Free Republic

Last month, when Trump dispatched the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group to the Persian Gulf region, it was reportedly the Israeli Mossad that tipped off the U.S. “on an Iranian plan to attack either a US or a US-allied target.”If so, the warning has already been borne out as just a week later Iran—trying to bully and threaten its way out of the Trump administration’s economic chokehold—attacked Norwegian, Emirati, and Saudi oil tankers, and last week attacked a Japanese and a Norwegian oil tanker.It’s not the first time Israeli intelligence has warned of impending attacks by Iran or...

This is the reality: A career diplomat crossing European borders in a rented car while carrying a professionally-made bomb, which bears a design favored by jihadists. In Luxembourg, he hands over the bomb to two would-be terrorists, long-standing residents of Europe who just look like any ordinary young married couple. They accept it with a clear mission in mind: to bomb a political rally in the largest convention center in France, located in the suburbs of Paris. If the plot is successful, it will kill many among the tens of thousands of people in attendance, among who were hundreds of...

Some intelligence agencies warn the five men may travel to Syria and make use of its chaotic landscape to plot attacks elsewhere. Iran has released five senior al Qaeda operatives from detention and will soon allow them to leave the country, prompting fears they will join other terrorists in Syria planning attacks on the West. According to intelligence sources, three of the five are members of al Qaeda's ruling committee the Shura Council. Among those released in exchange for the Iranian diplomat was Abu al Kheir al Masri - the former head of al Qaeda's "external relations" committee, who was...

In recent days, pro-al Qaeda jihadists claimed to confirm a recent news report saying that several senior al Qaeda leaders have been released from Iranian custody. Sky News reported earlier this week that five veteran jihadists were released in exchange for an Iranian diplomat who had been kidnapped in Yemen. Several jihadists on Twitter who are connected to al Qaeda have said the report is accurate. One of them is known as “Al Siyasi al Mutaqa’id,” who has relayed accurate information on al Qaeda in the past. The five jihadists who were reportedly freed are: Saif al Adel, Abu Mohammed...

AN Iranian diplomat has called for an uprising against his government after he became the third of his colleagues to defect this year. "I want (the regime) to be overthrown," press attache at the Iranian embassy in Brussels Farzad Farhangian, 47, told a press conference in Oslo yesterday, before seeking asylum in Norway He fled Brussels at the weekend after his decision to quit triggered threats of reprisals against him and his teenage son. Mr Farhangian, a diplomat for 23 years, wanted to "take a stand in support of the Iranian people and the (opposition) movement". His announcement came barely...

The No. 2 diplomat at the Iranian Embassy in the Finnish capital, Helsinki, has resigned in protest of the hard-line government in Tehran, Finland's national news agency reported Saturday. For more than a month before his resignation this week, former charge d'affaires Hossein Alizadeh hadn't been at the embassy, the FNB news agency said. Alizadeh, a veteran diplomat who reportedly had worked for the Iranian Foreign Ministry for more than 20 years, said he quit because he believed last year's presidential election in Iran was unfair and marked by cheating. He also declared his support for Iran's opposition "green movement."

Gunmen have kidnapped a diplomat from Iran and killed his guard in the north-western Pakistani city of Peshawar, police say. The Iranian diplomat was said to be the commercial attache of the consulate.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Militants in Iraq (news - web sites) said Sunday they had taken a top Iranian diplomat hostage, according to video shown on the Arab-language Al-Arabiya television station.