Author Archives: Denise Simon

Supreme Court Rejects Obama’s Appeal for Re-Hearing

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Primer: Donald Verrilli, the Department of Justice Solicitor General who argued these cases before the Supreme Court resigned in June. Verrilli successfully defended President Obama’s healthcare plan before the Supreme Court, is joining the Los Angeles law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson.

Supreme Court declines to hear immigration and Redskins cases

WaPo: The Supreme Court will not reconsider President Obama’s plan to shield undocumented immigrants from deportation and denied the Washington Redskins’ bid to get its trademark case on this term’s docket.

With oral arguments postponed for a day because of the Rosh Hashana Jewish holiday, the first Monday in October that marks the beginning of the new Supreme Court term became a day of rejection. The court issued a thick stack of cases that had accumulated over the summer that the justices decided not to hear.

Among the other losers: the NCAA, which had asked the court to review an appeals court ruling about its policies involving the amateur status of college football and basketball players. The issue remains alive in other court proceedings.

[Deadlocked Supreme Court won’t revive Obama immigration plan]

The administration’s request was a longshot bid to salvage what had been the biggest legal defeat of Obama’s presidency. In June, a deadlocked court failed to revive his stalled plan to shield millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation and give them the right to work legally in the United States.

The justices’ votes at the time were not announced, but the court’s liberals and conservatives were split at oral argument last spring. The tie meant that a lower court’s decision that Obama probably exceeded his powers in issuing the executive action kept the plan from being implemented.

The court’s action affected about 4 million illegal immigrants estimated to be covered by Obama’s plan, which would have deferred deportation for those who have been in the country since 2010, have not committed any serious crimes and have family ties to U.S. citizens or others lawfully in the country.

The Supreme Court rarely grants motions for rehearing. But the administration’s lawyers made the request in hopes that by now the vacancy created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia would be filled.

Instead, Senate Republicans have blocked consideration of Obama’s nominee to the court, appeals court judge Merrick Garland. They say the next president should fill the election-year opening.

This immigration case is the matter where the Judge ordered Department of Justice lawyers to attend an ethics class.

JonathanTurley: United States District Judge Andrew Hanen issued a remarkable opinion yesterday that found that Justice Department lawyers not only lied to him and opposing counsel but “it is hard to imagine a more serious, more calculated plan of unethical conduct.” What is even more remarkable however is that, after finding such calculated and unethical conduct, Hanen ordered the lawyers to simply take ethics classes rather than refer them to the bar for suspension or disbarment. Many attorneys object that government lawyers routinely escape serious punishment for false or misleading statements. In this case, the judge found that the Justice Department misled him and opposing counsel in a case by Texas and 25 other states that sought to block President Barack Obama’s controversial immigration programs. Hansen blocked the program. Notably, the Justice Department is even opposing ethical classes as a sanction.

The government misled the court on when the government would begin implementing one of the programs. The Justice Department team assured the court the government would not start implementing an expansion of a program called the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals until February 18, 2015. The court and opposing counsel relied on that date even though the government implemented a part of the program before February and granted over 100,000 applications. Hansen found that the “Justice Department lawyers knew the true facts and misrepresented those facts.”

Apparently, lawyers, somewhere in the halls of the Justice Department whose identities are unknown to this Court, decided unilaterally that the conduct of the DHS in granting three-year DACA renewals . . . was immaterial and irrelevant to this lawsuit and that the DOJ could therefore just ignore it. Then, for whatever reason, the Justice Department trial lawyers appearing in this Court chose not to tell the truth about this DHS activity. The first decision was certainly unsupportable, but the subsequent decision to hide it from the Court was unethical.

In an effort to convey how unethical the Justice Department acted in the case, Hanen even excerpted a portion of the film “Miracle on 34th Street” when a young Tommy Mara Jr. says “Gosh, everybody knows you shouldn’t tell a lie, especially in court.” Judge Hanen noted “There are certain attorneys in the Justice Department who apparently have not received that message.”

Here is the opinion: Immigration Decision.

Russia v. United States: It is Getting Colder as Russia Destroys Aleppo

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John Kerry announces the bi-lateral talks are over.

