Obama’s Cash-for-Jihad Program: Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review, Sept. 17, 2016 — The Obama State Department is convinced that Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and his regime’s cronies are financing terrorism.
Obama’s Greatest Achievement: Caroline Glick, Jerusalem Post, Sept. 1, 2016 — The time for complaining about President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran has passed.
Turn the Tables on Iran: Shoshana Bryen, Breaking Israel News, Sept. 14, 2016— On April 24, 2004 the USS Firebolt, a Cyclone-class coastal patrol boat in the Persian Gulf, launched a rigid-hulled inflatable boat (RIB) when its crew observed a dhow…
Why the Ayatollah Thinks He Won: Jay Solomon, Wall Street Journal, Aug. 19, 2016— Since the completion last year of a landmark deal limiting Iran’s nuclear program, the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has lashed out again and again at the U.S. for its supposed failure to live up to its end of the bargain.
Shurat HaDin: Obama Secretly Transferred $1.7 Billion to Iran to Keep It Out of Terror Victims’ Reach: Jewish Press, Sept. 13, 2016
D Minus Seven Years, and Counting: Ephraim Asculai, INSS, Sept. 11, 2016
The View From the Toppled: Abbas Milani, Wall Street Journal, Aug. 5, 2016
Iran’s Desert of Hate: P. David Hornik, Frontpage, Sept. 13, 2016
OBAMA’S CASH-FOR-JIHAD PROGRAM
Andrew C. McCarthy
National Review, Sept. 17, 2016
The Obama State Department is convinced that Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and his regime’s cronies are financing terrorism. How come? Well, because they conduct business in cash. In fact, in its most recent annual report on state sponsors of terrorism, State frets “that 60 percent of all business transactions [in Syria] are conducted in cash and that nearly 80 percent of all Syrians do not use formal banking services.” This has created a “vast black market,” the components of which are exploited by “some members of the Syrian government and the business elite . . . in terrorism finance schemes.”
Interesting thing about that: There are only three countries on the list of state sponsors of terrorism — Syria, Sudan, and Iran. That last one is worth highlighting. Iran, after all, is not just the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism; it is also the world’s leading state sponsor of . . . Syria — providing it with lots of that cash the State Department is so concerned about. Oh, I nearly forgot: Iran also happens to be the jihadist regime that President Obama just gave $1.7 billion to . . . in cash. Or should I say, at least $1.7 billion.
It is hard to decide what is the most appalling thing about Obama’s $1.7 billion payoff to the mullahs: the ransom for the release of American hostages, which has predictably induced Tehran to take more hostages; the pallets of untraceable currency loaded on multiple planes of the national airline regularly used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to arm Assad and facilitate terror; the withdrawals from a shadowy Treasury Department fund structured in a manner designed to conceal that money was being transferred to Iran. The transaction is so shocking, one can easily forget that it is just the latest in a long series of payoffs.
The payoffs were made in Obama’s pursuit of legacy adornment — the nuclear deal with Iran he coveted at any cost. Beginning in January 2014 and continuing for a year and a half — the period during which the president was quietly folding at the negotiation table on every bold campaign-trail vow to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons — the administration released $700 million per month in escrowed oil funds to the jihadist regime. In congressional testimony last week, Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) did the math: That’s $11.9 billion. But that, literally, may not be the half of it. In July, U.S. government officials told the Associated Press that Iran had repatriated a sum approaching $20 billion in the half-year following implementation of the nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA).
Is that $20 billion from the JCPOA in addition to the pre-JCPOA $11.9 billion in oil revenues? Is it in addition to the $1.7 billion “settlement of a failed 1970s arms deal” (a.k.a. the ransom for American hostages)? The “most transparent administration in history” is not saying. But as Dubowitz runs the numbers, the “worst-case scenario” is that Iran has gotten its mitts on $33.6 billion — and “worst” assumes that we know about every shady backroom deal, which seems unlikely. That staggering figure would amount to about 8 percent of Iran’s entire annual GDP. Whatever the true amount is, were the billions transferred in cash?
