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Tags: iran | money | financing | terror | obama | john kerry
OPINION

Obama Likely Helped Fund Terrorism by Releasing Money to Iran

Obama Likely Helped Fund Terrorism by Releasing Money to Iran

Former U.S. president Barack Obama (C) jokes arounds as he attends a side event for the Obama Foundation in Kuala Lumpur on December 12, 2019. (Mohd Rasfan/AFP via Getty Images)

Tom Basile By Friday, 10 January 2020 01:22 PM EST Current | Bio | Archive

The recent confrontation with Iran turned the spotlight back on the Iran nuclear deal, and many Democrats were hoping people would forget — at least until after 2020.

President Trump and his national security team, demonstrating what appeared to be a healthy interagency analysis, made a rational, measured, and strategic decision to eliminate Soleimani. The retaliatory response from Iran, which fortunately failed to produce American casualties, gave the president the off-ramp he needed to, at this point, de-escalate the situation, and impose more sanctions on the terror regime after sending a powerful message that decades of inaction on the part of the U.S. in response to Iranian aggression were over.

It was a good week for the cause of freedom. The president, as presidents tend to do, decided to address the nation to discuss his rationale for the attack. While predictions of Iran “standing down” were somewhat risky, the address was notable for the broadside attack on the nuclear deal championed by the Obama Administration.

The president has blasted the Iran deal for years, but as he stood in the grand cross-hall of the White House, he made a statement that, while perhaps poorly worded, is unfortunately true. The Obama Administration helped finance terrorism.

Iran-sympathetic media outlets in the U.S., including the New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post, immediately began criticizing the president’s comments. The arguably pro-Iranian commentators on CNN and MSNBC were outraged at the matter-of-fact tone. Fact-checkers were quick to point out that much of the money wasn’t American, but money that the U.S. unfroze. They nitpicked the Trump White House over the figures as well — was it $150 billion or some other lower number, perhaps around $50 billion?

Of course, even CNN had to admit that the president’s assertion that the Obama administration gave $1.8 billion in cash. In the real world, billions of dollars flowing to a terrorist regime are just that — billions of dollars flowing to a terror regime.

What do Democrats, Obama sycophants, and the media think this money funded? Schools? Women’s equality programs? Environmental protections? Amusement parks?

Authoritarian regimes all operate the same way. There is a long-standing pattern of behavior easily seen when looking at the countries in the Middle East in particular. Dictators put money into military infrastructure to ensure they can maintain power. In the case of Iran, they also dedicate substantial resources to the terror networks that drive their ideological agenda beyond their borders. These are facts that are not in dispute.

Even Obama’s Secretary of State John Kerry, a frequent Trump critic, was forced to admit back in 2015 the deal risked providing funding for terror operations.

The Iran deal, perhaps the greatest achievement of the feckless, conciliatory Obama foreign policy was a last-ditched effort to appease Islamic terrorists. It followed his abandoning Iraq to greater Iranian and Russian influence. It followed the dismissal of ISIS as the “JV Team,” and a response that allowed Islamic terrorists to infiltrate more than a dozen countries across the Middle East and Africa. It followed a calculated rouse by the Obama team, in the run-up to the 2012 election that suggested the so-called Arab Spring was a vindication of the Administration’s policies and proof the Middle East was moderating without American interventionist policies. It followed a ham-handed effort to overthrow Moammar Ghaddafi that ultimately left a combination of terrorists, Russia, and Turks in charge of the country.

Democrat Senators Schumer, Cardin, Manchin, and Menendez all opposed the deal when it was proposed by the Administration. Nineteen Democrats in the House opposed the deal. They had good reason. They still do.

Whether the result of the deal was the U.S. releasing $1 billion, $10 billion, or $150 billion, there can be no intellectually honest debate that ignores the fact that the Obama Administration helped fund terrorism. It helped embolden Iran and by extension its allies Russia and China.

It’s a point that American voters should be reminded of as the 2020 campaign rolls on. The American President should be fighting terrorism, not fighting to finance it.

Tom Basile has been part of the American political landscape from Presidential campaigns to local politics. He served in the Bush Administration from 2001-2004, as Executive Director of the NYS Republican Party and has held a range of senior-level communications roles in and out of government. Basile's critically-acclaimed book, "Tough Sell: Fighting the Media War in Iraq" (Foreword by Amb. John R. Bolton), chronicles his time in Baghdad fighting media bias and driving fairer coverage of the Iraq war. In 2011, he was featured in Time Magazine's Person of the Year spread about political activism around the world. Basile is an adjunct professor at Fordham University, a local elected official and runs a New York-based strategic communications firm. He is a member of the New York Bar and sits on a number of academic and philanthropic advisory boards. Learn more about him at TomBasile.com or follow him on Twitter @Tom_Basile. To read more of his reports — Click Here Now.

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TomBasile
It’s a point that American voters should be reminded of as the 2020 campaign rolls on. The American President should be fighting terrorism, not fighting to finance it.
iran, money, financing, terror, obama, john kerry
836
2020-22-10
Friday, 10 January 2020 01:22 PM
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