President Barack Obama didn’t support the pro-democracy “Green Revolution” protests that swept Iran after its disputed 2009 presidential election because he feared that they would “sabotage his secret outreach to Iran,” Bloomberg View columnist Eli Lake wrote on Wednesday. In his review of The Iran Wars, a new book by Wall Street Journal chief foreign correspondent...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

Iran-backed Shi’ite militias “detained, tortured and abused far more Sunni civilians” during the Iraqi government’s effort to recapture of the city of Fallujah than American officials have previously been willing to acknowledge, Reuters reported on Tuesday. Based on interviews with a combination of twenty survivors, tribal leaders, Iraqi politicians, and Western diplomats, Reuters...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

President Barack Obama changed his mind about launching a retaliatory strike against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose forces carried out a sarin gas attack that killed more than 1,400 people in August 2013, after Iran threatened to pull out of then-secret nuclear talks, the chief foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal said on Monday....

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

A year after the nuclear deal with Iran was reached, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have emerged as its biggest beneficiaries, Jay Solomon, the chief foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, wrote in an essay on Saturday. Khamenei achieved the major goals he wanted to...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

Japan has lodged a protest with Iran over the detainment of its ambassador to Tehran in April, the Japan Times reported on Sunday. Ambassador Hiroyasu Kobayashi was detained and questioned by Iranian authorities while he and his wife attended a dinner hosted by an Iranian acquaintance on April 28. Alcohol, which is officially banned in Iran,...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is kicking off a six nation tour of Latin America on Sunday amid increasing fears of Tehran’s influence over the region. Zarif will begin his visit in Cuba on Sunday, then travel to Nicaragua, Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia, and Venezuela, according to Iranian media. More than 60 Iranian business leaders will...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

The timing of the $400 million payment to Iran for the release of three American hostages “suggests” that the Obama administration was already talking to officials of Iran Air, which delivered the cash home from Geneva, while it was still listed as a terrorist organization, a former Treasury official said on...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

The families of 25 Kurdish prisoners who were executed by Iran earlier this month told an Iranian human rights organization that their relatives’ bodies bore marks of torture, Al Arabiya reported on Tuesday. Thirty-six Sunni Kurdish activists who were being held in the political prisoners’ section of Rajai Shahr, a prison located near Tehran, were reportedly taken...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

After months of denials that the United States paid a ransom to Iran, the State Department confirmed on Thursday that the Obama administration’s transfer of $400 million in cash to Iran was contingent upon the release of three American hostages. At the State Department’s daily press briefing, Associated Press journalist Bradley Klapper asked Spokesman John Kirby,...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

Around 80,000 Iran-backed Shi’ite militia members are currently operating in Iraq, a U.S. military official told Fox News on Tuesday. Baghdad-based military spokesman Col. Chris Garver explained that there are approximately 100,000 Shi’ite militia members fighting ISIS in Iraq, with the number backed by Iran “usually identified at around 80,000.” “The effect of the...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle