Senator Blackburn Introduces Bill to Prevent Biden from Imposing Unilateral Nuclear Deal with Iran

Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) announced Wednesday a bill to prevent President Joe Biden from circumventing the U.S. Senate to renegotiate the Iran Nuclear Deal. 

The legislation, “Iran Nuclear Deal Advice and Consent Act,” would prevent federal funds from going to the deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). It would require current and future administrations to submit any JCPOA successor agreement as a written treaty rather than an international agreement.

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Iran’s Supreme Leader Vows Revenge Over Slain Scientist

Iran’s supreme leader on Saturday demanded the “definitive punishment” of those behind the killing of a scientist who led Tehran’s disbanded military nuclear program, as the Islamic Republic blamed Israel for a slaying that has raised fears of reignited tensions across the Middle East.

After years of being in the shadows, the image of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh suddenly was to be seen everywhere in Iranian media, as his widow spoke on state television and officials publicly demanded revenge on Israel for the scientist’s slaying.

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Iran Scientist Linked to Military Nuclear Program Killed

An Iranian scientist named by the West as the leader of the Islamic Republic’s disbanded military nuclear program was killed Friday in an ambush on the outskirts of Tehran, authorities said.

Iran’s foreign minister alleged the killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh bore “serious indications” of an Israeli role, but did not elaborate. Israel, long suspected of killing several Iranian nuclear scientists a decade ago, declined to immediately comment. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once told the public to “remember that name” when talking about Fakhrizadeh.

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Commentary: The Obama-Biden ‘Ostracize and Punish Israel’ Legacy Will Return if Democrats Win the White House in 2020

Joe Biden portrays himself as Israel’s ally and a friend of the Jewish people. Obama did the same when he was running for president and then he played bait and switch.  It’s time voters wizen up because Biden vows to repeat the Obama-Biden playbook on Israel and the Middle East.  It’s even worse: today’s Democrat party leadership has taken a major turn to the left. They are no friend of the Jewish people here or in Israel.  

A quick history lesson is instructive:  In 2008, Candidate Obama pledged Israel’s security was “sacrosanct” and “non-negotiable” with “secure recognized defensible borders,” where Jerusalem would “remain” Israel’s capital and “must remain undivided.”  Fast forward, months later in 2009, then President Obama wasted no time abandoning his empty words.  Embarking on their true agenda, Obama-Biden declared a “serious problem” existed precisely because there was no daylight between the United States and Israel.  Obama-Biden was determined to change that and, off to the races, they didn’t look back.   

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UN Watchdog: Iran to Allow Access to Two Suspected Nuke Sites

Iran has agreed to allow inspectors in to two sites where the country is suspected of having stored or used undeclared nuclear material, the U.N. atomic watchdog agency said Wednesday.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran was “voluntarily providing the IAEA with access to the two locations specified by the IAEA and facilitating the IAEA verification activities to resolve the issues.”

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US Says Iran Briefly Seizes Oil Tanker Near Strait of Hormuz

The Iranian navy boarded and briefly seized a Liberian-flagged oil tanker near the strategic Strait of Hormuz amid heightened tensions between Tehran and the U.S., the American military said Thursday.

The U.S. military’s Central Command published a black-and-white video showing what appeared to be special forces fast-roping down from a helicopter onto the MT Wila, whose last position appeared to be off the eastern coast of the United Arab Emirates near the city of Khorfakkan.

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Iran Declines to Disclose Cause of Mysterious Nuke Site Fire

An online video and messages purportedly claiming responsibility for a fire that analysts say damaged a centrifuge assembly plant at Iran’s underground Natanz nuclear site deepened the mystery Friday around the incident — even as Tehran insisted it knew the cause but would not make it public due to “security reasons.”

The multiple, different claims by a self-described group called the “Cheetahs of the Homeland” included language used by several exiled Iranian opposition organizations. They also focused almost entirely on Iran’s nuclear program, viewed by Israel as a danger to its very existence.

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US Tries to Seize Iranian Gas Heading Toward Venezuela

U.S. federal prosecutors are seeking to seize four tankers sailing toward Venezuela with gasoline supplied by Iran, the latest attempt to disrupt ever-closer trade ties between the two heavily sanctioned anti-American allies.

The civil-forfeiture complaint filed late Wednesday in the District of Columbia federal court alleges that the sale was arranged by a businessman, Mahmoud Madanipour, with ties to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization.

