Obama's Fast-and-Loose Dealings with Iran Continue to Reveal Secret Agreements

Last week, Yahoo published an article, "Little precedent for $400 million cash payment to Iran," by Bradley Klapper. AP reported : "A $400 million cash delivery to Iran to repay a decades-old arbitration claim may be unprecedented in recent US history, according to legal experts and diplomatic historians, raising further questions about a payment timed to help free four American prisoners in Iran." ~~~~~ The $400 million was sent to Iran on January 17, 2106, the same day Iran agreed to release the prisoners. Obama and his administration spokesmen claimed for months the events were separate, but recently admitted that the cash was used as "leverage" until the Americans were allowed to leave Iran. Only then, according to the White House, did the US allow a plane with Euros, Swiss francs and other foreign currency loaded on pallets to take off from Geneva for Teheran. The admission that the prisoners and the payment were linked, and the unusual cash delivery, have made Republicans call it a "ransom." At a news conference in August, President Obama's explanation was that cash was used because the US and Iran don't have a banking relationship after years of US sanctions on Iran, making a check or wire transfer impossible. (A check?? -- okay, we'll let that pass -- maybe community organizers are used to $400 million checks.) The sum was the principal owed by the US on a 1970s Iranian account for buying US military equipment. After Iran's 1979 overthrow of the US-backed Shah and the US Embassy hostage crisis in Teheran, the weapons were never delivered. Iran has demanded the return of the principal plus interest ever since. Seven months ago, the two sides reached a $1.7 billion settlement. ~~~~~~ White House press secretary Josh Earnest said : "There's actually not anything particularly unusual about the mechanism for this transaction." But diplomatic historians and lawyers who are experts in international arbitration, when interviewed by Yahoo and AP could find no similar examples -- neither could the Office of the State Department Historian when asked to provide an example of a similar payment by the US using cash or hard money to settle an international dispute. Alan Henrikson, diplomatic history professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, found a precedent by reaching back to the 1848 Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican-American War. The accord called for the United States to pay Mexico $15 million, an amount worth about $482 million in today's money, he told Yahoo. The payment was determined "in consideration of the extension acquired by the boundaries of the United States" -- vague diplomatic wording, according to Henrikson, designed to compensate Mexico for a massive loss of territory that included all of California and parts of seven other states. President Ulysses S. Grant would later declare that it was "conscience money." ~~~~~~ The Obama administration has been "vague" from the start about its January settlement with Iran. Wall street Journal reports led to the recent admission that the $400 million delivered in stacks of cash had a connection to the American prisoners. But officials still won't say how Iran received the $1.3 billion in interest. It was done "in a fairly above-board way," a senior administration official intimately involved in the Iran negotiations said, involving an unidentified, foreign central bank. The official wasn't authorized to be quoted by name and demanded anonymity. The State Department then said the payments were made on January 19, two days after the cash delivery. ~~~~~~ Apparently, other settlements with Iran and other foreign claimants in recent decades bore some similarities to this latest transaction. But none involved planeloads of cash. In 1996, President Bill Clinton reached a settlement with Iran over the US Navy's 1988 downing of an Iran Air passenger plane that killed 290 people.The arrangement totaled $131.8 million but there was no cash delivery. Instead, $61 million was deposited in a Swiss bank account that was jointly held by the New York Federal Reserve and the Iranian Central Bank. The money was reserved for the families of those killed, not the Iranian government. The remainder of the settlement was used to cover Iranian debts to US claimants in separate arbitration cases. And in 1998, the US under President Clinton settled a dispute with Pakistan after halting the delivery of an F-16 aircraft purchase. The compensation was described as $325 million in cash and $140 million in surplus agricultural commodities, mainly wheat and soy, but the precise mechanics of the payment were never spelled out. Marcia Wiss, an international lawyer with a private practice in Washington, told Yahoo : "There were no sanctions regarding dollars or banks in Pakistan, so it may have been that the 'cash payment' was a bank transfer." ~~~~~~ The Iranian "ransom" has fallen off the media's radar screen recently, but on Thursday, TheHill's Julian Hattem raised the latest Iran issue -- secret deals made with Iran by the US and other world powers, including granting exemptions to Iran in order to allow it to meet deadlines and be relieved of sanctions as part of the July 2105 nuclear deal. Hattem says the loopholes were given to allow Iran to exceed limits set by the deal for the amount of low-enriched uranium -- which can be used to produce fuel for a nuclear weapon -- kept at Iranian facilities. The report was prepared by the Institute for Science and International Security, and Reuters obtained a copy ahead of publication. According to one senior unidentified official, the US and the five other nations agreed to the exemptions so that Iran could be certified as having complied with the deal and begin to see relief from sanctions in