Tag Archives: Iran Nuclear Deal

Fred Fleitz: Only One Option With Iran, ‘Kill the Deal’

Originally posted on Newsmax

President Donald Trump has just one “legitimate option” on the current agreement with Iran: “Kill the deal,” former CIA analyst Fred Fleitz told Newsmax TV on Monday.

In an interview with “Newsmax Now“ host Bill Tucker, Fleitz echoed Trump’s assessment of the deal as “an embarrassment to the United States.”

“The only legitimate option” is “kill the deal,” he said. “Get out of it.”

Fleitz added “the evidence is clear: Iran is not complying.”

“And this deal was negotiated with no input from our regional allies,” he charged. “Israel had nothing to do with this agreement. Let’s get a better agreement that includes our allies and permanently bars nuclear technology transfers to Iran forever.”

Fleitz said he does not believe it is even possible to get a good nuclear deal with Iran — “not at this time.

“That’s why we need to put in place an arrangement that blocks technology that allows them to build nuclear weapons,” he asserted. “That should be our priority.”

Fleitz also praised Trump for his stance on North Korea, saying “his policies are paying dividend.”

“The Chinese are being tougher against North Koreans than they ever have in the past,” he said. “They’re implementing U.S. sanctions faster and more aggressively. . . . Given the disaster he was handed . . . I think Mr. Trump’s doing pretty well.”

Mr. President, Decertify the Iran Deal and Then Walk Away

Originally posted on National Review

The question is not whether President Trump should decertify President Obama’s farcical Iran nuclear deal. Of course he should. Indeed, he must: Even if we set common sense to the side, federal law requires it.

Instead, there are two questions.

1. Why has President Trump recertified the deal, not once but twice? This is shameful. Remember, Trump insisted throughout the 2016 campaign that the deal — formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — was the worst and most dangerous in the history of deals. Just two weeks ago, addressing the U.N. General Assembly, he described it as an “embarrassment” and “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.” Yet, under the statute that calls for presidential findings every 90 days, the president, in recertifying, represented to Congress and the American people (a) that Iran is “transparently, verifiably, and fully implementing the agreement” and (b) that continuing the JCPOA is “vital to the national security interests of the United States.”

These assertions insult the intelligence.

The U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is charged with what laughably passes for the “monitoring” of the JCPOA and related “side agreements,” which the Obama administration shielded from congressional inspection. Last week, the IAEA fessed up: The agency has been unable to verify that Tehran is implementing the deal. The regime has barred inspectors from inspecting military sites. Consequently, as the invaluable analyst Omri Ceren points out, the IAEA has no way of verifying that Iran has refrained from “activities which could contribute to the design and development of a nuclear explosive device” (as required by the JCPOA’s Annex 1, Section T — see here, at p. 27).

This admission is not news. It just makes the obvious — the inevitable — explicit. It has been widely known from the first that the JCPOA is not verifiable, despite the Obama administration’s guarantees that it would be. It has long been known, moreover, that Iran is not in compliance with many of the JCPOA’s terms. That, too, illustrates the duplicity by which Obama sought his foreign-policy legacy monument: To get the deal approved by Congress — or, at least, to get it not disapproved under the cockamamie Corker-Cardin legislation — the prior administration solemnly pledged to hold the mullahs to the letter (and, of course, that this could be done verifiably). Obama officials further vowed that sanctions would “snap back” if Iran failed to comply. Once the deal got its congressional stamp of non-disapproval, though, we learned that Obama was quietly waiving violations left and right, and had even agreed to limits on what the IAEA could report — the better to conceal Iran’s breaches.

Bottom line: Iran has never, not for a moment, been “transparently, verifiably, and fully implementing” the JCPOA. The Obama administration knew this all along — and knew it would go this way. The Trump State Department, which is chockablock with Obama holdovers and has heavily lobbied the new president to stand by the deal, has known it from Day One.

And what about that second representation: vital to the national-security interests of the United States?

Seriously? With a straight face?

Quite apart from violating the terms of the JCPOA and refusing to permit verifiable inspections from the start, Iran continues to be the world’s No. 1 sponsor of anti-American terrorism, backing Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Taliban, a network of Iraqi cells, and the Houthis in Yemen, to cite just the best-known examples. That’s not just me talking; the regime continues to be one of just three countries on the U.S. government’s official terrorist list (the others are Syria, which is Iran’s cat’s-paw, and Sudan, which has longstanding ties to the regime in Tehran).

