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US embassy staff and the US ambassador in Baghdad have been evacuated, according to two unnamed Iraqi Foreign Ministry officials cited by Reuters, as hundreds of Iraqi protesters swam the embassy compound. Iraqi supporters of a powerful Iranian-backed militia were attacking the outside of the fortified zone that surrounds the US embassy compound in Baghdad, protesting against American air strikes that killed 25 fighters from the group, news agencies reported.

The U.S. Embassy in Iraq is being attacked by Iraqi Shiite militia supporters, who’ve broken into the compound. According to the Associated Press, a fire has been set and sounds of gunfire were heard.    An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw flames rising from inside the compound and at least three U.S. soldiers on the roof of the main building inside embassy. It was not clear what caused the fire at the reception area near the parking lot of the compound. A man on a loudspeaker urged the mob not to enter the compound, saying: “The message was...

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump To those many millions of people in Iraq who want freedom and who don’t want to be dominated and controlled by Iran, this is your time! 10:44 AM · Dec 31, 2019

Iran is prepared to accept changes to the 2015 nuclear agreement and not seek nuclear weapons if the United States agrees to the deal and lifts sanctions, a spokesman for Iran said Wednesday. “If the sanctions are ended and there is a return to the [nuclear] accord, there is room for giving reassurances toward breaking the deadlock and the President has even a proposal for small changes in the accord,” Ali Rabiei said on state TV, according to Reuters. The news service added that Iran’s state-run Press TV said on Wednesday that Tehran would be willing to reenter the deal...

Golly, whoever leaked this to Bloomberg must have been pretty high up the food chain to know what the president was thinking on a matter as sensitive as Iran diplomacy.And they must have a pretty sizable axe to grind with him if they’re willing to make him sound this weak, particularly in comparison to Bolton.Any theories? Do any current or former disgruntled national security aides with a reputation for score-settling in the press present themselves as logical suspects?The post-Bolton era will be a golden age of natsec leaking, my friends. President Trump discussed easing sanctions on Iran to help...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) is accusing multiple senior Trump administration officials in both the Treasury and State Departments of actively working behind President Donald Trump's back to save the Iran nuclear deal and continue providing Tehran with waivers permitting the regime to conduct sensitive nuclear work at a military site that houses Iran's nuclear weapons program. In reaction to reports that the State Department will renew a series of controversial sanctions waivers that have permitted Iran to continue conducting nuclear work, including at a military bunker dug into the side of mountain, Cruz accused "deep state" officials operating at...

Shortened title. Full title: Ted Cruz Sounds the Alarm: Deep State Staffers at Treasury and State Working Behind Trump’s Back to Preserve Obama’s Iran Nuke Deal Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) sounded the alarm on Wednesday and said that staffers at the Treasury and State Departments are tirelessly working behind President Trump’s back to preserve Obama’s Iran nuke deal. Ted Cruz accused many senior Trump administration officials of continuing to give Tehran waivers allowing the terrorist-supporting regime to conduct nuclear tests at a military bunker that holds Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Cruz said “Deep State” in the Treasury and State who...

RUSH: Donald Trump recently, President Trump just signed really, really, really Draconian sanctions against Iran, including sanctions that will deny the supreme leader, the head mullah, the grand pooh-bah ayatollah, will deny him access to financial instruments. We have sanctions that are so pinpoint, they’re aimed at a guy, the supreme leader of Iran. And Trump, just I mean moments ago, signed this executive order. There’s video of it happening right now. That’s pretty precision point when you deny the grand pooh-bah access to his financial instruments. Meaning, it’s gonna be tough for the guy to move money around and...

Assuming nothing happens between the time I write this and the time you read it, it appears that Donald Trump has refused to take the sucker’s bait and engage us in open war with Iran. And while I remain more hawkish than many of my fellow supporters of the Trump Revolt against the garbage liberal elite, it’s pretty clear that Trump was right. Some quality conservatives disagree with me in good faith, but whatever makes Fredocons like Bill Kristol upset is presumptively a good idea. Let’s clarify some things. Iran is our enemy – the notion that we might...

As the Trump administration sent warplanes and an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf, a small group of former Obama administration officials reached out to their contacts in the Iranian government, including Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. Their message to Iran: Don’t take Trump’s bait. Stay calm. Conversations between former Obama officials and Iranian government officials have been ongoing since November 2016. Zarif, who visits the U.S. every year for the U.N. General Assembly in New York, usually meets with lawmakers, think tanks, journalists, and former officials when he is in town. But the recent round of conversations, which took...

