ISIS moving into Tunisia and the Indo-Asia-Pacific

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This is precisely how the civil war in Syria began, with a protest. And so much for that Obama Asia pivot.

Escalating Protests Threaten Instability in Tunisia

AEI: Key Takeaway: Economic protests resembling those that sparked the 2010 Jasmine Revolution are spreading throughout Tunisia and may grow into nationwide civil unrest. The protests may escalate if security forces respond with violence or officials prove unwilling or unable to meet protestors’ demands. Widespread civil unrest provides an opportunity for Salafi-jihadi groups, including the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) and al Qaeda, to attack government or economic targets and further destabilize the Tunisian state.

The Situation as of September 15, 2016

Major economic protests began in two Tunisian cities on September 5 and September 7.

  • Protestors blocked roads and burned a business in the town of Ben Guerdane on September 5 after Tunisian security forces shot dead a suspected smuggler. Ben Guerdane is located on the Mediterranean coastline near the Libyan border. Its economy depends on smuggling. Trade unions plan to strike in Ben Guerdane on September 21 to protest administrative gridlock.
  • A café owner set himself on fire in Fernana, a town in northwestern Tunisia, on September 7 after being denied a request to negotiate a fine. Protestors responded by burning tires, closing a major road, striking, calling for the resignation of local officials, and attempting to disrupt the water supply to Tunisia’s capital. Demonstrations intensified on September 11 after the café owner succumbed to his injuries. Additional security forces deployed to Fernana on September 12. Protestors released a series of demands, including calls for anti-corruption measures, an industrial zone, and improved public health and energy infrastructure on September 13. Demonstrations quieted on September 15, but government buildings and schools remain closed.

Protests are spreading to other cities in Tunisia in a manner that resembles the beginning of the 2010 Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia that overthrew the Zine el Abidine Ben Ali regime.

  • Labor union members marched in Makthar, western Tunisia on September 13 to protest overdue development projects. Demonstrators demanded the removal of a corrupt official in El Mida, a town on Tunisia’s northeastern coast, on September 14. National Guard officers intervened to protect the official. Teachers and professors marched in Beja, north central Tunisia and Tozeur, southwestern Tunisia on September 14 to demand the implementation of a labor agreement and development plans. A farm worker in Reguib, central Tunisia attempted to self-immolate after a dispute with a local official on September 15.
  • These protests resemble the wave of civil unrest triggered by the self-immolation of Tunisian street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi in late 2010 that ousted longtime Tunisian President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali. The Jasmine Revolution sparked the Arab Spring.

The Tunisian government is attempting to respond to protestors’ demands, but its response may be insufficient.

  • Tunisian authorities had promised on September 12 to send a ministerial delegation to Fernana to hear protestors’ grievances. Local activists reported on September 14 that the promised delegation never arrived. A regional council is now set to convene to discuss Fernana’s development on September 18. The Tunisian Ministry of Industry and Trade announced plans to develop a free-trade zone in Ben Guerdane on September 13, possibly in an effort to placate protestors.
  • The Tunisian public’s expectations that life would improve after the 2010 Jasmine Revolution have not been met. Continued economic failure and successive corruption scandals underpin widespread discontent with the government, especially in marginalized regions, where the unemployment rate hovers around 30 percent. Clashes between security forces and local residents, as well as corruption, drive popular resentment against the police.

 

Context

Tunisia’s new unity government is vulnerable to economic and political backlash.

  • Newly appointed Prime Minister Youssef Chahed is preparing to announce austerity measures that will include new taxes and limits on public sector jobs. Parliament ousted former Prime Minister Habib Essid for his failure to resolve the country’s economic and security challenges. Chahed’s government faces the same challenges, as well as allegations of nepotism.

Tunisian security forces have violently repressed popular protests in the post-revolution period.

  • Protestors demonstrated nationwide in January 2016 after an unemployed young man electrocuted himself. Tunisian police responded with violent crackdowns.
  • Tunisian security forces may crack down on protestors. Tunisia’s security sector, including key leadership, has not changed since it responded violently to demonstrations in January 2016. Security forces have used states of emergency and unlawful force to break up peaceful demonstrations and detain suspects multiple times in recent years.

Tunisia is surrounded by unstable neighbors.

Tunisia is a target for global Salafi-jihadi groups.

