The Patriot Post® · Selling Out America for a Deal With Iran

A bombshell exposé by Politico’s Josh Meyer reveals the list of duplicitous machinations Barack Obama used to sell his Iran deal has grown longer — and far more egregious.

The seven Iranian-born prisoners released in exchange for five Americans held hostage by the world’s foremost state sponsor of terror were presented by the administration as people who “were not charged with terrorism or any violent offenses.”

Contemptible hair-splitting. Three of the men released were “involved in 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,” Meyer explains, while another was serving an eight-year sentence “for conspiring to supply Iran with satellite technology and hardware.”

Adding insult to injury, the Obama Justice Department also dropped charges against 14 fugitives involved in a smuggling operation aimed at supplying Tehran and its terrorist lackeys with sophisticated weapons. Three sought leases of Boeing-made aircraft for a Hezbollah-supporting Iranian airline. Another, Behrouz Dolatzadeh, was charged with conspiring to buy thousands of U.S.-manufactured assault rifles and send them to Iran. A fifth, Amin Ravan, was charged with smuggling U.S. military antennas to Iran via Hong Kong and Singapore. U.S. officials believe Ravan was also part of a “procurement network” that sought to provide Tehran with high-tech components for a particularly deadly type of Improved Explosive Device (IED).

One Shi'ite militias used to kill hundreds of American soldiers in Iraq.

It gets worse. The Obama administration also dropped charges against Seyed Abolfazl Shahab Jamili for allegedly conspiring to send thousands of parts, including hundreds of U.S.-made sensors, to Iran via China, over a seven year period from 2005 to 2012.

Parts used by Iranian uranium enrichment centrifuges.

These charges and allegations were obscured when the administration released an innocuous 152-word statement about the prisoner exchange, one noting it had “removed any Interpol red notices and dismissed any charges against 14 Iranians for whom it was assessed that extradition requests were unlikely to be successful.”

Unlikely to be successful because the Obama administration thwarted all efforts to bring these fugitives to justice. “Time and again, top officials at the White House, Justice and State departments denied prosecutors’ requests to lure one of the fugitives to friendly countries where he could be arrested,” the New York Post reveals. “Soon, the arms merchants vanished off US law enforcement radar.” The paper further notes Obama and company “slowed down extradition efforts against suspects in custody and began slow-walking investigations and prosecutions of US-based procurement.”

In a pathetic attempt to justify this travesty, former Obama administration officials insisted these men could still be prosecuted if they continued to engage in illegal activity. Yet as non-proliferation expert Valerie Lincy explains, dropping the cases against these fugitives and dismissing the international warrants against them, coupled with the re-direction of investigative assets, makes that scenario extremely unlikely.

A former federal supervisor pulled no punches. “Clearly, there was an embargo on any Iranian cases,” the supervisor stated. “Of course it pissed people off, but it’s more significant that these guys were freed, and that people were killed because of the actions of one of them,” the supervisor added, referring to Ravan and the IED procurement network.

The supervisor also belittled the Obama administration’s assertion it retained the right to go after Iran for any attempt to procure nuclear weapons, in exchange for dropping sanctions against the rogue state. “Then why would you be dismissing the people that you know about who are involved in that?” the supervisor asked.

Lincy was even more direct. “This is a scandal,” she declared. “The cases bear all the hallmarks of exactly the kinds of national security threats we’re still going after. It’s stunning and hard to understand why we would do this.”

It’s not stunning at all. Barack Obama was willing to do virtually anything to curry favor with Iran’s theocratic regime, beginning as early as 2009 when he refused to “meddle” in the disputed Iranian election that returned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power. Iran’s “Green Movement” dissidents who protested that election paid a price: 10,000 were arrested — many of whom were tortured — and at least 110 people were killed.

Obama also lied about when negotiations with Iran began. It wasn’t in 2013 when President Hassan Rouhani was elected, but in 2011 when “Death to America, death to Israel” hardliner Ahmadinejad was still in charge, totally undercutting the administration’s assertion that negotiations began when a more “pragmatic” Rouhani assumed the reins of power.

Equally appalling, Iranian officials claimed former Secretary of State John Kerry, who was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time, used Oman as an intermediary to send a letter to the Iranian regime “stating that America recognizes Iran’s rights regarding the enrichment cycle.”

Obama apparently recognized Iran’s “right” to hold Americans hostage as well: along with the release of the aforementioned prisoners, the administration ponied up a staggering $1.7 billion they denied was a ransom payment — despite paying it in cash.

Why cash? “There is principally one entity within the Iranian government that has need of untraceable funds,” former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey stated at the time. “That entity is the Quds Force — the branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps focused particularly on furthering the regime’s goals world-wide by supporting and conducting terrorism.”

Next October marks the 10-year anniversary of the National Counterproliferation Initiative launched in 2007 to “combat the growing national security threat posed by illegal exports of restricted U.S. military and dual-use technology to foreign nations and terrorist organizations.”

The Obama administration made a complete mockery of it. “This has erased literally years — many years — of hard work, and important cases that can be used to build toward other cases and even bigger players in Iran’s nuclear and conventional weapons programs,” said former DOJ counterproliferation prosecutor David Locke Hall. “Even though these men’s crimes posed a direct threat to U.S. national security, the [Obama] administration has essentially told them their efforts have produced nothing more than political capital that can be traded away when politically expedient.”

Political expediency? Rank appeasement bordering on treason is more like it. Obama was far more obsessed with his “legacy” than America’s national security, aided and abetted by an equally despicable cadre of administration officials, all of whom were desperate to offset their “Arab Spring” catastrophe.

As a result Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon remains unimpeded.

In a letter to the White House, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce has asked Trump to revive these cases, insisting the “Obama Administration appears to have done serious damage to our national security.” So did a GOP-controlled Senate, which conspired with Democrats to upend the Constitution’s requirement of a two-thirds vote approving any treaty.

The media? ABC, NBC and CBS celebrated the return of Obama to the national scene — and completely ignored Meyer’s devastating exposé.

During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump called this debacle the “worst deal ever negotiated” — before these revelations came to light. He was right. A thorough, no-nonsense review is in order.

The sooner the better.