Free Republic

The shooting took place in Tehran. Speculations that the ambush is part of Israel's response to the Hamas attack. The response is not limited to the Gaza Strip. A senior intelligence official of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Akiki, was ambushed and is in critical condition. The assassination attempt took place in Tehran, Iran. [Translated from Italian.]

(excerpt) The member, identified as Reza Dastani, was killed on his way to work. Efforts are underway to identify and arrest the assailants. (excerpt)The assassination comes just days after IRGC Col. Davoud Jafari was killed in a roadside bombing near Damascus that Iran has blamed on Israel. The IRGC-affiliated Tasnim News Agency reported that Jafari served as an adviser for the IRGC Aerospace Force in Syria and was among one of the Iranian officials responsible for the seizure of two US Navy command boats carrying 10 US personnel in the Persian Gulf in January 2016. The Intelli Times blog revealed...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States waged a series of precision air strikes on Thursday against an Iran-backed militia in Iraq that it blamed for a major rocket attack a day earlier that killed two American troops and a 26-year-old British soldier. The U.S. strikes appeared limited in scope and narrowly tailored, targeting five weapons storage facilities used by Kataib Hezbollah militants, including stores of weaponry for past attacks on U.S.-led coalition troops, the Pentagon said. In a statement, Iraq’s military said the U.S. air strikes hit four locations in Iraq that housed formal Iraqi police and military units, in...

President Trump certainly seems to have struck a nerve — given Tehran’s over-the-top response to reports he’s about to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist group. “If the news is correct about the stupidity of the American government . . . then the Revolutionary Guards will consider the American army to be like Islamic State,” declared the group’s commander, Gen. Mohammed Ali Jafari. Trump reportedly will make the designation as part of a new strategy that’s to start with decertifying President Barack Obama’s deeply flawed nuclear deal. It’ll hurt Tehran where it counts: The Guard controls some 15 percent...

The Syrian army and allied Iranian and Hezbollah forces are preparing for a ground offensive against insurgents in the Aleppo area backed by Russian air strikes, two senior regional officials familiar with the plans said on Tuesday. The offensive would expand on a ground attack launched by the same alliance last week that is targeting rebels in Hama province further west. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said thousands of Iranian troops had arrived to take part in the ground offensives in support of President Bashar al-Assad. A big government offensive in the area near the Turkish border is...

An Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) general has been killed near Aleppo while advising the Syrian army on their battle against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) fighters, the guards said in a statement on Friday. The Guards said General Hossein Hamedani was killed on Thursday night and that he had "played an important role ... reinforcing the front of Islamic resistance against the terrorists". Iran is the main regional ally of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and has provided military and economic support during Syria´s four-year-old civil war. Hamedani, a veteran of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, was made depu

BEIRUT — Islamic State militants seized several villages from rival insurgents north of Aleppo, Syria, on Friday, in a surprise attack that came despite intensive Russian airstrikes that Moscow insists are targeting the extremist group, activists said. Iranian state media reported that a senior commander in Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard was killed by the Islamic State group on the outskirts of Aleppo city, but it was not immediately clear whether Gen. Hossein Hamedani's death was related to the new ISIS offensive. An Iranian state television report said he was killed while "carrying out an advisory mission." It didn't provide any...

ANKARA, Oct 9 (Reuters) - An Iranian Revolutionary Guards general has been killed near Aleppo, where he was advising the Syrian army on their battle against Islamic State fighters, the guards said in a statement on Friday. General Hussein Hamedani was killed late on Wednesday, the statement said. Iran is the main regional ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and has provided military and economic support during Syria's four-year-old civil war.

The shadowy Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani recently visited Moscow to meet with senior Russian leaders, according to two Western intelligence sources, despite a travel ban and U.N. Security Council resolutions barring him from leaving Iran. On July 24, one week before State Secretary John Kerry testified to Senate Armed Services Committee and faced questions about the newly struck nuclear deal, Soleimani arrived in Moscow for meetings with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and President Vladimir Putin. It was not immediately clear what the Iranian leader discussed, but the revelation comes as the United Nations and European Union arms...

Iran nuclear deal whitewashes Qods Force commander Qassem Soleimani, who killed US soldiers, trained terrorists throughout region. Aside from removing UN conventional arms embargo on Iran after five years, the nuclear deal signed Tuesday by the P5+1 powers and Iran grants several other questionable concessions to the leading state sponsor of terror, unrelated to its controversial nuclear program. The most glaring of these concessions is seen by some as the inclusion of the name Qassem Soleimani on a list of companies and individuals who will have sanctions against them removed as expressly detailed in the deal, reports Yedioth Aharonoth. Soleimani...

