Free Republic

Hardline Iranian parliamentarian and member of Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Javad Karimi Ghodousi tweeted on April 22 implying that if granted permission, Iran could test its first nuclear weapon within one week.[17] Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Deputy Chairman Shahriar Heydari stated on April 22 in response to Karimi Ghodousi’s tweet that Iran has no ”intention” to build or use nuclear weapons.[18] Heydari cited Khamenei’s 2003 fatwa as the reason Iran is not seeking to acquire or use nuclear weapons. Heydari stated that Karimi Ghodousi's tweet may have been taken out of context.

Currently, Iran has a uranium stockpile to create 8 to ten nuclear bombs. But thanks to this nuclear deal, Iran must reduce its stockpile of uranium by 98%, and will keep its level of uranium enrichment at 3.67% — significantly below the enrichment level needed to create a bomb. On January 16, 2016, the International Atomic Energy Agency verified that Iran has completed the necessary steps under the Iran deal that will ensure Iran's nuclear program is and remains exclusively peaceful. Before this agreement, Iran's breakout time -- or the time it would have taken for Iran to gather enough...

Stacey Zolt Hara was in her office in downtown San Francisco when a text from her 16-year-old daughter arrived: “I’m scared,” she wrote. Her classmates at Berkeley High School were preparing to leave their desks and file into the halls, part of a planned “walkout” to protest Israel. Like many Jewish students, she didn’t want to participate. It was October 18, 11 days after the Hamas invasion of southern Israel. Zolt Hara told her daughter to wait in her classroom. She was trying to project calm. A public-relations executive, Zolt Hara had moved her family from Chicago to Berkeley six...

The Biden administration’s legal justification for its attacks on Houthi militants in Yemen is “laughable,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said at a Senate Foreign Relations committee hearing Tuesday on United States actions in the Red Sea. Speaking to defense officials, Kaine said though “Houthi behavior is abhorrent,” he has “grave skepticism” about the administration’s interpretation of presidential military powers under Article 2 of the Constitution. “A narrow mission to defend U.S. shipping, both military and commercial — that is Article 2 self-defense,” Kaine said. “Article 2 self-defense means you can defend U.S. personnel, you can defend U.S. military assets, you...

White House Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday that Republicans who oppose a Biden administration-backed bill on foreign aid and border security are “siding with Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Tehran,” effectively accusing them of treason. Jean-Pierre repeated the accusation, for emphasis, throughout a press briefing at the White House on Wednesday. No one in the press corps thought to challenge her on the tactic of accusing domestic political opponents of siding with America’s enemies. The bill has passed the Senate but is considered dead on arrival in the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) will not bring it to the...

‘Blood now soaks the soil of 3 continents. Aggressors are now on killing sprees’ Back before World War II there were multiple small, regional conflicts that had developed. Eventually they merged. And that is exactly what is developing now, according to an expert on international events, and Joe Biden is allowing it. “Biden has opened the floodgates of Hell. Although nothing is inevitable, we are fast approaching the point where, as a practical matter, he will not be able to stop China and Russia, directly and through proxies, from merging existing conflicts and turning them into the next global war,”...

MOSCOW, February 2-RIA Novosti. Great Britain has invited NATO allies to consider sending an expeditionary force of the alliance to Ukraine, an informed source told RIA Novosti. "In connection with the unfavorable developments for Kiev in the Ukrainian theater of military operations, Britain invited NATO allies to consider sending an expeditionary force of the alliance to Ukraine, as well as establishing a no-fly zone over the territory controlled by the Kiev authorities, and increasing the supply of weapons and equipment to the Ukrainian Armed Forces", said the agency's interlocutor. At the same time, according to him, London understands that the...

U.S. lawmakers are calling for military strikes inside Iran in the aftermath of a horrific terror attack that left three U.S. service members dead and dozens wounded. So if the U.S. does hit targets inside Iranian territory, how will the Iranians respond? It is theoretically possible that they could back down, but I doubt it. All of the airstrikes that we have conducted so far against Iranian-backed terror groups in Iraq and Syria have not caused them to back down. And the airstrikes that we have hit the Houthis in Yemen with have not caused them to back down either....

A bulldozer unloads the bodies of Palestinians killed in fighting with Israel and turned over by the Israeli military during a mass funeral in Rafah, Gaza StripThe first hearing in a landmark lawsuit against Israel enters its second day on Friday at the Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ). The case, filed to the top UN court by South Africa last month, claims Israel's siege of Gaza amounts to genocide and breaches the post-Holocaust 1948 Genocide Convention. The Convention gives party countries, which include both Israel and South Africa, the collective right to prevent and stop crimes of genocide. Such...

Russia and Iran will speed up work on a "major new interstate agreement", the Russian foreign ministry said on Tuesday. -snip- Iran is the main backer of Israel's enemy Hamas. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke by phone with Putin on Sunday and voiced "robust disapproval" of Russia's "dangerous" cooperation with Iran. Iranian authorities have said military cooperation with Russia is expanding day by day. Iran said last month it had finalised arrangements for Russia to provide it with Su-35 fighter jets, Mi-28 attack helicopters and Yak-130 pilot training aircraft.