Russia’s response:

Указ Президента Российской Федерации от 03.10.2016 № 511 “О приостановлении Российской Федерацией действия Соглашения между Правительством Российской Федерации и Правительством Соединенных Штатов Америки об утилизации плутония, заявленного как плутоний, не являющийся более необходимым для целей обороны, обращению с ним и сотрудничеству в этой области и протоколов к этому Соглашению”

Translation: Decree of the President of the Russian Federation from 03.10.2016 # 511 “on the suspension by the Russian Federation Agreement between the Government of the Russian Federation and the Government of the United States of America on the disposition of plutonium designated as no longer required for defence purposes, and cooperation in this area and the protocols to this agreement”

If you can read Russian, the document is here.

This was signed in 2010 between Hillary Clinton and Sergei Lavrov.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday suspended an agreement with the United States for disposal of weapons-grade plutonium because of “unfriendly” acts by Washington, the Kremlin said.

A Kremlin spokesman said Putin had signed a decree suspending the 2010 agreement under which each side committed to destroy tonnes of weapons-grade material because Washington had not been implementing it and because of current tensions in relations.

The two former Cold War adversaries are at loggerheads over a raft of issues including Ukraine, where Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and supports pro-Moscow separatists, and the conflict in Syria.

The deal, signed in 2000 but which did not come into force until 2010, was being suspended due to “the emergence of a threat to strategic stability and as a result of unfriendly actions by the United States of America towards the Russian Federation”, the preamble to the decree said.

It also said that Washington had failed “to ensure the implementation of its obligations to utilize surplus weapons-grade plutonium”.

The 2010 agreement, signed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, called on each side to dispose of 34 tonnes of plutonium by burning in nuclear reactors.

Clinton said at the time that that was enough material to make almost 17,000 nuclear weapons. Both sides then viewed the deal as a sign of increased cooperation between the two former adversaries toward a joint goal of nuclear non-proliferation.

“For quite a long time, Russia had been implementing it (the agreement) unilaterally,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with journalists on Monday.

“Now, taking into account this tension (in relations) in general … the Russian side considers it impossible for the current state of things to last any longer.”

Ties between Moscow and Washington plunged to freezing point over Crimea and Russian support for separatists in eastern Ukraine after protests in Kiev toppled pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich.

Washington led a campaign to impose Western economic sanctions on Russia for its role in the Ukraine crisis.

Relations soured further last year when Russia deployed its warplanes to an air base in Syria to provide support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s troops fighting rebels.

The rift has widened in recent weeks, with Moscow accusing Washington of not delivering on its promise to separate units of moderate Syrian opposition from “terrorists”.

Huge cost overruns have also long been another threat to the project originally estimated at a total of $5.7 billion.

Meanwhile what Russia is doing to Aleppo is beyond the definition of war crimes.

NBCNews: Russian-made cluster bombs — weapons that kill indiscriminately and inflict long-lasting damage — were used in an attack on at least one hospital in the ravaged Syrian city of Aleppo last week, a video obtained by NBC News appears to show.

The video shows two unexploded submunitions amid the rubble at the M10 hospital in rebel-held eastern Aleppo following a morning airstrike on Sept. 28. Several experts and sources independently identified the devices as Russian-made ShOAB 0.5 cluster submunitions, bomblets delivered by an air-delivered scattering device called the RBK-500. Both are known to be used by both the Russian and Syrian air forces.

However, it is difficult, even for specialists in unexploded ordnance disposal, to definitively identify such munitions in the field. The ShOAB 0.5 is visually similar to a U.S.-made series of bomblets.

Image: Medics inspect the damage outside a field hospital after an airstrike in the rebel-held al-Maadi neighbourhood of Aleppo

Medics inspect the damage outside a field hospital after an airstrike in the rebel-held al-Maadi neighbourhood of Aleppo, Syria on Sept. 28, 2016. ABDALRHMAN ISMAIL / Reuters

The use of cluster bombs on the hospital — part of a larger series of strikes that also hit a second hospital and a nearby bakery — underscores the relentless brutality of Syria’s civil war, which lurched back into violence last month after the disintegration of a brief cease-fire. The casualties include hundreds of children killed or injured in Aleppo by a myriad of weapons falling on the city.

The hospitals were among the few facilities that remained to treat the hundreds of thousands of civilians caught up in the brutal new government offensive on eastern Aleppo. It is not clear whether the second hospital, called M2, was hit with cluster bombs.

NBC News visited both hospitals and spoke to medical staff there. Among the patients at M2 was a prematurely born infant struggling to survive: Miriam, born on Sept. 10 when her mother, seven months pregnant, went into labor during the airstrike.

“These kids are innocent, and they came into this world under very difficult circumstances, they came into this world during a war,” said Um Mohammad, the nurse who had been tending the children and infants in the hospital. Um Mohammad is a pseudonym, meaning “mother of Mohammad.”

At M2, the attack started at about 4:00 a.m., according to Dr. Mohammad Abu Rajab, a physician at the hospital who uses a pseudonym to avoid reprisals for his work in opposition-controlled areas.

“This has resulted in the hospital being taken out of service completely and indefinitely,” Abu Rajab said. “This was systematic and direct targeting of this hospital, which was home to pediatric and women’s health specialists.” A must read of the rest of the article here.

Obama Admin Admits No Plan B for Syria

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Reuters: The United States called the assault on Aleppo by Syria and Russia “a gift” to Islamic State on Thursday, saying it was sowing doom and would generate more recruits for the militant group.

Moscow vowed to press on with its offensive in Syria, while U.S. officials searched for a tougher response to Russia’s decision to ignore the peace process and seek a military victory on behalf of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

United Nations aid chief Stephen O’Brien urged the 15-member U.N. Security Council to stop “tolerating the utter disregard for the most basic provisions of international humanitarian law.”

The sanctions program on Syria began in earnest under the Bush administration yet given the enormous death count and destruction, the last sanctions order by Barack Obama was:

On May 1, 2012, the President issued E.O. 13608 pursuant to, inter alia, IEEPA
and the NEA, finding that efforts by foreign persons to engage in activities
intended to evade U.S. economic and financial sanctions with respect to Syria
and Iran undermine United States efforts to address the national emergencies
declared in E.O. 13338, E.O. 12957, E.O. 12938, and E.O. 13224, and taking
additional steps pursuant to those national emergencies.

Given the violations, espionage aggressions and proven hacking by Russia, the Obama administration has not signed new sanctions on Russia. The most recent were those imposed during the Russia/Ukraine hostilities. So it stands to reason, there is no Plan B as noted below.

   

An Obama administration official painfully struggled to explain the ‘Plan B’ for Syria

A senior Obama administration official stumbled Thursday when pressed on the US plan to deal with the crisis in Syria, appearing unable to provide details about what comes next after a failed ceasefire.

BusinessInsider: Sen. Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee and the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, repeatedly pressed Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken during a committee hearing.

The US has been searching for a way to help resolve a five-year civil war between the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and rebel groups that has caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians and led to the proliferation of extremist groups like ISIS inside the country. But a ceasefire deal brokered with Russia earlier this month fell apart.

“I’d like to understand what Plan B is,” Corker said. “The mysterious Plan B that has been referred to since February, the mysterious Plan B that was supposed to be leverage to get Russia to quit killing innocent people, to get Assad to quit killing innocent people. Just explain to us the elements of Plan B.”

Blinken seemed unsure of the specifics of the so-called Plan B.

“In the first instance, Plan B is the consequence of the failure as a result of Russia’s actions of Plan A,” he said. “In that, what is likely to happen now is if the agreement cannot be followed through on and Russia reneges totally on its commitments, which it appears to have done, is this is going, of course, to be bad for everyone, but it’s going to be bad first and foremost…”

Corker cut him off, asking for more specifics.

“I want to hear about Plan B,” Corker said. “I understand all the context here.”

Blinken pressed on.

“I think, sir, this is important because Russia has a profound incentive in trying to make this work,” Blinken said. “It can’t win in Syria. It can only prevent Assad from losing. If this now gets to the point where the civil war actually accelerates, all of the outside patrons are going to throw in more and more weaponry against Russia. Russia will be left propping up Assad in an ever-smaller piece of Syria under constant assault…”

Corker cut in again.

“I understand that,” he said. “What is Plan B? Give me the elements of Plan B.”

Blinken tried again, but was still vague on details.

“Again, the consequences I think to Russia as well as to the regime will begin to be felt as a result of Plan A not being implemented because of Russia’s actions,” Blinken said. “Second, as I indicated, the president has asked all of the agencies to put forward options, some familiar, some new, that we are very actively reviewing. When we are able to work through these in the days ahead, we will have an opportunity to come back and talk about them in detail.”

Corker didn’t seem satisfied.

“OK, so let me just say what we already know,” he said. “There is no Plan B.”

This is a familiar criticism of the Obama administration’s Syria policy.

Mutasem Alsyofi of the Syrian Civil Society Declaration Initiative said in a statement last week that Secretary of State John Kerry wasn’t able to articulate a coherent plan for Syria when he met with a Syrian delegation in New York City.

“Kerry’s plan is to do more of the same — despite the repeated failure of US attempts to strike a deal with Russia,” Alsyofi said. “Syrians need a clear guarantee that the continued killing of civilians will be met with action to protect civilians. We do not need further failed agreements with Russia.”

The US recently worked with Russia to implement a ceasefire between the Assad regime and rebels in Syria, excluding extremist groups. But the deal — referred to as “Plan A” during Blinken’s testimony — fell apart before it was seen through to completion.

The Wall Street Journal reported on the administration’s “Plan B” for Syria earlier this year, citing unnamed US officials who described a covert operation to provide moderate rebels with more powerful weapons. Blinken did not mention such a program during his testimony.

Syrian opposition alliance enlists former Rep. Kingston

Sept. 30, 2016

An alliance of moderate Syrian political and military groups has enlisted Squire Patton Boggs lobbyists, including former Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), for advocacy support, according to a new lobbying disclosure.

The High Negotiations Committee of the Syrian Opposition, which released a new transition plan for the country earlier this month, is supported by numerous Western and Middle Eastern countries, including Turkey. The HNC reportedly excludes Syrian Kurds, who have exchanged blows with Turkey in recent years.

In addition to the end of the Assad regime, the coalition is reportedly working toward democratic elections, free press and a new constitution, among other issues.

Obamacare Proven Fraud and Single Payer

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(Washington, D.C.) – Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) expressed exasperation after the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released the final results of its 2015 undercover tests on the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) fraud prevention capabilities.  Amid naïve proclamations by President Obama that the ACA is “working exactly as it’s supposed to,” the GAO report reveals the sad reality that this law is uniquely prone to fraud and taxpayers have good reasons to worry.

GAO began “secret shopper” investigations in 2014 to test whether or not the federal healthcare exchange (marketplace) and select state marketplaces were able to detect and prevent falsified applications for subsidized health coverage from being accepted.  Those tests found that 11 of 12 fictitious identities received coverage and after a call to the marketplace in 2015, 10 of those 11 were re-enrolled for the following coverage year.

On September 12, 2016, GAO released the final results of its 2015 testing, which covered the federal marketplace and state exchanges in California, Kentucky, and North Dakota.  The results were similarly jarring.

All 10 fictitious identities that applied for taxpayer subsidies were approved, even after eight of the 10 failed the preliminary identity check.  Investigators were able to obtain subsidies after they provided false proof of income, documentation of citizenship, and Social Security numbers that began with zeroes.  The federal exchange made no effort to validate that information.  GAO also created fake applicants for Medicaid coverage, and the results were not much better:  seven of the eight fictitious applicants were approved for subsidized coverage.

Perhaps the most distressing revelation in this report is the following admission from federal and state marketplace officials:  “The marketplace or Medicaid offices only inspect for supporting documentation that has obviously been altered.  Thus, if the documentation submitted does not show such signs, it would not be questioned for authenticity.”

CAGW President Tom Schatz said, “The Congressional Budget Office estimates that subsidized health coverage through Obamacare will cost taxpayers $866 billion over the next ten years.  The fact that there is still no reliable system in place to prevent rampant fraud is a bad omen for taxpayers.  This damning report provides further justification for this flawed law to be completely overhauled and replaced.”

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.

**** Heading to Single Payer:

In part from The Hill:

The McKinsey Center for U.S. Health System Reform, which studies the ACA and its implications, showed in an Aug. 18 analysis that the percentage of counties in the U.S. with five or more participating insurance carriers remaining in the exchanges will likely shrink from 51 percent in 2016 to 31 percent in 2017, and the number of counties having only one carrier participating will likely grow from 2 percent in 2016 to 17 percent in 2017. Pinal County in Arizona found out in August that it will have no insurance carriers participating in ObamaCare exchanges in 2017.

This massive insurer exodus from Obamacare markets not only creates a shrinking pool of competition and narrower networks, but could also be setting the stage for something far more devastating: the inevitable push for a single-payer or public option to either be added to, or replace, ObamaCare.

In an Aug. 2 Journal of the American Medical Association article, President Obama, despite the overwhelming evidence that heavy-handed government control has not worked to make quality healthcare more affordable, called for adding a public option; more tax dollars to prop up the exchanges; more government bureaucrats and politicians making decisions on how healthcare is delivered to our nation’s citizens; and pharmaceutical price controls, which would destroy research and development and deny patients access to promising new therapies.

One need only to look at the Veterans Administration to understand what a government-run, single-payer healthcare system looks like. Horror stories of long waits for treatment, bureaucratic inertia, fraud, incompetence, cover-ups and politics abound.

Others in favor of a complete government takeover demand “Medicare for all,” also a single-payer system, ignoring the fact that on its current trajectory, the Medicare trust fund will be depleted in 2028, two years earlier than projected in 2015. Only massive tax hikes, budget cuts to other government programs, or more borrowing will save it.

These pro-single payer zealots want to emulate the disastrous single-payer systems adopted in other countries, where program costs exceeded expectations and rose faster than predicted, price controls were enacted, rationing became necessary and higher taxes were imposed to cover ballooning costs. Indeed, they are pushing hard for the United States to replicate these failed policies on an even grander scale.

They are ignoring the results so far of ObamaCare: numerous co-op failures costing billions of dollars, skyrocketing premiums and crippling deductibles across the country. With a slew of insurers exiting the ObamaCare exchanges, the nation’s healthcare system is now even more perplexing and costly.

With about two months left until the presidential election, it is time to start thinking critically about healthcare and why moving toward a propped-up ObamaCare or adopting a single-payer approach are not the answers to fixing the country’s broken healthcare system.

Creating an environment where a true market-based system can flourish and in which the purchasing power and healthcare decision-making stands with consumers, not with Washington politicians and bureaucrats, is the way to go.

Schatz is president of Citizens Against Government Waste.

 

US lifted Sanctions on Iran Banks as Part of Prisoner Release

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The White House published document on the Iran deal including those alleged ‘snapback’ sanctions, which will never happen. Given the huge infusion of cash into Iran, their economy and infrastructure will become more harden to any actions or damage future sanctions as is the objective, including snapback sanctions.

U.S. Signed Secret Document to Lift U.N. Sanctions on Iranian Banks

Administration backed measures on the same day Tehran released four American citizens from prison

WSJ: WASHINGTON—The Obama administration agreed to back the lifting of United Nations sanctions on two Iranian state banks blacklisted for financing Iran’s ballistic-missile program on the same day in January that Tehran released four American citizens from prison, according to U.S. officials and congressional staff briefed on the deliberations.

The U.N. sanctions on the two banks weren’t initially to be lifted until 2023, under a landmark nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers that went into effect on Jan. 16.

The U.N. Security Council’s delisting of the two banks, Bank Sepah and Bank Sepah International, was part of a package of tightly scripted agreements—the others were a controversial prisoner swap and transfer of $1.7 billion in cash to Iran—that were finalized between the U.S. and Iran on Jan. 17, the day the Americans were freed.

Brett McGurk, a senior State Department official, signed three documents with a representative of the Iranian government in Geneva on the morning of Jan. 17 that set out commitments for a prisoner swap, a cash transfer to Iran and the delisting of sanctions on two Iranian banks, according to senior U.S. officials.  Brett McGurk, a senior State Department official, signed three documents with a representative of the Iranian government in Geneva on the morning of Jan. 17 that set out commitments for a prisoner swap, a cash transfer to Iran and the delisting of sanctions on two Iranian banks, according to senior U.S. officials. Photo: mandel ngan/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

The new details of the delisting have emerged after administration officials briefed lawmakers earlier this month on the U.S. decision.

According to senior U.S. officials, a senior State Department official, Brett McGurk, and a representative of the Iranian government signed three documents in Geneva on the morning of Jan. 17.

One document committed the U.S. to dropping criminal charges against 21 Iranian nationals, and Tehran to releasing the Americans imprisoned in Iran.

Another committed the U.S. to immediately transfer $400 million in cash to the Iranian regime and arrange the delivery within weeks of two subsequent cash payments totaling $1.3 billion to settle a decades-old legal dispute over a failed arms deal.

