Free Republic

WASHINGTON -- New York County District Attorney Robert Morgenthau left his home turf and came to the nation's capital on Tuesday to sound the alarm about a "blossoming relationship" between Iran and Venezuela. Comparing the situation to the lead up to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, Morgenthau warned of growing threats--involving missiles, nuclear ventures and terrorist training--that Iran and Venezuela are now cultivating, together, "in our backyard." "Axis of unity" is the label that Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez have themselves chosen for their alliance. The rise of this partnership, according to Morgenthau, dates from Ahmadinejad's...

Survivors of a 1996 terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 U.S. servicemen are offendedthat an Iraqi official with ties to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was welcomed to the White House this week. “Outrage at the visit to the White House really doesn’t describe what I feel,” said William M. Schooley, who survived the June 25, 1996, bombing of the Khobar Towers. “I watched outstanding airmen die that night and witnessed horrific carnage. The survivors of Khobar Towers have been swept under the rug and now have received the greatest insult,” he added. The Washington Times first reported...

IRAN SENDS BIN LADEN'S SON TO LEBANON ABU DHABI [MENL] -- Iran was said to have sent the son of Al Qaida chief Osama Bin Laden to Lebanon. Islamic sources said Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has released Bin Laden's son, Saad. The sources said IRGC released the 27-year-old Saad and sent him to organize cells in Lebanon. "We have been hearing reports that Saad is no longer under house arrest and is now in Syria waiting to enter Lebanon," a source said. The UAE-based Elaph news agency reported that Iran sent Saad to the Syrian-Lebanese border to build cells...

DUBAI, July 19 (Reuters) - An Iranian general collaborated with al Qaeda to arrange the transit through Iran of nine of the September 11 hijackers, the Arabic newspaper Asharq al-Awsat reported on Monday. "A general in the apparatus (Revolutionary Guard) coordinated with the number two man in al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri, to provide 'safe passage' to around nine of those who carried out the attacks," the London-based paper said. It cited as its source an official in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and said Zawahri, who requested the help, had links with the general going back to the early 1990s. Iranian...

LONDON (from compiled intelligence briefs) - Al-Qaida had extensive contacts with Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security, as well as with an elite military unit which helped the terrorists train and plot attacks against Americans, according to a former intelligence officer who recently fled Iran. Hamid Reza Zakeri, a former inspector and director of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and Ministry of Intelligence, or MOIS, member said models of the World Trade Center, the White House, Pentagon and other United States government buildings "were in our headquarters." In an explosive interview with a London-based Arabic newspaper last week, Zakeri stated that...

Saturday's Washington Post had an article which quotes the usual unnamed intelligence sources saying that they are surprised to discover that al Qaeda has "reconstituted" itself. This surprise derives from, inter alia, the computer data found recently in Pakistan, intelligence sources (both ours and friends'), and simply looking at the range of activities in which the terrorists engage. This surprise is, as usual, unsettling, since it has been quite clear for some time now that al Qaeda and the other major terrorist groups — Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Jamaa, etc. — are all working together, and have been ever since...

The Obama administration is declining to inform Congress about the number of American citizens and troops killed by Iran and its terror proxies, according to a document provided to Congress and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The administration was repeatedly asked by Congress to release figures describing how many Americans and Israelis have been killed by Iran’s military and terror activities since the country’s 1979 revolution. In a series of on-the-record responses obtained exclusively by the Free Beacon, and provided in written form to Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), Kerry sidestepped the questions on all of the three separate...

Israel’s reported strike January 18 on a joint Iranian-Hezbollah convoy driving on the Syrian Golan Heights was one of the most strategically significant events to have occurred in Israel’s neighborhood in recent months. Its significance lies both in what it accomplished operationally and what it exposed. From what been published to date about the identities of those killed in the strike, it is clear that in one fell swoop the air force decapitated the Iranian and Hezbollah operational command in Syria. The head of Hezbollah’s operations in Syria, the head of its liaison with Iran, and Jihad Mughniyeh, the son...

Iran's foreign minister, Javad Zarif, has written an op-ed in the Financial Times which sets forward a distinct sequence for ostensibly resolving the daunting security challenges of the Middle East. First, the P5+1 - the group of powerful nations negotiating with Iran - should come to a deal over its nuclear program. As a result, he argues, Tehran will "open new horizons" and join "the international battle" against "the increasingly brutal extremism that is engulfing the Middle East." The idea that Iran is a partner in the fight against terrorism is not only disingenuous but also absurd. What Zarif is...

Uproar in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has relieved Gen. Qassem Soleimani,the Al Qods Brigades chief and supreme commander of Iranian Middle East forces, of his Syria command after a series of war debacles. He was left in charge of Iran’s military and intelligence operations in Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon. This is revealed by exclusive Iranian intelligence sources. Since Soleimani last visited Damascus on June 2, in the aftershock of the historic town of Palmyra’s fall to the Islamic State, the situation of President Bashar Assad and his army has gone from bad to worse. The Iranian general’s...