Moreover, Iran maintains its aggressive program of ballistic-missile development in defiance of Security Council resolutions. In fact, less than three months ago, Trump imposed new sanctions on regime officials and abettors. Iran is exporting arms and personnel to fortify Assad’s barbarism in Syria. It continues to threaten Israel’s destruction — in fact, two of the ballistic missiles it has test-fired were inscribed in Hebrew “Israel must be wiped out.” The mullahs are substantially responsible for the massive Hezbollah build-up (including an arsenal estimated at well over 100,000 missiles) that raises the distinct possibility of a catastrophic war. And, still proud to be the “Death to America” regime, Iran continues to abduct American hostages and menace American naval vessels.

Now, as you take all that in, understand: The tens of billions of dollars’ worth of sanctions relief Tehran has gotten under the JCPOA, including pallets stacked with billions in ransom cash that Obama threw in for good measure, are helping to pay for all of this anti-American malignity. Yet, we are told — multiple times — that maintaining this arrangement is somehow in the vital national-security interests of the United States.

On what planet?

2. What should Trump do after (finally) decertifying?

It is time to walk away.

As our former colleague Eliana Johnson reports at Politico, a scheme is afoot in the Trump administration to decertify the Iran deal without killing it. The idea is that the administration would keep the deal alive rather than push Congress to reinstate the sanctions, while endeavoring to persuade Iran and the other parties to the deal to renegotiate it.

This is a terrible plan.

To begin with, how much more betrayal are we supposed to endure? The Obama administration started down this path assuring the nation that Iran would be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons. Obama then struck a deal that, by its own terms (i.e., even if there were no cheating), merely delayed Iran while paving its way to the acquisition of nuclear weapons. Obama officials promised exacting verification protocols and then made an agreement in which Iran’s performance of its obligations could not be verified. Obama officials promised full disclosure but withheld key portions of the deal, then conspired with Iran to conceal its lack of compliance — even as Iran continued its anti-American provocations.

We were encouraged to swallow hard and accept all of this on the assurance that the sanctions could and would be “snapped back” into place if the deal failed to change Iran’s behavior. Now, with Iran’s behavior as appalling as ever, Trump — the guy who campaigned on what a lousy deal it is — reportedly has cold feet about snapping back the sanctions.

The rationalization for keeping the JCPOA is that Iran has already gotten most of the deal’s goodies. Abandoning the deal now would hurt us more than the mullahs, the thinking goes, because it would relieve them of the deal’s burdens.

That’s preposterous. Under the terms of the JCPOA and its undisclosed side deals, we do not and cannot know whether Iran is performing its obligations. More significantly, even if we could verify and even if Iran were in compliance, the deal does not prevent Iran from acquiring nukes; it just slows the mullahs down for a few more years.

Plainly, then, the deal is not in American interests. “But wait,” the decertify-but-don’t-kill-it crowd argues, “we will make it in our interests by improving it.”

Nonsense. If you keep the JCPOA, you have to try to fix it within the framework of the JCPOA . . . under circumstances in which Iran insists it will not renegotiate and our “partner” nations — who now have lucrative financial intercourse with Tehran — will balk. In other words, you would already be negotiating in order to try to preserve something that should never have been agreed to in the first place — and from there, you’d have to plead for accommodations.

It is better to walk away.

What the Iran-deal apologists never mention is that the United States still has enormous leverage in the form of the American economy. Even with the relief Iran has gotten, it is still feeling the pain of being walled off from commerce in U.S. dollars. An aggressive sanctions regimen would punish not only Iran but governments and corporations that do business with Iran. As former Senate staffer Richard Goldberg recounts, this kind of pressure works.

Would there be caterwauling by countries, their heavy-hitter businesses, and even such American companies as Boeing that chase profits in Iran? Yes, of course. If the Trump administration were serious, though, these calculating players would understand in short order that, if they want access to the $19 trillion U.S. economy, they must shun Iran.

They would shun Iran. And while Iran might not change its behavior, what I am proposing presents the only realistic chance of convincing Iran to change its behavior, especially if we unapologetically pursue other ways to squeeze the regime — as opposed to preserving the JCPOA, which obliges us to be supportive of the regime.

Trump the Businessman has long maintained that the art of the deal is knowing when to walk away from the table — when to take a tack antithetical to Obama’s no-concession-is-too-big approach. It is time to walk away from the table. The JCPOA is an atrocious deal that deserves to die. If the president wants to negotiate, let it be on a new deal and on America’s terms — which, you may remember, are that Iran does not get nuclear weapons, must honor its obligations on weapons development and proliferation, and must cease promoting terrorism.

No other deal is worth having.

Frank Gaffney: ‘Insubordinates’ Around President Trump Pressing Him to Stay with Iran Nuclear Deal

Originally posted on Breitbart

Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney joined SiriusXM host Alex Marlow on Wednesday’s Breitbart News Daily to discuss the possibility that President Trump will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. He also offered some observations on the Catalan independence movement in Spain.