  • Thousands of Tunisian militants are fighting for ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Waves of returning foreign fighters will attempt to re-enter their country, bringing with them plans to break the Tunisian state.
  • The al Qaeda network, composed of a core group and an array of associates and affiliates that pursue al Qaeda’s objectives, has grown stronger since 2011. This network includes Ansar al Sharia Tunisia and the Tunisian Uqba Ibn Nafa’a Brigade.

 

Complications

Salafi-jihadi groups may be positioned to infiltrate or attack Tunisia in the event of unrest.

  • Tunisian has limited security resources. The government would probably re-allocate these resources from counter-terrorism operations to quell unrest should there be widespread protests.
  • Tunisian ISIS militants operating in Libya may be preparing to return to Tunisia. ISIS could exploit unrest to penetrate Tunisia’s border at Ben Guerdane, where it attacked in March 2016. ISIS militants moving westward from the group’s former stronghold in Sirte, Libya are a growing threat on Tunisia’s eastern border.
  • Al Qaeda’s strategy includes embedding itself within and co-opting movements. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and the Uqba Ibn Nafa’a Brigade, an AQIM affiliate, may be positioned to infiltrate a movement against the Tunisian state.

A crackdown by security forces would strengthen the Salafi-jihadi base in Tunisia.

  • A violent crackdown would exacerbate existing popular grievances and reinforce a Salafi-jihadi popular support base in Tunisia. This base will remain a source of strength for local and global Salafi-jihadi groups.

 

Implications

Instability in Tunisia could greatly exacerbate regional instability and threaten U.S. interests in the region.

  • The destabilization of Tunisia would remove one of the few remaining semi-stable states in North Africa.
  • The U.S. relies on Tunisia as the host of diplomatic efforts for neighboring Libya. U.S. Africa Command works closely with Tunisian security forces in counterterrorism operations and may seek to base from Tunisia for future operations.

A stronger Salafi-jihadi base in Tunisia would threaten the security of the U.S. and its allies in the long term.

  • Salafi-jihadi groups with global objectives, including ISIS and al Qaeda, will continue to draw on a Tunisian support base for resiliency and strength.
  • This base will continue to threaten Tunisia and provide foreign fighters to regional conflicts. It will support Salafi-jihadi groups with the intent and capability to attack the American and European homelands.

Popular protests in Tunisia may spread throughout the country. In the most dangerous scenario, the Tunisian state will weaken or collapse and the country’s Salafi-jihadi base will grow stronger.  

*****

SanDiegoUnionTribune: The commander of American military forces across Asia, Adm. Harry Harris, said the jihadist group — commonly called ISIS — is seeking new territory as it gets squeezed out of Iraq and Syria.

“It’s clear to me that [ISIS] is also “rebalancing” to the Indo-Asia-Pacific,” said Harris, speaking during a meeting of the San Diego Military Advisory Council on Wednesday in Point Loma.

Using a cancer analogy, the four-star leader of U.S. Pacific Command added: “Through multinational cooperation, we can eradicate this [ISIS] disease before it metastasizes.”

But the U.S. alliance with the Philippines hit choppy waters recently after comments by President Rodrigo Duterte — something that Harris also addressed Wednesday with lightly veiled criticism of Duterte’s statements.

“We have been allied with the Philippines for a long time. We have shed our blood with them. … We fought side by side during World War II. I consider our alliance with the Philippines to be iron-clad,” Harris said. He also mentioned U.S. aid to the Philippines, budgeted at $120 million this year, and the dispatch of American troops to help after Typhoon Haiyan in 2013.

“So when the leader said, ‘Only China supports us,’ I don’t know what he means,” Harris said, answering a reporter’s question toward the end of his presentation.

Duterte started making headlines last week when, speaking in Tagalog, he called President Barack Obama a son of a bitch.

Since then the Philippines president has said his government would shop for weapons in China and Russia and would halt joint U.S.-Philippines patrols in the South China Sea to avoid appearing hostile to China.

He also called for the departure of U.S. special-operations troops from the southern Philippines, saying their presence could complicate the fight against the ISIS-linked terrorist group Abu Sayyaf.

One analyst said it appears that nationalism and a desire for “outsider” status are driving the Filipino president’s current tone.

