Category Archives: Middle East

Obama Lifting 14 Red Notices, Part of Iran Deal, Good for Assad

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Prisoner Swap May Help Iran Arm Assad

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Bloomberg: In exchange for the release of four American prisoners, the Barack Obama administration agreed to free seven Iranians in U.S. custody and stop trying to arrest 14 others, two of whom the U.S. government had accused of  funneling weapons to the Bashar al-Assad regime and Hezbollah in Syria.

For years, Iran’s privately-owned Mahan Air has been using its planes to bring soldiers and arms directly to the Syrian military and the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah by flying them from Tehran to Damascus, according to the U.S. Treasury Department. In 2013, Treasury sanctioned Mahan’s managing director, Hamid Arabnejad, for overseeing the company’s efforts to evade U.S. and international sanctions and aiding the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ elite Quds Force.

“Arabnejad has a close working relationship with IRGC-QF personnel and coordinates Mahan Air’s support and services to the paramilitary group,” the Treasury Department said. “He has also been instrumental in facilitating the shipment of illicit cargo to Syria on Mahan Air aircraft.”

According to the Iranian state media organization FARS, Arabnejad is one of the 14 Iranians who no longer will have Interpol red notices out on them, which are meant to ensure their arrest and extradition to the U.S. on charges that will now also be dropped. The executive order he is sanctioned under is for support for terrorism. In 2011, the U.S. sanctioned the entire airline for ferrying personnel and arms for the Revolutionary Guards Corps and Hezbollah, which it officially considers a terrorist organization. The White House declined my request for comment on whether Arabnejad was among the de-listed Iranians, but did not dispute the 14 names on the FARS list.

Mahan Air is “yet another facet of the IRGC’s extensive infiltration of Iran’s commercial sector to facilitate its support for terrorism,” the Treasury’s under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, David Cohen, told Bloomberg News at the time.

A 2012 press release from the Treasury says, “Iran used Iran Air and Mahan Air flights between Tehran and Damascus to send military and crowd control equipment to the Syrian regime.” Hezbollah and the Assad government coordinate with Mahan Air during their attacks on Syrian civilians and opposition groups, the Treasury Department said.

According to the Iranian news service, another Iranian who will no longer have to look over his shoulder when traveling around the world is Gholamreza Mahmoudi, also a top official at Manar Air. When Treasury sanctioned Mahmoudi in 2012, it said he worked closely with Arabnejad to evade sanctions and purchase new aircraft.

Last May, as the Iranian nuclear deal was being finalized, Mahan Air was able to purchase nine used Airbus commercial airliners, taking advantage of a relaxation of sanctions that came with an interim agreement Iran struck with Western powers. Experts say that the new lifting of the Interpol “red notices” — essentially arrest warrants — on Arabnejad and Mahmoudi further reduces pressure on Mahan Air and, by extension, on the Assad regime and Hezbollah, even though their U.S. Treasury Department sanctions remain in place.

“The one big impediment for them to run their business abroad was the red notice, not the U.S. sanctions,” said Emanuele Ottolenghi, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank that has advocated tough sanctions on Iran. “Clearly it was not impossible for them to travel. The fact they are no longer on the red notice means that as long as they don’t try to come to the U.S., they will probably live their professional lives unencumbered.”

The lifting of the red notices also has a symbolic effect, he said, by telling countries and companies around the world that it’s OK to look the other way as Mahan Air helps the Assad regime and Hezbollah.

“These guys have been working day in and day out flying arms to Assad regime,” said Ottolenghi. “This is another signal that there will be no consequences for this airline and the crimes they are responsible for.”

A U.S. official told me Saturday that the U.S.  removed any Interpol red notices and dismissed any charges against 14 Iranians for whom it was assessed that extradition requests were unlikely to be successful.

President Obama spoke about the Iran prisoner swap Sunday and said none of the 7 released Iranians were charged with terrorism or any violent offenses. “They are civilians,” he said. But Obama didn’t mention the 14 who no longer have international arrest warrants, including the Mahan Air executives.

“We remain steadfast in opposing Iran’s destabilizing behavior elsewhere, including its threats against Israel and our gulf partners, and its support for violent proxies in places like Syria and Yemen,” Obama said.

The administration has repeatedly said that the Iran nuclear deal and the prisoner swap were separate events, pursued through parallel tracks of diplomacy. But there’s concern on Capitol Hill that the effort to stop the Revolutionary Guards Corps’ violent activities is suffering in the wake of the nuclear agreement.

“This flawed deal is only entrenching Iran’s military and security forces that run the country.  Now more than ever, we need a policy of backbone, not backing down,” House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Ed Royce said Saturday.

On the other hand, Treasury did go forward Sunday with sanctions on Iran’s ballistic missile program that had been delayed because of the prisoner negotiations.

The return of the American prisoners, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, is of course good news, and the Obama administration believes the costs of the trade were worth the benefits. But some of those costs could be felt by the Syrian people, who had no say in the trade, got nothing from it and are still begging for more international support to stop Assad’s slaughter of civilians.

*** Going back to 2007, there were clandestine flights from Caracas, Damascus and Tehran.

NYT’s CARACAS, Venezuela, March 2 — Iran is already Venezuela’s closest ally outside Latin America, with ventures to produce oil and build cars and tractors together. Now, travelers between the countries can also take a weekly flight between Caracas and Tehran.

The flight, which was inaugurated here on Friday and includes a stop in Damascus, Syria, is operated in a code-share agreement by the Venezuelan state-controlled airline Conviasa and Iran’s national carrier, Iran Air.

Officials at Conviasa said that the company would use a Boeing 747 on the route and that soon it would also make available a European-made Airbus 340.

Under President Hugo Chávez, Venezuela has tightened relations with Iran and expressed explicit support for its uranium enrichment program.

Mr. Chávez has also reached out to Syria, making plans to build a $1.5 billion oil refining complex there. He sees relations with Iran and Syria, both under United States sanctions, as a centerpiece of a foreign policy aimed at countering American influence around the world.

In 2010:

Mahan Air made its first flight to Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) today (January 28).

Iran’s second largest airline is offering twice weekly flights from Shiraz to Kuala Lumpur, using an Airbus A310-300, which has a seating capacity of 196.

*** Let us not forget that in circa 2000: In the hotel room of Yazid Sufaat, a former Malaysian Army captain and businessman, in a hotel in Kuala Lumpur. The meeting lasted from 5 January 2000 to 8 January 2000. The summit’s purpose was allegedly to plan future attacks, which apparently included the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole and the 11 September 2001 attack plot. The attendance consisted of Arab veterans of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, including Hambali, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Nawaf al-Hazmi, Khalid al-Mihdhar, and Tawfiq bin Attash.

And in March of 2015:

KUALA LUMPUR – Malaysian police have foiled an attempt by a terror cell of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to attack the Saudi Arabia and Qatar embassies in Kuala Lumpur with the arrest of two Iraqi nationals.

Sources said the two men were detained by intelligence officials at a shopping mall last Thursday.

“They were planning to attack the embassies on March 31 at the behest of IS,” a source told The Star last Saturday, using another name of ISIS.

Iran Implementation Day and Iran’s Connection to Islamic State

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The money to Iran is already moving.

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This is going to be a long read, but an important one such that history is included, details of diplomacy is included and described implications are described. Imagine what the next president of the United States will have to deal with, but more, imagine what Iran may do in the immediate coming months with $100 billion dollars, which by the way is bigger than Iran’s current economic value.

Iran Is More Deeply Tied to ISIS Than You Think

As the West continues to partner with Iran to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State, it is worth remembering that one of Iran’s highest-ranking terrorists was instrumental in founding Al-Qaeda, and that the split between Shia and Sunni jihadis is murky at best.

Iranian operative Imad Mughniyeh was instrumental in the training, development, and support of Hezbollah, Hamas, and al-Qaeda – and thus its offshoot, the Islamic State.

The power vacuum Mughniyeh created helped to further Iran’s geopolitical agenda. (This is a very long, detailed and important read, don’t miss the whole summary)

In part from the WSJ: The head of the Treasury Department’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence is in Europe to discuss joint counterterrorism finance efforts and where things stand with the global agreement on Iran’s nuclear program. Talks on the former will be straightforward enough, but the latter could get bumpy.

Over the past few months, investors from Europe and Asia have gone to Tehran in droves, searching for post-sanction deals and bolstering Iranian hopes that the lifting of international sanctions will draw significant investment. Some in Europe have described Iran “as ‘an El Dorado’ and potential ‘bonanza.’ ” The chief of Iran’s central bank has cited the country’s “unique geographical advantage,” its “sense of timeliness and discipline,” and “very good history of being a trade partner.” In October, he predicted that “Iran will be a very favored destination for many international investors.”

But Treasury officials bear mixed news: The U.S. is preparing to meet its commitments on sanctions relief tied to implementation of the nuclear deal. Still, many U.S. sanctions tied to Iran’s support for terrorism, human rights abuses, and other negative behaviors remain in place.

And within days of the Iranian central banker’s comments in October, the Financial Action Task Force, which sets global standards on countering money laundering and terrorist financing, issued another searing rebuke of Iran’s “strategic deficiencies.” Only Iran and North Korea, the task force said, present such “on-going and substantial money laundering and terrorist financing” risks that the international community should apply active “counter-measures” to protect the global financial system.

The task force said that as sanctions are being lifted under the nuclear agreement, it “remains particularly and exceptionally concerned about Iran’s failure to address the risk of terrorist financing and the serious threat this poses to the integrity of the international financial system.” It repeated its long-standing call for financial institutions to “give special attention to business relationships and transactions with Iran, including Iranian companies and financial institutions.” The full story is here.

From the White House:

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From the Treasury Department in part:

1/16/2016

​Implementation Day Statement:

On July 14, 2015, the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States), the European Union, and Iran reached a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) to ensure that Iran’s nuclear program will be exclusively peaceful.  October 18, 2015 marked Adoption Day of the JCPOA, the date on which the JCPOA came into effect and participants began taking steps necessary to implement their JCPOA commitments.  Today, January 16, 2016, marks Implementation Day of the JCPOA.  On this historic day, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has verified that Iran has implemented its key nuclear-related measures described in the JCPOA, and the Secretary State has confirmed the IAEA’s verification.  As a result of Iran verifiably meeting its nuclear commitments, the United States is today lifting nuclear-related sanctions on Iran, as described in the JCPOA.
In connection with reaching Implementation Day, today the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued several documents.  Specifically, OFAC posted to its website: Guidance Relating to the Lifting of Certain Sanctions Pursuant to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Implementation Day; Frequently Asked Questions Relating to the Lifting of Certain U.S. Sanctions Under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Implementation Day; General License H: Authorizing Certain Transactions relating to Foreign Entities Owned or Controlled by a United States Person; and a Statement of Licensing Policy for Activities Related to the Export or Re-Export to Iran of Commercial Passenger Aircraft and Related Parts and Services. The aforementioned documents are effective today, January 16, 2015.
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Political Challenges to the Iran Deal in Tehran and Washington

By Aniseh Bassiri Tabrizi and Timothy Stafford
The Iran deal remains at the mercy of a volatile and unpredictable political climate, both in Tehran and Washington. This could well overwhelm it in the coming year.

Ticking the Boxes: Tehran’s Road to ‘Implementation Day’

By Aniseh Bassiri Tabrizi
To make the deal successful, intensive co-ordination between domestic actors in Iran will be required to implement these highly technical processes.

The Devil is in the Detail: The Financial Risks to the Economic Success of the Iran Deal

By Emil Dall, Andrea Berger and Tom Keatinge
Over the last decade, the US and EU have constructed a complex network of sanctions in response to Iran’s nuclear programme, ensuring the near-total isolation of Iran from global markets. On ‘implementation day’, this network starts to be disassembled and reintegration begin.

Iran Implementation Day Recommendations

The signatories to the Iran nuclear deal should move to entrench processes that will enable the agreement to outlast the individuals that put it in place. By this time next year, a new US president will have been sworn in, and presidential elections in Iran will only be just months away. Time must be used wisely.

Senator Session’s Book on Immigration and Green Cards

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Under Barack Obama, the United Nations is also the headquarters of who can claim a new identity, that of an American. The same does for Europe, the world is one big global citizen, loyal to nothing and fully borderless.

Hat tip to Chuck and Daily Caller:

Jeff Sessions Releases Book Of Charts Putting Immigration And Green Card Issuances Into Shocking Perspective

Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions released a book of graphs and charts on Wednesday that helps put the U.S.’s relaxed immigration policies in shocking perspective.

“Record-breaking visa issuances propelling U.S. to immigration highs never before seen,” is the sub-title to the Republican immigration hawk’s “chart book.”

Sessions, who chairs the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, asserts that the federal government will legally add 10 million or more “new permanent immigrants over the next 10 years.”

He also cites polls showing that a “stark” majority of Americans want lawmakers to reduce immigration rates, not increase them. Polls from Gallup and Fox show that Americans support an immigration reduction to an increase by a 2-to-1 margin.

Sessions’s chart book is aimed at providing readers an easy-to-understand frame of reference for immigration flows and green card issuances, past and present.

In one chart, Sessions compares the number of green cards that will be issued in the next decade to the population of the first three presidential primary states — Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.

Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions "Chart Book"

Another chart entitled “Immigration Adds 1 New Los Angeles Every 3 Years,” which is based on U.S. Census Bureau statistics and population projections, shows that the 11.4 million immigrants will enter the U.S. over the next nine years. “Unless immigration reductions are enacted,” the immigration population will increase in size equal to the population of Los Angeles — 3.9 million — every three years, Sessions notes.

sessions2 The number of green card issuances that can be expected over the next decade is also the equivalent of the combined population of seven of the largest cities in the U.S., including Los Angeles, Chicago, and Dallas, St. Louis, Denver, Boston, and Atlanta, Sessions notes.

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Other charts include one which shows that the U.S.’s immigration population will grow to more than 700 percent of 1970 levels by 2060.

By then, the U.S. will have 78.2 million foreign-born residents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In 1970, that number was 9.6 million.

And another chart takes aim at immigration from majority-Muslim nations. The U.S. has issued 680,000 green cards to migrants from those nations in the last five years, reports Sessions, citing statistics from the Department of Homeland Security.

Sessions’s “chart book” also includes stats on welfare usage rates for Middle Eastern refugees. According to a 2013 report from the Office of Refugee Resettlement, 91.4 percent of refugees from the Middle East are on food stamps. Nearly 70 percent — 68.3 percent to be exact — receive cash welfare assistance.

Other charts compare the U.S.’s immigrant population to other nations’.

“America Has 10 Million More Foreign-Born Residents Than The Entire European Union” and “U.S. Has 6 Times More Migrants Than All Latin American Nations Combined” provide the numbers.

While the U.S. has 45.8 million residents who were born outside of the U.S., the entire European Union has 35 million, according to a United Nations database. That despite the fact that the combined population of EU countries is 60 percent larger than the population of the U.S.

 

 

 

 

The Stench: Clintons and Marc Rich, Still Stinks

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When it comes down to THAT server, Hillary and team used this private communications method to avoid FOIA and public disclosure. While there is a fire brewing about Hillary’s misuse of classified material, the larger scandal with major IRS implications is the clandestine operations of the Clinton Foundation and the international network of money and criminal players.

This is a saga and symptom of the Clintons, where it is almost impossible to determine the beginning, but certainly a saga that has no end, or does it?

Clintons keep making millions off pardon of criminal Marc Rich

By Peter Schweizer

  Clintons keep making millions off pardon of criminal Marc Rich

NYPost: Fifteen years ago this month, on Jan. 20, 2001, his last day in office, Bill Clinton issued a pardon for international fugitive Marc Rich. It would become perhaps the most condemned official act of Clinton’s political career. A New York Times editorial called it “a shocking abuse of presidential power.” The usually Clinton-friendly New Republic noted it “is often mentioned as Exhibit A of Clintonian sliminess.”

Congressman Barney Frank added, “It was a real betrayal by Bill Clinton of all who had been strongly supportive of him to do something this unjustified. It was contemptuous.”

Marc Rich was wanted for a list of charges going back decades. He had traded illegally with America’s enemies including Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran, where he bought about $200 million worth of oil while revolutionaries allied with the Khomeini held 53 American hostages in 1979.

Rich made a large part of his wealth, approximately $2 billion between 1979 and 1994, selling oil to the apartheid regime in South Africa when it faced a UN embargo. He did deals with Khadafy’s Libya, Milosevic’s Yugoslavia, Kim Il-sung’s North Korea, Communist dictatorships in Cuba and the Soviet Union itself. Little surprise that he was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List.

Facing prosecution by Rudy Giuliani in 1983, Rich fled to Switzerland and lived in exile.

What bothered so many was that Clinton’s clemency to Rich reeked of payoff. In the run-up to the presidential pardon, the financier’s ex-wife Denise had donated $450,000 to the fledgling Clinton Library and “over $1 million to Democratic campaigns in the Clinton era.”

As Judge Abner Mikva, a counsel in the Clinton White House and mentor to President Obama, noted that even Obama “was very, very dismayed by the Marc Rich pardon and the basis on which it appears to have been granted.”

But does the story end there? Is it possible the payoffs continued after he left office?

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Denise Rich (left,) Marc’s ex-wife, donated $450,000 to the Clinton library in the run up to the presidential pardon.Photo: AP

The stench of the scandal in early 2001 sent people scurrying. Days after it was revealed that a senior UBS executive named Pierre de Weck had written a letter to Clinton “to support his request for a pardon,” the Swiss banking giant cancelled its discussions with Clinton about a lucrative post-White House speech, apparently “worried that a large speaking fee would create an appearance of impropriety.”

Even Bill Clinton eventually admitted that the pardon had been “terrible politics.” “It wasn’t worth the damage to my reputation,” he said.

But while the pardon was a political mistake, it certainly was not a financial one. In the years following the scandal, the flow of funds from those connected to Marc Rich or the pardon scandal have continued to the Clintons.

Rich’s business partners, lawyers, advisors and friends have showered millions of dollars on the Clintons in the decade and a half following the scandal

Rich died in 2013. But his business partners, lawyers, advisors and friends have showered millions of dollars on the Clintons in the decade and a half following the scandal.

Nigerian businessman Gilbert Chagoury is well known as a close ally and business associate of Rich. The Nigerian media declared in 1999 that the “Gilbert Chagoury-Marc Rich alliance remains a formidable foe.” They sold oil on international markets together. In 2000, Chagoury was convicted in Geneva of money laundering and aiding a criminal organization in connection with the billions of dollars stolen from Nigeria during the reign of dictator Gen. Sani Abacha.

As part of a plea deal the conviction was later expunged.

Chagoury has been very generous to the Clintons in the years following the Rich pardon. He has organized an event at which Bill was paid $100,000 to speak (in 2003), donated millions to the Clinton Foundation and in 2009 pledged a cool $1 billion to the Clinton Global Initiative. The Chagourys were also active in Hillary’s 2008 presidential bid. Michel Chaghouri, a relative in Los Angeles, was a bundler and served on her campaign staff. Numerous other relatives gave the maximum $4,600 each to her campaign.

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Gilbert Chagoury, Nigerian businessman and close ally of RichPhoto: Getty Images

In return, Bill has lavished praised on Chagoury over the years. In 2005, Bill was the Keynote speaker when Chagoury received the “Pride of Heritage Award” from the Lebanese community.

In 2009, CGI gave Chagoury’s company an award for sustainable development. In 2013, Bill showed up in Nigeria for a public ceremony involving one of Chagoury’s projects. When Bill Clinton had his 60th birthday party, Chagoury was an invited guest. Chagoury also attended the wedding of Bill’s longtime aide, Doug Band.

Then there’s Russian investor Sergei Kurzin. He worked for Marc Rich in the 1990s, traveling around Russia looking for suitable investment opportunities in the crumbled former Soviet Union.

An engineer by training, Kurzin has been involved in lucrative deals in Kazakhstan and other countries, including the lucrative Uranium One deal that involved Bill Clinton and Frank Giustra.

Russia bought 20% of all uranium production capacity in the US, a deal that needed to be signed off by the State Department when it was headed by Hillary Clinton. While the deal was going through, Bill Clinton was paid $500,000 to give a speech in Moscow, paid for by a Russian investment bank promoting the uranium deal.

Kurzin, meanwhile, donated $1 million to the Clinton Foundation.

The London-based Reuben Brothers have made a fortune thanks in part to their commodities firm Trans World Metals. According to the World Bank, they founded that firm with money from Marc Rich.

Photo: Post photo composite

And they have confirmed that they had business dealings with Rich. The Reuben Brothers, through their own Reuben Foundation, have been enthusiastic supporters of the Clintons. They co-hosted a star-studded gala with the Clinton Foundation in London dubbed the Millennium Network. They have also directly donated tens of thousands of dollars to the Clinton Foundation.

Beth Dozoretz, a longtime Democratic party donor, was a friend to Denise Rich, and according to congressional investigations played a “key role” in helping secure the Marc Rich pardon. On Jan. 10, 2001, Dozoretz received a phone call from then-President Bill Clinton informing her that he was planning to pardon international fugitive Marc Rich. Dozoretz informed her ski partner on that trip, Denise Rich, of the great news.

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Beth Dozoretz, a close friend of Denise Rich, refused to testify against herself about Clinton’s controversial pardon of Rich.Photo: Reuters

In the years since the pardon was granted, Dozoretz has served the Clintons closely: as the finance co-chair of Hillary’s 2008 campaign and as a senior State Department official during Hillary’s tenure. She has supported the super PAC Ready for Hillary and the Hillary Clinton campaign. Her husband, Ronald, has sent $25,000 to $50,000 to the Clinton Foundation.

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Rich died in 2013, and Clinton eventually admitted the pardon was terrible politics and “wasn’t worth the damage to my reputation.”Photo: Getty Images

Even the smaller phantoms of the Marc Rich scandal have popped up, opening their wallets for the Clintons. Gershon Kekst, who was Marc Rich’s longtime PR man in the United States, has contributed more than $10,000 to Hillary’s campaigns since the pardon. Clyde Meltzer was named in the original 1983 DOJ indictment against Marc Rich and Pincus Green. Meltzer pleaded guilty rather than flee the country like Rich and Green. In the 1990s he rejoined Rich, working for the fugitive’s new firm, Glencore.

According to Federal Election Commission records, Meltzer has a slim history of giving money to candidates, giving only $1,000 to a congressional candidate. But in 2007 he gave the maximum allowed to the Hillary Clinton campaign. Three of Marc Rich’s attorneys, Peter Kadzik, Robert Fink, and Jack Quinn, also a former counsel at the Clinton White House, have donated to Hillary’s campaigns. Quinn has given between $25,000 and $50,000 to the Clinton Foundation.

These Rich connections are, of course, based on disclosed donations. But we now know that the Clinton Foundation has failed to disclose more than 1,000 donors, despite its written agreement with the Obama transition team that it would maintain complete transparency.

Many of those donations came through a Clinton Foundation project in Canada, which is heavily laden with donations from the natural resources and commodities industries. Kurzin, for example, has given via this route. Are there more Marc Rich-connected dollars that have flowed to the Clintons? Will they ever provide the full disclosure they have so often promised?

It cannot be mere coincidence that in the years of fundraising for the Clinton Foundation, one of the industries that has emerged as a big backer of the Clintons is the mining and commodities industry, where Marc Rich made his fortune.

When it comes to Washington scandals, news usually sends political figures scurrying for cover — leading them to avoid those connected to the scandal. Apparently not so with the Clintons. Are you connected to the disgraced Marc Rich and the terrible pardon? It’s OK, as long as the check clears.

Peter Schweizer is the author of “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich.”

The Timeline and Iran Back-Channel People

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The Iranian Timeline of Terrorist Activities

Written by : Asharq Al-Awsat

Saturday, 16 Jan, 2016

Washington- 1979: On the year of the Iranian revolution, and after Ayatollah Khamenei returned to Iran, Iranians broke into the US embassy in Tehran, capturing 90 people. Later on they released women, African Americans, and indigenous Americans, while keeping 50 other diplomats captive for 444 days.

1980: With the start of the Iranian-Iraqi war, The Quds Force division unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard was established, answering only to the Supreme leader’s authority.

1982: During the Iranian-Iraqi war, Iran recruited troops from the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Democratic National Union of Kurdistan to fight along their side.

1982: Ali Akbar Mohtashami, Iranian 1982-1985 ambassador, and minister of interior affairs, founded Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah until today remains a political, military, and security, proxy for the Iranian plans for both Lebanon and Syria.

1983: 58 Americans were killed when a truck exploded in front of the US embassy in Beirut, which, later on, the United States held both Hezbollah and Iran responsible for.

1983: Two suicide attacks on American and French marine troops’ bases in Beirut lead to the death of 241 Americans, 58 French troops, and 6 civilians aside from the two attackers, tens were injured too. On 2002, the US court condemned Hezbollah and Iran for the attacks.

1983: Coinciding explosions target 6 institutes both Kuwaiti and foreign, including the US embassy in Kuwait. Iran and its proxies were accused for the attacks.

1985: A civil plane boarding 153 people was hijacked during its flight between Athena and Rome, and driven to Beirut. The plane was later moved from Beirut to Algeria, with two passengers killed, and the rest released. The Hijack was later traced back to an organization associated with Hezbollah and the kidnappers were: Imad Mughniyah, Hassan Ezzeddine, Ali Atweand Mohammed Ali Hamadeh; all Hezbollah members.

1989: An attempted murder of the novelist Salman Rushdie for writing Ayate Sheitani, “Satanic verses” failed. Lebanon-based Hezbollah declared coordinating with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard for the attempt.

1992: An explosion targeting the Israeli embassy in Argentine. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard was accused for perpetrating the attack.

1994: The Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aries, Argentine, was subjected to an explosion, and the Revolutionary Guard Stands was held responsible.

1995: The Iranian Revolutionary Guard organized an international gathering in Tehran, inviting several terrorist organizations, some of which were: the Japanese Red Army, the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia, the Iraqi Islamic Dawa Party, and the Lebanese Hezbollah.

1996: The terrorist Khobar Towers’ bombing in Saudi Arabia killed 19 Americans; Iran and proxies were held responsible.

1998: Two bombings targeted American embassies in Nairobi- Kenya and Dar es Salaam- Tanzania.

2001: After the US September attacks, American reports published report on Iran supporting al-Qaeda, and that it had allowed the 9/11 perpetrators to pass through its grounds. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah were enlisted as terrorist organizations.

2002: An American report issued that Hezbolla is granted an annual support from Iran ranging between 60 to100 million dollars. (Other reports estimated support to have reached 200 million dollars).

2002: Pentagon issued a report accusing the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Hezbollah, Egyptian Islamist group, and al-Qaeda for participating in terrorist operations carried out on the border region between “Argentine, Brazil, and Paraguay”.

 

2005: Rafic Hariri, Lebanese Prime Minister, alongside two of his companions were assassinated in an explosion that targeted Harir’s convoy to Beirut. The prosecution of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon requested a number of accused figures (all members of Hezbollah), for investigation purposes, however, Hezbollah refused to hand them in. Later on, multiple political assassinations following Rafic al-Hariri’s assassination were added to the case files of the tribunal.

 

2005: An American report accused Iran of harboring al-Qaeda militants in Afghanistan, some of which were relatives of Osama bin Laden.

2007: American General of forces in Iraq, David Petraeus in a congressional interrogation: Iran supports “Jaysh al-Mahdi” militia in Iraq in addition to other Shiite militants. Those supported by Iran are responsible for the death of over a thousand US soldiers in Iraq (by then).

2008: The Israeli embassy in the Baku capital of Azerbaijan is targeted with attempted bombing. Iran and its proxies were accused to also stand behind the operation.

2011: The Iranian plot to blow up a restaurant in Washington, DC, which was frequented by the Saudi ambassador (at the time) Adel al-Jubeir, who is today the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Although the target was the Saudi ambassador, the Iranian operation was going to kill many American citizens found at the restaurant.

2012: Blowing up a bus carrying Israeli tourists at an airport in Bulgarian city of Burgas. Five tourists were killed in addition to the bus driver and the bomber. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah were accused.

2012: In a court in Kenya, two detained Iranians were accused of being members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and of having plans to blow up embassies of the United States, Britain and Israel in the Kenyan capital Nairobi.

2012: Indian police announced that they had confirmed that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was behind the terrorist attack in New Delhi, which targeted Israeli diplomats in that year.

2013: Iranian plot in Nigeria against an Israeli shipping company and Office of U.S. Foreign Assistance Resources. 2013: Discovering secret filming operations Iran was behind, targeting the Israeli embassy in Baku, capital of Azerbaijan.

2014: Accusing Hezbollah of planning an attack on Israeli tourists in Bangkok, capital of Thailand. 2014: The arrest of spies working for Iran in Lima, capital of Peru, with the aim of attacking the Jewish synagogue, among them a Hezbollah member.

2015: Bahrain police discovered weapons and explosives factory, arresting agents of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

2016: The Ministry of the Interior in Bahrain discovered a terrorist cell affiliated with the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

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Hostage Swap: Obama’s Secret Second Channel to Iran

Brett McGurk, a senior State Department official, led a small American team in secret prisoner-swap negotiations with Iran, which culminated in today’s agreement. Photograph: Mandel Ngan / AFP / Getty

Fourteen months ago, President Obama authorized a top-secret, second diplomatic channel with Tehran to negotiate freedom for Americans who had disappeared or been imprisoned in Iran. It was a high-risk diplomatic gamble. The initiative grew out of nuclear negotiations, launched in the fall of 2013, between Iran and the world’s six major powers. On the margins of every session, Wendy Sherman, the top American negotiator, pressed her Iranian counterparts about the American cases. The Iranians countered with demands for the release of their citizens imprisoned in the United States for sanctions-busting crimes. More than a year of informal discussions between Sherman and her counterpart, Majid Takht Ravanchi, the Iranian Foreign Ministry official in charge of American and European affairs, led to an agreement, in late 2014, that the issue should be handled separately—but officially—through a second channel. After debate within the Administration, Obama approved the initiative. But it was so tightly held that most of the American team engaged in tortuous negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program were not told about it.

What heightened the risk was the fact that the new Iranian team was headed by a senior intelligence official, a sharp departure from the traditional but still tentative diplomatic channels with the Iranian Foreign Ministry developed in the nuclear talks. The involvement of Iranian intelligence made prospects far more unpredictable—and potentially controversial. Brett McGurk, a senior State Department official, headed the small American team, which also included officials from the Department of Justice, the F.B.I., and the intelligence community. The meetings—facilitated by the Swiss government and often held in Geneva—repeatedly hit snags, complications, legal hurdles, and last-minute demands. The swap—officially referred to as a “humanitarian gesture”—came close to fruition three times over more than a year of secret meetings, only to collapse again and again, an Iranian official said.

The deal finally came together this morning, just as Iran and the six major powers also moved toward Implementation Day of the Iran nuclear deal. It will mark the point when the U.N. confirms that Iran has complied with terms to dismantle its program, allowing international sanctions to be lifted. Secretary of State John Kerry held one final meeting with his Iranian counterpart, in Vienna, hosted by the European Union foreign-policy chief, Federica Mogherini. The separate diplomatic channels happened to mature at the same pace, according to U.S. officials. The second channel accelerated after the nuclear deal was announced last July.

Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif met one final time in Vienna before Implementation Day and the separate but simultaneous announcement that the two countries had agreed on a prisoner swap.

The United States had hoped to make the announcement of the Americans’ release this morning, but Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency preëmpted Washington with its own announcement that four Iranian-Americans imprisoned in Iran had been freed as part of a prisoner exchange, following a decision by the Supreme National Security Council. The State Department scrambled to get out its statement. “We offered clemency to seven Iranians, six of whom are dual U.S.-Iranian citizens, who had been convicted or are pending trial in the United States,” it said. “The United States also removed any Interpol red notices and dismissed any charges against 14 Iranians for whom it was assessed that extradition requests were unlikely to be successful.” The number was pared down significantly from the original Iranian list, U.S. officials said. And not all the American cases against Iranians were resolved by the swap.

The release marked the end of a troubled saga that had been further politicized during the U.S. electoral season. Many Republicans had criticized President Obama for agreeing to a nuclear deal—which will give Iran access to tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues that had been locked in foreign banks because of sanctions—while Americans were still held in Iran.

Indeed, the reaction was swift and biting among Republican Presidential candidates. “The fact of the matter is that this tells us everything we need to know about the Iranian regime—that they take people hostage in order to gain concessions,” Senator Marco Rubio said. “And the fact that they can get away with it with this Administration, I think, has created an incentive for more governments to do this around the world.”

U.S. officials remained upbeat. “We think this is a very good day,” a senior Administration official said, during a teleconference briefing this morning. “We think this proves that we are able to resolve issues when we have diplomatic channels.” But he hastened to add, “This was not a traditional spy swap. We are pursuing this in context of an extraordinary moment in U.S.-Iranian relations as implementation of the nuclear deal is upon us.”

“In many ways, this was harder than the nuclear deal,” Wendy Sherman told me on Friday. “Because these were about American citizens, human lives, the pain of their families, the pain of their daily existence. I’m very glad to see them coming home.”

Brett McGurk, the point man on the American team, began his career in Washington as a law clerk to William H. Rehnquist, the late Chief Justice. He has been given some of the toughest assignments at the State Department. His official biography describes him as one of the architects of President George W. Bush’s “surge” of U.S. troops to combat Al Qaeda. He was a key adviser during the Obama Administration’s review of our Iraq policy, and later helped manage the transition as the United States withdrew its troops. McGurk is now Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL. He was in Geneva negotiating right through Saturday morning, State Department officials said.