“We’re continuing to see evidence that the insubordinates around him are pressing him not to do what the facts require him to do, which is to say Iran is not in compliance with this so-called political understanding,” Gaffney said.

“What I’m afraid may come out of it, though, since he’s very intent, it seems, to decertify, as the facts suggest he must, is that there will be a kind of Solomonic splitting of the baby,” he predicted, saying this would lead to Trump’s remaining in the nuclear deal with deep reservations.

“That’s really, in a way, the worst of all worlds because we’re acknowledging there is no basis for a deal, but on the other hand, we’re going to continue to legitimate it or continue to be bound by it ourselves in the interests of renegotiating some of its terms,” he said, warning this could lead to “unhelpful and downright reckless” changes.

“When you look at what Iran is up to around the world, to say nothing of their ongoing nuclear weapons activities, there’s nothing but trouble coming from these guys. To the extent we pretend we still have some sort of workable arrangement with them that’s worth preserving, worth staying with, I fear it simply emboldens them to become even more dangerous,” he warned.

“John Bolton has a plan for getting out of this. The president wasn’t allowed to see it, so they published it at National Review. It ought to be the alternative not only is he presented with, but that he adopts,” Gaffney advised.

He noted a key component of Bolton’s plan involves acknowledging that “Iran’s behavior requires more sanctions – not more indulgence, not more accommodations or appeasement, but more sanctions, more pressure on them.”

Gaffney recommended that wavering American allies should be told, “Look, if you’re so hot to buy things or give things or otherwise do things with the Iranians, be our guest. It’s just not going to be with us as well.”

Marlow asked if the forces working to keep the Iran deal in place might be characterized as the “Deep State” or entrenched bureaucracy, noting that concerns about such influence on foreign policy date back to the Reagan administration and beyond.

Gaffney, who worked for President Reagan, replied that he “recognized, as we should all, that there is a permanent bureaucracy, and whether it’s deep or shallow or otherwise, it is permanent.”

“I’ve seen lots of examples of it, including one that’s ongoing right now that I’m seized with involving our missile defenses, in which the permanent bureaucracy is simply stymieing the will of the president or his leadership because it doesn’t agree with him,” he said.

Gaffney noted that Secretary of Defense James Mattis testified to the Senate that he supports staying with the Iran nuclear deal, a position he has held since his confirmation hearings.

“Rex Tillerson has made no secret that he wants to stay with this deal,” he added. “The guy who I think is probably the most insidious, however, of these insubordinates is H.R. McMaster, the national security adviser to the president, because I think he’s the one who is promoting this fraudulent approach that says, ‘You can decertify, Mr. President. We know you want to do that. Yes, sir, we’re going to decertify. We’re just going to stay in the deal.’”

Gaffney thinks this approach would create even more problems than the status quo. “I pray the president will say no to McMaster, and by the way, I think he should show him the door,” he said.

On the subject of Catalan independence, Gaffney noted the Kurds are “simultaneously expressing insistence on self-determination” as part of a worldwide challenge to existing political order.

“In Catalonia, the European Union and the Spanish government, of course, are determined to prevent the Catalans from having the opportunity to have their own state. I believe they will use force against them. They’re certainly going to do everything they can to prevent it,” he predicted.

“My guess is that in the end, it will come to force. Force was used already in order to prevent this referendum from going forward, as you know,” he noted.

“As to where we ought to come down on this, I personally believe that one of the biggest problems that we’re facing from countries that are supposed to be our friends is the hostility towards the United States of the European Union,” he added.

“To the extent that this plays out in a way that weakens that organization and strengthens those who are seeking a democratic alternative that represents their will and does not control them from Brussels, I think that’s on balance in our interests, as well as the people most immediately involved,” he advised.

Dozens of security experts, former defense officials pressure Trump to leave Iran deal

Originally posted on the Washington Examiner  

by Sean Langille

Dozens of security experts, former military officials and top diplomats are pushing President Trump to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.

Forty-five former security officials, including many who served in Republican administrations in senior positions overseeing nuclear weapons, arms control, nonproliferation, and intelligence, wrote Trump Wednesday calling on him to pursue a plan offered by former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton.

Bolton’s plan calls for abrogation of the deal, in consultation with U.K., France, Germany, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, over what he considers “outright violations and other unacceptable Iranian behavior” under the Iran deal’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). His approach also calls for more stringent new sanctions to bar permanently the transfer of nuclear technology to Tehran. He also urges new sanctions in response to Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism and efforts and provocative actions that have destabilized the Middle East.

