What we’ve already learned about the lengths to which Barack Obama went to secure his precious Iranian nuclear deal should be enough to trigger a full-fledged congressional investigation. The secret pallets of money sent in the dead of night – money that turned out to be a ransom for U.S. citizens held in Iranian prisons. The hostages WE let go, some of whom were dangerous spies and terrorists. The secret side deals that escaped the scrutiny of U.S. lawmakers. The text of the deal itself, which put Iran in charge of monitoring their own adherence to the nuclear restrictions.
President Trump called it one of the worst deals in history. That might have been an understatement.
But this deal is the gift that keeps on giving, so to speak. Because with every passing month, we learn something new. We learn that the Obama administration went even further than we thought, all to ensure the president secured this historically-terrible agreement.
Now, thanks to the congressional testimony of former Defense Department adviser David Asher, we are learning that Obama’s government “systematically disbanded” any and all investigatory units looking into Iran’s funding of terrorism around the world.
“Senior leadership, presiding, directing, and overseeing various sections and portions of the U.S. intelligence community systematically disbanded any internal or external stakeholder action that threatened to derail the administration’s policy agenda focused on Iran,” Asher told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday.
According to Asher, administration officials called off these investigations – which also touched on terrorism financing coming out of Syria and Venezuela – in the months leading up to the finalization of the Iran nuclear agreement.
Asher said that the Obama administration’s short-sighted actions ruined our chances to dismantle Hezbollah’s financial network and limit Iran’s ability to “readily terrorize us, victimize us, and run a criminal network through our shores, inside our banking systems – and in partnership with the world’s foremost drug cartels – target our state and society.”
“We lost much of the altitude we had gained in our global effort,” Asher said, “and many aspects including key personnel, who were reassigned, budgets that were slashed – many key elements of the investigations that were underway were undermined.”
Obama’s decision to try to dissuade Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon was an admirable one. But the way he went about it was disastrous from every standpoint you can think of. What cards did Iran hold that we needed to go to these extraordinary lengths to bend over backwards? And how DARE Obama’s supporters criticize Trump for thinking about rolling back Russian sanctions when their guy abandoned common sense and national security to secure this deal with a far greater enemy?
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