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a top member of the minority party in the upper chamber, met recently with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at a time of escalating tensions between Washington and Tehran. The two had dinner around the end of last month when Zarif was visiting the U.S., sources told Politico. Feinstein's team said the dinner was designed to update the senator on the situation between the U.S. and Iran and was "arranged in consultation with the State Department." A State Department official said the agency did not ask the California Democrat to meet with Zarif, but did not...

U.S. President Donald Trump warned on Monday Iran would “suffer greatly” if it targeted U.S. interests after Washington deployed an aircraft carrier and more jet fighters at a time of rising tensions with Tehran. “We’ll see what happens with Iran. If they do anything, it will be a very bad mistake,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “If they do anything they will suffer greatly.” Trump’s comments came after the United Arab Emirates reported four commercial vessels had been sabotaged on Sunday near Fujairah emirate just outside the Strait of Hormuz. Iran sought to distance itself from the incident.

A special European Union initiative to protect trade with Iran against newly reimposed U.S. sanctions faces possible collapse with no EU country willing to host the operation for fear of provoking U.S. punishment.

When President Trump announced in May that he was going to withdraw the United States from the nuclear agreement that the Obama administration and five other countries negotiated with Iran in 2015 and reimpose sanctions on the country, the decision was fraught with potential disaster. If Mr. Trump’s approach worked too well, oil prices would spike and hurt the American economy. If it failed, international companies would continue trading with Iran, leaving the Islamic Republic unscathed, defiant and free to restart its nuclear program. But the policy has been effective without either of those nasty consequences, at least so far.

VIENNA - Iran has remained within the main restrictions on its nuclear activities imposed by a 2015 deal with major powers, a confidential report by the U.N. atomic watchdog indicated on Thursday. In its last report in May, the IAEA had said Iran could do more to cooperate with inspectors and thereby “enhance confidence”, but stopped short of saying the Islamic Republic had given it cause for concern. Thursday’s report to member states seen by Reuters contained similar language. It said the Vienna-based U.N. nuclear watchdog was able to carry out all so-called complementary access inspections needed to verify Iran’s...

Next time someone spots Richard Clarke’s car, check to see if he’s sporting a “Resist” bumper sticker . . . On CNN today, former Madeleine Albright adviser Clarke expressed the hope that “the system” would “resist” President Trump should he order an attack on North Korea or Iran. Clarke said “we have to worry” that President Trump would try, for personal reasons, to launch an attack against North Korea or Iran. Continued Clarke: “We do have Secretary Mattis standing between him and our forces. So if the President wakes up in the middle of the night and is mad at...

For all the concessions President Obama offered Iran for his "nuclear deal" – $150 billion, for instance – Iran treated the U.S. with contempt, harassing and even taking into custody U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf. The adage that weakness is provocative was proven true (via the Daily Caller): During the final years of the Obama administration, Iranian gunboats regularly harassed U.S. ships, with three dozen such interactions occurring in 2016. The worst incident occurred in January 2016, when the Iranians captured two U.S. Navy riverine patrol boats and 10 sailors.

President Donald Trump, like everyone alive today, never met Prussian military theorist Carl Von Clausewitz, but the author of “Vom Kriege” (“On War”) would have found pleasant company with the man who inspired “The Art of the Deal.” For Clausewitz, war involved politics in addition to “other means” to arrive at a “deal”; in other words to obtain the objectives of a nation at war.For Mr. Trump, it’s about maximizing one’s leverage in obtaining the “deal,” one of his 11 tenets in the art of deal-making. And in that regard, Mr. Trump has demonstrated that he understands both the Clausewitzian...

Full title......US Moves To Strangle Iranian Efforts To Secure Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars To Fund Its Troubling Military Activities.......The U.S. Department of the Treasury imposed new sanctions on Iran Thursday, just two days after President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. is withdrawing from the Iran deal. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control blacklisted nine Iranian entities — six individuals and three firms — involved in an illegal currency-exchange network in the United Arab Emirates. Network exchangers and couriers converted and transferred hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), specifically the Quds Force...

President Trump was good to his word, dumping the rotten Iran deal in the toughest possible way. First, he stated in so many words that the United States wanted regime change, not just a revised deal with the mullahs. Second, he warned that any nation assisting Iran's nuclear program also would face sanctions (it's not clear what would trigger such sanctions, which is going to worry the Europeans). Third, he showed contempt for European diplomacy by hailing Israel's acquisition of Iranian nuclear-weapons plans, something that the Europeans insisted had no bearing on the present deal.You don't get tougher than...