Free Republic

10/25/10 An explosion that killed 18 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard on October 12 was ordered by the Mossad, French newspaper Le Figaro suggested on Monday. Another cause for the blast mentioned by the paper was a targeted Israeli air raid. Official Iranian reports stated that the explosion occurred after a fire broke out in a weapons depot. Le Figaro also alleged that the explosion occurred at a secret missile site for the long-range Shahab-3, capable of being modified to carry a nuclear payload and striking Israel. The Imam Ali missile base is located in western Iran near the...

If you desire I will tell you about `Isa (p.b.u.h.) son of Maryam (Mary). He used a stone for his pillow, put on coarse clothes and ate rough food. His condiment was hunger. His lamp at night was the moon. His shade during the winter was just the expanse of earth eastward and westward. His fruits and flowers were only what grows from the earth for the cattle. He had no wife to allure him, nor any son to give grief, nor wealth to deviate (his attention), nor greed to disgrace him. His two feet were his conveyance and his...

A mortar shell explodes inside the mausoleum of the imam Ali A mortar shell exploded inside the mausoleum of the imam Ali in the Holy City Shiite of Najaf (center), wounding ten people, indicated to persons in charge for the office of the radical leader Shiite Moqtada Sadr to the AFP. The higher part of one of the doors covered with gold of the mausoleum, driving with the tomb of Ali, was damaged and with rubble strewed the ground with the mausoleum, noted the correspondent of the AFP. Ten people were wounded in the explosion, which occurred towards 11H00...

THE HORRENDOUS CRIME carried out at the shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf, Iraq, last Friday has had immediate repercussions, most of them--in the Western countries as well as the East--unfortunate. Numerous Westerners theorized that the blast was caused by rivalries among Shias, by the intrigues of Iranian hard-liners or by followers of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Among the most commonly-named suspects was Moqtada Sadr, a young Shia figure who has made a bid for influence over Iraq's Shias, the group which comprises 65 percent of the country's population. More generally, Baathist guerrillas were accused. Strangely enough, Iraqi Shias and Shia...

A sandstorm turns the daylight orange as a US Army engineer crawls through the desert outside Najaf. (Reuters) Iraqis firing from Najaf shrine: US A US official says Iraqis have fired on US-led troops from inside the Ali Mosque in Najaf, an important Shi'ite Muslim shrine, but the Americans did not return fire. The report could not immediately be confirmed. A Reuters correspondent at Najaf says heavy fighting is underway around the city. "The Iraqi regime's use of the Ali Mosque for military purposes is just the latest example of the regime's continued strategy of placing sacred sites in...