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...

According to first unconfirmed reports, central Tehran was hit Sunday night with massive blasts leaving many hundreds of people dead. Witnesses report heavy Revolutionary Guards and Basij forces speeding to the area. Thee are also reports of explosions in the southern Iranian town of Isfahan - also unconfirmed.

The threat of Sunni extremists eclipsing the power of its Shiite-dominated Arab ally presents Iran with the biggest security and strategic challenge it has faced since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. With the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, an offshoot of al Qaeda, rapidly gaining territory, Iran deployed Revolutionary Guards units to Iraq, according to Iranian security officials. Iran has invested considerable financial, political and military resources over the past decade to ensure Iraq emerged from U.S. war as a strategic partner for the Islamic Republic and a strong Shiite-led state. The so-called Shiite crescent—stretching from Iran...

Iran has sent 2,000 advance troops to Iraq in the past 48 hours to help tackle a jihadist insurgency, a senior Iraqi official has told the Guardian. The confirmation comes as the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, said Iran was ready to support Iraq from the mortal threat fast spreading through the country, while the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, called on citizens to take up arms in their country's defence. Addressing the country on Saturday, Maliki said rebels from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) had given "an incentive to the army and to Iraqis to act...

Iran's Revolutionary Guards have stolen dozens of sophisticated Russian-made surface-to-air missiles from Libya and smuggled them across the border to neighbouring Sudan, according to Western intelligence reports. The weapons were seized by units attached to the Guards' elite Quds Force, which travelled to Libya from their base in southern Sudan. Acting on orders received from Revolutionary Guards commanders in Iran, they took advantage of the chaos that engulfed Libya following the collapse of the regime of former dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to seize "significant quantities" of advanced weaponry, according to military intelligence officers in Libya. They say the weapons stolen...

Senior officers in Iran's Revolutionary Guards have written a letter to their commanding officer demanding assurances that they will not be required to open fire on anti-government demonstrators. Following the recent violence that occurred during anti-government protests in Egypt, the officers argue that it is against the principles of Shi'ite Islamic law to use violence against their own people. In a suggestion of a major split within the Islamic Republic's ruling hierarchy over its handling of anti-government protests, the letter has been circulated widely throughout the ranks of the Revolutionary Guards, the body responsible for defending religious system. The letter,...

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Wednesday slapped new sanctions on several affiliates of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, targeting one person and four companies for penalties over their alleged involvement in producing and spreading weapons of mass destruction. Meanwhile, Channel 10 reported that China was also considering joining the West's sanctions. After Russia, China was until now the strongest opponent of harsher sanctions, enjoying strong trade ties with Iran and being one of the country's main oil clients. The American Treasury Department said it is freezing the assets in US jurisdictions of Revolutionary Guard Gen. Rostam Qasemi and four subsidiaries...

Axis Of Evil: So who mourns when a terrorist dies by his own bomb? Apparently the U.S. and the U.N. do, given their condolences to Iran after Sunday's attack on its Revolutionary Guard. Iran is the father of this terrorism. Over the weekend, Iran was shocked by a massive suicide bomb that killed 49 people, including five top commanders of its Revolutionary Guard and several tribal leaders in Iran's eastern Sistan-Baluchistan province. The attack was a first for Iran and a big blow to the mullahs, whose Revolutionary Guard acts as their military arm. A Pakistan-based terror group called Jundallah...

No, this is not satire from The Onion. If only it were, we could laugh instead of cry. Laura Rozen reports in Politico: The U.S. has condemned a suicide attack that killed five Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps members today. Five commanders of Iran's Revolutionary Guards were killed in suicide attacks in Iran's southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan province bordering Pakistan, according to reports. The Baluch group Jundullah claimed responsibility for the attack, that killed some 30 people. Iranian authorities have accused the group of receiving funding from foreign countries including the United States. The US has denied supporting Jundullah. "We condemn this act...

TEHRAN, Iran – A suicide bomber killed five senior commanders of the powerful Revolutionary Guard and at least 37 others Sunday near the Pakistani border in the heartland of a potentially escalating Sunni insurgency. The attack — which also left dozens wounded — was the most high-profile strike against security forces in an outlaw region of armed tribal groups, drug smugglers and Sunni rebels known as Jundallah, or Soldiers of God. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad promised sharp retaliation. But a sweeping offensive by authorities is unlikely. Iranian officials have been reluctant to open full-scale military operations in the southeastern border zone,...