Iran/Turkey Evade Sanctions Work, Guilty and DC

Posted on January 4, 2018January 4, 2018 by Denise Simon

If you think you can describe relationships and motivations globally and the connective tissue into Washington DC….you may need to think again.

This particular legal case decided yesterday has the makings of an HBO television documentary that includes past and present political power-brokers. We have Trump, Giuliani, Flynn, Obama, FBI, Justice, Iran, Turkey, lobbyists and even some violence.

What did the Obama administration know and why did they know it, then what?

Primer:

May 2017: MIAMI — President Donald Trump’s longtime Florida lobbyist, Brian Ballard, has expanded his practice globally and just signed a $1.5 million contract with the government of Turkey, which will be represented by the firm’s new big hire, former Florida Congressman Robert Wexler.

Ballard Partners’ Turkey contract, inked Friday, comes on the heels of two other international clients signed by the firm: A March 6 $900,000 contract with the Dominican Republic and an April 1 $240,000 contract with the Socialist Party of Albania, the ruling party in the Balkan nation. More here.

For a current list of clients for Ballard Partners, go here.

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Just the facts and the case of GOLD below, while several are still at large.

Enter the good guys, outside of government who perform remarkable and respected investigative work.

The Biggest Sanctions-Evasion Scheme in Recent History

And the swashbuckling gold trader at its center

SchanzerYesterday, Turkish banker Mehmet Hakan Atilla was found guilty in a Manhattan courtroom for a range of financial crimes. His dramatic trial revealed that tens of billions in dollars and gold moved from Turkey to Iran through a complex network of businesses, banks, and front companies.

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The trial was a long time coming. In late October of 2016, Justice Department officials paid a visit to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the Washington-based think tank where I serve as senior vice president. They wanted to talk about Reza Zarrab. A dual Iranian-Turkish national, Zarrab was the swashbuckling gold trader who had helped Iran evade sanctions with the help of Turkish banks in 2013 and 2014, yielding Iran an estimated $13 billion at the height of the efforts to thwart Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. A leaked report by prosecutors in Istanbul in March 2014 suggested that Zarrab spearheaded a second sanctions-busting scheme involving fake invoices for billions more in fictitious humanitarian shipments to Iran that were processed through Turkish banks.

At FDD, we’d spent considerable time digging into Zarrab’s activities. Our think tank already had an established track record of identifying and exposing Iran’s malign activities. We had also just launched a new program to explore Turkey’s recent drift into Islamist authoritarianism. The more we investigated, the more we realized that Zarrab’s schemes, which could have helped Iran pocket more than $100 billion, rank among the largest sanctions evasion episode in modern history.Despite the headlines generated by the gold trade and leaked report, the Turkish government insisted that everything was above board. The Obama administration seemed to echo this sentiment, saying that the gold trade had slipped through a legal loophole (a loophole the White House inexplicably left open for an additional six months, even after the problem was flagged). We soon learned Ankara’s political motivations: The gold trade helped boost Turkey’s flagging export numbers at a moment when those numbers might have hurt President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s chances for reelection. Zarrab, who became fabulously wealthy by taking a percentage from every transaction (he later estimated his take at $150 million), even received a reward for his efforts from a Turkish trade association in 2015, with Erdogan applauding from the audience.

But it all came to an abrupt halt last March, when Zarrab inexplicably brought his family to America for a vacation at Disney World. With the 2015 nuclear deal in effect, he may have believed that the sanctions laws he violated before the deal were no longer in force. Some suggest that Zarrab was trying to flee Iranian justice, particularly as the regime came to grasp just how much he skimmed off the top. Either way, when he arrived in Florida, U.S. authorities arrested him for engaging in conspiracies to violate sanctions, commit bank fraud, and launder money.

