Free Republic

The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has again sent a message to its rival, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, that when it comes to defending democracy, the two parties are 'in this together'. Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani admitted on Sunday that a 'third force' could come to power if his government collapsed, but warned PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif that he stood little chance of taking the helm. Referring to corruption charges against the government, he said that every democratic administration in the past was removed on charges of corruption. In a dig at his political opponent, Gilani said that Nawaz should...

US President Barack Obama Saturday signed into law tough new sanctions targeting Iran's central bank and financial sector, in a move that could intensify a brewing Gulf showdown. The measures, meant to punish Iran for its nuclear program, were contained in a mammoth $662 billion defense bill, which Obama signed despite having reservations that it ties his hands on setting foreign policy. The sanctions are meant to hit Iran's crucial oil sector and require foreign firms to make a choice between doing business with Tehran's financial sector and central bank or the mighty US economy and financial sector. Foreign central...

Tens of thousands of people have turned out at a rally in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi for former cricketer turned politician Imran Khan. Mr Khan, who has been an established politician for many years but has struggled to win votes, has seen his support increase recently. Correspondents say he has been riding a wave of disillusionment, particularly among the urban middle class. snip The two main parties - the PPP and the PML-N - are still strongly entrenched and Mr Khan has yet to spell out the specific policies of his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Movement for Justice) party. One...

snip American allies, such as Israel, are similarly nervous about the precipitous departure. A weak and America-less Iraq will have demonstrably negative consequences for Israel’s security environment. First, no country with an American military presence has attacked Israel. U.S. forces stationed in Turkey, Egypt, and the Gulf States have deterred or prevented those states from embarking on military action. In fact, the presence of U.S. forces has generally signaled the strategic orientation of those countries, first as anti-Soviet and now as anti-Iranian. snip Overall, the American withdrawal from Iraq portends ill for Israel. Iranian domination of Iraq is likely to...

What's Islam Got to Do with It?The role of Islam in terrorism should not be banned from discussion. Is there anything Islamic about Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps? On what basis does Ayman al-Zawahiri, now al-Qaeda’s leader, formerly the head of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, claim to be a jihadi — an Islamic warrior? Do groups that justify terrorism on the basis of Islam have a doctrinal leg to stand on?Let’s not start by answering these questions. Let’s start by agreeing that such questions need to be asked — not suppressed. Yet right now suppression seems to be the goal of...

-excerpt- The ministry said in a statement broadcast on state TV that Iran's secret services identified the suspect at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan.

NEW YORK — In an historic hearing in the federal courthouse in Manhattan on Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge George Daniels said he planned to issue a ruling in the coming days declaring that Iran shares in the responsibility for the 9/11 terror attacks. “The extensive record submitted to this court, including fact witnesses and expert testimony, is satisfactory to this court,” Judge Daniels said. The court “accepts as true” the various allegations of the plaintiffs and their experts, he declared, and “will issue an order” in the coming days that Iran bears legal responsibility for providing “material support” to...

The records show that New Delhi had no prior intention of dismembering Pakistan. However, events moved rapidly in East Pakistan. At the end of January 1971, RAW confirmed that the Awami League leadership was not very optimistic about the outcome of the negotiations on a new constitution and was preparing to launch a mass movement for an independent Bangladesh if the talks proved abortive... India was not taken by surprise by the Pakistani crackdown on the Bengalis on March 25. She was not prepared, however, for the savagery of the onslaught. This drew impassioned condemnation from all sections of the...

Davutoglu says Turkish foreign policy has pushed Israel to 'kneel down,' insists "zero problems with neighbors" policy works. Turkey's Middle East foreign policy has pushed an "isolated" Israel to "kneel down" before the Turkish Republic, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Thursday according to Turkish daily Zaman. According to the Turkish report, Davutoglu was responding to claims by the opposition in that country that Ankara has shifted its policy towards the East, despite its dependency on Western countries. Davutoglu struck back, saying that the country acts independently in the face of regional upheavals and dictatorships. He said it was Turkish...

Pakistani officials say NATO forces knew they were opening fire on Pakistani forces, and even apologised to Pakistani officers, throughout the friendly fire incident on a military checkpoint that killed 24 troops near the Afghan border in November. Pakistani officials on Thursday briefed reporters in Washington on their findings, drawn from interviews with survivors and local residents in the remote, mountainous area. Results of NATO's official investigation are due next week. Al Jazeera’s Rosiland Jordan, reporting from Washington, DC, said it could be an attempt by Pakistani officials to shape public opinion before the NATO report is released. “The Pakistanis...

