President Joe Biden’s impending agreement to restore the Iran nuclear deal offers the regime access to $90 billion in foreign currency reserves and sanctions relief to some of the world’s worst terrorists, according to a former State Department official.
Gabriel Noronha, writing in Tablet magazine, says the deal does not restore President Barack Obama’s old Iran deal, a weak agreement from which President Donald Trump withdrew, but goes much further in giving Iran money and sanctions relief.
“Multiple career officials view these capitulations as so detrimental to U.S. national security that they contacted me requesting that I rapidly share details of these concessions with Congress and the public in an effort to stop them,” Noronha writes.
He describes some of the concessions that Biden’s negotiator in Vienna, Rob Malley, has reportedly made:
The list of concessions that follows is long, detailed, disturbing, but also somewhat technical. But this much is clear to me: The deal being negotiated in Vienna is dangerous to U.S. national security, to the stability of the Middle East, and to the Iranian people who suffer most under that brutal regime. The lack of evidence to justify a removal of U.S. sanctions is illegal, and the deal that will be foisted upon the world without the support of Congress will be illegitimate. This deal will not serve U.S. interests in either the short or long term.
With Robert Malley in the lead, the United States has promised to lift sanctions on some of the regime’s worst terrorists and torturers, on leading officials who have developed Iran’s WMD infrastructure, and has agreed to lift sanctions on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) itself. In exchange, Iran will receive fewer limitations than those imposed under the JCPOA, and the restrictions on its nuclear program will expire six years sooner than under the terms of the old deal. And that’s just the beginning.
…
Iran is set to get access to a massive windfall of cash: My latest estimate (derived from figures declassified during my tenure at the State Department) is $90 billion in access to foreign exchange reserves, and then a further $50-$55 billion in extra revenue each year from higher oil and petrochemical exports, with no restrictions on how or where the money can be spent.
Personally, the most troubling transfer of funds will be the $7 billion ransom payment the United States is preparing to pay for the release of four Americans from an Iranian jail. Now, let me be clear: I would be extremely glad to bring these Americans back home safely as quickly as possible. They are innocent victims who, along with their families, have suffered unjustly for far too long. But make no mistake: Biden’s payment will only supercharge Iran’s hostage-taking industry.
Read Noronha’s full article here.
Noronha notes that Malley’s team has lost several negotiators who resigned in protest against what they viewed as the weak terms of the deal he was negotiating. Their departures, Noronha said, were a desperate plea for Congress to intervene.
Rob Malley, former US negotiator during the Iran nuclear program negotiations and current CEO at the International Crisis Group, poses in his office May 7, 2018 in Washington, DC. – President Donald Trump will confirm on May 8, 2018 whether he will make good on a threat to re-impose US sanctions on Tehran and thereby throw the entire Iran nuclear deal into question.Trump’s announcement that a decision was imminent cut short a last-ditch European diplomatic drive to save the accord ahead of what had been a May 12 deadline. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP) (Photo credit should read BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
The impression given is that Malley was simply told to agree to whatever Iran wanted in order to secure an agreement, thus fulfilling a campaign promise by then-candidate Biden and reversing a consequential decision by the hated Donald Trump.
As Breitbart News has reported previously, Malley is a serial appeaser who was kicked off the Obama campaign in 2008 for meeting with Hamas. He was alter brought back into the Obama administration to work on the first Iran deal, and was also the ISIS “czar,” a role in which he failed spectacularly to control the spread of the Islamic terror group. In 2018, once out of office, he was among those who said that Trump should not support protests against the Iranian regime by the Iranian people.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.