The Manchurian money transfer
Greetings from Paris. I'm on my way home.
The Obama administration is stonewalling a Congressional inquiry that's looking into how the '
other $1.3 billion' in ransom money got
paid over to Iran.
The Departments of State, Treasury, and Justice have all rebuffed a
congressional probe into the circumstances surrounding the $1.3 billion
payment to Iran, which is part of an additional $400 million cash payout
that occurred just prior to the release of several U.S. hostages and
led to accusations that the administration had paid Iran a ransom.
The Obama administration has admitted
in recent days that the $400 million cash delivery to Iran was part of
an effort to secure the release of these American hostages, raising
further questions on Capitol Hill about White House efforts to suppress
these details from the public.
...
The administration is also withholding key details about the payment
from leading members of Congress, including Sens. Ted Cruz (R., Texas)
and Mike Lee (R., Utah), who launched an inquiry into the matter earlier this month.
The Departments of State, Treasury, and Justice all failed to respond
to the inquiry by Monday’s deadline, according to congressional sources
tracking the matter.
“The already bizarre circumstances surrounding the $1.7 billion
payment to the Islamic Republic have only gotten stranger in the weeks
since we learned of the $400 million in cash that was sent to the
Iranian regime last January 16th,” Cruz said to the Free Beacon. “If
this payment was, as the Obama administration insists, a
straightforward settlement of an old debt that it would have cost
America more to contest, why all the secrecy?”
The State Department said it does not know how the remaining $1.3
billion was transferred or to whom it was transferred. Cruz described
this disclosure as “confounding.”
...
“While we are deeply concerned about the national security
implications of the administration’s cash-for-hostages scheme,
especially in light of reports that Iran has already arrested additional
Americans, the purpose of this letter is to inquire about the legality
of the payment,” the senators wrote in an Aug. 12 letter.
“It is imperative that the administration provide a full accounting
of its conduct with respect to the $400 million cash payment to Iran,”
they wrote. “If the administration violated the law, then Congress and
the American people should be made aware of it so that they can hold the
appropriate officials accountable and take whatever steps necessary to
strengthen the law and prevent any reoccurrence.”
While the administration has remained silent about the circumstances
surrounding the payment, investigative reporter Claudia Rosett recently disclosed that the Treasury Department transferred just under $1.3 billion to the State Department in 13 “large identical sums.”
The funds, allocated for “foreign claims,” could shine a light on how
the administration moved taxpayer funds into the State Department’s
purview in order to provide the additional payment to Iran.
In 13 individual payments of $99,999,999.99, the Treasury Department
moved a total of 1,299,999,999.87, which roughly amounts to the
remaining money owed to Iran.
All of this reminds me of some of the other mysteries of the Manchurian candidate Barack Hussein Obama. His
birth certificate. His
college transcript.
Obamacare's 'after we pass the bill, you can read the bill.' The 'secret negotiations' (and the
doctoring of a State Department press briefing about them) and
secret agreements with Iran. There's a pattern here and it's not a pretty one. It's a pattern of dishonesty. And it's a pattern that's being continued by
Hillary Clinton.
When will it end?
Labels: Ayatollah Ali Khameni, Barack Hussein Obama, Iran sanctions regime, Iranian nuclear threat, Jen Psaki, John Kerry, Obamacare, prisoner exchange, Shah Reza Pahlavi, US State Department
"Wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs and other currencies... on an unmarked cargo plane."
The United States government paid
$400 million in cash - in small unmarked euros and Swiss francs and other currencies packed on pallets and delivered in unmarked cargo planes - in return for the release of hostages in Iran in January.
Wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs and other currencies
were flown into Iran on an unmarked cargo plane, according to these
officials. The U.S. procured the money from the central banks of the
Netherlands and Switzerland, they said.
The money represented the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement the Obama administration reached with Iran to resolve a decades-old dispute over a failed arms deal signed just before the 1979 fall of Iran’s last monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
The settlement, which resolved claims before an international
tribunal in The Hague, also coincided with the formal implementation
that same weekend of the landmark nuclear agreement reached between
Tehran, the U.S. and other global powers the summer before.
“With the nuclear deal done, prisoners released, the time was right to resolve this dispute as well,” President Barack Obama said at the White House on Jan. 17—without disclosing the $400 million cash payment.
Senior
U.S. officials denied any link between the payment and the prisoner
exchange. They say the way the various strands came together
simultaneously was coincidental, not the result of any quid pro quo.
Really? They expect us to believe there's no connection? Or perhaps that this is '
normal political fibbing'? I'm not the only one who doesn't buy it.
