Obama Secretly Lifted Sanctions on Iran Months Ago

Kiss our enemies’ ass, disrespect our allies. That’s how he rolls.

From the Daily Beast.

The Obama administration began softening sanctions on Iran after the election of Iran’s new president in June, months before the current round of nuclear talks in Geneva or the historic phone call between the two leaders in September.

While those negotiations now appear on the verge of a breakthrough the key condition for Iran—relief from crippling sanctions—began quietly and modestly five months ago.

A review of Treasury Department notices reveals that the U.S. government has all but stopped the financial blacklisting of entities and people that help Iran evade international sanctions since the election of its president, Hassan Rouhani, in June.

……Mark Dubowitz, the executive director of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, an organization that has worked closely with Congress and the administration on devising the current Iranian sanctions, said the slow pace of designations was only one kind of sanctions relief Obama has been offering Iran.

“For five months, since Rouhani’s election, the United States has offered Iran two major forms of sanctions relief,” Dubowitz said. “First there’s been a significant slowdown in the pace of designations while the Iranians are proliferating the number of front companies and cutouts to bust sanctions.”

The second kind of relief Dubowitz said the White House had offered Iran was through its opposition to new Iran sanctions legislation supported by both parties in Congress.

By Dubowitz’s estimates, Iran is now selling between 150,000 and 200,000 barrels of oil per day on the black market, meaning that Iran has profited from the illicit sale of over 35 million barrels of oil since Rouhani took office, with little additional measures taken by the United States to counter it.

“Sounds like Obama decided to enter the Persian nuclear bazaar to haggle with the masters of negotiation and has had his head handed to him,” Dubowitz said.

Nothing has changed in Iran. Nothing. It’s the same despotic hellhole it’s been for decades. Hassan Rouhani was part of a secret assassination committee responsible for carrying out 162 political assassinations between 1979 and 1999, including the bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people and wounded hundreds more. 

Basically, it’s the same Sharia shit, different day.  The ruling hardline Islamofascist clerics installed another toady by rigging the list of candidates.  Make no mistake, the real power lies with Ayatollah Khamenei and his cabal of henchmen, and Rowhani is no fucking moderate.  Iran has a lengthy history of brutality toward pro-democracy protesters and activists.

Under Islamic law, women and girls are treated like chattel. They are subjected to stoning, rape, “honor killings”, genital mutilation, and arranged marriages to fetid old men. Cruelty is sanctioned by their Koran, and they practice it every chance they get.

Iran will still race toward building a nuclear bomb, threaten Israel, and export terrorism, regardless of the appointed puppet, or Obama’s kowtowing.

Needless to say, Israel is pissed.

Benjamin Netanyahu set himself on a collision course with Israel’s Western allies on Friday after lashing out at an impending deal over Iran’s nuclear program and warned that his country would not be bound by it.

Speaking before meeting John Kerry, the US secretary of state, the Israeli prime minister effectively accused Western negotiators of caving in during talks in Geneva and handing Iran the “deal of the century”.

“I understand that the Iranians are walking around very satisfied in Geneva, as well they should be, because they got everything, and paid nothing, they wanted. They wanted relief from sanctions after years of a grueling sanctions regime,” Mr Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport.

He called the proposed short-term agreement “a very bad deal” and said Israel “utterly rejects it”.

Sorry, Ben. You’ll just have to wait until this country comes to its senses and elects a leader who won’t sell us out to our enemies. Don’t hold your breath.