Iran has more to lose than America in current standoffIran is threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz. Go ahead, make our day. On Monday, Parviz Sarvari, a member of the Iranian parliament's national security committee, said, “Soon we will hold a military maneuver on how to close the Strait of Hormuz. If the world wants to make the region insecure, we will make the world insecure.” Closing the strategically important strait has long been viewed as one of Iran’s trump cards in the give-and-take with the United States and the West. The impact of a strait crisis is overrated....

A MEMBER of the Iranian parliament’s national security committee has said the military is to practise its ability to close the Gulf to shipping at the narrow Strait of Hormuz, the most important oil transit channel in the world. Parviz Sarvari told student news agency ISNA yesterday: “Soon we will hold a military manoeuvre on how to close the Strait of Hormuz. If the world wants to make the region insecure, we will make the world insecure.” Iran’s military declined to comment on the claim. Iran’s energy minister told Al-Jazeera television last month that Tehran could use oil as a...

AN IRANIAN nuclear facility has been hit by a huge explosion, the second such blast in a month, prompting speculation that Tehran's military and atomic sites are under attack. Satellite imagery seen by The Times confirmed that a blast that rocked the city of Isfahan on Monday struck the uranium enrichment facility there, despite denials by Tehran. The images clearly showed billowing smoke and destruction, negating Iranian claims yesterday that no such explosion had taken place. Israeli intelligence officials told The Times that there was "no doubt" that the blast struck the nuclear facilities at Isfahan and that it was...

Force is being used to attempt to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons program. On Monday, an explosion rocked the city of Isfahan in western Iran, site of a conversion facility that prepares uranium for enrichment at other sites. Conflicting reports attributed the explosion to either an accident at a gas station or a military training incident, or they denied it even happened. The blast came two weeks after Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Gen. Hasan Tehrani Moghaddam and 20 other IRGC members were killed in a massive explosion at a base near the village of Bidganeh, southwest of Tehran. The base...

Seems an explosion rocked Iranian city Isfahan that houses that nation’s uranium conversion facility on Monday. Hmm. Big hmm. Capitalized, italicized and boldfaced HMM. From the New York Daily News: “The government of Isfahan denied reports that the explosion was linked to the nuclear site, saying it was part of a military drill north of the city.” That excuse is so weak that I think Baghdad Bob either moved to Iran or has a cousin Tehran Terry. From the New York Daily News: “One of the first reports of the blast came from Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency, according to...

Iran erupted in a fresh frenzy of animosity towards its old imperial foe on Sunday as MPs chanting "death to England" voted to expel Britain's ambassador to Tehran and threatened his mission with a reprise of the 1979 hostage crisis. Dominic Chilcott, who took up the position of ambassador just a month ago, could be forced to leave the country within weeks after a motion to downgrade Iran's diplomatic ties with Britain was passed overwhelmingly by the Islamist republic's parliament. The step was taken after Britain, Canada and the United States announced fresh sanctions against Iran last week in the...

RACISM!

Afghan and Western officials on Sunday said NATO and Afghan forces on a nighttime operation Saturday came under fire from across the Pakistan border before they called in a deadly airstrike on two Pakistani military posts, in an incident has left U.S.-Pakistan relations in tatters. Pakstan's military denied firing on NATO forces, calling the "unprovoked" raid on the border posts an "irresponsible act." The army questioned why the coalition undertook a sustained two-hour attack on well-known border positions, involving helicopters and fighter jets, which left 25 soldiers dead and another 25 injured. ...Afghan and U.S. officials say their troops are...

An attack by Nato aircraft on Pakistani troops that allegedly killed as many as 28 soldiers and looks set to further poison relations between the US and Pakistan was an act of self-defence, a senior western official has claimed. According to the Kabul-based official, a joint US-Afghan force operating in the mountainous Afghan frontier province of Kunar was the first to come under attack in the early hours of Saturday morning, forcing them to return fire. The high death toll from an incident between two supposed allies suggests Nato helicopters and jets strafed Pakistani positions with heavy weapons.

Such is the state of U.S./Pakistan relations that no one seems fully confident this was accidental. Is there another “alliance” in the world of which that could be said — where one country wipes out two dozen troops from the other and it’s not instantly clear it was a terrible miscalculation instead of a response to some shadowy provocation?Is it “friendly fire” if the two sides aren’t really friendly? “It seems quite extraordinary that we’d just nail these posts the way they say we did,” said one senior American official who was in close touch with American and NATO officials...