It was about time. For three years, my colleagues and I had been briefing the Treasury Department, the State Department, and Congressional offices. We had tracked the export data (which, remarkably, Turkey did not hide), showing an astronomical spike in Turkish gold exports. We identified the companies and players, with the help of the 2014 prosecutor’s report. It was painstaking work, but it was all out there in open sources for a think tank like ours to document.Yet, it was an inconvenient moment to reveal unsavory truths about Iran, amid the push for the nuclear agreement. Nor did anyone, Democrat or Republican, want to touch the third rail of relations with Turkey, a NATO ally that had recently begun backing terrorist groups like Hamas (which still maintains a disturbing presence in Turkey) and a range of Sunni jihadi groups fighting the Assad regime in Syria (including al-Qaeda’s affiliate, according to senior U.S. government officials we interviewed). Stable allies in the Muslim world were scarce, and decision-makers seemed reluctant to take any chances with Ankara.

It may also have been difficult for officials to hear that the sanctions tools we have in place to prevent bad actors from moving money are just that—tools. Without intense vigilance and enforcement, there is ample opportunity for Iran and other sanctioned countries to find workarounds. But if we’re going to follow the money, we’d better be prepared to follow it to the most inconvenient places.

That’s why it was a pleasant surprise when the Justice Department came knocking on FDD’s door. It had never dawned on us that they might be interested in our work. But they were. They wanted to see what we already knew of the complex web of companies, networks, and schemes, that Zarrab employed to move money out of Turkey and into Iran. After all, even with the vast evidence they had collected, our research predated their investigation.In the weeks and months that followed, one visit begat another. Both I and Mark Dubowitz, FDD’s CEO, were asked by the assistant U.S. attorney to serve as an expert witness for the prosecution. We pored over invoices tracking the transactions that turned gold into Iranian cash. We analyzed spreadsheets detailing the dizzying trail of sales and purchases designed to obfuscate the illicit nature of the transactions. There were also photos, including one of Zarrab himself standing next to a six-foot high tower of plastic-wrapped bricks of $100 bills. The documents were privileged at the time, but will soon be made public now that the trial is over. The documents are damning, with textbook examples of money-laundering techniques like over-invoicing (charging significantly more for a given product to yield more margin) and circular invoicing (making multiple transactions involving the same funds or goods to hide a money trail or even benefit from arbitrage). The figures themselves were astounding: hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions in every stack of papers we viewed.

The case took a wild turn on March 28, when, Justice Department officials from the Southern District of New York arrested Atilla, the deputy CEO and general manager at Turkey’s state-owned Halkbank. They accused him of conspiring with Zarrab to launder hundreds of millions of dollars through the U.S. financial system on behalf of Iran. It was Halkbank that held one of the oil escrow accounts for Iran. The escrow accounts constituted a creative method of withholding petrodollars from Iran, as mandated by the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act (ITRA) of 2012. In brazen defiance of U.S. sanctions, Halkbank released those funds to buy gold, which was then shipped off to Iran. Halkbank was also accused of helping to process Zarrab’s aforementioned fictitious invoices, the ones first exposed in the 2014 prosecutor’s report.

Uranium or gold

Halkbank was clearly in trouble. In September, it hired Ballard Partners, a U.S. lobbying firm that already represented the Turkish government, for a whopping $1.5 million. Separately, Zarrab hired former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey in an attempt to derail the proceedings. But the real drama came in late November when Zarrab pled out, making him a witness for the prosecution. Atilla would stand trial alone.

Related reading: Iran’s Turkish gold rush

That’s when the Turkish government got angry. They took their anger out on me and Mark Dubowitz, who testified on the first day of Atilla trial about the Iran sanctions architecture. The state media called us terrorists, alleging we were affiliated with Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen’s network, the group Erdogan blamed for the attempted coup in July of last year. Ankara also issued an arrest warrant for my colleague Aykan Erdemir, a former Turkish parliamentarian. Turkish authorities froze his assets and even seized the apartment that his grandfather had bequeathed to the family. They said he “destroyed paperwork relating to state security” and “stole documents with the intention of using them abroad.” They also falsely identified him as being on the witness list.