“I don’t really think this is as much about the U.S. as it is about domestic politics — and just his personality. We are a very useful whipping boy,” said Thomas Sanderson, director of the transnational threats project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. “I think this is largely about someone who is a rebel … he’s an outsider and he’s broken through into an area that outsiders typically didn’t get to.”

Sanderson said the Philippines would do an about-face if Islamic terrorism becomes a more widespread problem for Filipinos.

“[Duterte] comes right back to us, there’s no doubt about it,” he said. “Because the center of gravity for counter-terrorism knowledge and skill is the United States.”

Harris outlined the signposts of the ISIS advance on new turf in the Pacific Command theater, an area that’s home to 700 million Muslims. That means more Muslims live in the Asia-Pacific region than in the Middle East.

“Population numbers alone have forced [Pacific Command] to think ahead about what’s next in the fight against [ISIS],” Harris said. “The vast majority of these people are peaceful citizens who seek to live lives free from the scourge of terrorism, but we know that a small band of fanatics can produce deadly results.”

He pointed to ISIS-inspired terrorism in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines so far in 2016. Those events include the July 2 attack on a Bangladeshi restaurant by ISIS-aligned militants. In May and June, Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines released video showing the beheadings of two Canadians after their families didn’t pay ransoms.

Hundreds of jihadists have traveled from Asia to the main ISIS battlegrounds of Iraq and Syria to join in the group’s violent vision of creating an Islamic caliphate, according to published accounts.

The tally is about 700 from Indonesia, 100 from Malaysia, 100 from the Philippines, 200 from the Maldives, 300 from China and 120 from Australia, according to a December report by The Soufan Group. These recruits make up a small portion of the estimated 30,000 to 40,000 fighters ISIS can claim or has been credited with over time.

But as they tire of warfare, the danger is that they may return home and try to continue the fight — and recruit others.

Sanderson said Indonesia has the highest vulnerability to ISIS despite its strong security forces, because of the number of ISIS fighters already hailing from there and because of Indonesia being a string of islands with lots of places to hide.

All of this comes as the United States is finishing its own “rebalance,” with the Navy shifting 60 percent of its fleet to the Pacific by 2020. That move, announced late in Barack Obama’s first term, was seen as a hedge against North Korean saber-rattling and the growing economic and military might of China.

Academics differ on how big the ISIS threat is becoming in the Pacific and Asia.

Eli Berman, a UC San Diego economics professor, said he thinks “rebalancing” is too strong a term for the jihadist group’s foothold in Asia. ISIS isn’t on the verge of controlling territory anywhere in the Pacific Rim, said Berman, who is a research director at the university’s Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation.

Asia expert Denny Roy at the East-West Center in Honolulu agrees with Harris that the basic ideas represented by ISIS won’t die if the Islamic State is geographically erased.

“The purveyors of those ideas are already trying to transplant them into other regions and are finding some interest,” Roy said.

But several observers pointed out that Asia has major differences that may hinder ISIS if it tries to expand there.

Governments there are generally more intact than in the Middle East.

“What’s missing is the ultra-weak states in which locals are ready and chomping at the bit to sign up for something to do,” said Sanderson at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “There are far fewer people who would want to sign up for a battle inside of Indonesia, as opposed to those who would want to sign up to battle inside Libya, Tunisia, Yemen or Syria — where the majority of young men would say, ‘Give me a gun and let’s go.’ They have nothing to lose.”

Roy sees South Asia, which includes Bangladesh, as fertile ground for extremism.

“Southeast Asia is less so, because the sense of grievance and the (routine practice) of mass political violence are less strong than in the Middle East or South Asia,” he said.

 

ISIS suspected of mustard attack against US and Iraqi troops

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First on CNN: ISIS suspected of mustard attack against US and Iraqi troops

Washington (CNN)ISIS is suspected of firing a shell with mustard agent that landed at the Qayarrah air base in Iraq Tuesday where US and Iraqi troops are operating, according to several US officials.

The shell was categorized by officials as either a rocket or artillery shell. After it landed on the base, just south of Mosul, US troops tested it and received an initial reading for a chemical agent they believe is mustard.
 
