Powerline Blog: Iran revisited

[TomSea]

Posted on August 25, 2019 by Scott Johnson in Iran, Obama Foreign Policy
Iran revisited

What did the Obama administration have in mind when it chose to empower and enrich the murderously anti-American and viciously genocidal regime Iran? Michael Doran explained all in the Mosaic 2015 essay “Obama’s secret Iran strategy.”

Doran’s analysis is still worth reading and still hard to believe. Why was the strategy secret? Perhaps the Obama administration promulgated some counterpart to the Truman administration’s NSC-68, the top secret strategic assessment adopted to counter the threat posed by the Soviet Union in 1950.

Yet Doran deduces Obama’s Iran strategy in part from public statements by Obama himself and Obama mouthpiece Ben Rhodes. Their assessment of Iran is so stupid that the administration’s Iran strategy might have been classified to save administration officials from embarrassment.

Read more at: https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/08/iran-revisited.php

[TomSea]

There's a 2nd part here:

Posted on August 25, 2019 by Scott Johnson in Iran
Iran revisited (2)

To this date the American public has not been advised of the side deals that the Obama administration made with Iran to announce its agreement to the JCPOA. A complete accounting of these side deals remains classified, so I am reliably informed. Jay Solomon has reported that the side deals Obama administration Secretary of State John Kerry negotiated were largely about infusing Iran with more cash and investment. Here is what Solomon came up with in 2016 supplemented by Josh Meyer’s Politico report (linked below):

1.) $1.7 Billion: The Obama administration initially said the cash shipments had nothing to do with the nuclear talks or the prisoners. But it was clear in the end, that everything — the nuke deal, the prisoners, the cash — were all interconnected (here).

2.) Missile Proliferation: In one of the classic side deals, the Obama administration agreed to get two Iranian state banks off the UN sanctions list, even though they were blacklisted for missile development. The Americans had said they wouldn’t ease sanctions on companies that were engaged in missile proliferation. But these two state banks were too important for the Iranian economy (here).

Read more at: https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/08/iran-revisited-2.php

https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0812993640/amazon0156-20/

The Iran Wars: Spy Games, Bank Battles, and the Secret Deals That Reshaped the Middle East Hardcover – August 23, 2016

Column cites books, worth a read.