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Bill Hagerty Issues Statement After Iran Issues Arrest Warrant for Donald Trump

U.S. Senate candidate Bill Hagerty this week released a statement after Iran issued an arrest warrant for U.S. President Donald Trump for taking out the top Iranian general and known terrorist Qasem Soleimani.

“Soleimani was a terrorist with the blood of Americans on his hands. Thanks to President Trump’s decisive leadership, the world is a much safer place because Soleimani is dead,” Hagerty said in the press release.

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Commentary: The Establishment Media Is Ignoring What Just Happened In Iran, But We Won’t

While the establishment media have studiously ignored reporting the story, the social media accounts of Middle East and national security experts have been abuzz with questions and information on the huge explosion or explosions that recently rocked a site believed to house one of Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities – the facilities that Obama and the Iranians claimed do not exist.

Rick Moran writing for our friends at PJ Media reported the explosion happened in the Alborz mountains, just east of Tehran. Satellite photos show the massive extent of the blast. The area of the blast near Iran’s Khojir missile base was identified in 2017 as a nuclear research facility despite Iran’s pledge to reveal all its nuclear infrastructure in the nuclear deal with the West.

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Amid US Tension, Iran Builds Fake Aircraft Carrier to Attack

As tensions remain high between Iran and the U.S., the Islamic Republic appears to have constructed a new mock-up of an aircraft carrier off its southern coast for potential live-fire drills.

The faux foe, seen in satellite photographs obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press, resembles the Nimitz-class carriers that the U.S. Navy routinely sails into the Persian Gulf from the Strait of Hormuz, its narrow mouth where 20% of all the world’s oil passes through.

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Blackburn Leads Bill to Fight ‘Digital Authoritarianism’ in China, Russia

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) introduced a bill Friday that she says would help prevent authoritarian governments in Russia and China from restricting “Internet freedom.”

“Leading censors like China and Russia are not only employing more sophisticated means to control the lives of their citizens online; they are also exporting their censorship and surveillance tactics to illiberal regimes abroad,” Blackburn said in a press release.

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Trump Vetoes Resolution Curbing His Ability to Attack Iran Without Congressional Approval

President Donald Trump vetoed a bipartisan congressional resolution Wednesday that would have curbed his ability to direct military action against Iran.

“This was a very insulting resolution, introduced by Democrats as part of a strategy to win an election on November 3 by dividing the Republican Party,” Trump said Wednesday as he signed the veto. “The few Republicans who voted for it played right into their hands. Congress should not have passed this resolution.”

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Russia Wages an Oil War Against Saudi Arabia and US Amid Coronavirus Concerns

Oil prices dropped Monday as Saudi Arabia and Russia haggle over whether to reduce crude production amid fears that coronavirus will hamper air travel and potentially wreck the global economy.

Prices fell into the $30s as the Saudis push for a cut in output to prop up prices, while Russia went the other way, and decided to infuse the market with hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil, according to The Washington Post. Moscow is worried that the U.S. will use shale oil to take advantage if Saudi Arabia ease off production.

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Commentary: Listen to Trump, Not Democrats on Foreign Policy Matters

The predicted has happened in Iran and more quickly than had been expected. On the evening of the day on which the Iranian authorities managed to bungle the funeral of their late terrorist chief, Qasem Soleimani, at least 50 people were trampled to death in their grief, and the crisis over the supposed escalation of hostilities subsided. (At least, unlike during the funeral of the Iranian theocracy’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the coffin did not fly open, spilling the corpse on the mourners.)

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Commentary: Americans Will Rally Around Trump on Iran

The Democrats have stumbled into yet another beartrap in their unanimous objection to President Trump’s order to kill the world’s leading terrorist, Iranian general Qassem Soleimani. The same misdirected solicitude that caused the Washington Post to describe ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, after he was driven to suicide by U.S. special operators, as an “austere cleric” has elevated Soleimani to the status of an Iranian General MacArthur.

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The Battleground State Report: Trump’s Unpredictability Is a Game Changer Both Foreign and Domestic

During a live recording on Friday’s Battleground State Report with Michael Patrick Leahy and Doug Kellett – a one-hour radio show from Star News Digital Media in the early stages of national weekend syndication rollout – with Kellett out of the studio, Leahy welcomed Tennessee Star Report’s all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the show.

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