Iran is conducting anti-U.S. operations from Latin America, including military training camps in Venezuela, and expanding its reach across the border from the U.S. in Mexico, according to footage unveiled late Thursday by the largest Spanish-language network in the United States, Univision. The documentary showed a former Iran senior official accepting a plan to launch from Mexico a cyber war on the United States, one that would cripple U.S. computer systems, including the White House, the FBI, the CIA and several nuclear plants. The official, former Iranian Ambassador to Mexico …
Egyptian Islamists are poised to emerge as the big winners in Egypt’s parliamentary elections, a complex electoral process that will be held in phases until March. The first round of voting, to fill one-third of the seats in the lower house of parliament, was held on November 28–29, with run-off votes held on December 5–6. Although the official results have not yet been released, early reports based on partial results indicate that the first round of elections was dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, which received about …
Iranian protesters illegally broke into two British Embassy compounds in Tehran today as police stood by idly, and the attack was broadcast live on Iranian television. It is unclear as yet whether British diplomatic personnel were harmed or taken hostage. Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency reported that six British officials had been taken hostage but withdrew the story from its website minutes later without explanation. Iran’s rogue regime once again has exhibited a flagrant defiance of international law by failing to protect the embassy compounds, and it undoubtedly orchestrated the …
As international pressure on Iran has mounted due to its accelerating uranium enrichment, its foiled plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., and its systematic human rights abuses, the embattled regime in Tehran has lashed out verbally against Turkey, Britain, Israel, and the United States. On Saturday, General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the head of the aerospace unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), warned that if the United States or Israel attacks Iran, then the IRGC would target NATO missile defense installations in Turkey. The Iranians claim …
Egypt experienced its third day of bloody clashes on Monday, the worst explosion of political violence since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak last February. The riots were provoked by a clumsy government attempt on Saturday to forcibly eject protesters from Cairo’s Tahrir Square—the epicenter of Egypt’s “Arab Spring” protests. Tens of thousands of demonstrators stormed back into the square to battle police and army personnel. At least 23 protesters reportedly were killed and more than 1,000 were injured, as police resorted to live ammunition in repeated confrontations with the …
The International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) long-awaited report on Iran’s nuclear program was released today, confirming longstanding suspicions that Iran has made substantial progress in its nuclear weapons program. The IAEA’s quarterly report concluded: The Agency has serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme. After assessing carefully and critically the extensive information available to it, the Agency finds the information to be, overall, credible. The information indicates that Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device. The IAEA report urged Tehran …
Libya’s interim government gradually is taking shape. On Monday the Transitional National Council (TNC) announced that it had elected a new Prime Minister, Abdurraheem el-Keib, who will serve until elections in June for a national assembly that will write a new constitution. El-Keib, a dual Libyan-American citizen, is a U.S.-educated engineering professor who taught for many years at the University of Alabama before joining the TNC earlier this year. El-Keib is a technocrat who emerged as a choice acceptable to both Islamists and secular factions and is the scion of …
The Al-Nahda (“Renaissance”) Party, a long-banned Islamist movement that was legalized after the ouster of Tunisia’s autocratic President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in January, is emerging as the big winner in Sunday’s elections. Although the final results have not yet been announced, Al-Nahda has reportedly won 27 out of the 62 seats, over 40 percent of the seats filled so far, in the 217-member constituent assembly. The landmark election—the first genuinely free election to be held in Tunisia since it gained independence in 1956—will determine the members of the assembly …
After denying last week that the negotiations to extend the U.S. troop presence in Iraq were failing, the Obama Administration pivoted on Friday as President Obama announced that the U.S. troop presence would not be extended. The President sought to turn a dangerous outcome for Iraq’s security and the war against terrorists into a political boost for his reelection campaign by declaring in a televised speech: “Today, I can say that our troops in Iraq will definitely be home for the holidays.” The rapid drawdown of the U.S. military presence …
The Obama Administration’s Iraq policy is in disarray amid reports that negotiations have broken down with the Iraqi government over extending the U.S. military presence past the end of the year. The Associated Press reported on Saturday that all U.S. troops would leave Iraq by December 31, except for 160 active-duty troops attached to the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. The Obama Administration denied this report, maintaining that negotiations were continuing and no final decision had been made. The Obama Administration had been negotiating to extend the U.S. military presence, now …
