Free Republic

The Iranian regime will hold its so-called parliamentary elections next Friday amidst mounting crises. The "elections" this year unfold in a radically different setting, with growing popular discontent and uprisings exacerbating an already dire situation for the regime. Braving systematic suppression and human rights, people in Iran usually vote on the streets. In their massive protests in November, they voted to change the regime in its entirety. Elections in one of the most repressive states in the world are nothing but a farce. The regime has effectively monopolized power through the concept of velayat-e faqih (absolute clerical rule). The supreme...

On September 25, during the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI)—a pro-Israel, anti-Iran lobby group—held a “summit” in New York that was attended by, among others, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer, and Sigal Mandelker, the outgoing Under Secretary of Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, as well as diplomats from Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. As usual, tough rhetoric was uttered by all the speakers, and threats were made. The day before the summit, another meeting was held that had allegedly been organized by Mark Wallace, the...

On Sunday and Saturday, for two consecutive days people of Iran, and students at different universities took to the streets, protesting the downing of the Ukrainian passenger airplane by the IRGC. The protesters were targeting the regime’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, and calling for the overthrow of the regime by chanting, “Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, resign, resign,” They also were chanting, “death to the dictator,” “Death to this murderous regime,” “Death to the oppressor, whether the Shah or the Leader (Khamenei),” “Soleimani was a killer and so is his leader,” “Death to this theocracy, for crimes in all these...

On Saturday, protesters with Iran's MEK Freedom Movement took to the streets in Tehran to protest after Iran's government admitted having shot down a Ukrainian plane by mistake, killing 176 people on board. Iran's government claimed that the U.S. airstrike killing Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani had united the country, but the protests disproved that narrative."Protests erupt against the Revolutionary Guards at Amir-Kabir University in Tehran due to authorities' incompetence and negligence after the recent plane crash that killed more than 176 people," Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad reported on Twitter. "Some people had claimed Iranians were united after [Soleimani]'s death....

By Hassan Mahmoudi On January 2, 2020, Qassem Soleimani, the notorious commander of Iran’s terrorist Quds Force was killed by a U.S.-led airstrike in the Baghdad International Airport. Soleimani, as a major general, was the second person in the Iranian regime and was a hated figure among the vast majority of Iranians. During uprisings in Iran in 2018 and 2019, protesters tore up and torched his posters in different cities. Some in the west, especially in the mainstream media, for political purposes, have been trying to portray Soleimani as if he was a “Hero for the Iranian people”, or a...

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is limiting U.S. diplomats' contact with Iranian opposition groups, according to a cable sent to all U.S. diplomatic outposts Tuesday. Pompeo’s order says diplomats should not meet with Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) or five other groups because it could damage the United States' chances to negotiate with Iran,... “Direct U.S. government engagement with these groups could prove counterproductive to our policy goal of seeking a comprehensive deal with the Iranian regime that addresses its destabilizing behavior,” the cable said, according to Bloomberg. It also added that these groups “try to engage U.S. officials regularly to gain at...

On January 3, 2020, near Baghdad's airport, a U.S. air raid targeted Qasem Soleimani, commander of Quds Force, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (“IRGC’s”) terrorist arm. He was killed instantly. To understand how important this is, one needs to understand who Qasem Soleimani (1957-2020) was. Soleimani, a one-time construction worker and weightlifter, joined the IRGC after the 1979 revolution and soon headed one of the IRGC’s main cadres. Khomeini assigned Soleimani to suppress a Kurdish movement in Mahabad, Western Azerbaijan. Soleimani's brutality earned him command over a Quds Guard Corps unit in Kerman. The Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) gave Soleimani opportunities...

Iran unleashed its proxies in Iraq to attack the US Embassy in Baghdad on the last day of 2019.  That speaks volumes about the nature of Tehran rulers. President Trump correctly held them accountable. The ayatollahs’ conduct at home and abroad has been utterly malign. Period. They stand out as one of the most pressing challenges the international community faces as we enter 2020. In November, major protests broke out in Iran. The regime's response was unprecedentedly brutal. International rights group Amnesty International condemned “the frequency and persistence of lethal force” deployed against peaceful demonstrations. Astonishingly, the death toll has...

As we witnessed a new round of nationwide protests in Iran, there is no sign of a slowdown in either the people’s unrest or the government’s brutal attempts at repression. By most estimates, the death toll exceeded 200. Thousands more have been wounded and arrested, and details about the regime’s tactics have begun leaking out in spite of the mullahs’ efforts to block the internet and maintain a veil of silence over ongoing developments. There are two distinct reasons for this silence. Obviously, Tehran does not relish the prospect of the international community becoming widely aware of escalating human rights...

Late in the night Oct. 16, Rudy Giuliani made a phone call to this reporter. The fact that Giuliani was reaching out wasn't remarkable. He and the reporter had spoken earlier that evening for a story about his ties to a fringe Iranian opposition group. But this call, it would soon become clear, wasn't a typical case of a source following up with a reporter. The call came in at 11:07 p.m. and went to voicemail; the reporter was asleep. The next morning, a message exactly three minutes long was sitting in the reporter's voicemail. In the recording, the words...