But U.S. officials also acknowledge that Iranian negotiators on the
prisoner exchange said they wanted the cash to show they had gained
something tangible.
Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas
and a fierce foe of the Iran nuclear deal, accused President Barack
Obama of paying “a $1.7 billion ransom to the ayatollahs for U.S.
hostages.”
“This break with longstanding U.S. policy put a price
on the head of Americans, and has led Iran to continue its illegal
seizures” of Americans, he said.
Ya think?
Since the cash shipment, the intelligence arm of the Revolutionary Guard
has arrested two more Iranian-Americans. Tehran has also detained
dual-nationals from France, Canada and the U.K. in recent months.
But this is just the start of the rewards for Obama's and Kerry's sellout to Iran.
Meanwhile, U.S. officials have said they were certain Washington was
going to lose the arbitration in The Hague, where Iran was seeking more
than $10 billion, and described the settlement as a bargain for
taxpayers.
That's in line with Obama's approach to budgeting: A trillion here, a trillion there, eventually it starts to add up to real money.
Of course, the Iranians are happy to call a spade, a spade.
Iranian press reports have quoted senior Iranian defense officials
describing the cash as a ransom payment. The Iranian foreign ministry
didn’t respond to a request for comment.
And the Americans are all too happy to accommodate them.
The $400 million was
paid in foreign currency because any transaction with Iran in U.S.
dollars is illegal under U.S. law. Sanctions also complicate Tehran’s
access to global banks.
“Sometimes the Iranians want cash
because it’s so hard for them to access things in the international
financial system,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on the January
cash delivery. “They know it can take months just to figure out how to
wire money from one place to another.”
There's much more.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Ayatollah Ali Khameni, Barack Hussein Obama, Iran Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran sanctions regime, Iranian nuclear threat, John Kerry, prisoner exchange, Shah Reza Pahlavi
CIA admits it was behind coup in Iran
The
CIA has admitted that it was behind the coup that overthrew Mohammed Mossadegh and installed Shah Reza Pahlavi as Iran's ruler 60 years ago today.
"[T]he military coup that overthrew
Mosadeq and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as
an act of U.S. foreign policy," the history reads. The risk of leaving Iran
"open to Soviet aggression," it adds, "compelled the United States ... in planning
and executing TPAJAX."
TPAJAX was the CIA's codename for the overthrow plot, which
relied on local collaborators at every stage. It consisted of several steps:
using propaganda to undermine Mossadegh politically, inducing the Shah to cooperate,
bribing members of parliament, organizing the security forces, and ginning up
public demonstrations. The initial attempt actually failed, but after a mad
scramble the coup forces pulled themselves together and came through on their
second try, on August 19.
Of course, Foreign Policy, where the article was published, goes on to beat its breast because of the CIA's involvement. I disagree. Based on what was known at the time, the CIA's actions may have made sense, and I don't think anyone would argue that Iranians or the interests of the United States are better off since the Islamic revolution.
Labels: CIA, Iran, Shah Reza Pahlavi
More eerie similarities between Iran 1979 and Egypt 2011
Michael Totten interviews Abbas Milani, an Iranian expat who has just written a book about the Shah of Iran. Milani was an opponent of the Shah, was not (and is not) an Islamist, but spent six months in jail with cellmates who became leaders of Iran's Islamic revolution. Milani points out some
eerie parallels (that go much deeper than the ones I discussed in an
earlier post) between Iran 1979 and Egypt 2011 (Hat Tip:
Instapundit).
MJT: So why, when you published a piece in The New Republic a few days ago, did you compare the upheaval in Egypt to the Iranian Revolution 31 years ago rather than to Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution that toppled Ben Ali less than 31 days ago?
Abbas Milani: Iran and Egypt are very similar. They have been, along with Turkey, the key bellwether states in the region. What happens in these three places has shaped what happens in the Middle East for a hundred years.
Tunisia—in terms of size, history, and trajectory—is far less like Iran than Egypt is. Egypt is the most important center of Sunni learning while Iran is the most important center of Shia learning. And the two countries have been very much in competition with each other for hegemony over the Islamic world. The Shah spent his last days in Egypt. There is a fifty year connection between the Pahlavi dynasty and Egypt.
Look also at the events themselves and the way the United States has tried to position itself. What’s going on right now in Egypt is eerily reminiscent of the events in Iran in 1979. The United States supported Pahlavi and Mubarak overtly. In both cases there was behind-the-scenes pressure to democratize and open the system. The Shah resisted, claiming a communist threat. Mubarak resisted, claiming a Muslim Brotherhood threat.