January. David Albright, the president of the Institute and a former weapons inspector, told Reuters : "The exemptions or loopholes are happening in secret, and it appears that they favor Iran.” The report will surely further anger congressional Republicans, who have accused Obama and his administration of not telling the Senate everything about the agreement. Critics have also attacked the United Nations for not letting US monitors search its files, and have alleged that the White House kept key documents hidden. Recently, critics have used the administration’s admission that it "leveraged" the cash payment of $400 million to Iran, in order to secure the freedom of five Americans held prisoner in Iran as another indication of President Obama's lies and half-truths in relation to the Iran nuclear deal, the hostage release, and his dealings with Iran in general. ~~~~~~ Iran could be using some of its new-found ransom money to finish the deployment of its Russian-made S-300 air defense system around its underground Fordo nuclear facility. The New York Times reports that video posted late Sunday on Iranian state TV’s website showed trucks arriving at the site and missile launchers aimed skyward. The report did not say whether the system was fully operational. General Farzad Esmaili, the commander of Iran’s air defense, declined to comment on the report in an interview with another website affiliated with Iran state news : “Maybe if you go to Fordo now, the system is not there,” he was quoted as saying on Monday. He added that the S-300 is a mobile system often relocated. The NYT wonders why Teheran had chosen to place the missile defense system at Fordo, since the complex is no longer being used to enrich uranium, according to officials from Iran and the United States. Instead, officials say, it is being used mostly for research and the production of medical isotopes. Social media has a different idea, questioning Iran’s claim that the site is no longer used to enrich uranium. As part of the nuclear deal, Iran agreed to convert the Fordo facility into a technology and science center and to give inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency access to the site, State Department spokesman, John Kirby, said : “It is the expectation of the international community that Iran will continue to meet its obligations. The IAEA is a highly skilled and professional institution and is well positioned to carry out its monitoring and verification responsibilities.” That may be true, but we now know that Iran and the US agreed in secret side deals to allow Iran to exceed the deal limits for the amount of low-enriched uranium stored at its nuclear facilities. Russia began delivering the S-300 system to Iran this year under a contract signed in 2007. Critics of Iran’s nuclear program say the air defense deployment at Fordo is proof of Teheran’s intention to secretly develop nuclear weapons. Iran says that it has never sought nuclear arms and that the security around the site is intended to protect it from American or Israeli airstrikes. The Fordo site was built 300 feet below a mountain about 60 miles south of Teheran and was revealed by Western nations in 2009. On Sunday, General Esmaili said there has been no change in how Iran defends its nuclear facilities, adding, “Since they are national achievements of Iran, they must be vigorously protected. We carry out defense exercises in non-nuclear facilities once a month, but we do them several times a month in our nuclear facilities." In additon, on Monday, Iran inaugurated a new radar system that it says is capable of detecting radar-evading aircraft like the American-made U-2, RQ-4 and MQ-1, according to reports of the Iran state television, as quoted by the NYT. Iran TV said the radar, called the Nazir system, is in a remote area and is capable of detecting ballistic and cruise missiles, as well as drones flying at an altitude of more than 9,800 feet. ~~~~~~ The Iran nuclear deal is a hornets' nest of lies and misrepresentations. Information on what Obama and Kerry, with the five other nations and the UN, really agreed to continues to dribble out long after there are any practical means of stopping the deal's stages of completion. President Obama and his Secretary of State have obfuscated and delayed giving Congress and the American people all the information they possess, while progressive world order cronies and mainstream media tell us that it was a good thing to release Iran to use its nuclear facilities for peaceful purposes -- with no mention of the ease with which Iran can build on its current capabilities to become a nuclear weapons power -- if it is not already. ~~~~~~ Iran said on Sunday that a person close to the government team that negotiated its nuclear agreement with foreign powers had been arrested on accusations of espionage and released on bail. The disclosure was reported in Iranian state news media. The arrest has been called the latest sign of Iranian leadership frustration over the deal, which has not yielded the significant economic benefits for Iran that its advocates had promised. Iranian officials blame the United States for that problem -- because, despite Kerry's efforts to free up banking facilities for Iran in Europe, Iran faces huge obstacles in attracting new investments and moving its own money through the global financial system, and is still blocked from using American banks, an important transit point for international capital, because of non-nuclear-related sanctions imposed by the US. There were earlier unconfirmed reports that Iranian authorities had arrested Abdolrasoul Dorri Esfahani, who has dual Iranian and Canadian citizenship, on espionage charges. Esfahani, an advisor to Iran’s central bank, helped the Iranian nuclear negotiators get sanctions relief in exchange for Iran’s pledges of verifiably peaceful