Iran: ‘We Won. The Americans Have Lost It.’

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Photo Credit: FrontPageMagBy Majid Rafizadeh.

Bashar Al Assad has been reelected as the president of Syria for an additional seven years, in an election that is not considered to be legitimate.

Since the election, Iranian authorities have been boasting about their role in keeping Assad in power and keeping their vow. This bragging comes at a time when the Obama administration is eagerly pushing for a final and comprehensive nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic in Geneva, which would urge the United Nations Security Council to remove all economic and political sanctions against Iran.

Iran is already receiving billions of dollars from the United States for signing the interim nuclear deal.

Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi, the military adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, triumphantly and openly expressed his sense of victory by stating on the government-run Press TV, “The strategy of the US Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and European countries to overthrow Bashar al-Assad has failed,” adding, “this is a strategic failure for the Western, Arab and Zionist front and a big victory for the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Tehran is attempting to show the failure of the US’s and other Western countries’ foreign policy initiatives and campaigns regarding the Syrian crisis. Senior Iranian officials have told the Guardian that the concentrated attempts to overthrow President Assad has failed, and this election shows that Tehran and its staunchest ally, Damascus, have won the war.

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Photo Credit: ReutersIran sends troops into Iraq to aid fight against Isis militants

By Martin Chulov.

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 bravely”. His call to arms came after reports surfaced that hundreds of young men were flocking to volunteer centres across Baghdad to join the fight against Isis.

In Iran, Rouhani raised the prospect of Teheran cooperating with its old enemy Washington to defeat the Sunni insurgent group – which is attempting to ignite a sectarian war beyond Iraq’s borders.

The Iraqi official said 1,500 basiji forces had crossed the border into the town of Khanaqin, in Diyala province, in central Iraq on Friday, while another 500 had entered the Badra Jassan area in Wasat province overnight. The Guardian confirmed on Friday that Major General Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ elite Quds Force, had arrived in Baghdad to oversee the defence of the capital.

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Photo Credit: Militant website via APU.S. evacuates embassy as bombs, fighting rock Iraq

By Ammar Al Shamary and Jabeen Bhatti.

The United States said Sunday it was evacuating some staff from its embassy and beefing up security as deadly explosions rocked the Iraqi capital and advancing militant Islamic insurgents released graphic images appearing to show its fighters massacring captured Iraqi soldiers.

The U.S. State Department said in a statement that an undisclosed number of staffers will be moved to Amman, Jordan, or U.S. consulates elsewhere in Iraq not immediately threatened by the insurgent group, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL.

The State Department issued a travel warning for Iraq Sunday night that cautioned U.S. citizens to avoid “all but essential travel to Iraq. Travel within Iraq remains dangerous given the security situation.” Violence in many regions of the country is as intense as it’s been since 2007, the warning said.

The embassy will remain fully operational with “some additional U.S. government security personnel,” the State Department said. The embassy, inside the Green Zone near the Tigris River, employs thousands of people, some local hires and others from the United States.

The development came as photos posted on a militant website show what look to be masked fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant loading captives onto flatbed trucks before forcing them to lie face-down in a shallow ditch with their arms tied behind their backs. The bodies of the captives are then shown, soaked in blood after being shot.

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Unreal: Obama Admin Urges Israel To Show “Restraint” In Hunt For Teens Kidnapped By Palestinian Terrorists…

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Photo Credit: Weasel Zippers Washington (AFP) – The United States on Wednesday called on both Israel and the Palestinians to show restraint as Israelis tightened their grip on the West Bank hunting for three kidnapped teenagers.

“We recognize this is an incredibly sensitive and difficult circumstance on the ground, and we feel all sides should exercise restraint,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters.

Israeli troops have pressed their biggest arrest operation in years, imposing a tight lockdown on huge swathes of the West Bank in the hunt for the three boys kidnapped six days ago.

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Obama ‘Went to Bed While People Died’

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Photo Credit: WNDAfter all is said and done, the Benghazi scandal boils down to just the same two key questions as those in the Watergate scandal: What did the president know? And, when did he know it?

