The “scandal-free” Obama administration sure liked to lie a lot. This morning, America awoke to yet another revelation that Obama officials misled Congress about their dealings with Iran.
A Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report alleges that the administration secretly sought to give Iran access — albeit briefly — to the U.S. financial system by sidestepping sanctions kept in place after the 2015 nuclear deal, despite repeatedly telling Congress and the public it had no plans to do so. Specifically, the Obama Treasury Department issued a license that would have allowed U.S. banks to participate in a scheme to convert $5.7 billion in Iranian funds into U.S. dollars and then euros. The American banks declined to participate, “citing the reputational risk of doing business with or for Iran.” The license wasn’t unlawful, but, to quote the Associated Press, it “went above and beyond what the Obama administration was required to do under the terms of the nuclear agreement.”
In other words, the Obama administration tried to do Iran an immense financial favor, one not required by the deal itself, to uphold the mythical “spirit” of the agreement (yes, that’s their off-the-record excuse). Iran had reportedly complained that it “wasn’t reaping the benefits it envisioned,” and the Obama administration attempted to help — even though it had publicly assured Americans that “Iran will be denied access to the world’s most important market and unable to deal in the world’s most important currency.”
The Iran deal was a deceptive dereliction of duty from the outset, resting on a fundamentally flawed understanding of Iran, the Middle East, and the world. The world’s greatest power confronted a third-tier nation with a fourth-tier military, and practically begged to avoid conflict.
Keep in mind, this attempted favor happened even as the Obama administration’s pie-in-the-sky hopes for the deal were crumbling before the world’s eyes. It was the administration’s hope that lifting sanctions, bringing Iran back into international markets, and providing it with immense sums of cold, hard cash would somehow make the jihadist regime want to “fully rejoin the community of nations.” Commerce and forbearance would work their magic, Iran would moderate, and we’d have peace in our time.
Instead, it was already clear that Iran wasn’t moderating one inch. It was pocketing its financial rewards and redoubling its international support for terrorism. It was still America’s enemy. It was still trying to kill American troops. So naturally, the Obama administration tried to increase its bribe.
We also can’t forget the extent to which the entire agreement was built on an edifice of lies. Remember this, from a New York Times profile of Obama deputy national-security adviser Ben Rhodes?
The way in which most Americans have heard the story of the Iran deal presented — that the Obama administration began seriously engaging with Iranian officials in 2013 in order to take advantage of a new political reality in Iran, which came about because of elections that brought moderates to power in that country — was largely manufactured for the purpose for selling the deal. Even where the particulars of that story are true, the implications that readers and viewers are encouraged to take away from those particulars are often misleading or false. Obama’s closest advisers always understood him to be eager to do a deal with Iran as far back as 2012, and even since the beginning of his presidency.
The Iran deal was a deceptive dereliction of duty from the outset, resting on a fundamentally flawed understanding of Iran, the Middle East, and the world. The world’s greatest power confronted a third-tier nation with a fourth-tier military, and practically begged to avoid conflict.
In exchange for milquetoast assurances about Iran’s nuclear program — How milquetoast? Just yesterday we learned that Iran opened a new centrifuge assembly center at its Natanz nuclear site — the Obama administration allowed Iran access to international arms markets, agreed to an immense stimulus through sanctions relief, and traded pallets of cash for American hostages. Worse still, it gave money back to Iran even as it used American tax dollars (instead of Iran’s own funds) to compensate American victims of Iranian terror.
Aw, they didn’t lie… they just didn’t tell ’em!
Obama hated this. He did all he could to make the US weaker, less influential and more vulnerable to those who would take us down a notch or two. So, he wouldn’t use US power (except to attack domestic enemies) and, simultaneously, wanted a deal for the groveling press to praise him for (as if they needed an excuse).
The license only allowed the conversion of Iranian rials into dollars as a momentary intermediate step in a transaction converting them to Euros. Nobody was going to hand over to them bags of U.S. currency.
But thinking about that would demonstrate the irrelevancy of the entire story, wouldn’t it? It’s much better to run about hysterically claiming “Obama gave them access!”
As irrelevant as that momentary step would have been, it never actually happened. Which serves to double down on the stupidity of the entire accusation.
@Greg:
No one said they were.
But, Obama WANTED it to happen and he promised the Iranians it would while telling Congress it wouldn’t. See how Obama lies? BIG lies, that affect national security. He’s a liar that lies for the pure pleasure of it AND he lies because he KNOWS what he is doing is WRONG.
@Deplorable Me, #3:
I do appreciate the timing of the story. No doubt it’s intended to serve as a distraction from Trump’s single-handed lifting of 2016 sanctions against China’s ZTE, which has been a conduit for embargoed U.S. microchip technology to Iran, Sudan, North Korea, Syria and Cuba.