Remember, when the news first broke of the $400 million cash payment on the same day our hostages were released, the president looked us in the eye and told us he had to pay the mullahs that way — he couldn’t wire the funds or send a check because, owing to his professed respect for sanctions in American law, there is no banking relationship between the U.S. and Iran. As I explained at the time, this was simply false: The cash transfer violated the sanctions every bit as much as a check or wire transfer would have. Plus, the sanctions allow for presidential waivers, so Obama could easily have wired the money. He sent cash only because he chose to send cash. Obama could easily have wired the money to Iran. He sent cash only because he chose to send cash.
So if the administration loaded up planes with $1.7 billion in foreign currency for the settlement/ransom, was a similar method used in connection with the $11.9 billion in escrowed oil funds? How about the $20 billion in JCPOA sanctions relief? Again, the administration won’t say — apparently relying on a nonexistent privilege of confidentiality in international relations to justify withholding such information from Congress and the public.
One sadly hilarious aspect of this spectacle is the administration’s tortured claims about Iran’s use of its Obama windfalls. The White House and State Department grudgingly admit that they cannot know for certain how much Iran has diverted to the terrorist activities that the administration even more grudgingly admits Iran continues to underwrite. But rest assured, Obama strongly suspects that very little money makes its way to the jihad, since Tehran must prioritize paying down crushing debt and repairing crumbling infrastructure.
How ridiculous. It is pointless to track how particular dollar streams are spent by a terrorist regime. Iran had crushing debt and crumbling infrastructure before Obama started lining its pockets; yet it was committed to exporting revolutionary jihad, so it spent its sparse resources on terrorism anyway. Consequently, if the new dollars Iran is reeling in are ostensibly spent on infrastructure or debt, the dollars that would otherwise have been spent on those activities are freed up for terrorist activity.
The logic is unassailable: Because money is fungible, not a thin dime can safely be given to an entity that supports terrorism.
In the case of Iran, however, we need not rely on logical deduction; we know Iran is channeling funds to the jihad. As the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Saeed Ghasseminejad reports, the Iranian regime requires the transfer to its military of funds it receives from settling legal disputes with foreign countries and companies. That means, for example, that the $1.7 billion settlement that Obama paid when the hostages were released has gone to the IRGC. That brings us back full-circle to the State Department’s annual report on state sponsors of terrorism. As the report explains, the IRGC, through its notorious Qods Force, “is Iran’s primary mechanism for cultivating and supporting terrorists abroad.”
To summarize: The Obama administration explains that when a terrorist regime like Syria prefers to conduct business in cash, that markedly increases the likelihood that its funds will be used to finance terrorism. Concurrently, Obama is providing exorbitant sums to Iran, the world’s worst terrorist regime, and going out of his way to transfer it in the form of cash. And under the Iranian regime’s dictates, a goodly portion of that cash is going directly to the component of the Iranian government that oversees its prodigious international terrorism operations. Not to worry, though — it’s not like they’re threatening our naval vessels, humiliating our sailors, massing Hezbollah forces on Israel’s border, or chanting “Death to America,” right?
Caroline Glick
Jerusalem Post, Sept. 1, 2016
The time for complaining about President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran has passed. The time has come to overcome the damage enormous damage his signature foreign policy accomplishment has caused. To understand why this is the case, it is important to understand the breadth and depth of Obama’s failure.
On August 4, during the course of a press conference, Obama gave his interim assessment of his nuclear agreement with Iran. “It worked,” he insisted. A year after the deal was signed, Obama argued, events have proven that he was right and the deal’s critics were wrong. “You’ll recall that there were all these horror stories about how Iran was going to cheat and this wasn’t going to work and Iran was going to get $150 billion to finance terrorism and all these kinds of scenarios, and none of them have come to pass,” he proclaimed. Obama then snidely swiped at the deal’s opponents saying that it would be “impressive” if the people who criticized the deal would own up to their mistakes and admit that it worked.