But Ankara could not stop Zarrab from delivering seven days of sensational testimony. On day one, he appeared in court wearing a beige prison jumpsuit; for the remainder, he was allowed to wear a blazer. He was a natural in front of the jury, using diagrams to coolly explain how he orchestrated the scheme. He looked like a business school professor teaching a class on corruption.Here’s what Zarrab testified: The scheme began in 2010, when Iran began to feel the squeeze from U.S. sanctions for its nuclear drive. Zarrab said that around 2012 the Iranian government gave him explicit directions to conduct these illegal transactions. Turkish officials were also on the take, Zarrab said, with its economy minister allegedly taking $50 million in bribes to help facilitate the scheme. He said other Turkish officials were on the take, too—many of whom were in Erdogan’s inner circle. According to Zarrab, other Turkish banks may have been involved at the government’s behest. All this might explain why the Turkish government, even after the prosecutor’s report was leaked in 2014, killed all inquiry into the Zarrab scheme.

Testimony from David Cohen and Adam Szubin, two former Treasury Department undersecretaries would also reveal that Halkbank officials repeatedly reassured them their gold-trader clients, including Zarrab, were in compliance with U.S. sanctions against Iran. (Zarrab testified that he continued his operations up until his arrest in March 2016, which meant that Halkbank would have been lying to U.S. officials.)

In the end, the trial ran long. With the judge calling for the prosecution to wrap things up quickly, I managed to avoid taking the stand. Atilla testified in a last-ditch self-defense, and the jury began its deliberations on December 20.Yesterday, after spending 11 days away for Christmas and New Years, the jury returned to deliberate again, and after only a few hours delivered their verdict: guilty on five out of six counts. Atilla’s rap sheep now includes four conspiracy counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, plus one count of bank fraud. (He was acquitted for money laundering.)

All eyes are now on the United States government and whether it issues a fine against Halkbank, particularly now that it has proven in a court of law that the bank engaged in a massive, illegal financial scheme. French Bank BNP Paribas was fined $8.9 billion for far lesser transgressions in 2015, for its violations of sanctions against Sudan, Cuba, and Iran.

Fine or no fine, it’s hard to envision tranquil U.S.-Turkish relations going forward. Erdogan, who now rivals Russia’s Vladimir Putin in autocratic style, has already instructed his spokesman to decry the trial as a “plot” against Turkey, while slamming “the scandalous verdict of a scandalous case.”

Then there is the question of Iran. In all likelihood, Tehran probably gave little thought to the Atilla verdict, given its ongoing domestic turmoil. The people are calling for better economic conditions, and a foreign policy that doesn’t squander Iran’s wealth on adventurism outside the country’s borders. One can only guess that would include complex sanctions busting schemes to enable an illicit nuclear program.

And now that Zarrab has finally clarified a few things about the Iranian role in his scheme, one troubling question lingers: Why did the U.S. government continue to negotiate the nuclear deal with Iran in 2013 and 2014 while Treasury was warning Halkbank about enormous sanctions violations? We may never know. Then again, from the documents I viewed, I wouldn’t be surprised to see other sanctions busters come in the DOJ crosshairs—creating new and uncomfortable challenges for our existing alliances and diplomatic agreements. Perhaps other future indictments will tell us more.

In Defiance, Governors Issues Pardons to Deportees

Posted on January 4, 2018January 4, 2018 by Denise Simon

It is argued that the Democrats want the illegals to stay in country due in part to gaining their vote. There is truth to that for sure, yet advocacy organizations raise a LOT of money which is in the end more important to the Democrat base for campaign contributions.

For a list of pro-amnesty groups covering all industry and social classifications, go here.

Perhaps as a reminder it is prudent to mention that Obama led the charge for clemency and pardons as noted here.

President Obama offered clemency to seven Iranians charged with violating U.S. trade sanctions against Iran as part of a historic prisoner agreement with Iran that freed four Americans Saturday, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian.

The Iranians, six of whom are dual U.S.-Iranian citizens, were imprisoned or were pending trial in the United States. The U.S. government dismissed charges against 14 other Iranians, all outside the United States, after assessing that extradition requests were unlikely to be successful, according to a U.S. official. More here.

