It seems that every day we learn about another Barack Obama capitulation to the terrorist-supporting Iranian regime. The latest news is that the same day $400 million dollars of foreign currency was sent to Iran in exchange Americans held hostage the Obama administration agreed to lift Iranian sanctions on two state-run banks famous for funding Iran’s ballistic missile program.
The U.N. sanctions on the two banks weren’t initially to be lifted until 2023, (at least according to the P5+1 deal. But per the Wall Street Journal, we know of the early removal of the sanctions by the U.N. Security Council, and why it came about.
The U.N. Security Council’s delisting of the two banks (Bank Sepah and Bank Sepah International), releasing or dropping charges against to 21 Iranian operatives sought for sanctions-busting or terrorism (including some who ran materials to Hezbollah and Assad), the $400 million (which was part of a $1.7 billion cash payment to Iran), and the release of the four American hostages were all part of the same secret deal between the U.S. and Iran on finalized on Jan. 17, the day the Americans were freed and the first load of money arrived in Tehran.
According to senior U.S. officials, a senior State Department official, Brett McGurk, and a representative of the Iranian government signed three documents in Geneva on the morning of Jan. 17.
One document committed the U.S. to dropping criminal charges against 21 Iranian nationals, and Tehran to releasing the Americans imprisoned in Iran.
Another committed the U.S. to immediately transfer $400 million in cash to the Iranian regime and arrange the delivery within weeks of two subsequent cash payments totaling $1.3 billion to settle a decades-old legal dispute over a failed arms deal.
The U.S. agreed in a third document to support the immediate delisting of the two Iranian banks, according to senior U.S. officials. In the hours after the documents were signed at a Swiss hotel, the different elements of the agreement went forward: The Americans were released, Iran took possession of the $400 million in cash, and the U.N. Security Council removed sanctions on Bank Sepah and Bank Sepah International, these officials said.
“Lifting the sanctions on Sepah was part of the package,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on the deliberations. “The timing of all this isn’t coincidental. Everything was linked to some degree.”
Brett McGurk, a senior State Department official, signed three documents with a representative of the Iranian government in Geneva on the morning of Jan. 17 that set out commitments for a prisoner swap, a cash transfer to Iran and the delisting of sanctions on two Iranian banks, according to senior U.S. officials.
Interestingly a month after the deal an Iranian Revolutionary Guard news agency announced Iranian government officials had demanded that Sepah be taken off the Iranian sanctions list as part of a deal to release the prisoners. In other words, the Iranian despots were more open with their people than Barack Obama has been with Americans.
(…) Another senior administration official said lifting sanctions on Bank Sepah and its London affiliate was in the spirit of the commitment by the U.S. and other world powers to provide Iran with sanctions relief.
Perhaps that same spirit of commitment was displayed by the Iranians when they launched ballistic missiles with “death to Israel” painted on them , or when they captured U.S. Sailors, or even the continued harassment of U.S. Navy vessels near the Straits of Hormuz, and other not so friendly acts by Obama’s latest BFF.
“By agreeing to remove U.N. and EU sanctions eight years early on Iran’s main missile financing bank, the administration effectively greenlighted their nuclear warhead-capable ballistic missile program,” said Mark Dubowitz, a top critic of the Iran nuclear deal at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank.
Once again it’s been proven that this president doesn’t really care about the safety of Americans or our allies. Nor does he care about transparency as he kept the deal secret (while Iran didn’t). All Obama really cares about is the legacy of making peace with Iran, a noble goal, but it’s not really peace when it’s one-sided.