President Joe Biden is pushing hard for more Ukraine money and resisting, at least so far, Republican efforts to put strong border security provisions into the aid bill. There are negotiations between the White House and Republicans on the border issue, but so far there has been no breakthrough. It looks more and more as if Biden will try and stonewall the Republicans and get his Ukraine money without strings. That helps explain why Biden has invited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to Washington. Zelensky just attended the inauguration for Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei. His appearance in Argentina (where he...

Former President Trump suggested in a new interview that the war between Israel and Hamas will just have to “play out” despite concerns about rising civilian casualties. “So you have a war that’s going on, and you’re probably going to have to let this play out. You’re probably going to have to let it play out because a lot of people are dying,” Trump told Univision in an interview that aired Thursday night. “It should have never started. There was no way it would have started again,” Trump added. “Iran didn’t have the money because Iran is leading this. And...

Oct 16 (Reuters) - Iran's top envoy said that a "preemptive action" could be expected in the coming hours, state TV reported on Monday, adding that Israel will not be allowed to take any action in the Gaza Strip without facing consequences. "Leaders of the Resistance will not allow the Zionist regime to take any action in Gaza. ... All options are open and we cannot be indifferent to the war crimes committed against the people of Gaza," Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, told state TV. "The resistance front is capable of waging a long-term war with the enemy (Israel)... in...

The Iranian government has infiltrated the Biden administration and obtained access to sensitive U.S. government information, according to a coalition of Republican lawmakers who are investigating the matter. Iran has repeatedly demonstrated in the past several months that it has access "to restricted U.S. State Department emails or government servers," according to a letter sent Wednesday to the White House by congressional Republicans and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The series of leaks, which have appeared in Iranian state-controlled propaganda outlets, "constitute a significant security breach of U.S. government property by a foreign adversary" and could indicate there is...

Russia was struck by drone strikes in at least two different regions early on Sunday, Moscow's Defense Ministry has said, as videos circulating online on Sunday seem to show uncrewed aircraft-type drones soaring over Russian soil. One clip, reportedly filmed in Russia's Smolensk region, appears to show an explosion as a drone dips from view... Ukraine targeted Russia's Krasnodar region with an "aircraft-type" drone at around 8 a.m. Moscow time on Sunday, Russia's Defense Ministry said. Six planes scheduled to arrive at Sochi airport, on the Black Sea coast in the Krasnodar region, were diverted to alternative airfields because of...

Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the spokesman for the Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas, slammed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech at the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, promising that there will be no peace or stability until the "Palestinian nation's" demands are met. In his speech, Netanyahu said, "Many decades of efforts to make peace with Arab Nations have failed because they were based on one false assumption - that the Palestinians must be appeased as a precondition to peace. The Palestinians have much to gain from new peace agreements. They should be part of these agreements, but they should not...

Poland said Wednesday it will no longer arm Ukraine and instead focus on its own defense, as the two allies clashed at a key moment in Kyiv's fightback against invasion by Russia. In a mounting row over grain exports from Ukraine, Poland summoned the Ukrainian ambassador to protest remarks at the UN by President Volodymyr Zelensky. The Ukrainian leader said some countries were only pretending to support his nation as it wages a counteroffensive to retake land taken by Russia. Warsaw took offense at this.

Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi said Tuesday that his country will never give up its right “to have peaceful nuclear energy” and urged the United States “to demonstrate in a verifiable fashion” that it wants to return to the 2015 nuclear deal. Addressing the annual high-level meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, Raisi said the American withdrawal from the deal trampled on U.S. commitments and was “an inappropriate response” to Iran’s fulfillment of its commitments. […] Iran has long denied ever seeking nuclear weapons and continues to insist that its program is entirely for peaceful purposes – points Raisi reiterated Tuesday...

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said the $6 billion in funds the U.S. agreed to unfreeze in exchange for five U.S. prisoners will be spent “wherever we need it,” despite the Biden administration saying the funds are restricted to humanitarian use. When asked in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt about the funds, Raisi said Iran would have “authority” over how the funds will be spent. “This money belongs to the Iranian people, the Iranian government, so the Islamic Republic of Iran will decide what to do with this money,” he said, according to an Iranian government translator.

And does the Biden administration realize it? Congress increasingly suspects that Iran has more information about US policy than they do — and proof just dropped into their laps. Or, rather, on the doorsteps of Iranian newspaper subscribers.For weeks, the House Foreign Affairs Committee has demanded to see why Biden’s special envoy to Iran, Rob Malley, suddenly got suspended from that position. They didn’t even know about it for two months, and spent the next two months trying to find out what happened. They don’t have to subpoena the State Department, however, as the Tehran Times published the “sensitive but...