Free Republic

Turkey's leaders have called Israel the "West's spoiled child," and the "bully" of the eastern Mediterranean. When a Tel Aviv soccer team showed up in Istanbul recently for a match, the welcome was less than warm. In September, Turkey kicked out the Israeli ambassador, suspended military and trade deals and threatened legal and naval action to challenge Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip. As roars of approval went up around the Arab world, few noticed another announcement quietly slipped in by Ankara: Turkey had signed off on a plan to host an American X-band radar system as part of a...

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Saturday that National Public Radio reporter Mary Louise Kelly lied to him and broke an off-the-record agreement. “NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly lied to me, twice,” Pompeo said in a statement. “First, last month, in setting up our interview and, then again yesterday, in agreeing to have our post-interview conversation off the record.” Pompeo and his staff said Kelly agreed that an interview with the secretary would be about Iran but that she asked questions about Ukraine and United States Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. Kelly revealed on NPR that Pompeo afterward berated her...

Economic sanctions against Iran are having an effect, experts who spoke with The Epoch Times agreed. Yet views diverged on the nature of the impact and on how big of a role sanctions have played in the Islamic regime’s reluctance to escalate after the assassination of a top general. Gen. Qassem Soleimani was killed in Baghdad on Jan. 3 by a missile fired from a U.S. drone. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the strike a preemptive move to keep Soleimani from executing an “imminent” attack on American assets. In retaliation, Iranian leaders ordered ballistic missile strikes that on Jan....

US Ambassador to the United Nation Kelly Craft slammed Iran and supported Israel at the United Nations Security Council debate on the Middle East last Tuesday, as reported by the Jewish News Syndicate. She urged council members to focus on Iran instead of Israel. “While the world criticizes Israel, Israel is making the world a better place. The council should not lose sight of this fact,” she said. “Our failure to address Iran’s central role in destabilizing the region sends a powerfully damaging message to those seeking lasting peace and prosperity in the region.” Craft urged the council to “focus...

A new poll shows Americans are more likely than not to support President Donald Trump’s decision to order a drone strike that killed an Iranian general, even amid widespread skepticism about his foreign policy overall. The poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research was taken about two weeks after the Jan. 3 strike that killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Iraq. It found that 41% of Americans approved of the action while 30% disapproved of it. The rest didn’t express an opinion either way. …

Iran was dealt a severe blow with the strike that killed Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani. Yet because of Iran’s core interests, the danger to U.S. servicemembers in Iraq is far from over. Instead of playing politics, Washington must realize that risking the lives of American forces in a gamble to reduce Iranian influence in Iraq isn’t worth it and may be self-defeating. Just look at the history of America and Iran.Many Americans view this history as starting in 1979 when, during the Iranian Revolution that overthrew the shah, Islamic radicals stormed the U.S. embassy in Iran and held...

U.S. troops last weekend reportedly found themselves in a standoff with Russian forces trying to gain access to key oil fields in northeastern Syria. The Saturday standoff — first reported by Turkish media outlets, citing unnamed local officials in the Turkey-Syria border region — seems to have ended without any shots being fired or any real risk of violence between the two sides. American military personnel reportedly stopped a Russian convoy near the town of Rmelan, and the Russian forces then apparently turned back and returned to their home base. Still, the near-clash serves as a reminder of the high...

What underlies the rage of the Democrat Party and of the leftist Democrat Establishment vis-à-vis President Donald Trump? Over forty years ago, during my high school years in Iran, my father and I had a conversation. He was an avid Republican, even though he lived on the other side of the world. Right before I prepared to leave Iran for the U.S., he gave me some fatherly advice. He explained why the Democrat Party was bad for America, bad for Iran, and bad for the world. He advised me that if I ever became a US citizen, I should never...

THE vicious jihadist terrorist organisation, Islamic State’s West Africa Province, ISWAP, also known as Boko Haram sect has beheaded abducted Chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, in Michika Local Government Area of Adamawa State, Rev. Lawan Andimi.

The Iran deal was never meant to stop Iran from building a bomb—it was supposed to delay it until disaster happened on someone else’s watchIn the wake of the targeted killing of Iranian terror master Qassem Soleimani, an interesting fight has broken out—after Donald Trump failed to brief them in advance of the strike, Democrats began fulsomely criticizing the president. This led Republican lawmakers to accuse their counterparts across the aisle of pro-terrorist sympathies. Maybe Republicans are still sore that Barack Obama compared them to Iranian hardliners like Soleimani for denouncing his signature foreign policy initiative, the Iran nuclear deal,...

