Free Republic

CBS News reports that the Obama administration has asked Israel to stop killing Iranian nuclear scientists. It was widely suspected that Israel had been behind a series of assassinations of key figures in the Iranian nuclear program, but never quite confirmed--until CBS' Dan Raviv cited sources close to Israel's Mossad intelligence agency. Israel and the US have both used a variety of unconventional methods to attack Iran's nuclear program.

The main purpose of US President Barack Obama's visit to Israel in the spring is to warn Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu against attacking Iran, unnamed officials told Army Radio on Sunday. According to the officials, the urgency of the trip is because in his speech to the United Nations in September, Netanyahu had flagged the spring of 2013 as a significant time in the context of the Iranian nuclear threat.

Soon after he took office, President Barack Obama began a process ultimately designed to reestablish full US diplomatic relations with Iran, including a reopening of embassies, an Israeli daily reported Sunday. The initiative, part of a wider shift in America’s diplomatic orientation, aimed at reaching understandings with Tehran over suspending its nuclear program, Maariv claimed, citing “two Western diplomats very close to the administration.” The initiative led to at least two US-Iran meetings, the report said. Israel was made aware of the contacts, and opposed them. But Iran rebuffed the “diplomatic hand” offered by the White House, Maariv reported.

The freshly appointed chairman of a federal investigation into the Benghazi massacre is an apologist for Islamic terrorism who has a cozy relationship with Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. And to add insult to injury, at press time Tuesday evening the chairman of this new State Department panel, former Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering, was poised to participate in a panel discussion at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., on “what role the faith community can play in fighting Islamophobia.” The news comes on the heels of a new report by the Investigative Project on Terrorism that found...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has renewed 180-day exceptions on Iran sanctions for Japan and 10 European Union nations due to their continued reductions of purchases of Iranian crude oil, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday. Clinton said the exceptions would apply to Japan, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom.