By According to a new report, the White House has approved a sanctions waiver that will grant nearly $10 billion in frozen assets to the theocratic regime that has been accused of funding terrorism and killing Americans in the Middle East.
The administration is not doing its best to hide its soft spot for Iran, which has included allowing an alleged Iranian spy to keep her job at the Pentagon.
The Washington Free Beacon writes that the sanctions waiver, which was set to expire today after first being authorized for a period of 120 days in July, allows Iraq to transfer payments for multibillion-dollar electricity imports from Iran into accounts outside of the country that can be used by Tehran. This is the first time the Biden administration has renewed the waiver since the Iran-backed terror group Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel that was reported to have been planned with Tehran’s support.
Renewal of the waiver “allows Iraq to use its own funds to render payment for Iranian electricity imports into restricted Iranian accounts in Iraq,” a State Department official told the Free Beacon, speaking only on background. “These restricted funds can only be used for humanitarian and other non-sanctionable transactions.”
While Iran can only use the funds related to the sanctions waiver for the purchase of humanitarian goods, critics of the administration’s policy argue that by freeing up this cash, Iran can allocate other financial resources to its global terrorism operation, which has been in overdrive since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel. Analysts place the amount of cash accessible by Iran at upward of $10 billion, as the Free Beacon first reported on Monday.
In deciding to renew the waiver for an additional 120 days, the State Department official said, “Unfortunately, Iraq will not wean itself off of Iranian gas imports overnight.”
“It is absolutely outrageous the Biden Administration continues to find ways to send Iran money — especially from Iraq, where the same Iranian-backed militias who are targeting American forces increasingly run the show and are helping keep Iraq addicted to Iranian energy,” Rep. Mike Waltz, a Republican from Florida, told Fox News Digital.
Releasing the funds is another excellent example of how not having Biden in charge and letting staffers run the show means that American policy will depend on the leaders of each federal department. As the State Department pours billions into Iran, the Department of Defense has been bombing insurgents who are, in effect, using American money to attack American troops.
The Associated Press reported on Monday that a “U.S. fighter aircraft conducted airstrikes on locations in eastern Syria involving Iranian-backed groups, likely causing casualties and destroying weapons stored at the two targets that were struck — a training facility and a safe house.
A defense official said that the training facility also served as a weapons storage and that the safe house, located in the Bulbul district of Mayadin, functioned as a headquarters for Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-affiliated groups in the area. The official said Revolutionary Guard-related personnel were present at the time of the strikes and likely were hit, but the Pentagon had not confirmed whether they were killed.
The U.S. has conducted three strikes over the last two weeks against Iranian-tied weapons depots in Syria to retaliate for the more than 50 rocket and drone attacks that militant groups have launched against U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria, which have caused dozens of minor injuries among U.S. personnel. Many of the militant groups are operating under the umbrella of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq.
The militant groups began attacking the bases on Oct. 17 after a blast at a Gaza hospital killed hundreds of civilians and further enflamed regional tensions following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks inside Israel, where at least 1,200 civilians were killed, and Israel’s blistering military response, which has killed thousands of civilians trapped in Gaza.”
Before launching the attacks, President Biden was criticized for downplaying the news that roughly two dozen American soldiers received injuries after an attack on U.S. bases in the Middle East.
Politico reported that nineteen American service members stationed in Iraq and Syria were diagnosed with traumatic brain injury after rocket and drone attacks from Iranian military proxies.
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