nuclear work. The official Islamic Republic News Agency said a spokesman for Iran’s judiciary, speaking at a weekly news conference on Sunday in Teheran, had “confirmed the arrest of an individual from the negotiating team.” But the spokesman also said that “his charge of spying has not been proved” and that the suspect had been released on bail pending an investigation. He also did not explain why bail had been granted for an espionage charge, regarded as one of the gravest offenses in Iran. Western analysts following the progression of the nuclear deal say the arrest is worrisome, a sign that Iran’s supreme leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, is unhappy over the slow pace at which it has been implemented. Three weeks ago, the authorities announced the execution of a nuclear scientist who had returned home from the United States, where, he claimed, he had been kidnapped by the CIA. The Iranians said the scientist, whose name appeared in some of Hillary Clinton's recovered unsecured emails, had betrayed secrets to the enemy. And just last week, high-speed Iranian boats from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy harassed American warships patrolling in international waters in the Persian Gulf region at least four times, United States officials said, calling the actions "dangerous and illegal." In a speech on Sunday reported by Iranian state news media, Ayatollah Khamenei denounced what he calls American duplicity in the negotiation and other matters, criticizing the United States for opposing Iran’s purchase of the Russian-made missile-defense system : “We face such an enemy that does not recognize any right of defense for our nation. In fact, it says you should remain defenseless so that when we wish, we can invade you.” The Ayatollah also said the talks that led to the nuclear agreement in July 2015 should be regarded as an instructive lesson on the dangers posed by interactions with governments he regards as enemies, saying : “Today, even the diplomatic officials and those who were present in the negotiations reiterate the fact that the US is breaching its promises, and while speaking softly and sweetly, is busy obstructing and damaging Iran’s economic relations with other countries,” according to the NYT, which quoted a translation reported by Press TV, an official Iranian English-language news site. ~~~~~~ Dear readers, political analysts outside Iran called Ayatollah Khamenei’s remarks his strongest criticism of the agreement to date. Some said there are practical goals behind his bellicose words. Cliff Kupchan, the chairman of the Eurasia Group, a political risk consulting firm in Washington, said : “He is pressing the West to move more quickly on investing in Iran, so that Iranians feel the deal helping their economy. But Khamenei is also buying a political insurance policy on the off chance that his elites turn against the agreement, and that’s a problem.” Iranian oil sales have increased, but Iranian President Rouhani’s optimism about other expected dividends of the agreement -- an end to Iran’s isolation and a rush of foreign investment and economic growth -- have not happened, calling into question his prospects for re-election next year. Despite lifting nuclear-related sanctions, Iran is still barred from using the United States financial system because of many other prohibitions imposed after the break in relations more than three decades ago. Big European banks, wary of violating those prohibitions and already uneasy about doing business in Iran, have largely stayed away, frustrating Iranian officials. The banking problems have played a role in delaying Iran’s purchases of new jetliners from Boeing and Airbus, which the nuclear agreement specifically permits. Congress has further angered Iranian officials by threatening new sanctions that could stop those purchases. Secretary of State Kerry, who was critical in reaching the nuclear agreement, has said the United States is working to ensure that all of the accord’s provisions, including the relaxation of the sanctions, are enforced. But, the truth is that Iran is its own worst enemy. Barring IAEA inspectors from its nuclear facilities, moving anti-missile air defense systems into place around them, and negotiating the secret right to enrich larger quantities of uranium than the world was told about -- all these facts can only make reasonable people nervous. Add to this Iran's continued harassment of vessels in the Persian Gulf, its supply of weapons to the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon and al-Assad in Syria, and its continuing efforts to assert control over Iraq -- all these aggressive actions alienate the West. Iran's Supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei in 2105 published a book entitled "Palestine." It is now partially translated from Farsi into English. Here is an excerpt from it : "Our Position [Against Israel & the United States] [p.68]. Speech to the Iranian Military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (June 30, 1991). Our position against Israel is, as always: Israel is a malignant cancer gland that needs to be uprooted. In contrast to what shallow people believe, it is not impossible to defeat Israel and the United States. Superpowers have come and gone throughout history. Materialistic powers are neither everlasting nor infinite. Yesterday, there was a power called the Soviet Union. It was one of the superpowers, but it no longer exists. A similar historical contemporary change is still before us." ~~ How can US President Barack Obama, his Secretary of State John Kerry, or their EU an UN allies, think that reason will work with the fanatic who rules Iran as a dictator? How can anyone believe anything he says or trust anything his minions, slaves trapped in his gulag or believers in his islamic vision, promise us?