Under the JCPOA, the Trump administration is required to recertify periodically that Iran is in complying with the terms of the nuclear agreement. The officials, in the letter, are urging Trump not to recertify the agreement next month.

“We also call on your administration to declare to Congress next month that Iran has not been complying with this agreement and that it is not in the national security interests of the United States,” the letter said.

President Trump announced Wednesday he has made a decision that he will reveal soon concerning the fate of the deal he called an “embarrassment to the United States” in his first speech to the United Nations General Assembly just one day earlier.

Bolton recently told the Washington Examiner he finds it unlikely that Trump will recertify the deal in light of his recent comments at the United Nations.

“I don’t think we know what the president’s decision on the deal is going to be yet,” Bolton said. “But these were very strong comments. And when you say, among other things, that the deal is an embarrassment to the U.S., it’s hard to see how you certify or stay in.”

Officials on the letter include General William G. Boykin, former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence under President George W. Bush; Ambassador Hank Cooper, former Chief U.S. Negotiator for Defense and Space Policy under President Reagan; Ambassador Robert Joseph, former Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security under George W. Bush; and Douglas Feith, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy under George W. Bush.

“It is time to move beyond President Obama’s appeasement of Iran and to begin work on a comprehensive new approach that fully addresses the menace that the Iranian regime increasingly poses to American and international security,” the letter said.

Is al-Shabaab shipping uranium to Iran?

On August 31st, in a letter to the U.S. Ambassador Somalia’s foreign minister, warned that Al-Shabaab forces have captured areas in the centrally located, Galmudug region of Somalia, where surface-exposed uranium deposits  can be found.

According to the report al-Shabaab is looking to strip mine triuranium octoxide for transport to Iran. Yellowcake uranium used in the preparation of nuclear reactors, is composed of about 70-90% triuranium octoxide. When this uranium is processed it can be enriched into isotope U-235 and processed to yield weapons-grade uranium.

The Somali foreign minister urged intelligence and military assistance to halt shipments of uranium compounds to Iran. The State Department did not dispute the statement, but refused to comment.

The relationship between Iran and al-Shabaab is deserving of close attention. One of Iran’s primary commercial shipping routes runs through the Arabian sea, via the Gulf of Aden, passing directly by Somalia. In 2006, the Iranian government reportedly attempted to supply the insurgent Islamic Courts Union (ICU) militia with weapons in exchange for uranium deposits, in violation of a 1992 UN arms embargo. Iran later denied supplying weapons or receiving uranium from Somalia. The Islamic Courts Union youth wing was al-Shabaab.

Al-Shabaab became an independent organization, split from the ICU, and aligned with al-Qaeda in 2012. Al-Qaeda since 9/11 has continued to receive support from Tehran and after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 many al-Qaeda terrorists fled to Iran. Iran’s defense budget ranges from $14-$30 billion  and funds go to supporting terrorist organizations and insurgent fighters.

In 2016 the United Nations Security Council expressed concern  over an Iranian shipment of arms to Somalia, and denounced Tehran’s efforts to obtain substantial amounts of uranium from Somalia in return for supplying weapons to al-Shabaab.

Trade between the Iranian and Somalian government from 2016 has increased by 38% and Iran exported $30 million dollars in goods to Somalia in the past year.

Under the Iranian nuclear agreement written under the Obama administration, prohibits the enrichment of uranium, which is presumably the purpose of the Iranian pursuit of triuranium oxide. The deal requires that Iran’s uranium stockpile is kept under 300 kg of up to 3.67% enriched uranium hexafluoride, which is what triuranium oxide is converted to. Procuring triuranium oxide illicitly from a designated terrorist group is one way for the Iranians to continue to feed their nuclear program in contravention of the Iran deal.

Al-Shabaab translated means “the youth.” The jihadist terrorist organization seeks to overthrow the Somali government and impose sharia law on the country. It is designated as a U.S. foreign terrorist organization and labeled as Africa’s deadliest terror group in 2016 with over 4,200 accounted deaths in that year.  Al-Shabaab was believed to have between 6,000 and 12,000 fighters in 2016, dominating control over many rural areas in southern Somalia. The group is to have historically financed its operations by extracting valuable resources from territory it holds and there is no reason to believe they would not also attempt to do so with superficial uranium deposits as well.

JCPOA Noncompliance — A Totalitarian Imperative

Originally published at Newsmax

Democracies have a blind faith that treaties can disarm totalitarian regimes. The notion that “peace in our time” is possible through a scrap of paper is an irrational addiction in Washington, D.C., the opioid of the U.S. State Department.

