Forty-five years ago this month, a revolution was underway in Iran. It was called an Iranian revolution but its leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, had a more ambitious project in mind: the founding of a new Islamic empire that would project power throughout the Middle East and far beyond.
In 1989, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei succeeded Mr. Khomeini as “supreme leader” of the misleadingly named the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Latest Developments
Iran has deployed its warship the Alborz to the Red Sea, Tehran’s state media reported on January 1. On January 2, the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen launched two anti-ship ballistic missiles into the southern Red Sea, said U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM). The missiles landed near several ships, but none of them was damaged. “These illegal actions endangered the lives of dozens of innocent mariners and continue to disrupt the free flow of international commerce,” CENTCOM said. “This is the 24th attack against merchant shipping in the Southern Red Sea since Nov. 19.”
Islamic fundamentalism has been present in Iran and other Islamic countries for centuries. In Iran, this trend has primarily been associated with autocratic rulers. However, the prevalence of medieval religious ideas had never really become widespread, at least in Iran, until a historical event profoundly marked the contemporary history of Iran and the world. This event was the uprising of the Iranian people against the Shah.
Palestinian airplane hijackings and attacks on Israeli civilians in Israel as well as on Israeli and Jewish targets abroad pockmarked the 1970s and 1980s.
The violence put the Palestinian issue on the world agenda. The violence erupted, and at times, was driven by fierce debate among Palestinian guerilla leaders on whether to drop maximalist demands for replacing the State of Israel with a (Palestinian-dominated) “secular democratic state” and strive for a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
“I am certain soon we can look forward to a family of rockets named after martyred leader Saleh al-Arouri,” Deputy Chair of the Political Bureau of Hamas and founder of the Martyr Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades.
It is beyond me how Israel has failed to figure out that a martyred Palestinian leader exerts a vastly more powerful hold on his people’s imagination and will to resist than a living one.
Rise of TTP in Pakistan and Afghanistan around 2007 was nothing short of resurrection of a hibernating sidewinder known in Muslim history as Khawarij. Historically, this ideology is based on violent misinterpretation of Islamic scripture and it first appeared during the time of the Prophet Muhammad PBUH. It continued to appear time to time and their only motive has remained to use twisted interpretation of Quran to declare other Muslims as Non-Muslims a phenomenon known as Takfir. Their ultimate aim has always remained to seek power, authority, and make people obey them through wrongful methods and reasons.
In 2nd speech this week, Hezbollah chief vows response is coming on the killing of Hamas terror orchestrator Arouri, says Lebanon would be exposed if assassination went unanswered
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah threatened that Israel’s northern residents would be “the first to pay the price if a full-scale war were to erupt” along the front, and boasted of the terror group’s achievements in recent daily skirmishes, in a nationally televised speech Friday.
Salvo of more than 40 projectiles sets off alarms in 90 Israeli communities; no injuries in strikes that targeted Mount Meron area; IDF hits terror infrastructure in response
The Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon fired a barrage of dozens of rockets into Israel on Saturday in a move it called “an initial response” to the alleged Israeli killing of Hamas terror chief Saleh al-Arouri in Lebanon last week. There were no reports of injuries.
Since Hezbollah’s guns began their unprovoked fire against Israel on October 8, 2023, Lebanon has found itself an unwitting battlefield in the war between Israel and the Gaza Strip’s Palestinian terrorist factions. Lebanon, whose territory is both the headquarters of Hezbollah—Iran’s most powerful extension and vanguard of its regional expansionism—and hub of coordination and planning for the Resistance Axis’ anti-Israel operations, couldn’t have expected total immunity. On January 2, Israel eliminated senior Hamas official Saleh Al-Arouri—one of the lynchpins of this coordination effort—in a precision strike in the heart of Hezbollah-controlled south Beirut. The strike also killed two other commanders in Hamas’ Izzeldine Al-Qassam Brigades, Azzam Al-Aqra and Samir Fundi, and four other Hamas fighters. This attack will pin Hezbollah between its obligations to the Resistance Axis and its need to navigate Lebanese political and social dynamics; the latter of which it is also a full participant in.
UNRWA has encouraged generations of Palestinians to wallow in the hell of refugees, stuck with the “right of return” promised to them by radical factions committed to eternal war with Israel.
Many words are being written these days about the “day after” in Gaza, but most of the writers ignore one organization, which bears considerable responsibility for the impossible situation the Gazans have reached. UNRWA: “The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East” is an organization sponsored by the UN and funded mostly by Western countries, led by the United States and Germany, but it does not carry out its require mission as a refugee aid agency.