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New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo mimicked California Gov. Jerry Brown’s approach to immigration, pardoning 18 convicted illegal immigrants who faced deportation.

Cuomo, a Democrat, praised himself on Twitter for his compassion Thursday before linking to a New York Times article supporting the move.

Defying Trump again, Jerry Brown pardons immigrants about to be deported

Escalating the state’s showdown with the Trump administration over illegal immigration, California Gov. Jerry Brown used a Christmas holiday tradition to grant pardons Saturday to two men who were on the verge of being deported for committing crimes while in the U.S.

Brown, pairing his state’s combative approach to federal immigration authorities with his belief in the power of redemption, characterized the pardons as acts of mercy.

The Democratic governor moved as federal officials in recent months have detained and deported immigrants with felony convictions that resulted in the loss of their legal residency status, including many with nonviolent offenses that occurred years ago.

With the pardons, the reason for applicants’ deportations may be eliminated, said attorney Kevin Lo of Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus, which represented some of the men in a recent class-action lawsuit.

The pardoned immigrants will still need to ask immigration courts to reopen their cases, he said.The detentions of felons has focused on specific ethnic groups in past months, including Cambodians and Vietnamese, according to immigration lawyers handling the cases. Cambodia has been reluctant to repatriate former felons, but acquiesced to accepting more after the State Department stopped issuing visas in September to a small group of top Cambodian officials and their families.

Two of Brown’s pardons are Northern California Cambodian men picked up in October in those immigration sweeps, Mony Neth of Modesto and Rottanak Kong of Davis.

Kong was convicted on felony joyriding in 2003 in Stanislaus County at age 25 and sentenced to a year in jail. Neth was convicted on a felony weapons charge with a gang enhancement and a misdemeanor charge of receiving stolen property with a value of $400 or less in 1995 in Stanislaus County.

Both men came to the United States as children after their families fled the Khmer Rouge regime, and neither has engaged in criminal activity since being released from prison.

Kong and Neth were scheduled to be deported Monday, but a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order last week in the lawsuit filed by Lo’s team, delaying their departure.

Neth, 42, was unexpectedly released from Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center on Friday, said his wife, Cat Khamvongsa, and is back home with his family – albeit with an ankle monitor.

“We gave him a big hug,” she said of herself and her 16-year-old daughter. “We’re so happy.”

In a phone interview Friday night while on his way to Costco, Neth said he was asleep Friday morning when a guard at the detention facility near Elk Grove called his name.

“I knew right then I was coming home,” Neth said. “It’s the best Christmas gift ever. … I don’t want to be anywhere else in the world.”

Despite the governor’s pardon, Neth still faces legal hurdles, Lo said.

How the U.S. will Deal with Iran and the Protests

Posted on January 3, 2018January 3, 2018 by Denise Simon

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The 2009 protest in Iran, named the Green Revolution launched after the Obama famous Cairo speech was much larger than the current protests in opposition to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

As an aside, one must ask what is Europe going to do regarding Iran?

According to Fox News, the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Steve Goldstein said the United States will post messages in Farsi on Facebook and Twitter to show Iranians that the United States supports the protests and Iranians in their quest for democracy. Goldstein reportedly said the U.S. is working to enable communication via these two platforms despite the Iranian government’s censorship efforts.

“Even though many social media sites have been blocked, Iranians can reach our State Department FB and Twitter sites, which are in Farsi, through VPN,” Goldstein reportedly said. “We would like Iran to open these legitimate forms of communication.”

Also on Tuesday, Goldstein told the Associated Press that the U.S. wants Iran’s government to “open these sites,” including Instagram and Telegram. “They are legitimate avenues for communication,” Goldstein reportedly said. “People in Iran should be able to access those sites.”

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EXCLUSIVE – A leaked report provided to Fox News shows how Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei met with political leaders and heads of the country’s security forces to discuss how to tamp down on the deadly nationwide protests.

The report covered several meetings up to December 31 and was provided to the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) from what it said were high level sources from within the regime.

The meeting notes, which have been translated into English from Farsi, said the unrest has hurt every sector of the country’s economy and “threatens the regime’s security. The first step, therefore, is to find a way out of this situation.”

The report added, “Religious leaders and the leadership must come to the scene as soon as possible and prevent the situation (from) deteriorating further.” It continued, “God help us, this is a very complex situation and is different from previous occasions.”

As the protests continue to spread, the total number dead rose Monday to at least 13, including a police officer shot and killed with a hunting rifle in the central city of Najafabad.

According to NCRI sources and reports from within Iran, at least 40 cities across Iran witnessed protests Monday, including in the capital city of Tehran. These reports state that slogans heard included “Death to the dictator,” and “the leader lives like God while the people live like beggars.”

The regime’s notes claimed protesters “started chanting the ultimate slogans from day one. In Tehran today, people were chanting slogans against Khamenei and the slogans used yesterday were all against Khamenei.”

The notes added that the intelligence division of the feared Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is “monitoring the situation” and “working all in coordination to prevent protests.”

It says that a “red alert” has not yet been declared, which would lead to direct military intervention in the protests. But it then predicted that sending IRGC or the Bassij forces would “backfire” and would further “antagonize the protesters.”

Messages of support for the protesters from President Trump and other administration officials were also mentioned in the report. “The United States officially supported the people on the streets.” The notes continued by saying the U.S. and the West “have all united in support of the Hypocrites,” the regime’s pejorative description of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) which is one of the groups making up the NCRI.

The meeting notes that the leader of the NCRI, Maryam Rajavi, and the “Infidels,” which the translation says refers to “the West,” “are united for the first time.” It continued, “Maryam Rajavi is hoping for regime change,” saying the protests are “definitely organized,” and “the security forces report that the MEK is very active and is leading and directing them.”

The notes also warn that all those affiliated with leadership “must be on alert and monitor the situation constantly,” continuing, “the security and intelligence forces must constantly monitor the situation on the scene and conduct surveillance and subsequently report to the office of the leadership.”

About THAT Arab Bank in New York

Posted on January 2, 2018January 2, 2018 by Denise Simon

Yet another deadly and financial scandal both Barack Obama and John Kerry ignored for the sake of the consummation of the Iran nuclear deal.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is launching a review of a law enforcement initiative called Project Cassandra after an investigative report was published this week claiming the Obama administration gave a free pass to Hezbollah’s drug-trafficking and money-laundering operations to help ensure the Iran nuclear deal would stay on track.

The Justice Department said in a statement to Fox News that Sessions on Friday directed a review of prior Drug Enforcement Administration investigations “to evaluate allegations that certain matters were not properly prosecuted and to ensure all matters are appropriately handled.”

“While I am hopeful that there were no barriers constructed by the last administration to allowing DEA agents to fully bring all appropriate cases under Project Cassandra, this is a significant issue for the protection of Americans,” Sessions said in a written statement. “We will review these matters and give full support to investigations of violent drug trafficking organizations.” More here.

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Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS fame wrote about this case in 2005 while at the Wall Street Journal. And the LA Times further summarized the legal case against the Arab Bank and financing terror.

There is even a book about banking and terrorism.

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Back in 2015:

Three days before a first-of-its-kind damages trial was supposed to start, a Middle Eastern bank has reached a settlement with hundreds of American plaintiffs, including victims of terrorist attacks around Israel, who had filed a lawsuit against the bank accusing it of supporting terrorism.

A spokesman for the bank, Arab Bank, and a spokeswoman for one of the law firms representing the plaintiffs confirmed on Friday that an agreement had been reached but declined to offer additional details, including the amount of the settlement.

Last year, a jury in Federal District Court in Brooklyn found Arab Bank liable for financing terrorism by processing transactions for members of the militant Islamic group Hamas. More here.

