Free Republic

Love at First Sight Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (R) greets Venezualan President Hugo Chavez in Tehran July 29, 2006. REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi (IRAN) Last November, MataHarley mentioned about how Russia was planning to help Hugo Chavez build a nuclear energy program. Of course, like the typical power-hungry dictator that he is, all he claims to want is to acquire nuclear power for clean energy and peaceful medical purposes. At this point, they are still in the planning stages, with Chavez explaining, "not to worry, folks": "I say it before the world: Venezuela is going to start the process of developing nuclear...

His name is Touraj Esmaeeli, and you haven’t heard it before. And yet, he’s a big story. He worked as a top advisor to the Iranian intelligence service, as an expert on that country’s cyberwar against the United States and other Western countries. Several of his colleagues have been arrested since last spring, accused of spying, but the spybust hasn’t been widely covered. Esmaeeli scooted off to Istanbul, where he first checked in to a hotel and then barely escaped a combination of Iranian and Turkish agents who had come to arrest him. He has taken refuge in a Western...

Frightening crisis evolves bearing unsettling similarities to 1962 Cuba... except this time facing advanced air defenses German Newspaper Die Welt has for months been reporting surreptitious scheming between Chavez and Ahmedinijad, and the latest fruit of this most unholy alliance is now ready for us to choke-on-down. Engineers from a construction company operated by Tehran's Republican Guards already surveyed sites back in February, and are reportedly putting into action plans for both defensive and offensive installations of Iranian missiles on the Paraguana Peninsula in the far north-west of Venezuela. You'd have to be pretty deep in denial to not see how these ambitious little despots are moving beyond...

Russia's S-300 air defense systems, which Moscow refused to deliver to Iran following a new round of UN sanctions against the Islamic Republic, could be sold to Venezuela instead, a Russian arms trade expert said on Friday. Russia signed a deal to deliver five battalions of S-300PMU-1 air defense systems to Iran in 2007 but banned the sale in September, saying the systems, along with a number of other weapons, were covered by the fourth round of sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council against Iran over its nuclear program in June. "Russia is looking for a buyer of five...

While Obama has been focusing his attention on the Republican hostage takers and bomb throwers the Iranian regime has been stockpiling Shahab 3 missiles in Venezuela that can reach the United States. Hudson New York reported, via Israel Matsav: According to Die Welt, Venezuela has agreed to allow Iran to establish a military base manned by Iranian missile officers, soldiers of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Venezuelan missile officers. In addition, Iran has given permission for the missiles to be used in case of an “emergency”. In return, the agreement states that Venezuela can use these facilities for “national needs”...

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived Wednesday in Cuba for talks with his counterpart Raul Castro as the Islamic Republic blamed Israel and the United States for the killing of a nuclear scientist in a Tehran car bombing. The scientist's killing heightened already high tensions with the West over Iran's suspect nuclear program but a defiant Ahmadinejad flashed the victory sign several times after landing in Havana. The Iranian leader was greeted by nine girls in traditional Iranian attire as he stepped off the plane that flew him in from Nicaragua on the third leg of his Latin American tour. Ahmadinejad,...

The next Israeli crisis is being manufactured in South America. As unimaginable as it is for the byzantine politics of Latin America to become more complicated, a metastasized Middle Eastern "peace process" has produced just that result... --snip-- Chavez's close relationship to the world's principal sponsor of terrorism isn't new, but it is a quantum leap in escalation of his enmity to America and his threat to South American democracies. The 1962 Cuban missile crisis was the closest the United States came to a nuclear war. With Soviet medium range missiles in Cuba, capable of carrying nuclear warheads to any...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Iran's test of a long-range missile shows the need for the United States to expand its missile defense system into Europe, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says Iran's test of a long-range missile shows that it is "a real threat." 1 of 2 "We've been saying as we talk about missile defense in Europe that there is a real threat, and the test this morning underscores it," Gates said hours after Iran's test. Russia has strongly opposed the U.S. program of expanding the missile defense system into Eastern Europe in countries such...

The US has said it will not hesitate to defend its interests and those of its allies as Iran continues missile tests. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the US had increased its security in the region and Iran should not be "confused" about US capabilities. Iran tested missiles on Wednesday that could reach Israel, and on Thursday carried out further tests. Meanwhile French energy giant Total has said it will not invest in Iran because it is too politically risky. New tests Condoleezza Rice was speaking during a visit to Georgia. She said: "We take very strongly our obligation...

TEHRAN, July 11 (UPI) -- Iran's missile capability, shown off this week in its first test, poses no threat to the region or Europe, an Iranian official said Friday. The tests were merely a military exercise but showed Iran is ready to fight off any threat, Mohammad-Esmail Kowsari, the deputy head of Majlis National Security and the Foreign Policy Commission, told the IRNA news service. "Defense doctrine of the Islamic Republic (of Iran) is based on self-defense," he said. "Since theU.S. and the Zionist Regime have newly planned an all-out threat against Iran, the Islamic Republic's armed forces showed in...