Iranian authorities last week arrested Fatemeh Mohammadi, a woman who converted to Christianity, and was transported to a secret location. The Persian-language news agency HRANA first reported on Mohammadi’s arrest. According to the website Article 18, which seeks to promote religious freedom, “The 21-year-old, who after her conversion now prefers to be known as Mary, was reportedly arrested on Sunday near Azadi Square, where protests were taking place following the Iranian government’s admission of guilt in the downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane.” Article 18 said, “A number of protesters were reportedly arrested on Sunday evening, as protests took place...

In April 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took over Iran; months later 52 American diplomats and citizens, as well as citizens of other nations, were kidnapped and held hostage for 444 days in the US Embassy in Tehran. How far has America fallen in just 41 short years? We have fallen so far that the most popular Democratic candidate for president in 2020 is a hardcore Socialist Communist who sided with Iran and against America during the 1979 Iranian Hostage Crisis. That same man in 2020 displays an open hatred for Israel and is still siding with Iranagainst America. Of course,...

A year and a half into Donald Trump’s presidency, Henry Kissinger set out a theory. “I think Trump may be one of those figures in history who appears from time to time to mark the end of an era and to force it to give up its old pretences,” he told the Financial Times. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that he knows this, or that he is considering any great alternative. It could just be an accident.” A term has been coined to describe this notion: Ryan Evans of War on the Rocks calls them “Trumportunities.” It is the idea that,...

The impoverished Yazidi community survived ISIS genocidal attacks but has been targeted repeatedly by Turkey since 2017. Turkey again carried out a targeted assassination of Yazidi members of a far-left group in Sinjar in northern Iraq on Wednesday, according to local reports. It is one of several airstrikes Turkey has carried out in the area where members of the Yazidi minority live.  The impoverished Yazidi community survived ISIS genocidal attacks but have now been targeted repeatedly by Turkey since 2017, including a Turkish invasion of Afrin in 2018 that led to ethnic-cleansing of Yazidi villages and a Turkish attack with...

Just how serious a threat to the Iranian regime are these street protests? They have not abated since the regime finally admitted lying about the shootdown of Ukraine International Flight 752. Time Magazine reports today that the tenacity of the outrage represents a serious threat to the mullahs, although they still take the protests over the death of Qassem Soleimani at face value: Days earlier, millions of Iranians had gathered in grief and rage after a U.S. airstrike killed Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani on Jan. 3. But the feeling shifted when it seemed Tehran was trying to cover up...

Iran’s supreme leader said President Donald Trump is a “clown” who only pretends to support the Iranian people, as he addressed Friday prayers In Tehran for the first time since 2012. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says Trump will “push a poisonous dagger” into the nation’s back. He said the outpouring of grief at the funeral for Iran’s top general, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike earlier this month, shows that Iranians support the Islamic Republic.

Riyad Dirar, the co-chair of the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), the political wing of the Syrian Democratic Forces SDF, stressed that they are among those who are inviting but not invited to the Third Cairo Conference, because they are from the preparatory committee of it. He stressed Egypt's important role in the political solution in Syria and that it supports their position in facing "Turkish aggression" in the region. Dirar said in a statement to North-Press, that the Syrian Democratic Council is included in the preparatory committee for "Cairo 3" conference, and they are seeking to develop the road map...

What do the Iranian people, who have turned out in droves to protest their own government, know that many members of Congress don’t? They realize it’s their leaders who represent a grave threat to the future of their own country and world peace, not the president of the United States. Too many in Congress have let their personal disdain for President Donald Trump cloud their obligation to ensure the safety of Americans at home and abroad. Some have apologized to the Iranian regime that has backed repeated attacks against U.S. personnel and our embassy in Iraq. A majority in the...

I. IntroductionFor the second time in 40 years, a Republican President was forced to clean up the mess left by his Democrat predecessor’s failures in Iran. The first time was when a group of Muslim “college students” overran the U.S. embassy in 1979 and paralyzed the Carter administration for more than a year. The second time was when the Obama administration, in a move reminiscent of British PM Chamberlain’s futile attempt to appease Hitler, sent a plane-load of cash in the middle of the night to Tehran to induce the rogue nation to stand down on its nuclear program. The...

The Turkish and Syrian heads of intelligence met in Moscow on Monday, in the first official contact in years despite AnkaraÂ’s longstanding hostility to President Bashar al-Assad, a senior Turkish official and Syrian news agency SANA said. According to Reuters, both sides have said there have been intelligence contacts but that this is the first explicit acknowledgement of such a senior meeting. Turkish President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan backs rebels who fought to topple Assad during SyriaÂ’s nine-year civil war. ErdoÄŸan described Assad as a terrorist and called for him to be driven from power, which earlier in the war had...