As it works out, everything that Obama said about the deal with Iran during his press conference was a lie. Some of his lies became apparent within hours. For instance, Obama falsely claimed that Israel now “acknowledges this has been a game changer and Iran has abided by the deal and they no longer have the sort of short-term breakout capacity that would allow them to develop nuclear weapons.” Hours later, the Defense Ministry issued a stinging rebuke of Obama’s claim, parroted more diplomatically by the Prime Minister’s Office.
Obama’s press conference took place the day after The Wall Street Journal reported that in January 2016, the US sent an unmarked plane to the Tehran airport filled with $400 million in cash, on the same day Iran released four US hostages. Obama angrily rejected allegations that the cash payment was a ransom payment for the hostages’ release. He insisted that the US had made the payment as the first installment of a $1.7b. payment the administration made to settle an Iranian government lawsuit against America.
Obama claimed that the administration agreed to the settlement at the urging of the Justice Department. He said his administration was able to settle the dispute only due to the nuclear deal which placed US officials in direct contact with their Iranian counterparts for the first time in decades. Within a day, Obama’s claims were exposed as lies. It turns out that Justice Department lawyers opposed the cash payout to Iran.
One of the hostages released in January told the media that the Iranians refused to allow the hostages to leave Iran until the airplane with the cash landed in the airport. The Iranians, for their part, contemptuously mocked Obama, and stated openly that the $400m. was a ransom payment for the hostages. Two weeks later, Obama’s State Department admitted that the $400m. was a payment for the hostages.
Obama’s principle claim is that due to his deal, Iran no longer has a short-term nuclear breakout capacity. He also says that in accordance with the deal, Iran has shipped its nuclear materials out of the country. These claims are both untrue and misleading. On Thursday Reuters reported that Iran did not ship the quantities of low-enriched uranium out of the country in the quantities the deal required. Last January, when the deadline arrived for Iran to comply with the deal’s clauses calling for it to move its uranium enriched to 3.5 percent and 20 percent out of the country and so enable the US and its European colleagues to cancel UN sanctions against it, it worked out that Iran had failed to comply.
Rather than acknowledge Iran’s failure and maintain the sanctions in accordance with their deal, the Americans and Europeans decided to move the goalpost closer to Iran. They secretly decreased the amount of uranium the Iranians were required to part with. They then announced triumphantly that they were canceling UN sanctions because Iran had complied with the agreement. Reuters reported that much of the low-enriched uranium Iran did remove from its territory wasn’t actually removed from its possession. Instead it was transferred to neighboring Oman, where it is held under Iranian guard and control.
Obama of course knows all of this. So his claims that the agreement “worked” are nothing more than a card trick meant to trick the American public. Obama’s assertion that Iran’s breakout time to a nuclear arsenal has been slowed as a result of his deal is similarly a stretch of the imagination. The Iranians have suspended much of their prior centrifuge spinning. But that is only because they are now directing their efforts to developing and deploying more advanced centrifuges that will be able to enrich uranium to bomb grade material far more rapidly than the centrifuges they were required to retire.
Experts have already placed Iran’s post-deal nuclear breakout time at a mere six months. And Iran can leave the agreement – which it never actually signed or officially agreed to – anytime it wants. While developing their next generation centrifuges, the Iranians are expanding the range and precision of their ballistic missiles, deploying them and increasing the size of their arsenals. Despite the fact that these actions are prohibited under US law and breach what was initially claimed about the ever-changing nuclear deal, the Obama administration has refused to impose sanctions against Iran, insisting that its actions merely breach the spirit, rather than substance, of the deal…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
Shoshana Bryen
Breaking Israel News, Sept. 14, 2016
On April 24, 2004 the USS Firebolt, a Cyclone-class coastal patrol boat in the Persian Gulf, launched a rigid-hulled inflatable boat (RIB) when its crew observed a dhow — a traditional boat, in this case likely owned by Iran — fast approaching the Al Amaya oil terminal in Iraq. Suspecting an attempt to destroy the terminal, the RIB’s seven-man crew pulled alongside the Dhow in order to board it. The dhow blew up in a blast intended for the terminal. Two sailors, Navy Petty Officers Michael Pernaselli and Christopher Watts, were killed instantly. Coast Guard Petty Officer Nathan Brukenthal died when the RIB turned over in the water. Brukenthal was the first Coast Guardsman killed in action since the Vietnam War.