The free world is free because it has laws and contracts, and an ideological imperative to believe in the efficacy of negotiation and compromise. The totalitarian world is not free because its laws and contracts are lies, merely a propagandistic means to the end of tyranny, where the ideological imperative is to enslave.

Never the twain shall meet. But the free world never learns war cannot be outlawed by the Kellogg-Briand Pact of Aug. 27, 1928 or, just as absurdly, a world without nuclear weapons achieved by negotiating with North Korea an Agreed Framework (1994) or with Iran a Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA, 2015).

Perhaps the best warning against JCPOA is the long, failed history of arms control.

True believers in JCPOA should read two books, Barton Whaley’s “Covert German Rearmament 1919-1939: Deception and Misperception” and John Jordan’s “Warships After Washington.” Both books describe cheating by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan on the Versailles Treaty of June 28, 1919, the Washington Naval Treaty of  Feb. 6, 1922, the London Naval Treaty of April 22, 1930, and the Second London Naval Treaty of March 25, 1936.

Also read “The President’s Unclassified Report to the Congress on Soviet Noncompliance with Arms Control Agreements” (Released Feb. 1, 1985) wherein is described the USSR’s cheating on the major arms control agreements of the Cold War. The State Department is still sitting on the even more shocking classified version.

Now, Clare Lopez, a former CIA clandestine services officer who is vice president for research and analysis at the Center for Security Policy (CSP), one of the best Washington, D.C. think tanks, has written the definitive study titled “Why Trump Must Not Re-Certify Iranian JCPOA Compliance.” (Center for Security Policy, Aug. 23, 2017).

Lopez has deep expertise in the ideology of radical Islam that drives the Islamic Republic of Iran and their Islamic Revolutionary Guard to be the world’s leading sponsors of international terrorism — and why development of an Islamic Bomb is an ideological religious imperative for Iran.

The mullahs who run Iran, and the fanatical Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who run Iran’s nuclear and missile programs, will never betray Allah by surrendering their Islamic bomb — the most powerful weapon for material and spiritual victory in their global jihad.

Failure by the U.S. State Department to understand the ideological motives behind Iran’s nuclear missile program is repeating State’s catastrophic misunderstanding that the ideological imperatives of totalitarianism made inevitable North Korea’s cheating on former-President Bill Clinton’s Agreed Framework.

Totalitarian Iran and North Korea, despite profound ideological differences, are strategic partners in a nuclear missile “axis of evil” because the free world is even more abhorrent to Tehran and Pyongyang than each other.

Key Findings from Clare Lopez’s “Why Trump Must Not Re-Certify Iranian JCPOA Compliance”:

—”It is imperative that President Trump not recertify the Iranian regime as compliant with the provisions of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) when the next deadline comes due in October 2017;”

— “Tehran is explicitly and demonstrably out of compliance with the JCPOA on numerous specific counts'”

— “The nature of the Iranian regime is self-avowedly jihadist per its own constitution, which   declares the objective of the regime is global conquest by an Islamic State under rule of Islamic Law (shariah) – thus, its nuclear weapons program is a means to achieve that objective;”

— “The Iranian regime is signatory to a host of international conventions and treaties but has a documented record of violations that lends little credence to its JCPOA pledges;”

— “The Iranian regime most notably violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) for at least 14 years before getting caught and publicly revealed with a clandestine nuclear weapons program in 2002.”

— “The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) documented a long list of so-called Possible Military Dimensions (PMDs) related to the Iranian nuclear program in November 2011 that strongly suggest its assessment that Iran had an advanced nuclear weapons program and possibly nuclear warheads at that time;”

— “More recent revelations demonstrate that the Iranian regime continues to work on nuclear warheads and explosive charges to initiate the implosion sequence of a nuclear bomb at clandestine sites off-limits to IAEA inspections;”

— “Even after the July 2015 JCPOA, the Iranian regime has been confronted with credible information that it is operating more advanced centrifuges than permitted, exceeding limits on production of heavy water, and covertly procuring nuclear and missile technology outside of JCPOA-approved channels: these are all material breaches of the JCPOA;”

— “The Iranian regime’s nuclear weapon and ballistic missile ‘Joint Venture’ with North Korea dates back at least to the 1990s and continues currently with especial concern about the sharing of expertise on warhead miniaturization and Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) technology;”

— “Denial of recertification of Iranian compliance with the JCPOA must be the first step in a complete review of the nuclear and ballistic missile threats from both Iran and North Korea.”

Mr. President, don’t let Iran become another North Korea. Tear-up the JCPOA!

READ GAC REPORT EXECUTIVE SUMMARY HERE (PDF)

Peter Vincent Pry is executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security. He served in the Congressional EMP Commission, the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission, the House Armed Services Committee, and the CIA. He is author of “Blackout Wars.” For more of his reports, Go Here Now.