Criticism of this Executive Office move has been countered with a claim that it is part of a broader strategy, though the objective of that strategy is a bit unclear. The U.S. trade deficit with China was up 11% over the first 4 months of the current year. Maybe going lighter on a Chinese corporation that transferred embargoed U.S. technology to North Korea is part of reining in Kim Jong-un?
@Greg:
Yeah, because the media is ALWAYS doing Trump a favor and helping him out where ever and when ever they can, right?
No, it’s just the fact that Obama’s deal with Iran was ill-conceived, stupid, naive and not in America’s interest. Obama, like all sneak-thieves do, had to lie about and hide the details of such a bad deal.
But, it’s cute you think the media is helping Trump out.
The provisions of Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran extended their projected breakout time for a nuclear weapon by around a decade. Contrary to the right’s propaganda, the verification protocol was very solid. Trump’s own Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis confirmed that to be so.
Trump has now thrown that deal out, without a clue how to come to a better arrangement. Nothing has been gained by doing so, other than the approval of his fans. The bottom line? It was an Obama administration accomplishment and therefore had to be discredited and broken.
But, since Obama gave in to all of Iran’s demands up front, lifted all the sanctions and gave them pallets of cash, in addition to making some illegal promises he couldn’t, thankfully, fulfill, there is no hope of improving it.
@Deplorable Me, #7:
Utter nonsense. All of Iran’s wishes WERE NOT granted up front. Continuing release of their funds was contingent unpon continuing compliance the the provisions of the nuclear deal. Between $100 billion and $120 billion of Iran’s assets—the vast majority of their total frozen assets—still remain frozen.
If you don’t believe this, look up the amount that remains frozen for yourself. You won’t trust any reference I provide.
Getting a small portion of their total frozen funds up front was the incentive they were offered to enter into the agreement. Without such an incentive, they would have had nothing to gain.
People don’t enter into one-sided agreements. You can only reach mutually beneficial arrangements when each side is willing to give something up in return for something that it wants.
If North Korea ever agrees to give up its nuclear weapons, that goal will only be reached in a series of incremental steps. There’s no way they will give us everything we want up front, all at once, in expectation of some future reward.
@Greg:
People who simply want an agreement for the sake of saying they got one do. And that’s what Obama did.
No, that’s NOT what Obama did. We most definitely got something out of the deal: an Iran that still lacks nuclear weapons. That state of affairs has now become much less likely to continue. What was gained by unilaterally dumping the deal is absolutely nothing.
@Greg: Only Iran and Obama got anything out of the deal and Obama’s share has evaporated. You act like Iran was minutes away from having a weapon (but they didn’t want a weapon, did they? It was all for research). Funny, they just opened up a new centrifuge. Now, with such a tough-ass deal, how would they be building a new centerfuge and what would they be intending to use it for (since Russia has all their uranium)?
@Deplorable Me:
The estimate was that they were a few months away. That was nearly 3 years ago. They have no bomb.
Under the provisions of the deal, international monitoring of Iranian centrifuge production would have continued for 20 years; international monitoring of Iranian enriched uranium production would have continued for 25 years. This was not nothing. Much can change over 25 years.
A comprehensive timeline of the Iran nuclear deal
They were allowed to keep centrifuges capable of slow, low level enrichment, to produce uranium suitable to fuel nuclear energy reactors and for medical purposes. That was part of the agreement. Centrifuges capable of the rapid, high level enrichment necessary for uranium fission bombs were dismantled and exported. Their immediate plutonium bomb path was eliminated with the destruction of the Arak reactor core.
They have continued research and development on advanced gas-injection centrifuges. Without out the constraints of the nuclear deal, they may start building them for accelerated production purposes.
@Greg: Allowed to continue enriching uranium for a quick enrichment for weapons grade. Yeah, this was a brilliant deal, alright, tough on Iran.
This is still Iran’s view, so it doesn’t inspire confidence that, allowed to police themselves and dictate who can inspect where, all while opening new centrifuges, Iran, under this regime, should be allowed to have a nuclear program.
No, it wasn’t a good deal, it didn’t stop Iran and it will now be much tougher to bring them in line, thanks to Obama liffing all the sanctions.
Well, no problem, since Trump has unilaterally kicked our side of the agreement to pieces. Maybe Iran will send someone to join Trump and Kim Jong-un at their Rose Garden tea party, where masterful application of The Art of the Deal will bring everyone into perfect agreement.
Personally, I think Trump is breaking a long list of things that he doesn’t have a frickin’ clue how to fix.
@Greg: Trump may actually cut a deal with N.Korea, especially since he has shown them what he thinks of one-sided deals designed for one person’s personal prestige.
Yeah, well you thought Obama was a great President, Hillary would have been a great President and Hillary deleted 33,000 yoga, wedding and funeral emails, so I won’t bank too much on that.