Iran's missile tests last week will strengthen its position in diplomatic efforts to resolve an international standoff over Tehran's disputed nuclear plans, a senior official was quoted as saying on Monday. "The manoeuvres helped the Islamic Republic to go to the negotiating table with a full hand," the official IRNA news agency quoted Deputy Defence Minister Nasrullah Ezatti as saying. Ezatti, a brigadier-general who is in charge of coordinating armed forces logistics, was speaking five days before Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili was expected to meet European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana in Geneva. In June, Solana presented...

The BBC has raised the possibility that Iran may target NATO forces in Afghanistan, which include several thousand Canadian troops stationed in the province of Kandahar, with short-range missiles. Those who focused on the possibility of Iran and Israel going to war or a strike against the U. S. Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf have overlooked the chance that attacking elsewhere might also serve Iran's strategic interests, the BBC said in an article on its Web site last week.

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama (Reuters) - Iran could have the ability to strike most of Europe with a ballistic missile within three or four years if it made an all-out push, the former head of Israel's missile defense program said. If correct, the Iran missile timeline cited by Uzi Rubin, a leading authority on Iran's program, puts a fresh note of urgency into a diplomatically thorny debate over building a multibillion-dollar anti-missile shield in Europe.

SNIPPET - QUOTE: Possibly the mystery of the three recent incidents of exploding Yemeni fishing boats can be explained as Iranian missile shipments. The following article asserts Iran is shipping from an African country, likely Sudan, to Yemen. A Yemeni fishing boat also exploded in a Sudanese port and Yemen's Midi Island is a new transit point for Sudanese refugees. Once there's a smuggling route established for weapons, the boats often also transport refugees. However this report is taken from a Yemeni government stooge newspaper, Akhbar al Youm, which once announced that Ayatollah Sistani and I (me Jane) wrote the...

Iranian ships and submarines have deployed an undisclosed number of Iranian troops and weapons at the Eritrean port town of Assab, according to opposition groups, foreign diplomats, and NGOs in the area. The city of Assab sits at the Horn of Africa in the Arabian Sea. As such, Assab offers a strategic position as the world nervously eyes the precarious routes through which a seaborne oil traverses daily. Local sources have reported that Iran recently sent soldiers and a large number of long-range and ballistic missiles. The military basing came after Iran signed an accord with Eritrea to revamp the...

WASHINGTON: Iran Is Expanding Terrorism And Spy Networks In America Robert Johnson January 31,2012 Adding to the Washington rhetoric regarding Iran, the Director of National Intelligence told Congress today that Tehran is expanding its support for international terrorism and spy networks against the U.S. Tony Capaaccio and John Walcott at Bloomberg report that in a statement to the Senate Intelligence Committee, James Clapper said “The 2011 plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States shows that some Iranian officials — probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei— have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an...

Any good armchair general with a good search engine and time on their hands can figure out in a hurry that the song and dance about Iran being unable to close the Strait if Hormuz for long is just a plain crock. Worse than a crock. Yet, this big Orwellian lie persists, so once again I have to set the record straight. Iran has the capability of not only closing the Strait for some time, but creating a world of hurt for the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet. Iran possesses a build up of anti-ship weapons called Sunburn missiles, which it...

Full title: Iran Aggressively Recruiting ‘Invisible Army’ of Latin American Converts to Infiltrate U.S. Through ‘Soft Belly’ of the Southern Border Iran is recruiting an “invisible army” of revolutionary sympathizers in Latin America to infiltrate the U.S. through the “soft belly” of the southern border, U.S. officials and national security experts told TheBlaze. And they’re using one website in particular to do it. The Iranian regime’s conversion efforts are becoming increasingly aggressive, especially over the Internet, with the goal of conducting operations against United States interests in the Western Hemisphere, according to U.S. government officials who spoke on the condition...

Former members of the Russian military have been secretly helping Iran to acquire technology needed to produce missiles capable of striking European capitals. The Russians are acting as go-betweens with North Korea as part of a multi-million pound deal they negotiated between Teheran and Pyongyang in 2003. It has enabled Teheran to receive regular clandestine shipments of top secret missile technology, believed to be channelled through Russia. Western intelligence officials believe that the technology will enable Iran to complete development of a missile with a range of 2,200 miles, capable of hitting much of Europe. It is designed to carry...

Iran is using diplomatic pouches to smuggle weapons into and out of the country, Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said Monday. “The Iranians are taking advantage of diplomatic mail in order to transfer these items,” Yaalon told Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina, who is visiting Israel. “They are taking advantage of the drug smuggling routes from South America into the United States in order to move weapons there,” he said. Iran, said Yaalon, was pulling out all stops in order to export its Shi'ite Islamic revolution to the West, preparing communities of Shi'ite Muslims for the day they must help Iran...