Free Republic

Lucky for John Kerry that no one has ever been convicted (or even prosecuted since 1852) for violating the 18th-century Logan Act, which bars private diplomacy against US interests. Because what the former secretary of state has been doing to pressure President Trump against withdrawing from the Iran deal sure looks like a textbook violation. The Boston Globe reports that Kerry in recent weeks has engaged in “unusual shadow diplomacy” to “apply pressure on the Trump administration from the outside,” holding meetings and phone calls “below the radar” with Iranian and European leaders. Kerry doesn’t deny the meetings, but claims...

Iran: The nuclear deal with Tehran is right out of the Neville Chamberlain appeasement playbook. A straight line can be drawn from President Obama's 2009 overture to Islamists and this historic misjudgment. The Great Appeaser, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, is best known for his September 1938 "peace for our time" speech hailing the Munich Agreement. But six months later, even after Kristallnacht and just after the Munich-breaking Czechoslovakia occupation, he was still denying reality. "I hoped in going to Munich to find out by personal contact what was in Herr Hitler's mind," Chamberlain said in March 1939, quoting the...

The Obama administration finally highlights Iran’s key role in supporting al Qaeda On July 28, the Treasury Department designated six al Qaeda operatives involved in shipping money and men from the Persian Gulf to senior al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The move targets a node of the global terror network that is critical to its overall strength, freezing any of its financial assets under U.S. jurisdiction and prohibiting any transactions with the operatives. Of the many conduits for al Qaeda funds and personnel across the world, the U.S. government believes this one is the most important. “This network...

Improvised rocket assisted munitions made in Tehran, favored by the Iranian trained Shia militias in Iraq, are placed on the back of flatbed trucks. Their target: U.S. military personnel and their bases in Iraq as the remaining U.S. forces prepare to leave the nation by the end of December. Fifteen Americans were killed in June, the deadliest month for U.S. personnel serving in Iraq in more than two years. And some say Iranian influence is showing up more and more in attacks on troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. -video at link also-

Obama needs to support freedom in Iran by Michael Rubin June 23, 2009 Over the weekend, both conservative columnist George Will and former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan argued that conservative criticism of President Obama's rhetorical restraint amidst the Iranian protests was unwarranted. "The president is being roundly criticized for insufficient rhetorical support for what's going on over there. It seems foolish criticism," Will said. "To insist the American president, in the first days of the rebellion, insert the American government into the drama was shortsighted and mischievous," Noonan wrote. "The ayatollahs were only too eager to demonize the demonstrators as...

Monday, June 22, 2009 Understanding Obama on Iran   [Andy McCarthy] Call me thick, but I continue to be baffled by a lot of the commentary, cited by Rich and others, which gives as the rationale for President Obama's diffidence his purported determination to preserve the opportunity to negotiate with the mullahs on their nuclear program. Obama is resigned to Iran getting nukes (perhaps even having them already) and has no intention of doing anything meaningful about it.  The fact is that, as a man of the hard Left, Obama is more comfortable with a totalitarian Islamic regime than he...

DEBKAfile’s Washington sources report that the Obama administration is on the threshold of a major rapprochement with Tehran, a reversal of US policy dramatic enough to block out international sanctions. Iran will be allowed to keep its nuclear program, including military elements and enriched uranium stocks, up to the point of actually assembling a weapon. [..] The US president is willing to ditch Israel as a friend. This will be brought home to Jerusalem when he makes his big speech on April 7 appealing for a grand US-Muslim global reconciliation. The US president is preparing to tie a Palestinian-Israeli settlement...

The explosions in the Sha'ab neighborhood in the Baghdad district of Adhamiyah, which killed 16 civilians and wounded 29 more, have been "misreported," according to the US military. The explosions in the Mahdi Army stronghold were initially reported in the media as a car bomb attack that targeted a police commander. The attack was held up as the largest bombing in Baghdad since mid-March. But the US military has refuted the reports, saying the explosions were caused by the premature detonation of a Special Groups improvised rocket launching system. The system, which has been described as a flying improvised explosive...

Suspected Shiite militiamen have begun using powerful rocket-propelled bombs to attack U.S. military outposts in recent months, broadening the array of weapons used against American troops. U.S. military officials call the devices Improvised Rocket Assisted Munitions, or IRAMs. They are propane tanks packed with hundreds of pounds of explosives and powered by 107mm rockets. They are often fired by remote control from the backs of trucks, sometimes in close succession. Rocket-propelled bombs have killed at least 21 people, including at least three U.S. soldiers, this year. The latest reported rocket-propelled bomb attack occurred Tuesday at Joint Security Station Ur, a...