Last week, the USS Firebolt was back in the news. On September 4th a swarm of seven Iranian fast boats, armed with guns and missiles and belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard naval force, harassed the Firebolt and forced it to divert from its heading to avoid a collision. In an incident that lasted some eight minutes, three of the Iranian boats maneuvered within about 500 yards of the Fireboltand then pulled away. Another Iranian boat sped in front of the Firebolt and blocked its path. From what can be ascertained, the Firebolt sent radio warnings that were not answered and then -– closing in at about 100 yards -– the Firebolt turned away to avoid the “parked” Iranian attack craft. The Firebolt did not fire warning shots or blast its foghorn.
The Iranians were once again clearly testing swarm boat techniques and seeking to provoke the United States. It was the fourth time in less than a month. American official said there have been 31 similar events this year, almost double the same period last year. This incident follows other recent harassment of vessels including the guided missile destroyer Nitze, the patrol ships Tempest and Squall and the destroyer, the USS Stout. General Joseph Votel, commander, U.S. Central Command, said the Iranians are conducting unsafe maneuvers to exert their influence in the Gulf. He is correct.
There are major political, psychological, and military gains for the Iranians from these provocations. On the military level the Iranians are learning a lot about the speed of the U.S. Command Structure –- how long it takes for a warning to be made and what happens when the first radio broadcast, foghorn, or gun is fired. One can imagine the Iranians with stopwatches. A successful swarm attack that can do real damage to major U.S. naval assets needs to be correctly sequenced, as the Iranians surely know. Even though U.S. warships are poorly equipped to deal with swarming fast attack boats, they are not without resources. And air power can be called in to augment U.S. ships under attack. If Iran’s objective in such a situation involving a real attack is to cause serious damage to a U.S. aircraft carrier or a guided missile cruiser, by now they know pretty much what they have to do and what price they will pay.
The sight of U.S. warships running away from Iranian fast boats is great political propaganda that, for the Iranians, plays well at home and abroad. It is the perfect David and Goliath moment in which the Great Satan is forced to turn and run. Iran, in fact, made a video purporting to show the sinking of the Nitze as a result of Iranian “courage and righteous anger” at an “American invasion.” Internally, such propaganda boosts the Revolutionary Guard, increasing its leverage. Outside, it helps Iran spread its influence in the region and as far afield as South America.
American allies and clients in the Persian Gulf and Middle East feel the opposite impact. If the United States does not stand up to aggression, smaller and less capable countries may find it necessary to accommodate Iran. President Obama and American policy compound their distress. The president told Jeffrey Goldberg in an Atlantic magazine interview that Saudi Arabia — a U.S. ally and Iranian adversary — “needs to find an effective way to share the neighborhood and institute some sort of cold peace.” Reflexively backing the Saudis against Iran, he said, “would mean we have to start coming in and using our military power to settle scores. And that would be in the interest neither of the United States nor of the Middle East.”…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
WHY THE AYATOLLAH THINKS HE WON
Jay Solomon
Wall Street Journal, Aug. 19, 2016
Since the completion last year of a landmark deal limiting Iran’s nuclear program, the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has lashed out again and again at the U.S. for its supposed failure to live up to its end of the bargain. But a speech he gave on Aug. 1 in Tehran took his anti-American rhetoric to a new level. He accused the Obama administration of a “bullying policy” and of failing to lift sanctions in a way that benefited “the life of the people.” Mr. Khamenei ruled out cooperation with the U.S. in the fight against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, telling his audience that Iran’s experience with the nuclear deal “showed us that we cannot speak to [the Americans] on any matter like a trustworthy party.” Many in the crowd chanted anti-U.S. slogans.
Is Iran preparing to walk away from the accord? It’s unlikely. Mr. Khamenei’s speech was classical political posturing intended to rally his hard-line followers. But more than that, his bluster conceals a deeper strategic calculus. For all his complaints about American treachery, Mr. Khamenei and his allies recognize that the nuclear deal has produced significant benefits for their hobbled theocracy and may serve to further entrench the regime brought to power in the 1979 revolution.