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BEIRUT: Jordan’s largest lender, the Arab Bank, announced this week that a New York federal court dismissed more than 90 percent of the claims in a long-running lawsuit accusing it of providing banking services to charities and individuals allegedly affiliated with Palestinian militants. The ruling is the most significant victory yet for the Arab Bank yet in its nine-year legal battle with 6,596 relatives of victims killed or injured in two dozen Palestinian attacks in Israel during the Second Intifada. More here.

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LINDE v. ARAB BANK, PLC

In July 2004, Osen LLC sued Arab Bank, Plc on behalf of American terror victims in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The lawsuit, captioned Linde v. Arab Bank, Plc and brought under the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA), was the first civil lawsuit brought against Arab Bank. The Plaintiffs sought to hold Arab Bank liable for deaths and severe injuries resulting from acts of international terrorism that Palestinian terrorist groups perpetrated between 2000 and 2004, during the Second Intifada. After 10 years of litigation that included multiple appeals, American victims of terrorism were finally able to present their case to a Brooklyn jury in August and September 2014. The first trial centered around 24 terrorist attacks that the Plaintiffs alleged were perpetrated by Hamas, a Foreign Terrorist Organization that the United States first designated a terrorist entity in 1995. On September 22, 2014, an 11-person jury found Arab Bank liable for knowingly providing financial services for Hamas. This finding represented the first, and still only, time a financial institution has been held civilly liable for aiding terrorism.

The Liability Trial (August-September 2014)

During the course of the trial, which centered around 24 Hamas terrorist attacks between March 2001 and September 2004, the Plaintiffs proved that Arab Bank knowingly provided material support to Hamas by illegally maintaining accounts for: Hamas (via an account held in the name of senior Hamas leader and spokesman Osama Hamdan that accepted multiple checks explicitly made out to beneficiary “Hamas“); Hamas’s founder and supreme leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin (Yassin was first designated a Specially Designated Terrorist in 1995); and dozens of other Hamas leaders and senior operatives, including Salah Shehadeh – founder and former head of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades in Gaza, and Ismail Haniyeh, former Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority and current Hamas leader in Gaza. The Plaintiffs also proved that Arab Bank knowingly provided material support to terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah that facilitated millions of dollars in direct transfers to the families of suicide bombers and other terrorist operatives through the Saudi Committee for the Support of the Intifada al Quds and the Al-Shahid Foundation. Lastly, the Plaintiffs proved that Arab Bank knowingly provided material support to Hamas by maintaining accounts for eleven Hamas-controlled organizations in the Palestinian Territories.

One of Arab Bank’s chief contentions, voiced by defense expert Beverley Milton-Edwards, was that the identities of Hamas leaders were not well known between 2000-2004. The jury, however, was shown a video of the funeral of the infamous Hamas bomb-maker, Muhanad al-Taher, in the town square of Nablus. Hamed Beitawi, vice-Chairman of the Nablus Zakat Committee and Chairman of the Islamic Solidarity Al-Tadhamun Charitable Society – Nablus (two of the eleven relevant Hamas-controlled organizations, both of which maintained accounts at Arab Bank) spoke at this very public event. Dr. Milton-Edwards was also impeached by video showing Salah Shehadeh – founder and former head of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades in Gaza – giving a speech to a massive audience, thus undercutting the Bank’s claim that Hamas leaders “lived in the shadows.”

Post-Trial Proceedings

After the jury rendered its unanimous verdict, Arab Bank filed 3 motions, arguing: (1) notwithstanding the jury’s verdict, Arab Bank was entitled to victory on the merits and dismissal of the case; (2) if the Court would not grant that relief, Arab Bank was entitled to a new trial because of purported mistakes the Court made in managing the trial; and (3) in any event, the Bank was entitled to immediate review of the verdict by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

The Court denied the Bank’s motions for a new trial and for Second Circuit review of the verdict. In its decision, the Court noted that the Bank’s liability was established “on volumes of damning circumstantial evidence that defendant knew its customers were terrorists.”

