RUTHFULLY YOURS

The more one looks at President Biden’s decision to waive sanctions on Iran — in essence, to pay a ransom to the mullahs in exchange for the release of American hostages — the more peculiar it appears, and the less the administration’s explanations make sense.

I’ve already had plenty to say about Biden’s provision of $6 billion to the regime in Tehran (see, e.g., here, here, and here). Regardless of what administration officials say about the restrictions in effect to prevent Iran from diverting the loot to nefarious activities, the stubborn fact remains that Biden chose to make $6 billion available, via Qatar, to the world’s leading state sponsor of anti-American terrorism. Again, it doesn’t matter if Iran has direct access to these funds; if it can direct its ally Qatar to disburse it for its legitimate government activities, then the regime can redirect to terrorism funds that were previously allocated to those legitimate activities. That’s such common sense that Iran’s own president touted it, as Noah Rothman relates.

But let’s look beyond the money to other aspects of Biden’s deal with Iran — consummated on September 11, of all days.

The deal was pitched to the nation as a prisoner swap. Iran released five Americans whom it had imprisoned on trumped up spying charges; plus, it allowed one prisoner’s mother and wife to exit the country (though not imprisoned, they had previously not been permitted to leave). In exchange (besides the $6 billion), the United States was required to release five Iranian convicts who had been or were being prosecuted by the Justice Department on various charges arising out of their clandestine work on Iran’s behalf.

Now, such prisoner exchanges are not uncommon between hostile nations. They happened throughout the Cold War, for example. Obviously, there is significant downside in giving an enemy back its operatives, many of whom are well trained and likely to return to anti-American activities. The hazardous incentive created by releasing captives is similar to that created by paying ransom: The enemy will abduct and detain innocent Americans as chits for future exchanges. And because our authoritarian enemies know we value the lives of our people more than they do the lives of theirs, these swaps tend not to be balanced deals — we pay a heavy price in unleashed evil. Still, unless the terms are too perilous for national security, it’s a price we reluctantly pay in order to free our citizens from bondage.

Nothing new about any of that: We get ours back, and they get theirs back.

Yet that’s not really what happened in Biden’s deal with Iran. Instead, we got ours back, and they got theirs released to continue operating in the United States. Or, that’s what happened with three of the five, anyway.

Let’s start with the other two, who were released and returned to Iran via Qatar (where else!). They were Mehrdad Ansari, an Iranian national who was convicted of obtaining sensitive military equipment and parts for Iran in violation of the federal trade embargo; and Reza Sarangpour Kafrani, a Canadian citizen, native of Iran, who was convicted of exporting laboratory equipment to Tehran in violation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (the IEEPA is the successor to the World War I–era Trading with the Enemy Act).

The other three prisoners are what’s known as “U.S. persons” — i.e., either American citizens or permanent resident aliens (green-card holders). That is to say, (a) they are our people whom Biden agreed to release at the insistence of a hostile alien power, and (b) because of their U.S. ties, there was a traitorous aspect to their clandestine work for Iran that makes their offenses more serious.

Specifically, Kambiz Attar Kahshani is a dual U.S. and Iranian citizen who was convicted on IEEPA charges for transferring sensitive goods and technology to Iran. Kaveh Lotfolah Afrasiabi is an Iranian academic and author who became a U.S. green-card holder in 1984, as he attended UMass. (He later got a doctorate from Boston University.) He was charged with acting as an unregistered foreign agent of Iran under FARA, the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The Justice Department alleges that he was being paid by the Iranian government (through its U.N. mission in New York) while he lobbied for Iran on nuclear energy and other issues of immense importance to American national security.

Finally, Amin Hasanzadeh is a native Iranian electrical engineer who served in the armed forces of the regime whose motto is “Death to America.” Eventually, he emigrated to the United States, became a permanent resident alien, and found lots of lucrative work as a defense contractor, on projects involving supercomputing and aerospace technology. He transferred hundreds of files involving this sensitive work to his brother in Iran, who worked at a number of Iranian military contractors. He was accused of stealing technology and lying in visa applications about his Iranian military service.