No US troops were hurt or have displayed symptoms of exposure to mustard agent.
One official said the agent had “low purity” and was “poorly weaponized.” A second official called it “ineffective.”
A US defense official said troops had gone out to look at the ordnance after it landed. Based on seeing what they thought was a suspect substance, two field tests were conducted.
The first test was positive and the second was negative, the official said. The substance is now being sent to a lab for further examination.
Iraqi forces push towards Mosul as refugees wait for aid
US troops involved in the incident went through decontamination showers as a precaution. No troops have shown any symptoms of exposure, such as skin blistering. CNN has reported on previous instances where ISIS has fired rounds with mustard agents in Iraq and Syria.
The officials said they “had expected” that ISIS might try use chemical weapons as US and Iraqi forces push towards Mosul in an effort to take the city back from ISIS. Several hundred US troops are using the base as a staging area for supporting Iraqi forces.
All of this has led the Pentagon to assess on a preliminary basis that it was ISIS that fired at the base, since the terror group has been making mustard agent for some time.
In the course of its air campaign against ISIS, US airstrikes have hit several locations the US believes are production sites for mustard agent.
US officials emphasized that mustard agent is relatively easy to produce, and they continue to hit suspected manufacturing sites when they find them. US troops are routinely outfitted with protective gear in the event of a chemical weapons attack.
Qayyarah Airbase. File Photo

(IraqiNews.com) Nineveh – The Qayyarah air base, which the Iraqi forces hoped to use as a staging area to take Mosul back from ISIS, was almost completely destroyed by the retreating ISIS militants, raising new doubts over whether the long-awaited operation will begin this year or not.

Iraqi army commanders stationed at the base said that it will take months of reconstruction before it is ready to receive cargo planes and house the tens of thousands of troops needed for the march on Mosul.

Col. Karim Rodan Salim said, “ISIS began destroying Qayyarah base from the moment they took it over, no less than 95 percent of the base has been destroyed,” adding that, “What we see here was an organized destruction but we were expecting it, ISIS never leaves anything behind.”

“It will take at least six months of rebuilding before the base is ready for the 50,000 troops that will be needed to retake Mosul,” Salim added.

ISIS captured Qayyarah air base in 2014, when it swept across much of northern and western Iraq and drove Iraqi troops out of Mosul.

The coalition hopes to transform the base into a logistics center ahead of the Mosul operation. The Pentagon announced earlier this month that about 400 soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division will deploy to Iraq as part of that effort.

Meanwhile, US commander of coalition land forces in Iraq Major General Gary Volesky said, “The seizure of this base is important because it demonstrates the Iraqi security forces’ ability to maintain momentum as ISIS gets weaker and continues to lose territory.”

ISIS has retreated from areas around Mosul in recent days, including the nearby city of Qayyarah, but it has sabotaged infrastructure on its way out, leaving behind a destruction that in the short-term is hindering further advances by Iraqi forces and in the long-term will require great reconstruction effort.

DOJ, Civil Rights Division on Ferguson, Baltimore etc.

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DOJ Civil Rights Chief Links Local Distrust of Police to ‘Unconstitutional’ Tactics

Law: The chief of the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division told more than 200 lawyers and community activists at an Atlanta symposium Tuesday at Georgia State University that she and her Justice Department colleagues in Washington and across the nation “see a very clear link” between the criminalization of poverty by law enforcement authorities and the growing distrust of police and the government by the public.

Civil rights chief Vanita Gupta’s comments on law enforcement tactics came just hours before unrest erupted in Charlotte over the latest police shooting of an African-American man, Keith Lamont Scott. A second African-American man, Terence Crutcher, was also shot by police, in Tulsa, on Friday.

“Unconstitutional policing undermines community trust,” Gupta said. “Blanket assumptions and stereotypes about certain neighborhoods and certain communities can lead residents to see the justice system as illegitimate and authorities as corrupt. Those perceptions can drive resentment. And resentment can prevent the type of effective policing needed to keep communities and officers safe.”

Gupta noted that in Baltimore, the city’s African-American residents, concentrated in two small districts that accounted for just 11 percent of the city’s population, represented an estimated 44 percent of police stops. There, as well as in Ferguson, Missouri, where a white police officer shot and killed an unarmed 16-year-old African-American teen in 2014, Gupta said Justice Department staff saw a trend toward criminalizing the poor coupled with a focus on policing in order to generate revenue. That strategy, Gupta said, “resulted in a system where the police department and municipal court advanced policies that broke the law.”