The Anatomy of a Deception

The media and much of the Republican establishment have caught on to only part of a story about a shady deal that the Obama administration made with the Islamic Republic of Iran, a deal that took a rather labyrinthine and bizarre form. What they are talking about is bad enough, which involves paying a ransom for hostages, opening up Americans to kidnappings and imprisonment whenever they travel abroad.

The part of the story that they are missing, however, is that what the administration did was highly illegal, according to statutes we still have on our books.

On August 3rd, a story broke that an unmarked cargo plane loaded with $400 million in foreign currency landed in Tehran as part of a United States payment to Iran. Coincidentally this happened the very same day that three American hostages were released.

The next day President Obama took to the airwaves, and emphatically stated, “We do not pay ransom for hostages. We didn’t here, and we won’t in the future.” He went on to describe how he has met with various American families whose loved ones are being held hostage around the globe, and that we simply do not pay ransom because that would encourage more hostage taking in the future. “Those families know we have a policy that we don’t pay ransom,” Obama said. “And the notion that we would somehow start now, in this high-profile way, and announce it to the world, even as we’re looking in the faces of other hostage families whose loved ones are being held hostage, and saying to them we don’t pay ransom, defies logic,” President Obama added.

However, Washington is abuzz with the news from the Thursday, August 18th Wall Street Journal that an Iranian cargo plane from Iran Air went on a trip to Geneva where pellets were loaded onto it, with foreign currencies including Swiss francs and euros. One of the hostages, Pastor Saeed Abedini, had said that he was kept waiting at Mehrabad Airport in Tehran on January 16th, until the morning of January 17th, and “was told by a senior Iranian intelligence official that their departure was contingent upon the movements of a second airplane,” according to reports.

Another aspect of the story is that Iran Air is the official airplane used by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to transfer weapons and manpower to Syria to fight for President Bashar Assad’s brutal dictatorship and to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran Air had been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for ferrying weapons and supplies until January 16th of this year, the very same date these foreign currencies were being ferried to Tehran.

Interestingly, January 16th was also “Implementation Day” of the agreement.

Why did President Obama feel it was necessary to deceive the American public about this and to transmit the funds in such a convoluted and bizarre way?

For starters, Americans have a well-warranted distrust for Iran. This began with the 1979 Khomeini Revolution, when Iranian revolutionaries stormed the American embassy and took embassy officials hostage. It continued through the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon, to that of the Khobar Towers in 1996, and to the IEDs found with Farsi imprints on them that sent American servicemen and women back home in body bags or with missing limbs.

A story in The Hill from February 17, 2016 reports that only 3 in 10 Americans approve of the nuclear deal with Iran.

The second and much more compelling reason is because what Obama did is patently illegal, and the Obama administration was aware of that. In fact, while arguing for the deal, they had reassured a skeptical Congress that these statutes would remain on the books.

The reason that they had to reassure Congress is simply because it is a well-known fact that Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. The State Department’s most recent report on State Sponsors of Terrorism reads:

“Designated as a State Sponsor of terrorism in 1984, Iran continued on its terrorist-related activity in 2015, including support for Hizballah, Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza, and various groups in Iraq and throughout the Middle East. In 2015, Iran increased its assistance to Iraqi Shia terrorist groups…Iran used the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF)-to implement foreign policy goals, provide cover for intelligence operations, and create instability in the Middle East. The IRGC-QF is Iran’s primary mechanism for cultivating and supporting terrorists abroad.”

Andrew McCarthy, a former U.S. prosecutor for the southern district of New York, argues in a recent National Review story that the financial sanctions, which were put in place in the 1980s because of Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism, still remain in place today. In fact, while making the case to support the JCPOA, Obama constantly promised Congress that the Iran-related terrorism sanctions would remain in place, and, (again), on January 16th, the U.S. Treasury Department reaffirmed that commitment. As Mr. McCarthy writes, “Treasury’s published guidance regarding Iran states that, in general, ‘the clearing of U.S. dollar — or other currency — denominated transactions through the U.S. financial system or involving a U.S. person remain prohibited[.]’”

And on the afternoon of August 18th, because of that morning’s Wall Street Journal story, State Department spokesman John Kirby admitted that this was ransom money.

This obvious deception is somewhat emblematic of the entire way this nefarious deal was made between the Obama administration and the Islamic Republic of Iran, including running to the United Nations to have the deal enshrined in international law before going back to Congress and having it approved. The Obama administration refused to acknowledge that this was a treaty, and required 2/3 of the Senate to ratify it. Instead, they dubbed it as “political commitments” and never even allowed the Senate to vote on approving it, even as required of a regular bill, which would require 2/3 to reject it.