The most widely known American released today is the Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian, who had been detained since July, 2014.  Born in California, of Iranian parents, he went to Iran as a young reporter, married an Iranian journalist, and settled in. He was charged with espionage, “collaborating with hostile governments,” and “propaganda against the establishment.” Among Rezaian’s alleged crimes, according to Iranian press reports, was writing to President Obama and offering advice based on his wide range of Iranian contacts. Rezaian was convicted last year, but his sentence, curiously, was never announced. Even his lawyer said that she didn’t know what it was.

Rezaian’s wife, the journalist Yaganeh Salehi, was detained at the same time. She was later released on bail, but the charges were never dismissed. She is being allowed to fly out of Iran with her husband, U.S. officials said.

Of the four prisoners released by Iran, Amir Hekmati, a former Marine, had been imprisoned the longest. He was born in Arizona, grew up in Michigan, and served in Iraq. He was visiting his grandmother in Tehran when he was arrested, in August, 2011, and charged with espionage, waging war against God, and “corrupting the earth.” He received the death sentence. A retrial overturned that conviction, and he was sentenced to ten years for “coöperating with hostile governments.”

The Reverend Saeed Abedini, who was born in Iran, converted to Christianity from Islam. Christianity is legal in Iran, and Christians have special, and proportionate, seats in Parliament. But Abedini was a convert, and reportedly helped to establish underground churches in Iran for other converts. He eventually married an American, moved to the United States, in 2005, and was ordained by the American Evangelistic Association. But he returned to Tehran in 2009. He was picked up in 2012 and charged with undermining national security. He was sentenced to eight years.

The fourth released prisoner is Nosratollah Khosrawi-Roodsari, about whom little is known. The United States was not even aware that he had been detained until it received a diplomatic note about him from the Iranians during the negotiations. He was detained sometime in the past year, U.S. officials said.

In a separate case, a fifth American, Matthew Trevithick, was also allowed to leave Iran today, before the others. Imprisoned early last month, on unknown charges, he was a young businessman who ran a research organization in Turkey and had been in an intensive language-training class in Tehran. He was just completing his course when he was arrested. Shortly after he graduated from Boston University, Trevithick worked as my research assistant at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, in Washington. He later worked for two years at the American University in Sulaymaniyah, in Iraqi Kurdistan, and for four years at the American University in Kabul. He was allowed to call his parents this morning en route to the airport.

At least two Americans are not coming home. Siamak Namazi was detained in October, although the judiciary has never confirmed his arrest or charges against him. A young analyst from a prominent Iranian family, he came to the United States as a boy, received dual citizenship, and attended college at Tufts, then returned to Iran to do compulsory military service. He did stints as an analyst at think tanks in Washington, including the National Endowment for Democracy. He later set up shop in Dubai as a consultant on energy issues. He had avoided going back to Iran after the arrests of other Iranian-Americans, but he received signals that it was safe to visit his family. He was soon picked up. “We’re doing everything we can to resolve his case,” a senior official said.

Robert Levinson, a retired F.B.I. agent, who has been missing for more than eight years, is a more complicated case. He was last seen on Iran’s Kish Island in 2007. Levinson told colleagues that he was working on a cigarette-smuggling investigation, but the Washington Post reported, in 2013, that he had actually been on a C.I.A. contract, and was dispatched by intelligence analysts who had no authority to run operations overseas. The revelation of the rogue operation led to a shakeup at the agency.

In 2013, Levinson’s family released a series of “proof of life” photos sent to them of a bearded, bedraggled, and chained Levinson in an orange prison jumpsuit, the type worn by detainees at Guantanamo Bay. In each photo, he carried a sign. In one, he pleaded, “Help me.” Another read “I Am Here in Guantanamo Do You Know Where It Is?” U.S. officials say that Iran’s claims not to know Levinson’s current status are credible. There have been suggestions over the years, never confirmed, that he might have been taken to Baluchistan, an unruly area that overlaps the borders of Iran and Pakistan. In its announcement of the prisoner swap, the State Department said, “Iran has also committed to continue cooperating with the United States to determine the whereabouts of Robert Levinson.”

The Fars New Agency identified the seven Iranian inmates freed by the United States as Nader Modanlou, Bahram Mechanic, Khosrow Afqahi, Arash Ghahreman, Touraj Faridi, Nima Golestaneh, and Ali Sabounchi. All had been charged with violations of sanctions or trade restrictions. None had ties to terrorist activity, U.S. officials said Saturday.

Despite the timing, U.S. officials insisted that the two big breakthroughs on Saturday—on the nuclear deal and on the detainees—were not initially designed to conclude simultaneously. “As unbelievable as it will be for a lot of people, the two channels were really separate,” a U.S. official familiar with the talks told me. “They steamrolled in such a way that they ended up coming together at a time Iran wanted to clean the decks.”

The release set the stage for at least one additional step that could resolve some remaining differences between Tehran and Washington, but those negotiations are still under way. The Obama Administration also hopes today’s events will foster further coöperation when the United States and Iran participate in new Syrian peace talks, set to begin on January 25th—a process far more complex than the negotiations over nukes or hostages.