Because these three characters are technically “our” people, our government could not force them to return to Iran. And, I’m sure you’ll be shocked to learn, the Iranians are tickled pink to have them stationed exactly where they are — embedded in the Great Satan, whose laws make it extraordinarily hard to strip U.S. persons of their legal right to reside in our nation, even after they have betrayed us. (And remember, we’re currently governed by the Biden administration, whose preoccupation is inventing scams to import millions of lawbreakers who have no legal right to be present in this country.)

So what did President Biden do? Yes . . . wait for it . . . he granted executive clemency to the three Iranian operatives whom Iran demanded that he release — not so Iran could have them back, but so Iran could have them here.

Kahshani had already been convicted, so Biden commuted his sentence, allowing him to be released from custody. Afrasiabi and Hasanzadeh had not yet been tried, so Biden just issued pardons, erasing the charges as if the two had never sabotaged us. Make no mistake: This was a willful release into the United States of abettors of a regime that unabashedly calls for our destruction, that has killed hundreds of Americans, and that pulls the strings of jihadist organizations, such as Hamas, that are maniacally murdering our Israeli allies.

Clearly, the Biden administration calculated that its complaisant media would report all of this as a standard prisoner exchange, celebrating the release of Americans and footnoting the release of Iranian operatives. But that doesn’t mean Biden officials weren’t worried about what the reaction to their derelictions would be — just as they worried what Americans would think about Biden’s pouring of $6 billion into the coffers of the world’s leading state sponsor of anti-American terrorism, and thus tried to camouflage it under a bunch of hoo-hah about how the funds are still locked up (by Qatar!).

So, I ask again, what did President Biden do?

For public consumption, he announced that his release of the three Iranian operatives into the United States is subject to stringent conditions, and that, if the three operatives violate those conditions, why . . . he’ll rescind the pardons!

I’m getting like a broken record saying it, but they think we’re idiots.

Pardons cannot be rescinded. As a matter of constitutional law, their effect is to erase the offense as if it never happened, and to allow the pardon recipient to plead double jeopardy if any prosecutor attempts to charge him in the future. A pardon, once granted, extinguishes the government’s authority to recharge the pardoned offense. End of story.

Think about the Trump pardons. The progressives who run New York state were so outraged over the pardon of Paul Manafort, they tried — until a court stopped them — to change New York constitutional law to permit him to be charged by the state. Then there are the other Trump pardons that outraged Democrats: Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, et al. If it were constitutionally permissible for a president to rescind pardons, do you think there is any chance that Biden would not have rescinded Trump’s pardons? That George W. Bush would not have rescinded the scandalous Clinton pardons? That Jimmy Carter would not have rescinded Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon (a pardon lauded with the passage of time but one that caused Democrats’ heads to explode when it happened)?

Biden and his advisers know that he has authority neither to rescind a pardon nor to re-imprison an offender whose sentence he has commuted. The Biden administration is talking nonsense, knowingly and willfully, because it knows to its core that Biden’s deal with Iran — extending the regime $6 billion, releasing Iranian operatives so they can get back in business in the United States — is indefensible.

Just as Biden knows Iran was pulling the strings on Hamas’s October 7 atrocities that — in addition to a still-climbing number of Israelis — killed at least 25 Americans.

That’s the Biden administration for you: Don’t worry about the $6 billion we’re giving Iran because . . . we’re sure they can’t spend it on terrorism. Don’t worry about the Iranian agents we’ve sprung on the nation because . . . if they do anything, we’ll rescind their pardons. Don’t worry about Iran’s masterminding of last Saturday’s barbaric Hamas spree of murder, rape, and the slaughter of children because . . . we can’t . . . um . . . “confirm” . . . that . . . uh . . . the mountain of evidence of Iran’s complicity means that . . . you know . . . Iran was . . . like . . . complicit.