After a while the Shah became impervious to American pressure because he had oil money. He had more money than he knew what to do with. During those very crucial years the Iranian middle class mushroomed. The educated class was increasing. These were the years when pressure for democracy was most urgent, but the Shah was impervious to it.
MJT: How big was the middle class in 1979?
Abbas Milani: It depends on how you define it. If you look at the income, the amount of urbanization, the number of educated people, the number of people who lived in their own domicile, the number of people who could travel outside the country—all these grew rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s thanks to the push for industrialization that began in the early 1960s. It began before the oil money came in.
We had a class of brilliant Iranian technocrats, many of them educated in the United States, including right here at Stanford. They put into effect a remarkable process of industrialization that by 1970 was bearing fruit. These people demanded political rights, and the Shah, instead of opening the country, clamped down with the one-party system.
I am absolutely convinced that in 1975, when he was at the height of his power, if the Shah had made just a third of the concessions he later made in 1978, we would be looking at a very different Iran today.
MJT: It was too late in 1978.
Abbas Milani: What Mubarak and the Shah both failed to understand is that if you make concessions when you’re weak it just increases the appetite for more concessions. If they would have made concessions when they were in a position of power, they could have negotiated a smooth transition to a less authoritarian government.
In Egypt, when the US pressured Mubarak to announce that he would not run again, that he should come out publicly and say he has cancer and that there will be a free election soon, he instead tried to create a monarchy.
Milani also has a lot to say about the Muslim Brotherhood and the parallels between its behavior today and Khomeni's behavior during the last four months before the Shah fell. It is not reassuring.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Ayatollah Khomeni, Egyptian regime change, Hosni Mubarak, Iranian revolution, Muslim Brotherhood, Shah Reza Pahlavi
Eerie parallels between Iran 1979 and Egypt 2011
Michael Ledeen has some eerie - really eerie - parallels between
Iran 1979 and Egypt 2011.
First of all is prostate cancer. The shah was dying of it and Mubarak is afflicted with it. We know Mubarak’s got it. We didn’t know the shah had it. One of the effects of the disease and its treatment seems to be that the person has difficulty making tough decisions, and it inevitably forces him to think about his legacy. The shah didn’t want to go down as a bloody dictator, and he rejected all appeals from his generals to open fire on the demonstrators. This encouraged the opposition and discouraged the military commanders.
Second is the role of Washington. Carter did not know what to do, and he was operating on the basis of very bad intelligence. Above all, he (thanks to his CIA) had very little good information about Khomeini. He and advisers like Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and Iran desk officer Henry Precht and NSC staffer Gary Sick all permitted themselves to believe that we could continue to have very good relations with Iran even if the shah were overthrown. They failed to see the nature and extent of the Khomeini movement, saw it as a “progressive revolution,” and UN Ambassador Andrew Young famously called the ayatollah a holy man, and even “some kind of saint.”
I don’t know the quality of our intelligence on the Egyptian opposition, but if former Ambassador Martin Indyk is correct (and all I’ve got to go on is a Tweet saying he said it on BBC Arabic), the White House and State Department may be signaling approval of Mohammed al-Baradei. According to Al Jazeera — a very unreliable source to put it mildly — Obama has told leaders in the Gulf that the United States favors a “peaceful transition” to greater democracy.
Well, so do I. But Baradei is one of the last men I would choose for that role. He doesn’t like America and he’s in cahoots with Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood. He would be likely to try to replay the ghastly catastrophe of 1979. Bad for freedom, bad for the Egyptian people, bad for America. Does our intelligence community not know this? And if they do, why is Obama tilting towards this outcome? If he is, that is…
In 1979 we came down hard on the shah to show restraint towards the demonstrators, just as we are today with Mubarak. I understand that no American government, let alone an Obama government, can openly say to Mubarak: “What are you waiting for? Put it down!” I don’t know what we’re saying privately. Gates has apparently spoken to his counterparts in Cairo and Jerusalem. What did they say? I don’t know, obviously, but that conversation would go a long way to clarify the real facts. I’ll bet you that there was some sort of deadline to Mubarak: if you can’t establish control within x days, we will have to work with the opposition. That would be normal and sensible.
The greatest American sin in 1979 was to confuse the shah. He didn’t know what we wanted. From the State Department he heard calls for sweet reasonableness, entreaties not to use live ammunition against the mobs, and so forth. From Brzezinski he heard pleas to be strong. Maybe even to crack down violently. The shah didn’t know who to believe. Then it got worse. We sent a General Huyser to Tehran with two sets of instructions: a) to support a military coup and b) to prevent a military coup. So the shah and the generals stood by and watched, and Khomeini’s multitudes, who knew exactly what they wanted, fought all-out and won.
