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Iran Tag

Obama administration will be allowing plane makers Airbus and Boeing to sell jetliners to Iran, clearing the way for one of the most high-profile business deals since the lifting of nuclear sanction on Islamic Republic earlier this year. The easing of commercial restrictions is part of President Obama-led initiative to reward Iran for signing a Nuclear Agreement in July last year. According to U.S. Treasury's own assessment, as early as March 2016, Iran's civilian airliners were being used to illegally transport terrorist combatants and arms shipment in conflict zones across the Middle East. Iran's state-controlled airlines are not regular commercial operations geared towards customer satisfaction, but are made to carry out regime-sanctioned covert operations to arm and replenish the ranks of Syrian army, Hezbollah and other terrorist outfits under the guise their commercial flights -- coordinated by Iran's mafia-like Shia-Islamist ‘Revolutionary Guards’.

Back in August, the Obama administration would not tell Congress how the U.S. paid $1.3 billion to Iran. The lawmakers asked questions after they learned that the administration paid $400 million as Iran released four American hostages. Well, on Tuesday, the administration finally told the lawmakers about the $1.3 billion. Officials transferred the money "through Europe on Jan. 22 and Feb. 5" the exact same way they sent the $400 million. Iran picked it up in Geneva, Switzerland.

Iran has deployed the Russian-made S-300 missile system to fortify its underground nuclear facility at Fordo. Tehran’s decision to deploy the missile system at the site should set alarm bells ringing for the Obama administration. Prior to the Nuclear Deal, the installation at Fordo was used by Iran to enrich Uranium, vital component for building a nuclear bomb. The enrichment process was to be halted at the location under the Obama-sponsored agreement. According the deal, Iran was required to repurpose the centrifuges at Fordo and turn one of its major nuclear installation into a ‘medical research facility’, dedicated to ‘medical imaging’. Deploying missile system that fires rockets twice as big as the average patriot missiles, makes Iran's Fordo clearly the best protected 'medical facility' in the world. For those waiting to hear the thunderous sound of that ‘snap back’ promised by President Obama in the run-up the Iran Deal -- please don't hold your breath.

While fake instances of “Palestinian suffering” has been taking up all the bandwidth of media attention in the West, mainstream media and liberal activists have been surprisingly silent over the suffering of Baloch people living under the brutal occupation of Iran and Pakistan. Once an independent people with distinct ethnicity, culture and language, Baloch people today are living under foreign military occupation. In 1928, the armies of the Shah of Iran took hold of the western part of Balochistan. Today over 2 million Baloch are living under Iranian rule, more than 80 percent of them in abject poverty. Just like Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in Northern Iran, ill-fed and outgunned Baloch have been putting up resistance to the Mullah Regime in the south. Forgotten by the rest of the world, Kurds and Baloch are facing an increasingly well-equipped Iranian army -- replenished thanks to 150 billion dollar windfall from Obama's sanctions relief.

On a certain level, it was refreshing to see an MSM member admit how he sees his role: as that of a "defense attorney" for Barack Obama. On another level, it was disgusting . . . On today's Morning Joe, during a discussion of the Iran ransom deal in which even State Department spokesman John Kirby effectively conceded that the deal was a "quid pro quo," the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson said "I feel like I need to ask the sort of question a defense attorney would ask at this point." Robinson's point was that some had criticized the Obama admin for not obtaining the release of the hostages as part of the Iran nuclear deal. But no one ever suggested that the US pay ransom for the hostages, as President Obama untruthfully denied doing. The notion was that the US should not agree to the deal unless the hostages were released. But that didn't stop Robinson from going all Perry Mason on behalf of the president.

The State Department has confirmed the U.S. used the $400 million payment to Iran as leverage for the prisoners they released in January. From The New York Post:
State Department spokesman John Kirby was asked at Thursday’s press briefing: “In basic English, you’re saying you wouldn’t give them $400 million in cash until the prisoners were released, correct?” “That’s correct,” Kirby replied.

Since the revelation that the Obama Administration forked over $400 million to Iran in exchange for right around the time American hostages were released, speculation that the cash was a ransom payment has dogged the administration and the Justice Department. Timing is everything, especially in determining what really went down. New reports suggest the $400 million was held until after the Americans were released from Iranian custody, making the whole ordeal look an awful lot like a ransom payment and subsequent prisoner release. The Obama Administration denied the payment was ransom, but said it was part of $1.7 billion settlement from 1979.

The Iranian government hanged Shahram Amiri, a nuclear scientist, for giving "vital information to the enemy."  The enemy being, despite Obama's desperate groveling, the United States:  "This person who had access to the country's secret and classified information had been linked to our hostile and No. 1 enemy, America, the Great Satan" a spokesman for the Iranian judiciary said. NPR reports:
Iran has executed a nuclear scientist who allegedly provided U.S. officials with information about the country's nuclear program. In 2010, Shahram Amiri returned from the US. to Iran, where he was eventually arrested, as NPR's Peter Kenyon told our Newscast unit. "The spokesman for Iran's judiciary tells the official IRNA news agency that Shahram Amiri was executed following his conviction on treason charges," Peter reported. That spokesman, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei, said in a news conference that Amiri "had access to top secret information about the Islamic Republic of Iran," which he provided to the United States, according to IRNA.