Gupta said at the symposium that more than 60 percent of all inmates in county jails across the nation are defendants awaiting trial. Many of them, she said, “have committed nonviolent offenses and are there because they cannot pay bail.” Those practices “translate into devastating consequences—for individuals, communities and society as a whole,” she said. For people living on the financial edge, an arrest or a fine can cost a defendant his or her job, family, children, home and health care, trapping “the most vulnerable among us in perpetual cycles of poverty, debt and incarceration,” Gupta said. That, in turn, “undermines the legitimacy of our justice system,” she added. “It threatens the integrity of our democracy.”

She said the division also found when people living in poverty could not pay the court’s fines and fees, “they were subjected to multiple arrests, jail time and payments that far exceeded the cost of the original ticket.”

The seminar was sponsored by the Southern Center for Human Rights, which has filed lawsuits across Georgia challenging practices by counties and municipalities, and the private probation companies many of them have retained, that incarcerate misdemeanor defendants because they have no money to pay their fines or post a bond.

The Civil Rights Division has brought its considerable weight to two of those Georgia cases. Last month, Gupta joined with the U.S. attorney in Atlanta and the American Bar Association to ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit to affirm a trial court ruling on behalf of indigent misdemeanor defendants who had faced jail because they could not afford to post a bond.

Seems Gupta is traveling the country hosted several seminar essentially broadcasting variations of a DoJ mission as noted here: DOJ Official: Slavery to Blame for Riots in Ferguson and Baltimore

Need more on Gupta and Loretta Lynch at the DoJ?

CJR: Top Justice Department officials, including Attorney General Loretta Lynch, have worked with an organization dedicated to interfering with law enforcement efforts to monitor activities at the most radical mosques.

Lynch and DOJ Civil Rights Division head Vanita Gupta have appeared at gala events for an organization called Muslim Advocates. The George Soros-funded charity has badgered the New York City Police Department away from monitoring the most radical mosques in the city.

Civil Rights Division head Gupta appeared at the sold-out annual gala event for Muslim Advocates in Millbrae, California. Muslim Advocates lobbies the administration heavily to oppose any link between terrorist acts and radical Islam, and opposes monitoring of radical mosques. Gupta told the crowd:

To anyone who feels afraid, targeted, or discriminated against because of which religion you practice or where you worship, I want to say this — we see you. We hear you. And we stand with you. If you ever feel that somehow you don’t belong, or don’t fit in, here in America, let me reassure you  you belong.

Muslim Advocates also conducts recruitment and training for lawyers designed to help FBI terrorist targets and interviewees navigate the interviews. Their annual report states:

Throughout the year we grew our internal volunteer referral list for FBI interviews. Today, the list is over 130 lawyers nationwide who are ready and able to assist community members contacted by the FBI.

The purported non-partisan tax exempt 501(c)(3) charity is conducting a campaign against corporations like Coca-Cola to hector them into not sponsoring the Republican convention in Cleveland.

Muslim Advocates gave Vanita Gupta their Thurgood Marshall Award “for her commitment to criminal justice reform and to holding perpetrators of anti-Muslim hate accountable” at the California gala. Read more here.

Sheik Anwar and Yaafghankid78, the NY/NJ Bomber

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The full criminal complaint by the FBI on Federal charges for Ahmad Khan Rahami is here.

Ahmad kept a journal and it was on his body when he was wounded in a shooting exchange with police near his home.

Much of the references in this journal are to Anwar al Alawki who was an American born cleric and major target for the Obama administration to begin the defeat of al Qaeda. He was in fact killed in a drone strike in Yemen. Major Nadal Hassan, the Ft. Hood killer was also a devoted follower of al Alawki.

This journal does have a very small reference to Islamic State, however Rahami was radicalized during one of his last trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan where the Taliban and al Qaeda maintain a foothold of power. Islamic State on the days of the bombings in New York and New Jersey did not claim any connection however they did to the knife attack in St. Cloud, Minnesota.

 There was immediate chatter and concern that there was a functioning terror cell in that does appear to be the case in some form. Rahami did not act alone. The FBI has published a wanted poster for 2 other individuals.

