will never give up its nuclear program.The report emerged a few days before Secretary of State...

By/Major Garrett/CBS News/November 6, 2014, 9:23 PM Obama writes private letter to Iranian leader WASHINGTON -- U.S. officials confirm President Obama sent a letter to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in mid-October, as first reported in the Wall Street Journal. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest would neither confirm nor deny the letter's existence. "I'm not in a position to discuss private correspondence between the president and any world leader," Earnest said Thursday. When asked about secret negotiations with Khamenei, Iran's top political and religious leader, Earnest said the White House "also" conducts private briefings with key members of Congress...

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday called Israel a “rabid dog” for its attacks on Gaza, and urged Muslims to arm Palestinians to enable them to counter what he termed genocide. […] In a speech marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, Khamenei criticized the United States and European countries for what he said were their efforts to limit the military capacity of Palestinian fighters in the enclave. Of Israel, he said: “This rabid dog, this rapacious wolf, has attacked innocent people and humanity must show a reaction. This is genocide, a catastrophe of historical...

(Ayad) Allawi, the son of a Shiite businessman, joined the nationalist Baath party when he was a medical student, but in the 1970s, became an opponent of Saddam, who had already begun using brutal methods to steer the country. Today, 11 years after Saddam’s fall, violence, corruption and abuses of power still dominate daily life in Baghdad. Allawi blames Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for this chaos. […] “I have nothing against the Iranian leadership. In fact, I accommodated it often enough during my time as premier. But I am no proponent of a theocracy. I am a secularist. I wanted...

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei marked the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women with a series of Twitter messages extolling women, but U.N. rights experts paint a bleak picture of Iran’s treatment of women, especially those in prison. Several other Islamic countries also have a poor record when it comes to treatment of women, with abuses including female genital mutilation, stoning for adultery, and “honor” killings—the murder of women accused of bringing family honor into disrepute by their behavior. … A September 2012 report by the U.N. “special rapporteur” on human rights in Iran noted that...

(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,...