One hot evening in May, 2009, at the U.S. Embassy Baghdad, while the acrid smell of burning trash pits hung in the air, I took an evening stroll. All of a sudden, the Embassy’s “Big Voice” loudspeakers came alive — INCOMING! INCOMING! — and I dove into a bomb shelter. As our little cluster of Embassy staffers crouched low, mouths open to reduce compression injury, our bodies shook with the rocket’s explosion nearby. We found out later that the Iranian-made rocket killed a DoD employee by blowing up his trailer just north of the Embassy.
Imagine how we and the family of those killed by Iranian rockets would have felt if we discovered that our President had just given Iran 10 billion dollars — an act that any sane person knows would finance more rockets and terrorism.
Hugh Iwanicki | American Thinker
One hot evening in May, 2009, at the U.S. Embassy Baghdad, while the acrid smell of burning trash pits hung in the air, I took an evening stroll. All of a sudden, the Embassy’s “Big Voice” loudspeakers came alive — INCOMING! INCOMING! — and I dove into a bomb shelter. As our little cluster of Embassy staffers crouched low, mouths open to reduce compression injury, our bodies shook with the rocket’s explosion nearby. We found out later that the Iranian-made rocket killed a DoD employee by blowing up his trailer just north of the Embassy.
Imagine how we and the family of those killed by Iranian rockets would have felt if we discovered that our President had just given Iran 10 billion dollars — an act that any sane person knows would finance more rockets and terrorism. Well, this is what Biden just did, even as American soldiers in Iraq are being harmed by the drone attacks of Iranian-backed militias. Biden’s duplicity is on full display.
Last week, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller announced that the Biden Administration will waive Iranian sanctions to permit the release of $10 billion to Iran from Iraqi electricity sales. This was in addition to the $6 billion released this past September as a ransom for American hostages held by Iran. Mr. Miller assured us the money would be restricted so that Iran would only be able to buy food and humanitarian aid for its people. However, an astute reporter asked whether the $10 billion was fungible, meaning that Iran could shift money away from the designated services to fund terrorism. Miller denied it and said, “They [Iran] choose to fund destabilizing activities first. They always have; as far as we can tell, they always will… looking at this money, we see the benefit to allowing these funds to move again to restricted accounts where they can only benefit the Iranian people.” This argument is delusional. He may as well have told us that giving Hamas water pipes was a peaceful way to support the Palestinian people, when in fact Hamas turns water pipes into missiles.
Could it be that President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken are just naïve, because they lack foreign policy experience?
Nope. With a quick Google search, anyone can verify that Biden has decades of foreign policy experience as Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC). As for Secretary Blinken, his impressive resume includes Harvard University and a J.D. in Law from Columbia, along with nearly three decades of foreign policy experience, starting in 1994 as a member of the National Security Council. He also served as SFRC Staff Director, National Security Advisor to the Vice President, Deputy National Security Advisor, and Deputy Secretary of State, where he helped develop policy on Afghanistan and Iran’s nuclear weapon’s program. One would think that he’d be superbly prepared to be Secretary of State.
Secretary Blinken, a supposed Afghanistan expert, claimed that “Withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan meshes with the Biden administration’s goal of focusing resources on China and the Covid-19 pandemic… The terrorism threat has moved to other places…” This disastrous decision resulted in the death of 13 U.S. servicemen and thousands of Afghans who had helped the U.S. At the time, many Americans demanded that Blinken resign as Secretary of State, but these calls did not concern him, perhaps because he knew his Deep State connections via WestExec Advisors and Pine Island Capital Partners would protect him.
Blinken also rejected comparisons between the collapsing situation in Afghanistan and the chaotic American departure from Saigon in 1975. He said: “We went to Afghanistan 20 years ago with one mission, and that mission was to deal with the folks who attacked us on 9/11, and we have succeeded in that mission.” Within days after Blinken claimed the mission was a success, the Afghan government fell and the same Taliban that gave cover to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda returned to power.
At this point the question we should be asking ourselves is: After all those decades of foreign policy experience, how could Biden and Blinken still keep getting it wrong?
“During Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003-2010), [the] DoD assessed that at least 603 U.S. personnel deaths in Iraq were the result of Iran-backed militants,” said Navy Cmdr. Sean Robertson. Those causalities resulted from rockets, mortars, RPGs, IEDs and other attacks.
As the architect of America’s policy toward Iran’s nuclear program, we can be sure that Blinken has an intimate knowledge of how the mullahs of Iran operate and how many Americans they have killed. Despite this, our highly educated but incompetent administration has financed Iran to the tune of tens of billions of dollars (including Obama’s “pallets of cash”). These decisions continue to jeopardize our military, meaning that many more American troops are going to die from Iran-backed attacks. Our leaders should be ashamed of themselves as they dine in high society while American soldiers bleed in Iraq and Syria.
It’s not just American soldiers who feel the impact. Biden’s recent Washington Post op-ed stated: “We stand firmly with the Israeli people as they defend themselves against… Hamas.” But how can Biden stand firmly with Israel while he is also giving billions of dollars to Iran, which supports 93% of Hamas’ military budget?
In other words, while Biden shakes Netanyahu’s right hand, Biden’s left hand gives Ayatollah Khamenei a knife.
What can we Americans do in the face of such double-dealing? We can start by opposing the Biden Administration’s exemption of itself from American anti-terrorism laws, such as its $10 billion Iranian sanction waiver.
More than that, the U.S. needs to rigorously enforce Iran’s existing sanctions. Any company that does business or buys Iranian oil must be excluded from commerce with America and its businesses.
The history of Biden’s Administration tells us not to expect this kind of leadership, given its grotesque conflicts of interests. However, we can call on Congress to block Biden’s pandering to America’s enemies, and hold Biden’s gang in check until Republicans win the White House next November.
This article was first published by American Thinker. Hugh Iwanicki, is a former Foreign Service Officer and expert on Middle Eastern affairs. He is the author of Shock & Alarm: What It Was Really Like at the U.S. Embassy in Iraq.