The deception was gradual and implemental.

I will never forget sitting in the audience at the AIPAC Policy Conference in 2007, and listening to then Senator Barack Obama pledge that “the world must work to stop Iran’s uranium enrichment program,” amidst rapturous applause.

According to a piece in the Washington Free Beacon, since 2008 until April 2015, Obama promised no less than 28 times that he would prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.

And as soon as he entered office in 2009, U.S. secret negotiations immediately began with Iran, with Oman acting as the intermediary.

David Samuels revealed in his May 5, 2016 profile of Ben Rhodes in the New York Times Magazine that the Obama administration created “an echo chamber,” in which a crop of newly minted experts acted as cheerleaders, and ventriloquist dummies “were saying things that validated what we were giving them to say,” according to Rhodes.

The Obama administration must have known that no matter who was elected president of Iran, Khamenei and the ruling mullahs had the final say on everything. Yet, when Rouhani was elected, President Obama used his bully pulpit to further the myth that Rouhani was a moderate, and that therefore we had a small “window of opportunity” for a nuclear agreement.

Yes, we now have a nuclear agreement with Iran. And Iran now has an internationally condoned path towards a nuclear bomb, if they wait 10 to 15 years, plus it is permitted to operate more than 5,000 nuclear centrifuges, plus another 1000 in Fordow, (the rest are put in storage but not dismantled), plus, according to the Congressional Research Service, at least 120 billion dollars in unfrozen assets, plus 1.7 billion dollars which the administration claims is part of a pre-1979 deal we had made with Iran that was cancelled after the Islamic revolution, (of which the $400 million of ransom money is simply a part), plus an estimated $12 billion relief from the JPOA, plus lucrative deals with Boeing and other companies that Secretary of State John Kerry has been globetrotting, encouraging international businesses to participate in, as well as an enhanced capacity to produce weapons grade uranium, and a replacement of outdated centrifuges with more modern ones, which were all negotiated as part of the agreement.

Fred Fleitz, a former CIA analyst who now works for the Center for Security Policy, has written in his brilliant new book, Obamabomb, A Dangerous and Growing National Security Fraud, “The JCPOA was negotiated and sold to the America people by the Obama administration with unprecedented deception, dishonesty and stealth. The United States made indefensible concessions because of the obsession by Obama officials to strike a legacy nuclear agreement for President Obama.” Mr. Fleitz argues that at best, the agreement will leave Iran with an industrial-sized nuclear program, with the world’s international blessings. He feels, however, that the more likely scenario will be that Iran will use the provisions of the nuclear agreement to continue to produce greater amounts of weapons grade uranium in a much shorter time, with advanced, more modern centrifuges.

This deal is perhaps the worst example of international diplomacy in history; with none other than the world’s leading state sponsor of Islamic terrorism, at a time when the free Western world is being plagued a scourge of exactly such terrorism. The Obama administration must be aware of that. Otherwise, why would they go to such extraordinary lengths to deceive the American people?

And as the sun rises in the morning, the government of Iran has already abducted more Americans to hold for future ransoms.

Another Example of the Obama Admin’s Dishonest Campaign to Sell Iran Nuke Deal

Over the last few months, a lot of new information has come out on how the Obama White House misled the American public, Congress and the news media about the nuclear deal with Iran before Congress voted on the agreement last September.

According to a May 5, 2016 New York Times profile of National Security Council Adviser Ben Rhodes, the Obama administration used false narratives to promote the nuclear deal and conducted a campaign to manipulate and mislead journalists as part of a media “echo chamber.”

Several liberal organizations helped facilitate this echo chamber.  One of the most notorious was the far-left Ploughshares Fund which sought and received funding from liberal philanthropist George Soros. This included an April 2015 request for $750,000 to use mainstream media to counter opponents of the nuclear deal and parrot White House talking points.

Congressman Mike Pompeo (R-KS) has called for an investigation on whether large payments by Ploughshares to National Public Radio slanted NPR’s coverage of the nuclear deal and kept congressmen who opposed the agreement off the air.

The latest disclosure on how Ploughshares funding may still be distorting the debate over the nuclear deal concerns a Washington Post contributor.

According to an August 16, 2016 Washington Free Beacon by Adam Kredo, Allen Weiner, a Standord law professor and Ploughshares-funded expert, recently penned a Washington Post op-ed defending the nuclear deal but the Post failed to mention that he is on the payroll of the Ploughshares Fund.  According to Kredo, Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (where Weiner acts as a senior lecturer), received $100,000 from Ploughshares in 2015.  Weiner received a $15,000 payment from Ploughshares for a 2007 paper.