That’s according to a man who used to guard the president for a living, former secret service agent Dan Bongino, author of the WND bestseller, “Life Inside the Bubble,” and current candidate to represent Maryland in Congress.

Bongino strongly suggested the answers to those questions will show President Obama just as responsible for the scandal as President Nixon was for his. The difference was, he said, people died in Benghazi.

Parodying the phrase used by former Secretary of Stare Hillary Clinton, Bongino rhetorically asked, “What difference does it make?” He then answered by saying four men were killed and nothing was done to help them.

The man who used to personally guard the president was one of more than a dozen expert panelists convened by the Heritage Foundation and the Benghazi Accountability Coalition for a four-hour examination of the scandal called, “Benghazi: The Difference it Makes is Accountability.”

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Urgent Prayer, Help Needed for Iraq’s Christians

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Photo Credit: AFP / Getty ImagesIn the wake of the growing crisis in Iraq, a plea for prayer and help has been issued by the Diocese of Cyprus and the Gulf and the Anglican vicar of St George’s Church in Baghdad.

An estimated half a million people, including hundreds of Christian families, are fleeing the area with many attempting to find refuge in the nearby Kurdish provinces of Northern Iraq. At least one Assyrian church in Mosul has been burned down in the recent violence.

A statement from the diocese said that Christians are feeling particularly vulnerable, “especially in light of the treatment of Christians in the Raqqah province of northern Syria where ISIS* has also established its authority.

“Recall that, in February 2014, ISIS commanders in Raqqah forced Christian community leaders to sign a contract agreeing to a set of stringent conditions. These included the payment of a special tax (known as jizya), conduct of Christian rites only behind closed doors so as to be neither visible nor audible to Muslims, and adherence to Islamic commercial, dress code and dietary regulations.

“Mosul and the surrounding Nineveh plain is the traditional heartland of Iraq’s Christian communities. Many Christians fled to this region when forced to leave Baghdad and other areas in recent years. Christians are alarmed at the ISIS take-over of Mosul, fearful that this will further accelerate the decline of the Christian presence in Iraq.”

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‘Obama, Stop Playing Golf and Deal With Iraq’

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By Courtney Coren.

House Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers pleaded with President Barack Obama on Monday to quit playing golf and lead the country with a better solution than working with Iran on the crisis in Iraq.

“‘Mr. President, please come back from the golf course,'” Rogers said on “America’s Forum” on Newsmax TV. “‘We need you. We need a decision now. We need to sit down. We ought to be spending very long days in situation rooms to try to get to a place that really does work for American national security interests.”

Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States is close to beginning talks with Iran over helping Iraq in the fight against the insurgency.

Rogers says the United States should be exhausting other options before turning to Iran for help.

“That would put us at odds with Iran’s position in Syria, and it certainly would put us at odds with a country that we believe has U.S. blood on its hands by supporting and financing operations in Iraq against U.S. soldiers in the past,” the Michigan Republican explained.

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Photo Credit: APObama Announces 275 US Troops Will Be Sent to Iraq to Protect American Embassy in Baghdad Days After Saying They Would Not Return

By DAVID MARTOSKO, U.S. POLITICAL EDITOR and JAMES NYE and ASSOCIATED PRESS.

President Obama announced on Monday evening that US ground troops ‘equipped for combat’ are being sent to Iraq – just days after claiming that no American soldiers would be deployed to the war-torn country.

In a letter to Congress, the president said American troops will be returning to Iraq only three years after they left and their deployment began on Sunday.

Obama said that their only purpose will be to protect U.S. personnel and the embassy in Baghdad – and not to join in the fierce fighting raging outside the Iraqi capital.

The president did tell Congress, however, that American military personnel in Baghdad will be ‘equipped for combat.’

The president did not give a deadline for the troops exit, only that the 275 soldiers will remain in Iraq for as long as they are needed to protect US interests.

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Iran Supreme Leader: The Shiite Islamic Messiah Is Coming To Free The World (+video)

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / www.khamenei.irIran’s supreme leader is promising a world free of infidels and nonbelievers with the coming of the Islamic messiah, Mahdi, a 9th-century descendant of the prophet Mohammad whom the Shiites refer to as the 12th Imam.