MUNICH, Germany -- U.S. military commanders in Iraq have shown members of Congress explosive devices that bear Iranian markings as evidence Tehran is supplying Iraqi militants with bombs, a senior U.S. government official said Saturday. One of the lawmakers, independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, said he has seen some of the evidence, though he would not be specific. "I'm convinced from what I've seen that the Iranians are supplying and are giving assistance to the people in Iraq who are killing American soldiers," said Lieberman, who was attending an international security conference in Munich. The senior official said military...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The Pentagon is investigating whether a recent attack on a military compound in Karbala was carried out by Iranians or Iranian-trained operatives, two officials from separate U.S. government agencies said. "People are looking at it seriously," one of the officials said. That official added the Iranian connection was a leading theory in the investigation into the January 20 attack that killed five soldiers. The second official said: "We believe it's possible the executors of the attack were Iranian or Iranian-trained." Five U.S. soldiers were killed in the sophisticated attack by men wearing U.S.-style uniforms, according to...

TEHRAN, (Reuters) - Despite talk of a possible rapprochement between Tehran and Washington, Iran sees no sign of the United States changing its policy towards the Islamic state, Iran's Foreign Ministry said on Sunday. The Bush administration has come under growing pressure to reach out to Iran to try to calm escalating violence in Iraq. A key recommendation of a bipartisan U.S. report on how to tackle Iraq said Washington should engage Iran and Syria directly. Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Saturday that Iran was prepared to talk to the United States about Iraq, but only once Washington...

Iran Press News: One of the commanders of the Lebanese branch of Hezbollah affiliated to the Islamic Republic, confirmed a report that indicated that Hezbollah has been taking all necessary action to topple the government of Lebanon. Last week Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, said there was mounting evidence that the Damascus and allies Tehran regime were behind Hezbollah’s attempt to overthrow the Lebanese government in order to hinder an international tribunal into the investigation of the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister. The regime-run site RASAW wrote: One of the prominent Hezbollah clergymen confirmed that...

April 11, 2006 -- Anthony Cordesman is ABC News' military analyst and the Arleigh A. Burke chair in strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. He offered the following remarks about the developments in Iran. • The IAEA found Iran had probably carried out test enrichments of uranium with its centrifuges long before this. • A claim of 3.5% enrichment is not much of an achievement if true. • There is no clear evidence that Iran has brought the limited 164 centrifuge chain at Natanz on-line in any kind of sustained operation. A one shot,...

TEHRAN, Iran - Former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani said Tuesday that Iran has enriched uranium using 164 centrifuges, a major development in nuclear fuel cycle technology, news agencies reported. Rafsanjani made the comment to the Kuwait News Agency during an interview in Tehran. "Iran has put into operation the first unit of 164 centrifuges, has injected (uranium gas) and reached industrial production," the Kuwait News Agency quoted Rafsanjani as saying. Iranian authorities had promised to announce "good nuclear news" on Tuesday.

They say ignorance is not innocence, but sin. Isn't yet the time for the Western media to wake up, and for once show the true face of the Islamic Republic in Iran? Watch the video below: http://switch5.castup.net/frames/20041020_MemriTV_Popup/video_480x360.asp?ClipMediaID=66581&ak=null

...Because Iran's endless gaming of the IAEA is fast becoming a story of short memories getting shorter, it's useful to recap the events of just the past two weeks. In mid-November, Tehran finalized an agreement with Britain, France and Germany to suspend its uranium-enrichment program -- crucially and explicitly including the use of uranium-enriching centrifuges. In exchange, Europe promised not to refer the Islamic Republic's known and suspected breaches of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to the U.N. Security Council, which could impose economic sanctions. No sooner was the ink dry on that agreement than Iran rushed to convert 22 tons...

WASHINGTON - Iran "vigorously" pursued programs to produce nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and sought help from Russia, China, North Korea and Europe, a CIA report said on Friday. "The United States remains convinced that Tehran has been pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons program," according to a semi-annual unclassified report to Congress on the acquisition of technology relating to weapons of mass destruction. "Iran sought technology that can support fissile material production for a nuclear weapons program," said the report, covering the period Jan. 1 to June 30. Satellite imagery showed Iran was burying a uranium centrifuge enrichment facility at...