President Barack Obama defined the nuclear deal primarily as an arms-control exercise, designed to constrain Tehran’s nuclear program for at least a decade and to keep the U.S. from becoming embroiled in yet another Middle East war. But the White House and its top diplomats, including Secretary of State John Kerry, also quietly suggested that the agreement might open the door to a broader rapprochement between Tehran and Washington and empower Iran’s moderate political forces, particularly its elected president, Hassan Rouhani. U.S. officials have always cautioned that it would take time for the salutary effects of engagement with Iran to take effect. They have even conceded that, in the short term, the agreement might energize hard-liners opposed to engagement with the West—and that, indeed, seems to be what is happening.
Since the accord was announced last summer, Mr. Khamenei and his elite military unit, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, have moved to solidify their hold. As international sanctions against Iran have slackened, the ayatollah and his core allies have expanded the Iranian military and pursued new business opportunities for the companies and foundations that finance the regime’s key ideological cadres. Iran has continued to fund and arm its major regional allies, including the Assad regime in Syria, the Lebanese militia Hezbollah and Houthi rebels in Yemen—all of which are at war with America’s regional partners—and the regime has continued to test and develop ballistic missiles. The government has also stepped up arrests of opposition leaders and political activists.
Mr. Khamenei has been deeply involved from the start with his country’s talks with the U.S. After the U.N. Security Council imposed tough sanctions on Iran in 2010, he became alarmed by the drain on Tehran’s finances. In 2012, he backed secret talks in hopes of relieving the crippling financial pressure. A collapse in global oil prices made Iran even more vulnerable. As the talks evolved into public negotiations with the U.S. and its partners, Mr. Khamenei instructed his representatives to ensure that Iran could keep the major infrastructure of its nuclear and military programs.
Today, the 77-year-old ayatollah—who reportedly suffers from cancer—is seeking to cement his legacy and to shape the political transition that will occur once he is gone. The nuclear agreement provides him with the building blocks to do that, and for now, at least, Mr. Khamenei and his allies look to be the deal’s big winners. The next U.S. administration is likely to face an unhappy choice: to continue to work with Iran or to challenge an increasingly entrenched supreme leader and his Revolutionary Guard…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
Shurat HaDin: Obama Secretly Transferred $1.7 Billion to Iran to Keep It Out of Terror Victims’ Reach: Jewish Press, Sept. 13, 2016 —Shurat HaDin-Israel Law Center, representing American the families of terror victims who have won US court judgments against the government of Iran for its support of Palestinian terrorist attacks in Israel, on Tuesday released a letter it sent US Congress members alleging that the Obama Administration kept secret the details of the $1.7 billion in cash payments to Tehran in January 2016 in order to evade efforts by their clients to recover those funds to satisfy outstanding court awards.
D Minus Seven Years, and Counting: Ephraim Asculai, INSS, Sept. 11, 2016 —The most important reservation regarding the JCPOA is the high probability that after ten years, Iran will proceed with the production of highly enriched uranium, and thus will have the capability to produce nuclear weapons almost at will, with a breakout time reduced to two months, if not less.
The View From the Toppled: Abbas Milani, Wall Street Journal, Aug. 5, 2016—The photograph on this book’s cover betokens an image from Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita”—a tanned, haute couture-d couple rejoicing in the good life. The title, “The Fall of Heaven,” elevates the splendors of pre-revolution Iran to something Olympian—and the calamity of its aftermath to nothing short of the twilight of the gods.
Iran’s Desert of Hate: P. David Hornik, Frontpage, Sept. 13, 2016—Iran’s pistachio farms are dying of thirst. That may not, in itself, seem like major news. But it has a greater significance. After crude oil, pistachio nuts are Iran’s biggest export, with only the United States producing more. Yet a drought lasting years, along with uncontrolled pumping of water by farmers, has created a situation where the pistachio crop is drying up.