The Court further noted the testimony of the Bank’s own former head compliance officer in London who was presented with the Saudi Committee wire transfer payable to “the family of martyr Ibrahim Karim Beni Awda” and responded: “[w]e would never in a million years have dealt with a payment order such as this.”

The Court’s decision also took note of the testimony of Arab Bank’s primary expert witness, Dr. Milton-Edwards, who testified that the organizations in the Palestinian Territories at issue in the case were neither controlled by Hamas nor perceived as Hamas affiliates during the relevant period based in part of her review of “paraphernalia” she observed during her visits to these organizations. The Court observed that her testimony “backfired in spectacular fashion” when “it came out on cross-examination that she could not read Arabic.”

Furthermore, the Court noted Dr. Milton-Edwards’ impeachment by her own book: She had testified that the Islamic Society of Gaza was neither affiliated with Hamas nor perceived as such by the Palestinian public. Her book told a different story, however:

[t]he work of the Islamic Society and the rest of Hamas’s network in the decades up to, during and after the second intifada, when families needed it most, represented not so much a donation as an investment by Hamas, one that reached a lucrative political dividend in the 2006 election.

Ultimately, the Court concluded, “[t]he effect of cross-examination on Dr. Milton-Edwards’ testimony, and its potential spillover effect on the credibility of defendant’s entire case, is … hard to overstate.”

Arab Bank’s Appeal

Following the Court’s denial of the Bank’s motions for a new trial the parties prepared for the first damages trial, which the parties agreed to postpone once they reached a framework for settlement of all of the Plaintiffs’ Anti-Terrorism Act-related claims.

As part of the settlement, the Bank reserved the right to take a one-time appeal of the liability verdict, the outcome of which would determine the settlement’s precise contours. The briefing is complete and the Second Circuit heard extensive oral argument on May 16, 2017.

Remember, Obama Removed Iran/Hezbollah from Terror List

Posted on January 1, 2018January 1, 2018 by Denise Simon

In February of 2015, yup the Obama administration instructed the intelligence community to remove Iran and it’s proxies such as Hezbollah from the terror list mostly due to the Iran nuclear deal and the assistance Iran was providing the Baghdad government in fighting Islamic State…..ahem….sure thing.

“Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) and Lebanese Hezbollah are instruments of Iran’s foreign policy and its ability to project power in Iraq, Syria, and beyond,” that assessment, also submitted to the Senate of February 26, said in its section on terrorism. “Hezbollah continues to support the Syrian regime, pro-regime militants and Iraqi Shia militants in Syria. Hezbollah trainers and advisors in Iraq assist Iranian and Iraqi Shia militias fighting Sunni extremists there. Select Iraqi Shia militant groups also warned of their willingness to fight US forces returning to Iraq.” More here.

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But Hezbollah’s more recent moves in Latin America are very much a matter of interest for investigators, too. In October, a joint FBI-NYPD investigation led to the arrest of two individuals who were allegedly acting on behalf of Hezbollah’s terrorist wing, the Islamic Jihad Organization (IJO). At the direction of their Hezbollah handlers, one person allegedly “conducted missions in Panama to locate the U.S. and Israeli Embassies and to assess the vulnerabilities of the Panama Canal and ships in the Canal,” according to a Justice Department press release. The other allegedly “conducted surveillance of potential targets in America, including military and law enforcement facilities in New York City.” In the wake of these arrests, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center warned: “It’s our assessment that Hezbollah is determined to give itself a potential homeland option as a critical component of its terrorism playbook, and that is something that those of us in the counterterrorism community take very, very seriously.” These cases, one official added, are “likely the tip of the iceberg.”