“The coming of Imam Zaman (Mahdi) is the definite promise by Allah,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech Wednesday on the anniversary of Mahdi’s birthday at an exhibition of research and historical documents on the 12th Imam.

Khamenei said one of Allah’s promises was that an Islamic revolution would come to Iran. “Who would have thought that in this sensitive region and in this important country, with a regime (run by Shah Pahlavi) and supported by the international powers, a revolution based on religion and Sharia (law) would take place?” Khamenei asked.

The Shiite clerical establishment ruling Iran believes that Iran’s 1979 revolution was a precursor to the coming of Mahdi, during which all infidels will be killed and the flag of Islam will be raised in all four corners of the world.

“The caravan of humanity from the day of creation has been moving through the windings of the hard maze (of life) … to reach an open path, (and) this open path is that of the time of the coming of Imam Mahdi,” he said. “The awaiting for the coming is a hopeful and powerful wait, providing the biggest opening for the Islamic society.”

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Ruthless: ISIS Tweets Photo of Severed Head for World Cup

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Photo Credit: TownHall The World Cup kicked off this week and to show their “support,” ISIS savagely tweeted a photo of a Sunni police chief’s severed head and joked about it being a soccer ball.

“This is our ball,” the Iraqi jihadists said in the tweet showing the picture. “It is made of skin #WorldCup #WorldCup2014.”

Via the New York Post (click if you want to see the blurred-out image):

Increasingly violent rebel forces have been documenting their savagery with a steady stream of graphic photographs and videos as they rampage toward Baghdad.

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Seal Southern Border, Enforce Immigration Laws

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Photo Credit: Marjorie Kamys CoteraCornyn: U.S. Should Help Mexico Seal Its Southern Border

By Julián Aguilar.

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, on Wednesday said U.S. aid that has helped return Mexican cities like Ciudad Juárez to normalcy after years of violence should also be used to help Mexico secure its border with Central America and stem the growing tide of undocumented immigrants arriving in Texas.

In recent weeks, the Rio Grande Valley sector of the U.S. Border Patrol has been overwhelmed by a surge of unaccompanied minors from Central America breaching the Texas-Mexico border. About 47,000 have been apprehended along the entire southwest border so far this fiscal year, Cornyn said, and the the final count could be more than 60,000 by the end of the fiscal year in September.

“That 500-mile border between Guatemala and Mexico is a sieve,” Cornyn said during a conference call with reporters. “Once these unaccompanied minors or other adults get in to the hands of the gangs that smuggle them through areas controlled by the Zetas or other cartels, this is not a benign situation. This is a dangerous and deadly … journey.”

The U.S. aid package known as the Mérida Initiative, which was passed in 2008 under the administration of President George W. Bush, earmarked more than $1.4 billion for training and equipment for the governments of Mexico and Central America, though most of that has gone to Mexico. Cornyn said that U.S. officials are already helping Mexico undertake the task of securing its border, but it is obvious that authorities there are overwhelmed.

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Children flooding across the southern border

By O’Reilly Factor.

O’REILLY: “Impact” segment tonight. We continue our reporting on the southern border chaos. In the past eight months the border patrol says nearly 50,000 minors have entered the USA without any adult supervision at all. Little kids are showing up. Getting across the border now being warehoused by the federal government.

Joining us from Tucson Art Del Cueto, border patrol agent and president of the union down there. So what’s going on right now with these kids? I guess a lot of them are being bused from Texas to Arizona because Texas can’t handle the numbers? Is that what is happening?

ART DEL CUETO, LOCAL 2544 TUCSON, BORDER PATROL UNION PRESIDENT: Correct. What’s going on is they are being actually flown from Texas to Arizona. The issue is here in Arizona down near the border there is a town called Nogales. And we have a processing center there that’s more able to handle the volume, you would say of these individuals.

O’REILLY: All right so they are being flown on, what, chartered airlines? Military? Who is flying them over from Texas to Arizona?

