Showing posts with label Chief Sponsor Of Terror. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chief Sponsor Of Terror. Show all posts

Sunday, November 5, 2017

The Obama administration's selective releases portrayed Tehran as an enemy of the extremists. There's more to it.







...Ryan Trapani, a spokesman for the CIA, told me Thursday: "Documents collected during the bin Laden raid, which have been declassified, indicate Iran and al-Qaeda have an agreement to not target each other. The documents indicate bin Laden referred to Iran as the 'main artery' for al-Qaeda to move funds, personnel and communications."

Some of this was known before. The U.S. government has sanctioned members of al-Qaeda's network in Iran going back to the Obama years. The State Department's annual reports on terrorism also touch on this.

Nonetheless, it's understandable why many observers would dismiss the notion of an Iran-al-Qaeda connection. Earlier releases of the bin Laden files under the Obama administration emphasized the Iran-al-Qaeda rivalry. All the while documents that showed cooperation remained classified....

Current and former Trump administration officials tell me the declassification of the documents was a priority for the new president's team. The former senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, pressed the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to declassify the bin Laden documents. He met with resistance because translations, vetting the documents and providing official analysis would sap resources from higher priorities, according to these current and former officials. In the end, the CIA released most of the documents on Wednesday without translations and analysis, in hard-to-download zip files.

In the coming days and weeks, outside analysts and experts will be able to see for themselves the extent of Iran's cooperation with al-Qaeda....









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Monday, January 9, 2017

"Since the nuclear agreement, we have been sending Iran $700 million a month."



...An Iranian official has confirmed that the US sent the Iranian central bank more than $10 billion in cash, gold, and other assets since 2013. Since the nuclear agreement, we have been sending Iran $700 million a month. That money includes the $1.7 billion paid in ransom for US sailors being held hostage by the regime.

Washington Free Beacon:

The latest disclosure by Iran, which comports with previous claims about the Obama administration obfuscating details about its cash transfers to Iran—including a $1.7 billion cash payment included in a ransom to free Americans—sheds further light on the White House’s back room dealings to bolster Iran’s economy and preserve the Iran nuclear agreement.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi confirmed last week a recent report in the Wall Street Journal detailing some $10 billion in cash and assets provided to Iran since 2013, when the administration was engaging in sensitive diplomacy with Tehran aimed at securing the nuclear deal.

Ghasemi disclosed that the $10 billion figure just scratches the surface of the total amount given to Iran by the United States over the past several years.

“I will not speak about the precise amount,” Ghasemi was quoted as saying in Persian language reports independently translated for the Washington Free Beacon.

The $10 billion figure is actually a “stingy” estimate, Ghasemi claimed, adding that a combination of cash, gold, and other assets was sent by Washington to Iran’s Central Bank and subsequently “spent.”...
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