Rachel Ehrenfeld: Obligated to Iran
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http://acdemocracy.org/obligated-to-iran/
Since February 2013, Iran has received billions of dollars in sanctions relief as incentives to attend negotiations with the United States and others in Geneva. However, from March 2012, until January 2016, when the U.S. lifted the sanctions, Iranian banks were not connected to the Belgium-based SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) system.
“Nobody could pay the Iranians via normal lines, not even in euros,” a European oil trader was quoted saying. Then how did the regime access the payments and the billions of dollars it was given?
Following Ayatollah Ali Khamenei‘s complaint that Iran’s banks are still under sanctions (due to its sponsorship of international terrorism), the Obama administration decided to circumvent U.S. anti-money laundering laws to help Iran’s economy.
Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA), Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has pointed out that the Obama administration’s plan, allowing Iran “access to U.S. dollars through offshore clearinghouses,” undermines U.S. and international anti-money laundering laws.” His Washington Post article last week argued the “U.S. must not aid and abet Iranian money laundering.”
But under the Obama administration, Americans have been witnessing, and many have accustomed to the president’s disregard to laws governing his own country.
The U.S. has strict federal Anti-Money Laundering laws, requiring “banks and certain other financial institutions, which tend to have extra-territorial effect, through requirements for US banks to control their relationships with correspondent and shell banks to prevent money laundering.
President Obama’s efforts to whitewash the Islamic Republic of Iran, are nothing new. Already in 2007, the presidential candidate Obama declared the U.S. “had the obligation to find areas where we can potentially move forward” with Iran. Moreover, he promised that if elected, he will send Iran “a signal” that the U.S. will withdraw from Iraq. It took two years for President Obama – in complete disregarded to military and intelligence warnings – to withdraw the U.S. forces from Iraq. ISIS did not take long to fill the vacuum. Obama was belittling ISIS’s threat, famously dismissing them as the “Jayvee team.”
Last week, upon learning of the administration’s plan to allow Iran direct access to the U.S. banking system, Democrats, and Republican lawmakers have voiced their objection causing the President walked back his plan, but not his wrongful willfulness. Thereof the president instructed to change the venue through which Iran could access and launder the U.S. dollar, all the while admitting that some of that money will be used to advance the terrorist agenda of terrorist-designated Islamic Republic of Iran.
Why is he doing that?
According to his Sec, John Kerry, “if we said we would lift the sanction, we’re under an obligation to lift the sanction.” If that was not enough, the secretary argued that “everybody should be encouraging Iran not to continue its missile activities, not to continue to ship arms, because that will upset and
rile the marketplace.“
“Upset and rile the marketplace”?
What about the hundreds of thousands of victims of the Islamic Republic’s dollar-fuelled nuclear-armed terror troops? Clearly, the Obama administration feels no obligation towards them.
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ABOUT ACD
American Center for Democracy is a New York-based not-for-profit organization, which monitors and exposes the enemies of freedom and their modus operandi, and explores pragmatic ways to counteract them.
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