Read the whole thing.
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Unfortunately, that includes the United States and its allies.
What could go wrong?
Labels: Barack Obama, Hosni Mubarak, Jimmy Carter, Shah Reza Pahlavi
Ahmadinejad's lie exposed
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad frequently claims that the US and other Western powers were perfectly willing to let Iran have nuclear weapons under Shah Reza Pahlavi, but not under Ahmadinejad. Recently disclosed documents from the Ford and Carter administrations expose Ahmadinejad's assertions as a lie. The US
strongly opposed the Shah's attempts to obtain nuclear weapons, while the Germans and the French continued to sell nuclear equipment to Iran.
In fact, Washington was involved in a long-standing and frequently behind-the-scenes diplomatic tussle with the shah over the purpose of his nuclear program. Recently declassified documents from the Carter and Ford presidential libraries; the departments of defense, energy, and state; and the National Security Council (NSC) show that every element of today's impasse between the U.S. government and the Islamic Republic was also present in the negotiations with the shah. These range from Iran's insistence on its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) right to a "full fuel cycle," its complaint that the United States was singling it out for guarantees no other country was required to give, and finally the U.S. offer to make Iran part of an international consortium to enrich uranium outside Iran, the so-called "Russian solution." The shah repeatedly insisted that at least he did not want a nuclear bomb -- yet he was adamant that Iran not be treated as a second-class citizen. These negotiations, details of which have not been published before now, don't just expose the regime's lies about the alleged U.S. double standard, they also offer a useful guide for Western negotiators in navigating the waters of Iranian nationalism, both real and feigned.
Iran's nuclear program began in 1959 with a small reactor given by the United States to Tehran University as part of the "Atoms for Peace" program announced by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in December 1953. But that only whetted the Iranian monarch's appetite: With his increased oil revenues, and with his new vision of Iran as the hegemonic force in the region, a nuclear program became for Shah Pahlavi the symbol of progress and power. He summoned Akbar Etemad, a trained nuclear physicist, to the royal court in 1973, told him of his desire to launch a nuclear program, and asked Etemad to develop a master plan.
Two weeks later, the shah met with Etemad again. He quickly read the 13-page draft document Etemad had prepared, then turned to the prime minister and ordered him to fund what turned out be one of the most expensive projects undertaken by his regime. There was no prior discussion in the Majlis, where the constitutional power of the purse lay, or in any other governmental body or council. Like every major policy decision in those days, it was a one-man act. Thus was launched Iran's nuclear program.
The shah's plans called for a "full-fledged nuclear power industry" with the capacity to produce 23,000 megawatts of electricity. By 1977, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) had more than 1,500 employees (who were, on the shah's orders, allowed to become the highest-paid government employees). Pahlavi had arranged for the training of Iranian nuclear experts around the world (including a $20 million endowment at MIT), engaged in an intensive search for uranium mines in Iran and all over the planet, and launched several nuclear research centers across the country. AEOI was in those days one of the most heavily funded programs in the country. In 1976, its budget was $1.3 billion, making it, after the country's oil company, the single biggest public economic institution in the country.
While Germany and France showed immediate eagerness to sell Iran its desired reactors, the United States was initially reluctant to sell any, "without conditions limiting [the shah's] freedom of action," according to the text of a U.S. governmental memo. The German company Kraftwerk signed the first agreement to build the now-famous Bushehr reactor with an initial completion date of 1981 and an estimated cost of $3 billion. As Bushehr was located in a dangerous zone that was prone to frequent and strong seismic activity, extra funds were set aside to protect the site against the dangers of an earthquake. It was said at the time that the German government was so eager to find a foothold in the Iranian market that it guaranteed Kraftwerk's investment against any loss. U.S. companies, on the other hand, were barred from these contracts until Washington's concerns about the shah's intentions were addressed.
The shah was adamant that Iran should enjoy its "full rights," as he put it at the time, within the NPT -- an agreement Iran had immediately signed upon its formulation and that calls for non-nuclear states to forfeit the search for a nuclear bomb in return for easy access to the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. But Iran not only insisted on the right to have the full fuel cycle, it also was interested in processing plutonium -- a faster way to a nuclear bomb than enriched uranium.
Sounds familiar doesn't it? Except for the last paragraph, he's spot on. With respect to the last paragraph, I'd like to see more evidence of Iranian democrats eschewing nuclear weapons. From what I've seen so far, they're pretty coy about the subject.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Iranian nuclear program, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Shah Reza Pahlavi