The Department of Justice did not want the Obama administration to send $400 million as Iran released four Americans due to the image it may portray. The administration struck down the request:
The timing and manner of the payment raised alarms at the Justice Department, according to those familiar with the discussions. “People knew what it was going to look like, and there was concern the Iranians probably did consider it a ransom payment,’’ said one of the people.

The U.S. sent $400 million to Iran in January just as the country decided to release four Americans. The administration claims they did not pay a ransom, but many have raised their eyebrows. President Barack Obama said the payment "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."

Iran has been making repeated attempts to acquire nuclear-, chemical- and biological weapons technology from Germany, reveals the annual domestic intelligence report published by the German State of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) last week. According to the report, last year Iran made 141 attempts to illegally secure technologies related to [nuclear, chemical, biological] proliferation in the state of NRW alone. This indicates an almost 100 percent rise compared to 83 such attempts in 2014. If this intelligence report is to be believed, than German government was aware of Iran’s continued efforts to acquire Nuclear and WMD technologies while it was pushing for a Nuclear Deal with Tehran 0n the world stage. Chancellor Merkel’s Government enthusiastically backed Obama-sponsored Nuclear Deal and was one of the six countries that worked out a nuclear agreement with Iran last year.

Numerous news reports have covered the Navy's report on the capture of ten U.S. sailors in January by Iran, notably the Navy's decision to discipline nine officers and sailors over the incident. But the media buried a bigger part of the incident in the Navy's report. Here's Politico, quoting from Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson:
Richardson said a number of serious mistakes contributed to the sailors’ capture, but he reiterated they broke no international laws and “had every right to be where they were on that day” because the laws of the sea allow for what’s called innocent passage. “The investigation concluded that Iran violated international law by impeding the boats’ innocent passage transit. They violated sovereign immunity by boarding, searching and seizing the boats and by photographing and videotaping the crew,” Richardson said.

As the U.S. disengages from Latin America as part of President Obama’s broader policy of reducing American presence in the world, Iran is moving in fill parts of that geopolitical vacuum, says a report published by Washington D.C. based Center for a Secure Free Society (SFS). The report used documents and legal wiretaps related to the circumstance surrounding the death of Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman who died of a bullet shot on January 19, 2015, a day before he was going to testify before Argentina’s Congress about Buenos Aires Jewish community center bombing carried out by Iranian terrorists. The report cited by the Wall Street Journal shows how the death of Argentine prosecutor “paved the way for [Iran] to move into a new phase of its information and intelligence operations in Latin America.” WSJ concluded that unfettered access for international financial system and assets worth $150 billion given to Iran as the result of Obama-Kerry Nuclear Deal “will increase Iran’s penetration of the Western Hemisphere.” The revelation comes just days after a senior Israeli diplomat in New Delhi warned of a concrete threat of Iran-sponsored terrorism targeting Israelis in India and abroad. In February 2012, Iranian terrorists carried out a bomb attack targeting Israeli mission in New Delhi.

In a brutal report on the administration's dishonesty regarding the nuclear deal with Iran, CNN's Jake Tapper last week concluded that Americans "have a right to know who lied to us." Tapper walked us through the basics, but let's review. The story began in February 2013, when Fox News reporter James Rosen asked then State Department Spokesperson Victoria Nuland, "There have been reports that intermittently, and outside of the formal P-5+1 mechanisms the Obama Administration, or members of it, have conducted direct, secret, bilateral talks with Iran. Is that true or false?"

President Obama press advisor Jen Psaki attacked Fox News after reporter James Rosen asked for clarification over her statement about deleted footage from a 2013 press briefing about secret Iran and U.S. talks. Rosen asked then-State spokeswoman Psaki about the meeting in 2013, a year after the department denied such talks existed. Psaki admitted they took place, but Rosen found someone deleted his questions from the old video:
The department acknowledged Wednesday that several minutes of video from the 2013 briefing – at which then-State Department spokeswoman Psaki appeared to acknowledge misleading the press over the Iran nuclear deal – had been intentionally cut. The order apparently came from an official in the public affairs office, but that individual has not been identified.
Fox News published their complete email exchange, where Psaki berates Rosen for politely asking for an explanation after Psaki referred to the transcript and not the video.

How's the Iran nuclear deal working out? I'm not asking the broader foreign policy question that Tom Nichols just addressed, but how is the nuclear aspect of the deal by itself working out? According to Jonathan Broder of Newsweek, the deal is unraveling. And it is the fault of the United States.
Probably the biggest source of friction is a U.S. law that bars Iran from using the U.S. financial system and the American dollar, even indirectly. The law, enacted in 2012, was aimed at punishing Iran for a variety of alleged sins: the country’s ballistic missile program, human rights abuses and state-sponsored terrorism. Because these issues haven’t been resolved, there is virtually no chance Congress would repeal the law in the foreseeable future, experts say. As long as that statute remains in place, foreign banks holding Iran’s funds in dollars will be wary of doing business with the country.

In his testimony last week before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, concerning the grand Iran deal deception described in a recent New York Times article that was carried out by Obama and Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, Michael Doran, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, laid out five areas where the White House deceived the American people. First, Doran in his testimony established that even before he became president, Obama had expressed an interest in rapprochement with Iran. He cited former CIA chief and Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta, from The New York Times expose on the echo chamber saying that the administration knew that "They’d have gotten “the [expletive] kicked out of them,” if they had been upfront about their intention to engage Iran. Doran summed it up: