The Election Is Already Making A Difference In How We Deal With Iran

According to The Daily Signal, on Thursday the House Republicans passed a bill blocking the sale of aircraft to Iran.

The article reports:

The House voted 243 to 174 to pass legislation sponsored by Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich., prohibiting the secretary of the Treasury from authorizing a transaction from a U.S. bank or financial institution related to the export of aircraft to Iran.

The White House said it would veto the bill, as it could be viewed as a violation of the Iran nuclear deal.

In September, the Treasury issued licenses to aviation giants Airbus and Boeing that permitted the sale of planes to Iran Air, the country’s state-owned airline. The agency also allowed U.S. banks to finance the sale of those aircraft to Tehran.

“This bill would keep Americans’ deposits away from a country that the president’s own State Department calls ‘the foremost state sponsor of terrorism,’ and which Treasury has designed as a ‘jurisdiction of primary money laundering concern,’” Huizenga said today on the House floor.

The legislation also prohibits the Export-Import Bank, or Ex-Im, from providing any assistance either directly or indirectly to Iran and associated entities, including its state-run airline.

Ex-Im provides taxpayer-backed loans and loan guarantees to foreign countries and companies for the purchase of U.S. products.

“We need to make sure that the American financial system is not complicit in this [Iran nuclear] deal,” Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., said on the House floor Thursday. “We need to make sure American taxpayers are not subsidizing this deal.”

The article explains why selling aircraft to Iran is not a good idea:

The company’s deal marked the first time since the Islamic Revolution in 1979 that American aircraft were sold to Tehran.

The Obama administration previously sanctioned Iran Air after the airline used passenger and cargo planes to fly rockets and missiles to Syria and other nations. The weapons were sometimes disguised as medicine or spare parts, according to past reports.

Under the Iran nuclear deal, the Obama administration dropped economic sanctions against Tehran.

I believe that the Iran treaty will be one of the first things to go under a Trump Administration. The treaty is not a good deal for anyone–it simply allows Iran to develop nuclear weapons a few years later than the Iranian government originally had in mind. It is also obvious by the behavior of Iran since the treaty that their hostility toward America has not decreased. I suspect that one of the reasons the House of Representative allowed the treaty to stand was that the airline manufacturers made large campaign contributions to key Representatives. That is the kind of behavior that needs to go away as soon as possible.

Amendments Matter

On Tuesday, Breitbart News reported that the Iran deal approved by the Iranian lawmakers is not the same deal that was negotiated in Vienna.

The article reports:

New York Post columnist Amir Taheri has explained in a series of social media posts that Iran’s version of the deal calls for the cancellation of sanctions against the regime in Tehran.

He also noted that Iran’s version of the nuke deal calls for the dismantling of Israel’s nuclear weapons program, citing Iranian parliamentarian Kazem Jalali.

The Middle East Media Research Center (MEMRI), a regional watchdog organization, has confirmed that Iran did not pass the deal agreed upon in July. They instead voted to pass the  amended version by a vote of 161-59.

Iranian lawmakers tried to unilaterally amend the deal to strip the United States’ ability to “snapback” sanctions should the Tehran regime cheat the agreement. They also replaced the language to ensure that the deal will “cancel” sanctions forever, instead of “suspending” them, MEMRI reported.

The Middle East monitoring group added that the decision to amend the deal unilaterally came at the behest of Iran’s dictator, Ali Khamenei, who on September 3 promised not to honor the agreement with Obama.

Okay, folks, what do we do now? Meanwhile, Iran is testing missiles and holding American citizens prisoners. Why in the world would we even consider lifting economic sanctions on Iran until they release the Americans they are holding hostage? If they won’t play nice, we shouldn’t play with them.

Who Is Teaching Our Children and What They Are Teaching Them ?

I have spoken before on this website about Reza Kahlili. The Daily Caller describes him as follows:

Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and the author of the award winning book, A Time to Betray. He is a senior Fellow with EMPact America, a member of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and teaches at the U.S. Department of Defense’s Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy (JCITA).

His website, A Time To Betray posted an article today about Abbas Maleki, the Iranian regime’s former deputy foreign minister and adviser to the Supreme Leader. Mr. Maleki is set to begin his academic career in America at Harvard and MIT.

The website includes a video:

It’s time to think about what our ‘best and brightest’ are learning in college.

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It May Already Be Too Late To Deal With The Problem Of Iran

Reza Kahlili posted an article at the Daily Caller today about some recent comments in the Iranian newspaper Kayhan. Reza Kahlili is the pseudonym of a former Iranian Revolutionary Guard member who worked undercover as a CIA agent for several years in the ’80s and ’90s.

The article at the Daily Caller reports:

The newspaper, which is under the supervision of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ran the story under the headline “11,000 Missiles Ready to Launch.”

And on Saturday, Tehran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Qazanfar Roknabadi, confirmed during a public roundtable event that the Islamic regime is prepared to attack both Israel and U.S. bases in the region if its nuclear facilities are attacked.

Citing comments from Gen. Zakaraia Hossein, the former head of the superior academy of Egypt, the Kayhan report added that “America fully knows that Iran is not Iraq” and that “a war with Iran would jeopardize all its interests in the region.”

One of the things to remember in dealing with Iran is that this is the country that put keys around the necks of twelve-year-old boys (the keys were supposed to be the keys to paradise) and told them to walk through minefields during the Iran-Iraq War to clear the way for the Iranian tanks. The leaders of the country are truly irrational.

In December of 2011, Fox News reported that Iran was buying weapons from China. It was reported that China sold Iran $11 billion worth of advanced DF-31 ICBMs which are capable of reaching U.S. soil with nuclear warheads. North Korean engineers are helping to get the missile system up and running. Stopping Iran’s nuclear program is not only about the destruction of Israel.

Whether we attack Iran or Israel attacks Iran, the results are going to be messy and a lot of people are going to die. The only hope we have is regime change, and that seems to be a very slim hope right now. The Israelis have tried everything short of war to stop Iran’s nuclear program, and I fear that we are rapidly reaching the point where attacking the nuclear facilities of Iran will be the only solution, as awful as that solution will be.

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This Really Doesn’t Seem Very Neighborly

One of the really great things about America is the idea most Americans have of being nice to people and being neighborly to the people around them. We need to remember that not every person or every country lives by those rules.

Reza Kahlili posted an article at wnd.com today reported:

Calling Israel a danger to Islam, the conservative website Alef, with ties to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the opportunity must not be lost to remove “this corrupting material. It is a ‘jurisprudential justification” to kill all the Jews and annihilate Israel, and in that, the Islamic government of Iran must take the helm.”

The article, written by Alireza Forghani, a conservative analyst and a strategy specialist in Khamenei’s camp, now is being run on most state-owned conservative sites, including the Revolutionary Guards’ Fars News Agency, showing that the regime endorses this doctrine.

Because Israel is going to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, Iran is justified in launching a pre-emptive, cataclysmic attack against the Jewish state, the doctrine argues.

As previously noted on this website, Reza Kahlili is a former CIA agent who served in Iran. He is an amazing man. His website is A Time To Betray. Not only does he have amazing insight into the political forces in Iran, he is extremely current on what is happening there.

The problem in dealing with Iran is that we are not dealing with a rational government. The Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) that got us safely through the cold war will not work with the Iranian regime. The regime is controlled by the Ayatollahs–not the President. The Ayatollahs believe that the destruction of Israel will trigger the coming of the last Islamic Messiah and that Jesus Christ, who will convert to Islam, will act as Mahdi’s deputy, praying to Allah as he stands behind the 12th Imam. These are not rational people, and I am hoping that either there will be a revolution within Iran by the people who do not believe this or that Israel will attack, regardless of U. S. foreign policy. I prefer that the people of Iran somehow bring democracy to their country.

On a personal note, Mr. Kahlili has a facebook page. One of the things I have noticed in the comments to his posts are that there are many broken-hearted Iranians living in America longing to return to their country once the Ayatollahs are overthrown. You can hear the heartbreak over what has happened to their country in their posts. Those who support democracy in Iran need the prayers and support of all Americans.

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