In an email to Kredo, Weiner denied speaking to anyone at Ploughshares about the nuclear deal or knowing the group’s position on the agreement.  Washington Post Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt disputed Kredo’s claim that Weiner is on the Ploughshares “payroll” and said he saw no conflicts of interest.

However, on August 11, 2016, the Washington Post ran an op-ed co-authored by Weiner that defended a $400 million payment to free four U.S. prisoners held by Iran as “American diplomacy at its finest.”  Many experts believe this payment amounted to ransom and have harshly criticized the Obama administration for concealing it from Congress.

The $400 million was secretly flown to Tehran from Geneva in an unmarked plane.  The payment was made in small denominations of euros and Swiss francs.  The plane transporting the American prisoners was not allowed to take off until after the planeload of cash landed.  Iran says this was a ransom payment.  The Justice Department opposed the timing of this payment because it looked like ransom.  Weiner ignored these facts and repeated the absurd Obama administration position that this was not a ransom payment but represented America repaying an old debt to Iran.

With the Obama administration under fire for the controversial $400 million it paid to Iran, I have no doubt someone recruited Weiner as part of its Iran deal echo chamber to draft his Washington Post op-ed defending its dubious rationale for this payment.  This op-ed did not appear out of thin air.

Was Weiner on the Ploughshares “payroll” to promote the Iran deal?  There’s no evidence of this (at least yet) and he denies it.  However, given the unusual timing of his piece mimicking administration talking points that the $400 million was not a ransom payment, it seems likely Weiner is part of the White House media echo chamber to mislead the American people and Congress about the Iran deal.

Weiner’s article also suggests this echo chamber is still being used to generate false narratives for the White House to defend the nuclear deal.  Further investigation by journalists may prove that the Ploughshares Fund is still funding these distortions.

Obamabomb: A Dangerous and Growing National Security Fraud

ObamaBomb

July 14, 2016 was the one-year anniversary of the nuclear agreement with Iran, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA.

In his book, Obamabomb: A Dangerous and Growing National Security Fraud, Center for Security Policy Senior Vice President Fred Fleitz provides a detailed analysis of the dangers this agreement continues to pose to U.S. and international security, including:

  • Why the threat from Iran’s nuclear weapons program is growing despite the JCPOA;
  • How the nuclear agreement gave Iran a pass on its nuclear weapons work and led the IAEA to dumb down its reports on the Iranian nuclear
    program;
  • How the agreement has made Iran a greater regional and international threat;
  • The Obama administration’s deceptive campaign to implement the agreement; and
  • How the Obama administration is trying to grant further concessions to Iran.

Fleitz speaks on the anniversary of the adoption of the agreement at the Heritage Foundation

Although Fleitz argues that the nuclear deal is so dangerous that the next president should tear it up and start over, Obamabomb also includes recommendations for new sanctions against Iran and these principles that should guide any effort by a future president to re-negotiate the nuclear pact:

  1. Iran must cease all uranium enrichment and uranium enrichment research.
  2. Iran not have a heavy-water reactor or a plant to produce heavy-water.
  3. Robust verification, including allowing anytime, anywhere inspections by IAEA inspectors to all declared and suspect nuclear sites, including military facilities.
  4. Iran must fully and truthfully answer all questions about its prior nuclear weapons-related work.
  5. Iran must curtail and agree to limitations on its ballistic missile program.
  6. Lift sanctions in stages in response to Iranian compliance.
  7. Iran must agree to end its meddling in regional conflicts and sponsorship of terror.
  8. Threats by Iran to ships in the Persian Gulf, U.S. naval vessels and American servicemen and servicewomen must cease.
  9. Iran must cease its hostility toward Israel.
  10. Iran must release all US prisoners.

Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney said about Obamabomb:

Fred Fleitz’s new book Obamabomb: A Dangerous and Growing National Security Fraud could not be more timely. Fleitz’s detailed analysis of this agreement not only proves the growing danger that the agreement poses to U.S. national security, he explains how the deal is making a U.S. enemy and leading actor in the Global Jihad Movement into a regional hegemon in the Middle East. Fleitz also discusses the dishonest Obama administration campaign to implement this agreement over bipartisan majorities in Congress and the dangerous precedent this set for future presidents.

Fred Fleitz is Senior Vice President for Policy and Programs with the Center for Security Policy.  He served in U.S. national security positions for 25 years with the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Department of State and the House Intelligence Committee staff.  During the administration of President George W. Bush, Fleitz was chief of staff to John Bolton, then Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security.  In his five years with the House Intelligence Committee staff, Fleitz was a senior aide to Chairman Peter Hoekstra and the committee’s expert on the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs.

 Obamabomb