Rahami’s father brought the family to the United States under asylum conditions and there have been several legal cases with members of the family with law enforcement. Ahmad has a first wife (Dominican) and a daughter and he is known to have married a second wife in Afghanistan and has a child with her. The second wife was returning to the United States and was detained by the FBI in the United Arab Emrites. Ahmad’s father wanted his 8 children to remain loyal to their heritage and such has been the case at least for some. One son moved back to the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan and the father in fact himself was part of the mujahedeen as a fighter against the Soviets as did Usama bin Ladin.

Not only has the father travel back to Afghanistan but the son, Ahmad did so more than once.

Rahami, 28, spent several weeks in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and Quetta, Pakistan, in 2011, according to a law enforcement official who reviewed his travel and immigration record.

Two years later, in April 2013, he went to Pakistan and remained there until March 2014 before returning to the US, official said.

 

So, how did the FBI and DHS miss all the signals?

In part from Vocativ: The [FBI] should have launched a formal surveillance investigation as Rahami clearly followed a path towards radicalization and mobilization over the past two years,” said Nicholas Glavin, a senior research associate at the U.S. Naval War College.

Tracking all potential terror threats, however, is not easy. The FBI claims it already has more than 1,000 active Islamic State probes alone, which does not include investigations related to other Islamist groups. And Rahami is by no means the only terror suspect to avoid detection. Analysts who spoke with Vocativ noted that Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez, the man who killed four marines at a pair of Tennessee military sites in July 2015, had not been monitored by the FBI. Neither had Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, the husband and wife who carried out the ISIS-inspired slaughter in San Bernardino, California, last year.

Even those known to law enforcement as would-be jihadists manage to conduct horrific attacks. The FBI had investigated Omar Mateen on two separate occasions before the Florida man executed 49 people and wounded 53 others during a shooting massacre at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando this summer.

“The U.S. has the most robust counterterrorism apparatus [in the world], yet it is already stretched thin,” Glavin said. FBI Director James Comey previously admitted that his agency has struggled to keep up with surveillance demands.

Experts also concede that there’s no predictable path toward radicalization, making it a persistent challenge to suss out extremists. Some studies have argued that a uniform profile of a “lone-wolf” terrorist does not exist. Peter Bergen, who has researched more than 300 jihadist terrorism cases in the U.S. since 9/11, told Vocativ that they lead largely normal lives.

Bergen’s data shows that four-fifths of these homegrown jihadists are U.S. citizens. They are no more likely to have criminal backgrounds than other Americans and are less likely to suffer from mental illness. Many of them attended college and are married.

“The big takeaway is that they’re ordinary Americans,” Bergen, who published the book The United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorist earlier this year, told Vocativ. Like most, Rahami was not a foreigner, a refugee or a recent immigrant.

Which presents a daunting challenge of its own. 

“We’ve created political culture where we want 100 percent success in stopping them,” Bergen said. “Unfortunately, that is not a realistic expectation.” 

 

How Obama Admin Hid the Cash Transfers to Iran

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The U.S. government wired about $848,000 to Iran in July 2015 in order to settle a dispute over fossils and architectural drawings that are now in Iranian possession, a spokesman from the Treasury Department said. This April, the U.S. also wired roughly $9 million to Iran in exchange for 32 tons of its excess heavy water, which could be used to make a plutonium bomb. Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Naqdi, commander of Iran’s Basij militia, said in January that the $400 million payment “was returned for the freedom of the US spy and it was not related to the [nuclear] negotiations.” More here in further detail.

(The heavy water was delivered to Oak Ridge Laboratories in August for domestic use and for sale to other customers including Spellation Neutron Source which is an accelerator operation. The total published cost to purchase Iran’s extra heavy water from the Iranian Arak facility is $8.6 million. It is unclear out of what agency budget this money was paid, including the Department of Defense or the Department of Energy.

Obama Admin ‘Laundered’ U.S. Cash to Iran Via N.Y. Fed, Euro Banks

Congressman: ‘Administration laundered this money in order to circumvent U.S. law’

FreeBeacon: A member of the House Intelligence Committee is accusing the Obama administration of laundering some $1.7 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars to Iran through a complicated network that included the New York Federal Reserve and several European banks, according to conversations with sources and new information obtained by the lawmaker and viewed by the Washington Free Beacon.

New disclosures made by the Treasury Department to Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.), a House Intelligence Committee member, show that an initial $400 million cash payment to Iran was wired to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) and then converted from U.S. dollars into Swiss francs and moved to an account at the Swiss National Bank, according to a copy of communication obtained exclusively by the Free Beacon.

