Free Republic

"Iranian people's feelings toward Israelis are not as bad as you think," Saeed Kharazi Zadeh, a greying Iranian IT engineer told me after I introduced myself as a reporter for The Jerusalem Post. Zadeh was part of the Iranian delegation which had a booth at the UN Summit on Information Society held in Tunis November 15-17. I reminded the 48-year-old government employee that in October his president declared that "Israel should be wiped off the map." I told him that many Israelis fear that Iran would indeed try to attack Israel. Zadeh laughed incredulously. "There have been many terrorist actions...

Tehran, 22 Nov. (AKI) - Iran's religious authorities in the holy Shiite city of Qom have officially invited Cuba's revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, to convert to Islam, according to Hojatolislam Mohammad Reza Hakimi, quoted by Iran's Farda news agency. "I met Castro together with the Iranian foreign minister, Saiid Salili, and gave him some sacred Islamic texts translated into Spanish," said Hakimi, who recently returned from a government visit to Cuba. "We spoke with Castro for several hours, and I think I almost managed to convince him to become a Muslim," Hakimi added. "Castro certain that Cuba is suffering from...

The Bible is full of praise for Persia (today's much-maligned Iran) and for its rulers. In the Book of Ezra, God speaks through the proclamations of Cyrus, the king of Persia, who declares, "The Lord God of Heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem." Cyrus acceded to this divine command, and thus was the Second Temple in Jerusalem built. In other parts of the Old Testament, there is ringing praise of Cyrus as God's "anointed" and the "chosen" ruler, who freed Jews from their Babylonian...

LEWISTON — The Bush White House is the most corrupt administration in U.S. history since President Warren G. Harding's, said Howard Dean during his first visit to Maine as chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Dean's comments Saturday came as top White House advisers are being investigated for their roles in the outing of a CIA operative and Tom DeLay, the former second-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, faces conspiracy and money-laundering charges. "The first thing we're going to do is we're going to have ethics come back to Washington again," said Dean, the keynote speaker at Saturday night's...

Al Muhajiroun (Khavarej) is referred to a clandestine group of four who cooperated to assassinate four leaders at promptly the same time: Imam Ali who was a religious leader (the fourth Suni's Khalif and the first Shiite's Imam), Moavieh who was the leader of the land, Amro Aas who was a canning politician and a senior advisor to Moavieh, and - Of the four only one, namely Ibn Moljam, successfully carried out his assassination by wounding Imam Ali with a poisonous sword, during the Imam's pray. Imam Ali died of his wound on the third night, the 21st, of Ramadan....

<p>Former President Jimmy Carter has been linked with a key figure in the U.N.'s oil-for-food scandal by the group leading the nationwide effort to evict the United Nations from American soil and halt U.S. funding of the U.N.</p>

The ineptitude of the administration of President James Earl ("Jumma") Carter seemed to me for a long time simply to be what happens when you put a bumbling, indecisive naif in a position of serious power. Lately, however, I've come to see the dark side of Jimmy Carter, and let me tell you, it's not only ugly and disgusting, it's pathologically dangerous. Neither Jumma nor Bubba, the two surviving Democrat ex-Presidents, has the decency or the respect for the office he once held to keep his pie-hole shut and refrain from criticizing the current Commander-in-Chief. But of the two, although...

TEHRAN, Iran - To shouts of "Death to America," Iran's parliament unanimously approved the outline of a bill Sunday that would require the government to resume uranium enrichment, legislation likely to deepen an international dispute over Iran's nuclear activities. Still, Iran's top nuclear negotiator Hossein Mousavian told The Associated Press there was a 50 percent chance of a nuclear compromise with European nations. [...] Some lawmakers broke out with shouts of "Death to America!" after the conservative-dominated parliament after lawmakers voted to advance the nation's nuclear program, an issue of national pride that provides a rare point of agreement between...

why on earth would Kerry tell the Council on Foreign Relations in December that, if elected, he would abandon the president's war on terror, begin a dialogue with terrorist regimes and apologize for the "years of mistakes by the Bush administration"? In an article in the March issue of Insight magazine, author Kenneth R. Timmerman described the meeting: "Kerry promised to spend the first 100 days of his administration traveling the world to denounce his predecessor, apologize for his ‘radically wrong' policy, and seek ‘cooperation and compromise` with friend and foe alike." Timmerman cited a seven-page e-mail, "confirmed as authentic...

I know that I'm little bit late in posting this thing-they've already finished the first segment-but I've always abided by the motto: "Better late, then never."Farah Pahlavi is discussing her husband, her recently published book (An Enduring Love), and the future of Iran.

Nobody else is saying it, so, once again, it is left to me to explain what really happened in Iraq yesterday. Iran declared war on the U.S. The signs have been there for a long time. I don't know if they have been intentionally ignored by U.S. forces in Iraq, or whether there is some master plan at the Defense Department to deal with this scenario. All I can tell you is we are now fighting a regional war. Our local opposition in Iraq is being trained, armed and directed with foreign support – by neighboring Iran. The uprising yesterday...

It's on the right, in English. I'm not suggesting any responses, just select what you know.

The Democratic Party's presidential front-runner, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., has pledged that if elected he will abandon the president's war on terror, begin a dialogue with terrorist regimes and apologize for three-and-one-half years of mistakes by the Bush administration. In a sweeping foreign-policy address to the Council on Foreign Relations in December, Kerry called the U.S. war on terror as conceived and led by President Bush "the most arrogant, inept, reckless and ideological foreign policy in modern history."

DEBKAfile Special Report This week, Israel's Iranian-born defense minister Shaul Mofaz made the unique gesture of answering questions from listeners in Iran - in their own language - in a live broadcast over Israel Radio's Farsi-language service. The questions came thick and fast. In answer to one, he promised everything would be done to protect the environment against radioactive fallout should Israeli forces destroy Iran's nuclear capability. Shaul Mofaz was only six when his family emigrated from Iran to Israel. His knowledge of Farsi is rudimentary at best. But that didn't stop the Israeli defense chief from getting his message...

Of the three countries that composed the axis of evil -- Iraq, Iran and North Korea -- without a doubt it is Iran that represents a double axis of evil: It serves as the largest terror nucleus in the Middle East, and also possesses a selection of nuclear resources -- plutonium, enriched uranium and centrifuges. Iran is right behind North Korea in realizing its nuclear capabilities, involving a huge financial investment, in a country rich in oil, but whose citizens are condemned to poverty. Americans are just now beginning to understand the dangers posed by a nuclear-armed Iran. A recent...