Republicans pounced on a report Monday that said top White House adviser David Plouffe took a $100,000 speaking fee from an Iran-tied firm whose technology may have been used to track dissidents, claiming Plouffe's involvement could represent a "loophole" in sanctions against the regime. The White House rejects the notion that anything improper took place. According to The Washington Post, Plouffe was paid for two speeches he made in Nigeria in December 2010 about a month before joining the White House -- and apparently before the company hosting him started coming under heavy scrutiny from the Obama administration. The White...

A leading commander in Iran's Revolutionary Guards has claimed his country's ultimate aim is to turn the United States into "an Islamic Republic," and rejected any possibility of a thawing in relations between Tehran and "The Great Satan." An undated video released by the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran, an Iranian opposition group, shows Commander Hassan Abbasi - who is also a member of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei's inner circle - making the comments during an address, in which he lashed out at unnamed Iranian officials for expressing hope that a nuclear deal with the US could open the door...

Mohammad Ali Jafari lashes out at Saudis for continued military campaign against Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen. Saudi Arabia is a betrayer who is “following in the footsteps of Israel and the Zionists,” the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said Monday. Maj.-Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari’s comments came amid the Saudi-led coalition’s military campaign against Iranian- backed Shi’ite Houthi rebels who are trying to take over Yemen. “Today, Saudi Arabia is brazenly and obnoxiously bombarding and massacring a nation, which is seeking the denial of the hegemonic system,” Press TV quoted Jafari as saying. Air raids, naval shelling and ground fighting shook...

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has cancer. After him are men even less likely to comply with a nuclear deal. ********************** Negotiators from Iran and the P5+1 powers led by the U.S. are racing against a March 31 deadline to conclude a nuclear deal in Lausanne, Switzerland. Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters on Saturday that negotiators had made “genuine progress” but that “important gaps remain.” Yet what happens if the Iranian leadership that the U.S. and others are dealing with now is not in place to implement any agreement? Two recent developments suggest that the Islamic Republic may be...

The Iraqi Security Forces, supported by several Iranian-backed Shiite militias and Sunni tribal fighters, have launched an offensive to retake Tikrit from the Islamic State, which has held the central Iraqi city since June 2014. Massive columns of Shiite militas, including some groups that are listed by the US as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, have been leading the fight in Tikrit. The operation, which involves more than thirty thousand Iraqi security personnel and militia forces, started on the morning of March 2. According to Al Jazeera, Iraqi forces and allied militias attacked the city from three sides while Iraqi aviation launched...

Operatives of a secretive Iran-backed terrorist network in Turkey scouted the area hosting a radar site in Malatya's Kürecik district that is part of a NATO early warning radar system, an ongoing investigation has revealed. According to an 854-page police investigation on the Tawhid-Salam terror network obtained by Today's Zaman, witness testimony provided to the Istanbul Chief Prosecutor's Office on March 22, 2013 indicated that suspects tied to Iranian intelligence had collected information about Kürecik. The witness said many front companies with the cover of legitimate businesses such as real estate agencies or bookstores had been established in Malatya by...

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf says leaks on the Iran nuke talks by Israel would “betray” the US’s trust. “We’ve continuously provided detailed classified briefings to Israeli officials to keep them updated and to provide context for how we are approaching getting to a good deal,” she told reporters in Washington. “Any release of any kind of information like that would, of course, betray that trust.”

U.S. officials consider removing Castro regime from terror listU.S. officials are considering removing Cuba from a list of state sponsors of terrorism, even as Cuban allies continue to launch military attacks and trade for weapons. As part of President Barack Obama’s announcement in December that he would normalize relations with Cuba, Obama instructed Secretary of State John Kerry to review Cuba’s terror designation and issue a report in six months. While reports indicate that the administration is leaning toward removing Cuba from the terror list, such an action would conflict with the Cuban regime’s support for Colombian militants, Iran, and...

d Hezbollah figures killed in an airstrike in Syria this weekend were likely planning an 'imminent' attack on Israel, security sources have claimed. Six Iranian army chiefs died alongside five Hezbollah militants after an Israeli helicopter fired rockets at a convoy in the Golan Heights region on Sunday. Among those killed was Iranian General Mohammed Allahdadi, as well as commander Abu Ali Tabatabai, who is known to have worked with both Hezbollah and Iran. Today Major General Eyal Ben Reuven, a former deputy head in the Israeli Defense Forces, accused the senior military figures of meeting to plot an attack...

Death of a ProsecutorPosted By Kenneth R. Timmerman On January 21, 2015 @ 12:35 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 2 Comments Alberto Nisman, the Argentinean prosecutor who indicted top Iranian regime officials for the July 1994 AMIA Jewish Center bombing in Buenos Aires, was found dead by gunshot in his apartment on Sunday night, in what initially was called a suicide.Nisman was scheduled to address members of parliament the next day to reveal new information about alleged efforts by Argentinean President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and her foreign minister, Hector Timerman, to cover up the responsibility of the Iranian regime...