Once the money was transferred to the Swiss Bank, the “FRBNY withdrew the funds from its account as Swiss franc banknotes and the U.S. Government physically transported them to Geneva” before personally overseeing the handover to an agent of Iran’s central bank, according to the documents.

These disclosures shine new light on how the Obama administration moved millions of dollars from U.S. accounts to European banks in order to facilitate three separate cash payments to Iran totaling $1.7 billion.

The latest information is adding fuel to accusations the Obama administration arranged the payment in this fashion to skirt U.S. sanctions laws and give Iran the money for the release of U.S. hostages, in what many have called a ransom.

Congress has been investigating the circumstances surrounding the payment for months and said the administration is blocking certain requests for more detailed information about the cash transaction with Iran.

“By withholding critical details and stonewalling congressional inquiries, President Obama seems to be hiding whether or not he and others broke U.S. law by sending $1.7 billion in cash to Iran,” Pompeo told the Free Beacon. “But Americans can plainly see that the Obama administration laundered this money in order to circumvent U.S. law and appease the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

As new details emerge, congressional critics such as Pompeo and Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) are beginning to suspect the U.S. government laundered the money in order to provide Tehran with immediate access.

“Think about this timeline: the U.S. withdraws $400 million in cash from the Swiss National Bank and then physically transports it to another city to hand-off to Iranian officials—three days before Iran releases four American hostages,” Pompeo said. “But it gets worse: less than a week after this, the U.S. again sends hordes of cash to Iran.  As we speak, Iran is still holding three more Americans hostage and I fear what precedent this administration has set.”

The initial $400 million payment to Iran was initiated on Jan. 14, 2016, according to information sent by the Treasury Department to Pompeo.

“For the first settlement payment in January, Treasury assisted the Defense Finance and Accounting Services (DFAS) in crafting a wire instruction to transfer the $400 million in principal from the Iran FMS [Foreign Military Sales program] account on January 14, 2016,” the document states.

“Treasury worked with DFAS and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY), which was acting as Treasury’s financial agent, so that the funds were converted from dollars to Swiss francs and credited to a FRBNY account at the Swiss National Bank (SNB), which is the central bank of the Switzerland [sic],” it adds.

The U.S. hostages were released shortly after Iran received this initial cash payment.

The additional $1.3 billion cash payment was facilitated by the Dutch Central Bank, which helped the United States transfer the money to an account before it was converted into euros.

The Dutch Bank “then disbursed the funds as euro banknotes in the Netherlands to an official from the Central Bank of Iran.”

The payment was broken down into two separate transactions that occurred on Jan. 22 and Feb. 5.

Senior administration officials maintain that the transaction was completely legal and not paid out as part of a ransom to Iran. These officials have said that cash was the “most reliable” method to ensure Iran received immediate access to the funds, as its banking system is still under sanctions.

Officials from the Treasury and Justice Departments would not respond to Free Beacon requests for comment about the exact type of legal approval given prior to the cash payment.

One congressional adviser who works closely on the Iran issue told the Free Beacon that the Obama administration appears to have involved multiple branches of the government in order to help conceal the cash payment to Iran.

“It looks as if the White House made just about every corner of the executive branch complicit in covering up the extent of its payments to Iran,” the source said. “Congress was already aggressively looking into payments involving the State, Treasury, and Energy Departments. Now it’s the Justice Department, too. We already know that top officials from Justice objected strongly to the ransom deal, but were overruled. Congress wants to know what happened and why.”

A senior congressional aide familiar with investigations regarding the matter told the Free Beacon that the administration continues to hide information from lawmakers about the cash payment.

“The American public and Members of Congress understand psychology—if the administration is hiding something, there is a reason.  President Obama, Secretary Kerry and others would like to pretend that their months of evasiveness and stonewalling regarding Iran are normal, but their behavior indicates otherwise” the source said. “Refusing to answer basic questions about millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars paid to the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism only invites more questions.”

Recent reports have raised questions about how much of this money may be spent to fund Iran’s international terror operations and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Lawmakers examining who in Iran assumed control of the money have told the Free Beacon that at least part of the cash was likely spent to fund the IRGC’s operations.