By Marisa Herman
Friday, 17 November 2023
The Biden administration’s decision to unlock upwards of $10 billion that will fill now fill Tehran’s coffers only proves that
despite the U.S. fight against Iranian proxies in the Middle East and the Islamic Republic’s financial support of terror group
Hamas, the U.S. policy toward Iran remains unchanged, experts say. On Tuesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken signed a 120- day waiver extension that will allow Iraq to continue to purchase electricity from Iran. Under the deal, Iran will have
some access to the proceeds, supposedly to buy humanitarian goods.
Records indicate that there is as much as $10 billion in Iraqi payments for Iranian electricity currently being held in escrow
accounts in Iraq. Thanks to the waiver, Baghdad will be able to maintain its energy imports without worrying about incurring U.S. penalties for violating sanctions on Iran. Majid Sadeghpour, the political director of the Organization of Iranian American Communities, called the move a “misguided policy.”
“The adverse political message of such a misguided policy – to the Iranian people and the international community – cannot be understated,” he said. “Affording any overt or covert concession to the regime in Tehran inevitably serves to
suffocate the pro-democracy movement of the Iranian people and green lights the regime’s brazen support for international
terrorism.”
Michael Makovsky, president and CEO of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, said even though “everything
in the Middle East changed” following Hamas’ surprise Oct. 7 terror attack against Israel, Biden’s Iran policy appears “stuck
in an Oct. 6 time warp.”
He said the move to free up funds for Tehran is “exactly the wrong thing to be doing” in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war.
News of the sanction waiver came on the same day that nearly 300,000 Jews, Americans, and Israel allies marched in Washington, D.C. While it would have been “wrong” to approve the sanctions on Oct. 6, Makovsky said it is “especially wrong” to do so on any date following the war.
“When it comes to Iran, America really needs to step up,” he said. “We need to instill the fear of God into the Iranians and
their proxies.” To do so, Makovsky said the U.S. needs to adopt a policy of troops, he said it is evident how Tehran is spending its money. “Giving them a waiver to give them even $1 is too much,” Makovsky said. “If it’s $10 billion, it’s 10 billion times more wrong.”
Officials familiar with the waiver plan told The Associated Press that Blinken approved it because the Biden administration
doesn’t want to cut Iraq off from a critical source of energy. They noted that a small portion of the money held in Iraq had
been transferred to Oman during the past 120 days and that none of the money now held in Omani banks had been spent.
They also told the outlet that the Biden administration is confident Iran won’t be able to use the money to fund terrorism
and that a process is in place to ensure that the cash can only be used for food, medicine, medical equipment, and agricultural goods.
While the Biden administration may be confident that the money won’t be used to do harm, recent history proves
otherwise. After the U.S. unfroze about $6 billion of Tehran’s assets in a prisoner swap between the nations, Iran immediately began increasing its provocations toward the U.S.
While the deal was struck in August, which sent money owed to Iran by South Korea for oil purchased before the Trump
administration imposed sanctions on such transactions in 2019, it wasn’t set in motion until September. At the time, Iran hawks lambasted the terms of the prisoner swap, arguing it effectively put a price on the heads of Americans abroad and could set a precedent that the U.S. would pay large sums of money to free detainees. Under that agreement, the money held by South Korea was transferred to banks in Qatar and was also supposedly restricted for the purchase of humanitarian supplies.
But soon after the deal went through, Iran began ratcheting up its aggression. Tehran’s bad behavior began shortly after with military reports that Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy vessels shone a laser multiple times at a U.S. AH-1Z Viper attack helicopter and that a U.S. Marine Corps attack helicopter had an “unsafe and unprofessional” interaction with the IRGCN.
Since the war between Israel-Hamas, Iranian-backed proxies have unleashed dozens of attacks on U.S. troops stationed in
Iraq and Syria. Defense officials have put the number of attacks during the past hesitate to do what’s necessary, again, to protect the troops,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters at a news conference in Seoul on Monday.
The latest attack against American troops involved the firing of multiple one-way drones.
In response to the ongoing attacks, the U.S. carried out a third round of strikes against targets with ties to Tehran. American
fighter jets hit a weapons storage site in Syria and other facilities it said were used by Iranian proxy forces. While many of the proxies’ attacks have failed to reach their intended targets, 56 military personnel have sustained injuries ranging from traumatic brain injuries to shrapnel wounds or perforated eardrums.
Bill Roggio, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and editor of FDD’s Long War Journal, said that the “continuous attacks by Iran’s militia proxies demonstrate that U.S. efforts to deter future attacks have so far failed.”
“Iran and its proxies do not fear or respect the occasional strike,” he said in a statement. “If the Biden administration truly wants to deter future strikes on U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria, it must hit Iranian assets harder and far more
frequently.”
Makovsky said the sanction waiver is “absurd.” He added: “We have to be squeezing the Iranians now.”
https://www.newsmax.com/platinum/iran-sanction-waiver/2023/11/17/id/1142652/