DEL CUETO: My understanding it was chartered airlines. But I’m not positive on how it is. I just know they are being flown here to Arizona.

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Obama Chews Gum During D-Day Ceremonies, Sparks Twitter Outrage

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Photo Credit: AP / Pascal Rossignol, PoolBy Kellan Howell.

President Obama was caught on camera chewing gum during the D-Day ceremonies in France as Queen Elizabeth II was welcomed, and Twitter feeds worldwide exploded with criticism.

“Obama and his chewing-gum. Classy” one French user tweeted sarcastically.

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Photo Credit: APObama and Putin Appear Simultaneously on Big Screen at D-Day Ceremony, CNN’s Confusion Is Hilarious

By Michael Hausam.

This one, where you can better hear the audience reaction, is from RT News:

And this, with comments from the announcers, is from CNN:

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Their 9/11 Role: The Taliban Five are Even Worse than You’ve Heard

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Photo Credit: Weekly Standard By Thomas Joscelyn.

One of the five senior Taliban leaders transferred to Qatar in exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl played a key role in al Qaeda’s plans leading up to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Mohammad Fazl, who served as the Taliban’s army chief of staff and deputy defense minister prior to his detention at Guantánamo, did not have a hand in planning the actual 9/11 hijackings. Along with a notorious al Qaeda leader, however, Fazl did help coordinate a military offensive against the enemies of the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan the day before. And Osama bin Laden viewed that September 10 offensive as an essential part of al Qaeda’s 9/11 plot.

The 9/11 Commission found that the hijackings in the United States on September 11, 2001, were the culmination of al Qaeda’s three-step plan. First, on September 9, 2001, al Qaeda assassinated Northern Alliance commander Ahmed Shah Massoud in a suicide bombing. Massoud’s death was a major gift to the Taliban because he was their chief rival and still controlled parts of the country. The assassination was also intended to weaken opposition to the Taliban and al Qaeda within Afghanistan before the United States could plan its retaliation for the most devastating terrorist attack in history. The Northern Alliance did, in fact, play a role in America’s response.

The following day, September 10, al Qaeda and the Taliban took their second step. A “delayed Taliban offensive against the Northern Alliance was apparently coordinated to begin as soon as [Massoud] was killed,” the 9/11 Commission found. Fazl and one of bin Laden’s chief lieutenants, Abdul Hadi al Iraqi, played key roles in this setup for 9/11. At the time, al Iraqi oversaw what al Qaeda called the Arab 55th Brigade, which was Osama bin Laden’s chief fighting force inside Afghanistan and fought side by side with Mullah Omar’s forces.

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Photo Credit: Fox News Daughter of first American killed in Afghanistan learns freed Taliban leader was behind it

By Hollie McKay.

Alison Spann was just 9 when she learned her father, a U.S. Marine turned CIA operative, had become the first American killed in the war in Afghanistan. Thirteen years later, she found out her country had freed the Taliban leader behind his death.

In the time between, Spann has cherished the memory of her father, Johnny Micheal “Mike” Spann, who was killed during a Nov. 25, 2001 prisoner uprising at a northern Afghanistan compound where he was interrogating Taliban fighters. The 32-year-old was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in a ceremony in which he was lauded by then-CIA Director George Tenet for trying to build a “better, safer world.” His daughter has since grown up and recently graduated from Pepperdine University, even as more than 2,300 Americans have died fighting in Afghanistan.

But nothing prepared Alison Spann for news that Mullah Mohammad Fazi, the unquestioned leader of the prisoners at the compound where her father was killed, had been traded along with four cohorts held at Guantanamo Bay for U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who had been held by the Taliban for nearly five years..

“My initial reaction was shock. I was shocked that our president would release five of the most high-risk prisoners being held in Guantanamo in exchange for one American,” she told FoxNews.com. “As a whole, my family was extremely upset and saddened that our government would do something like this, especially in light of the fact that it seems that people in the intelligence community are fairly united in their belief that these terrorists are likely to seek to further harm Americans in the future.”

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