Meet the Friends of Iran’s Military Pardoned by Obama What the president called a ‘one-time gesture’ will make prosecuting similar offenders less likely. By David Locke Hall
http://www.wsj.com/articles/meet-the-friends-of-irans-military-pardoned-by-obama-1453335742
The release Saturday during a prisoner swap of four Americans held by Iran, including the reporter Jason Rezaian and Christian pastor Saeed Abedini, is certainly welcome news. But the details of this deal, arranged after a year of secret negotiations, are troubling.
In exchange the U.S. freed seven Iranian men, six with dual American citizenship—though they seem to have decided against returning to Iran. Most were charged with export violations: in other words, smuggling goods and technology, including those with military applications, from the U.S. to Iran. By making this deal, which traded law-abiding U.S. citizens for Iranian defendants charged with or convicted of federal crimes that jeopardize U.S. national security, the administration has stooped to Iran’s level. That’s a high price to pay, and it sets a dangerous precedent for federal law enforcement.
I served as an assistant U.S. attorney for 23 years, working with counter-proliferation agents from Homeland Security Investigations to investigate and prosecute unlawful arms procurement by Iran. The reason for our focus on Iran was its sustained effort over decades to obtain munitions from the U.S.
In 2007, Mr. Ardebili agreed to meet undercover agents in Tbilisi, Georgia, where he was arrested and extradited. He entered a guilty plea in 2008, admitting that he willfully and knowingly violated U.S. export laws to procure weapons for Iran. He served a five-year sentence, and was deported back to Iran in 2012, so he was not among those recently released.
Yet the seven men freed Saturday have similar stories. One was convicted of hacking an American defense contractor to steal software. A second man was convicted of conspiring to enable Iran to launch its first satellite in 2005. Another was convicted of conspiring to buy and export marine navigation components (fiber-optic gyrocompasses) and military electronic components (electron tubes). Three were awaiting trial for participating in an illegal procurement network to supply Iran with controlled microelectronics used in surface-to-air and cruise missiles. The seventh was convicted after trial of smuggling advanced industrial components to Iran.
These men’s crimes posed a direct threat to U.S. national security. President Obama described the swap as a “one-time gesture.” But this gesture diminishes any deterrent effect their arrests and convictions may have had. It also erases years of hard work by investigators and prosecutors.
The administration’s actions send a clear signal to federal agents and prosecutors that their labors produce nothing more than political capital, to be traded away when it is politically expedient. Arms-procurement investigations are always difficult and labor intensive. Nabbing Mr. Ardebili required years of sustained effort, travel to Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia, and a significant expenditure of national treasure. These prosecutions require proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant knew he was violating U.S. export laws and was doing something wrong. For this reason, few export-enforcement actions are brought to begin with. Now, there will likely be even fewer.
Most troubling, the administration is equating law-abiding Americans—guilty of nothing more than reporting for a newspaper, advocating better Iranian-American relations, and preaching the Christian faith—with Iranians arrested for violating federal laws and sending components and technology to a country preparing for war with the U.S.
When Mr. Ardebili met with undercover agents in Georgia, he said that Iran’s leaders “think the war is coming.” Tehran’s ballistic-missile test last fall, its firing of rockets near the USS Harry S. Truman last month, and its capture and public humiliation of U.S. sailors in the Persian Gulf last week tell the same story. Freeing those who transfer American technology to such an aggressor seems like a very bad deal indeed.
Mr. Hall, a former Justice Department official and intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve, is the author of “CRACK99: The Takedown of a $100 Million Chinese Software Pirate” (W.W. Norton, 2015).
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