The administration’s counter-Hezbollah campaign is an interagency effort that includes leveraging diplomatic, intelligence, financial and law enforcement tools to expose and disrupt the logistics, fundraising and operational activities of Iran, the Qods Force and the long list of Iranian proxies from Lebanese Hezbollah to other Shia militias in Iraq and elsewhere. But in the words of Ambassador Nathan Sale, the State Department coordinator for counterterrorism, “Countering Hezbollah is a top priority for the Trump administration.” Since it took office, the Trump administration has taken a series of actions against Hezbollah in particular — including indictments, extraditions, public statements and rewards for information on wanted Hezbollah terrorist leaders — and officials are signaling that more actions are expected, especially in Latin America. Congress has passed a series of bills aimed at Hezbollah as well. The goal, according to an administration official quoted by Politico, is to “expose them for their behavior.” The thinking goes: Hezbollah cannot claim to be a legitimate actor even as it engages in a laundry list of illicit activities that undermine stability at home in Lebanon, across the Middle East region and around the world.

To support this policy, the administration has issued a broad RFI — a request for information — requiring departments and agencies to scour their files and collect new information that could be used to identify targets and help direct and inform the implementation of forthcoming actions. Though it is unclear if it is a result of that RFI, it appears new information is coming in, as evidenced most recently by a little-noticed FBI “Seeking Information” bulletin issued by the Bureau’s Miami Field Office. More here.

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All of this has turned quite political on The Hill due in part to recent investigative report published by Politico on how Obama gave Iran, a state sponsor of terror networks worldwide a major pass. In part from Congressional testimony in June of 2017:

Hezbollah has experienced a series of financial setbacks, leading U.S.

officials to describe the group being in the “worst financial shape in decades.”

Indeed, Hezbollah has in recent months resorted to launching an online fundraising crowdsourcing campaign entitled “Equip a Mujahid Campaign” which calls for donations, large or small, payable all at once or in installments, to equip Hezbollah fighters.

Hezbollah has also promoted a fundraising campaign on billboards and posters promoting a program through which supporters whereby supporters can avoid recruitment into Hezbollah’s militia forces for a payment of about $1,000.

These are desperate measures for a group suffering tough financial times.

And yet, Hezbollah continues to collect sufficient funds to deploy a significant militia

at home and next door in Syria, to send smaller groups of operatives to Iraq and Yemen,

and to operate an international terrorist network with deadly effect.

To effectively counter Hezbollah’s financing, the U.S. must lead an international effort to target the group’s illicit financial conduct both at home in Lebanon and around the world. More here.

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Meanwhile to fully comprehend the full construction of Iranian terror networks globally and the historical facts, go here.

In day 5 of the Iranian people protesting the Iran government, at least a dozen have been killed.

Initially, state TV said that 10 people had been killed overnight, but that figure was later raised to 13 by a regional governor:

Six died after shots were fired in the western town of Tuyserkan, 300km (185 miles) south-west of Tehran

Later, Hamadan province’s governor told the ISNA agency that another three people had also been killed in the city

Two people died in the south-western town of Izeh, an official said

Two died in clashes in Dorud in Lorestan province

This has the makings of the conflict seen in Syria as the genesis is the same. Where will this put militant Islamist groups in the mix is an open question. Islamic State did launch a terror attack in June of 2017.

There are other moving parts to the building civil conflicts in Iran and they include Israel, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and the United States.

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In part from Reuters: Hundreds have been arrested, according to officials and social media. Online video showed police in the capital Tehran firing water cannon to disperse demonstrators, in footage said to have been filmed on Sunday.

Protests against economic hardships and alleged corruption erupted in Iran’s second city of Mashhad on Thursday and escalated across the country into calls for the religious establishment to step down.

Some of the anger was directed at Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, breaking a taboo surrounding the man who has been supreme leader of Iran since 1989.

Video posted on social media showed crowds of people walking through the streets, some chanting “Death to the dictator!” Reuters was not immediately able to verify the footage. The Fars news agency reported “scattered groups” of protesters in Tehran on Monday and said a ringleader had been arrested.

“The government will show no tolerance for those who damage public property, violate public order and create unrest in society,” Rouhani said in his address on Sunday.

Unsigned statements on social media urged Iranians to continue to demonstrate in 50 towns and cities.

The government said it was temporarily restricting access to the Telegram messaging app and Instagram. There were reports that internet mobile access was blocked in some areas.