The Iranian regime has become more brazen in its foreign policy. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) recently attacked commercial vessels in the Gulf, and seized others, including a British tanker. It also launched missiles against Saudi oil infrastructure in September. This is in addition to its aggressive policies in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.The regime's recent actions cannot simply be interpreted as a response to rising levels of pressure from the US. Its abuses both at home and abroad have been getting worse for quite some time. And they have done so not because of newfound foreign pressure but because...

Iranian Clergies Spreading Lies and Fake News A lie is an assertion that is believed to be false, typically used with the purpose of deceiving someone. A big lie is one which attempts to trick the victim into believing something major which will likely be contradicted by some information the victim already possesses, or by their common sense. When the lie is of sufficient magnitude it may succeed, due to the victim’s reluctance to believe that an untruth on such a grand scale would indeed be concocted A big lie is a propaganda technique and logical trick (fallacy) the expression...

By: Hassan.Mahmoudi Forty years have passed since the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the Ayatollahs grasping power in 1979. Since then, hundreds of policymakers, scholars, and practitioners have attempted to challenge the Ayatollahs in very different ways. US President Obama throughout his 8-year term in office advocated continuing an already discredited appeasement policy towards the Iranian regime, in 2015, together with the EU, signing the JCPOA, ‘nuclear deal’ with Iran and releasing billions of dollars in sanctions relief, paving the way for the regime to become much more aggressive with malign activities and interventions throughout the region, and,...

Ex-Gov. Bill Richardson is one of several former top U.S. government officials pocketing large fees to speak in support of an Iranian group that is listed by the United States as a foreign terrorist organization. Richardson, a former energy secretary and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was in Washington, D.C., in January and in Paris in February to call on the State Department to remove the Mojahedin-e Khalq, or MEK, from the terror list. During the ’70s, the MEK killed U.S. military personnel and U.S. civilians working on defense projects in Tehran and supported the takeover in 1979 of...

My country Iran is at a critical point. The regime is struggling to survive economically, politically and strategically. The circumstances are ripe for its downfall. A 40-year nightmare that has unleashed egregious rights abuses, regional chaos, religious fundamentalism and international terrorism is coming to a close. In recent days, the Tehran has been targeting oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, facilitating attacks on Saudi oil installations, and orchestrating missile assaults on American interests in Baghdad. These acts reveal that the regime’s impasse is real and it is becoming increasingly more desperate. Three key factors have contributed to the regime’s rapid...

There are several truisms about the Iranian regime. It is a deeply intolerant, religiously fanatical regime with a death grip on power through suppression and a corrupt system of bribes, payoffs and family connections.Tony Soprano has nothing on the mullahs’ regime.Like any insular group of Mafiosos, the mullahs ruling Tehran are a deeply paranoid bunch. They regularly suspect traitors in their midst and engage in periodic purges that would do Josef Stalin proud; right down to public hangings.They also desperately manipulate—sometimes clumsily—social media and the Internet in general in a vain attempt to trash opponents and to stifle debate about...

The American Iranian diaspora that stands against the regime in Iran last month came to New York, my city, as the international community does during the annual United Nations General Assembly meetings. For the ninth time, I had the honor of addressing them. We have an obligation to listen to what the Iranian people have been saying over the past nine months in their continuous nationwide protests. I am one of a large bipartisan group of former governors, mayors, military leaders, senior administration officials and members of Congress, who agree on one critical foreign policy, as the Iranian people do:...

While Iran’s economy is collapsing, and this will eventually be forcing poor people into disastrous condition and when the Trump administration is pushing its “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran into overdrive, with Tuesday’s announcement that the State Department is aiming to cut off all Iranian oil exports by November. While the Iranian rial has lost more than 85 percent of its value against the US dollar in recent months. last week Iran faced with Social unrest and Protests such as truck driver and merchants strike. Today Following calls for a strike on October 14 that was widely circulated on social...

An Iranian man charged in D.C. with conspiracy and other offenses was so incensed by a U.S. senator who participated in a New York rally against the Tehran regime last fall that he suggested to his alleged co-conspirator that the “motherf—” needs to be shot, according to documents unsealed on Monday. Majid Ghorbani and Ahmadreza Mohammadi-Doostdar stand accused of having collected data for the regime relating to Jewish organizations in Chicago and U.S.-based members of the exiled Iranian opposition group, Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK). They did so, according to an FBI special agent’s affidavit, “for the purpose of enabling the government...

An indictment was returned today charging Ahmadreza Mohammadi-Doostdar, 38, a dual U.S.-Iranian citizen, and Majid Ghorbani, 59, an Iranian citizen and resident of California, with allegedly acting on behalf of the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran by conducting covert surveillance of Israeli and Jewish facilities in the United States, and collecting identifying information about American citizens and U.S. nationals who are members of the group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK). The charges were announced by Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers, U.S. Attorney Jessie K. Liu for the District of Columbia, and Acting Executive Assistant Director Michael McGarrity...