All eyes these days are on North Korea, but menacing as Kim & Co. may be, a nuclear-armed Iran is yet more dangerous. The North Koreans may rattle cages and stomp their feet, shooting off missiles and even testing bombs, but their intentions so far are mainly to retain their atrocious despotic control of their own people. The Iranians, both through their ideology and evident actions in progress across the globe, are truly imperialistic in their intentions. They seek to rule the Middle East, if not the world, in the name of their millenialist brand of Shia Islam.
That is why Josh Meyer’s lengthy article — “Barack Obama’s hidden Iran deal giveaway” — is of tremendous importance. Meyer — using named sources — discovered that Obama essentially lied to us about the nature of the seven men (Iranian and Iranian-American) that were released by our government through the agreement, saying they were insignificant “civilians.”
In reality, some of them were accused by Obama’s own Justice Department of posing threats to national security. Three allegedly were part of an illegal procurement network supplying Iran with U.S.-made microelectronics with applications in surface-to-air and cruise missiles like the kind Tehran test-fired recently, prompting a still-escalating exchange of threats with the Trump administration. Another was serving an eight-year sentence for conspiring to supply Iran with satellite technology and hardware.
There’s quite a bit more at the link, including this:
The biggest fish, though, was Seyed Abolfazl Shahab Jamili, who had been charged with being part of a conspiracy that from 2005 to 2012 procured thousands of parts with nuclear applications for Iran via China. That included hundreds of U.S.-made sensors for the uranium enrichment centrifuges in Iran whose progress had prompted the nuclear deal talks in the first place.
And you thought it was bad that Obama released inmates from Guantanamo who could return to the battlefield to resume their terrorist careers, as several did. Think what these people could do.
There are obviously quite a number of other lies about the Iran Deal whose full contents we, and clearly even Congress, have yet to learn. (In an interview on Tucker Carlson’s show Tuesday night, Tucker got Rep. Eric Swalwell, a Democrat and member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, to admit he never heard any of the information in Meyer’s article while being privy to supposedly confidential testimony on the deal. Though he fought it, Swallwell was disturbed.)
After the Syrian gassing, I urged the administration to reveal the full contents of the deal. They haven’t done that, obviously, but appear to have serious reservations about the agreement. In fact, it is quite possible that the deal will not remain in place, at least in its current version (whatever that is). The Wall Street Journal is reporting
The White House is conducting a 90-day review of its Iran policy and considering steps to significantly ratchet up U.S. efforts to push back against Iran and its military operations in the Middle East.
Potential steps include sanctions against hundreds of Iranian companies that would be vetted for suspected ties to Tehran’s elite military unit, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, these officials said.
The Trump administration also is exploring ways to enhance international efforts to combat Iran’s ability to smuggle weapons to its military proxies in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.
All good, but not enough. We need a full congressional investigation of how we got here in the first place. It’s more important than the Trump-Russia investigation or even whether the Obama administration spied on Trump, because the root of all may be hidden beneath this. David Harsanyi explains it this way in concluding his fine gloss on Meyer’s investigation:
It seems increasingly plausible that Obama was hamstrung to act in Syria by the overriding need to avoid upsetting the Iranians (and Russians). That alone should be enough to count the Iran deal as a massive disaster. Yet, considering how little we know about what was in the deal, who knows what ugly things we’ll find out in the coming years.
Indeed. But the conundrum remains. Why in the first place was Obama so desperate to make such an absurd deal, continually giving in to every Iranian demand? Some say it was to preserve his legacy. The Iran agreement was virtually the entire focus of his second term. I’m not entirely convinced there isn’t more to the story that would unlock many of the mysteries of our time. But perhaps I’m unduly suspicious. Because of Meyer’s investigation, Greg Gutfeld, on The Five, wondered if Obama could be impeached retroactively. Clearly, he was jesting (sort of). Nevertheless, we need a true congressional investigation. Or something.
Roger L. Simon is an award-winning novelist, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and co-founder of PJ Media. His latest book is I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn’t Already. Follow him on Twitter @rogerlsimon.
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