would the White House knowingly
trnsfer tens of billions of dollars to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps
and Hezbollah in Lebanon to finance the slaughter of Syrians or
the next war against Israel? In theory, the Iran nuclear deal wasn’t
supposed to fuel Iran’s imperialism and its ardent anti-Semitism. And yet
President Barack Obama appears to have done exactly what he and Secretary of
State John Kerry promised not to do: They are directly financing the
Syrian horror show and terrorists on America’s watch lists.
During the nuclear negotiations and since reaching the agreement
with Iran, the administration has strenuously rejected congressional concerns
that sanctions relief would fund the mullahs’ malign activities. CIA Director
John Brennan said again this
July that Iran has used much of the sanctions relief for development projects:
“The money, the revenue that’s flowing into Iran is being used to support its
currency, to provide monies to the departments and agencies, build up its
infrastructure.”
The administration’s assurances are undercut by Iran’s own
behavior since July 2015. Gen. Joseph Votel, commander of U.S. Central
Command, said that Iran
has become “more aggressive in the days since the [nuclear] agreement.” The
regime is keeping Bashar al-Assad afloat in Syria and actively
supports Lebanese Hezbollah, which has a 150,000 rocket stockpile with only one target: Israel. Tehran
has expanded its efforts to create Shiite militias in the Middle East and has continued
to send aid, including weaponry, to radical
Palestinian groups.
For all of these endeavors, the regime needs money — liquid,
untraceable, convertible, and easy to transfer. According to the global
anti-money laundering Financial Action Task Force, cross-border cash transfers are “one of the main methods used to
move illicit funds … and finance terrorism.” The mullahs have been hungry for
cash after American and European sanctions drastically curtailed the regime’s
access to hard currency.
In three shipments in January and February, the United
States transferred$1.7 billion in cash to Iran, ostensibly to settle
a thirty-year military claim before the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal. As
the administration was finally forced to acknowledge under intense
congressional and media scrutiny, the first installment of $400 million was part of a “tightly scripted exchange timed
to the release of American hostages.” In rejecting congressional accusations
that he had authorized a ransom payment, Obama justified the transfer by citing the
severity of remaining sanctions. “The reason that we had to give them cash,”
Obama argued, “is
precisely because we are so strict in maintaining sanctions … we could not wire
the money.”
The president, however, is wrong: U.S. regulations permit all transactions
between the American and Iranian financial systems related to Tribunal
settlements. Moreover, Washington wired payments to Iran in July 2015 and
again in April 2016, further disproving the president’s statement.
It is
certainly possible that banks were unwilling to wire the $1.7 billion no matter
what guarantees they got from the administration. Banks have a healthy fear of
sanctions and their penalties. If so, it raises a troubling question: How did
Tehran receive the billions of dollars in sanctions relief released under both
the interim and final nuclear agreements?
During the nuclear negotiations, the clerical regime received
access to about $700 million per month, totaling $11.9 billion between January 2014 and July 2015,
from its restricted, foreign oil escrow accounts. If no mechanism existed to
transfer the Tribunal funds through the formal financial system, what mechanism
was used to transfer the $11.9 billion? A senior officialadmitted that “some” of this money was sent in
cash, and that “we had to find all these strange ways of delivering the monthly
allotment.” Did these “strange ways” include the transfer of gold or through
some other financial mechanism, and how much was transferred in cash? The
administration is not saying.
And it doesn’t end there. In July 2016, U.S. officials estimated that Iran had repatriated “less than
$20 billion” from previously frozen, overseas assets of $100 to $125 billion
released as part of the final nuclear accord. Were these funds repatriated in
cash and gold? Was this in addition to the $11.9 billion? The administration is
silent.
If the White
House could only authorize sanctions relief in the form of cash, that could
amount to, including the Tribunal payment, $33.6 billion. Even a portion of
that in cash would be an astounding amount of money.
Alternatively,
if this money went through the formal financial system, the administration is
not being truthful about why it had to send the $1.7 billion in cash. If formal
channels were used for the other $31.9 billion, why not wire transfer the
Tribunal money to an official Iranian account at a European central bank, where
Tehran could access the funds to pay for current European imports or other
legitimate economic needs? With financial controls to minimize the risks of
money laundering and terror financing, these formal channels would be more
difficult for the Revolutionary Guard to subvert.
In recent testimony, a State Department official claimed that the $1.7 billion cash payment was
necessary because Iran needed cash to address its “critical economic needs.”
The Iranian parliament, however, alreadyallocated the $1.7 billion to its Revolutionary
Guard-dominated defense budget, which nearly doubled this year. Calling the allocation
“troubling,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Joseph Dunford noted that the more money Iran’s military
has, “the more effective they’ll be in spreading malign influence.”
The State Department official also said that only a cash payment,
not a seconds-long electronic transfer, would meet Iran’s immediate need.
However, in February 2014, the Bank of Japan reportedly wired $550 million to an Iranian
central bank account at a Swiss bank as part of the interim-deal relief.
Why couldn’t the administration use this formal financial channel?
But perhaps Brennan is correct: U.S. intelligence on Iranian money
flows is so good that the United States know that the funds were used
for economic development. If so, intelligence capabilities have improved
dramatically: It took the U.S. government about eight years to account for a missing $6.6 billion in banknotes sent to Iraq between 2003
and 2004 for American soldiers, spies, and diplomats to buy influence and
reward good behavior. Is the U.S. government better at tracking how Iran spends
its cash than our own fellow Americans?
Pallets of
cash to close a thirty-year military sales dispute, arriving with the release
of U.S. hostages. Refusals to answer congressional questions about billions in
cash going to the leading state sponsor of terrorism. Implausible claims that
Iran is using this money for domestic concerns.
The White House refuses to acknowledge the obvious: The nuclear
deal has already led the United States to fund terrorists, sectarian warfare,
and chaos in the Middle East.
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