The U.S. agreed in a third document to support the immediate delisting of the two Iranian banks, according to senior U.S. officials. In the hours after the documents were signed at a Swiss hotel, the different elements of the agreement went forward: The Americans were released, Iran took possession of the $400 million in cash, and the U.N. Security Council removed sanctions on Bank Sepah and Bank Sepah International, these officials said.

“Lifting the sanctions on Sepah was part of the package,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on the deliberations. “The timing of all this isn’t coincidental. Everything was linked to some degree.”

A documentary published by Tasnim News Agency, an Iranian media outlet affiliated with the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, claimed in February that Iranian government officials had demanded that Sepah be taken off the sanctions list as part of a deal to release the prisoners.

The Obama administration, under the nuclear deal reached in July 2015, agreed to lift Treasury Department sanctions on Bank Sepah, but U.N. penalties were to remain in place for eight years.

But after the nuclear deal was forged, U.S. officials said, there was a continued dialogue with Iran about the status of the two banks before the deal went into effect in January.

Tehran argued that the banks were critical to the country’s economy and international trade. Bank Sepah is Iran’s oldest bank and one of its three largest in terms of assets. Bank Sepah International, based in London, was key to financing Iran’s international trade before sanctions were imposed.

U.S. officials said there was a desire in Washington to harmonize the U.N. sanctions list with the U.S.’s. And they said Washington believed Iran had earned more sanctions relief because Tehran had been implementing the terms of the nuclear agreement, which called for a major scaling back of its infrastructure and production of nuclear fuel.

“The issue of Bank Sepah has been one of many topics we discussed with Iran in our overall diplomatic discussions,” said a second senior administration official briefed on the deliberations.

Another senior administration official said lifting sanctions on Bank Sepah and its London affiliate was in the spirit of the commitment by the U.S. and other world powers to provide Iran with sanctions relief.

Administration critics and some congressional officials said they believed the move broke the commitments the administration made to Congress about the deal.

The Obama administration had told Congress that under the deal the U.S. would lift sanctions only on companies and individuals tied to Iran’s nuclear development. Sanctions on those involved in missile development were to remain in place, these critics said.

The Obama administration has repeatedly said it is committed to rolling back Iran’s ballistic missile program.

“By agreeing to remove U.N. and EU sanctions eight years early on Iran’s main missile financing bank, the administration effectively greenlighted their nuclear warhead-capable ballistic missile program,” said Mark Dubowitz, a top critic of the Iran nuclear deal at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank.

The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Bank Sepah, Bank Sepah International and its then-chairman in 2007 for their alleged role in backing Iran’s missile program. The designation didn’t mention what direct role the entities allegedly played in helping Iran’s nuclear program.

At the time, the Treasury said that Bank Sepah and Bank Sepah International had provided financial support to Iranian-state owned companies and organizations developing Iran’s missile program. These included Iran’s Aerospace Industries Organization and the Shahid Hemmat Industries Group.

“Bank Sepah is the financial linchpin of Iran’s missile procurement network and has actively assisted Iran’s pursuit of missiles capable of carrying weapons of mass destruction,” the Treasury said in a January 2007 statement.

Iran has conducted up to 10 ballistic missile tests since the forging of the nuclear agreement in July 2015. The U.N. Security Council has condemned Tehran’s actions but hasn’t moved to impose any new sanctions on the country.In March, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on two Iranian companies it said were working with Shahid Hemmat Industries.

U.S. officials said the Obama administration closely vetted the activities of all individuals and entities tied to Bank Sepah before supporting the lifting of U.S. and U.N. sanctions.

“We have the ability to quickly reimpose U.S. sanctions if Bank Sepah or any other entity engages in activities that remain sanctionable,” said the second senior U.S. official.

The Obama administration’s decision to send such large amounts of cash to Iran has fueled charges in Congress that the White House paid ransom to Tehran to secure the release of the American prisoners. The White House has repeatedly denied the charge, saying the $1.7 billion settlement saved the U.S. as much as $8 billion that it could have owed Iran if it lost, as was expected, a court proceeding that was taking place in The Hague, Netherlands. The administration has said the cash was used as “leverage” to make sure the American prisoners were released.

The dispute in Washington has only deepened in recent weeks, as senior Pentagon officials, including Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, told Congress in a hearing that they weren’t notified by the White House about the cash transfer. The chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff, Marine Gen. Joe Dunford, said at a hearing last week that he found it “troubling” that the U.S. provided Tehran with so much cash, which he argued could be used for “spreading malign influence.”