Iran: One of the linchpins of former President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran was that it would be accompanied by a near-ban on Iran having any access to the U.S. banking system. A new congressional report says that, too, was a lie.
Obama and his officials at the Treasury Department and State Department were clear: They would work assiduously to freeze out Iran from getting dollars to fund its mischief and mayhem around the world.
The Associated Press, puts it this way: "As the Treasury and State Department worked behind the scenes to help Iran access the dollar, the message to Congress remained the same: The JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) did not allow Iran to access the U.S. financial system."
Obama sent a clear message to Congress: If you don't block this nuclear deal, we will bar Iran's access to our financial system. The deal was clear, unequivocal.
It was also a lie. Obama lied, and so did others in his administration.
That's the conclusion of a report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. It alleges Obama officials pushed the U.S. Treasury to let Iran convert the equivalent of $5.7 billion of funds held in Oman's Bank of Muscat from rials into dollars and subsequently into euros.
It required a special license by the U.S. Treasury, which was granted in February of 2016. But it was never disclosed, either to Congress or the American people.
OK, you say, $5.7 billion. What is that, when big economies like the U.S., Britain, Germany and France have economies trillions of dollars in size?
Apart from the lie, which is bad enough for an administration that claimed repeatedly to be "scandal-free," this money did not have innocuous uses. Far from it.
Our own State Department characterizes Iran as the No. 1 terrorist-supporting state on Earth. Every dollar it gets from us has an ultimate use that is highly questionable, which is the reason why the U.S. imposed sanctions in the first place.

Terrorist Funding

Washington Times national security correspondent Bill Gertz in February of this year reportedthat some of the $1.7 billion that the Obama administration officially handed over to the Iranians had ended up in the hands of terrorist groups. Those terrorist groups included Hezbollah, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and Iran's own Quds Force, the dirty tricks and terror branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
No one knows how much of the $5.7 billion that Obama allowed Iran to access also went to terrorist activities. Or, for that matter, how much went to further research activity on Iran's nuclear bomb project. That awaits a later investigation.
But it's important to note that the Iran nuclear deal also removed some $100 billion in sanctions on Iran. This made Iran once again a big player in the Mideast. It's almost certain that a good piece of that went to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, which by some accounts control as much as 40% of Iran's economy.
It's clear from Obama administration actions, under both his Secretaries of State, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, that the Obama White House despised Israel and did all they could to undermine its security. How else can you explain the enabling of a terrorist-supporting regime?
The Obama administration failed to enforce its own "red line" in Syria on chemical weapons. By doing so, it in effect invited both Russia and Iran into that disintegrating country. Iranian troops today are within striking distance of our one true ally in the region, Israel.

Mideast Disintegration

The disintegration of Libya, the collapse of Egypt, and Turkey's embrace of radical Islam, all took place under Obama's watch. None of them were in the U.S.' interest.
The Mideast has been a mess for decades, but things got markedly worse under Obama. A big reason is the Iran nuclear deal didn't make anyone in the Mideast, Europe or U.S. safer. But it did empower the terrorist-supporting mullahs in Tehran.
The mullahs are now funding terrorism on Israel's border. They're biding their time until they can get another anti-Israel president in the White House. Mullahs with a nuclear weapon will be a nightmare. President Trump has a big job still ahead of him, but in his first year and a half in office he has undone much of Obama's damage.
All of this because the Obama administration signed a deal that not only didn't end Tehran's nuclear program, but merely postponed it for a decade, all while doing nothing about its terrorist activities. Now we find that Obama also helped finance that.
Paying to support terrorism, and not telling the American people about it. Still think the Obama administration was "scandal-free"?