Feeding Iran forbidden carrots even as it breaks the nuclear deal
?It?s fair for Iran to get what it deserves because it kept its part of the bargain to date, with respect to the nuclear agreement,? Secretary of State John Kerry told MSNBC on Tuesday.
?Fair?? Don?t be so modest. This week?s disclosure that the Treasury Department plans to unilaterally remove banking restrictions that it explicitly swore to Congress it would ?never? remove is much more than merely ?fair.?
Oh, and: Even President Obama acknowledge that the mullahs are violating at least the ?spirit? of that bargain.
True, Iran has complied with some of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which was completed last July. But it?s also tested nuclear-capable ballistic missiles at least three times, got caught smuggling illicit arms to such unsavory war zones as Yemen and Syria and reintroduced all that ?death to America? and ?wipe Israel off the earth? talk.
So it should at least get a slap on the wrist, right?
Ah, but there?s the rub: The Iran deal was never signed as an official treaty. After all, a Senate failure to ratify it could?ve endlessly embarrassed Obama and Kerry in front of their global partners. Instead, the deal became law by turning it into a UN Security Council resolution ? signed, sealed and delivered by world powers.
Those world powers ? Russia and China in particular ? are now embarrassing us.
The Obama administration vowed to protest each Iranian missile test to the Security Council. After all, the Security Council resolution ?calls upon? Iran not to conduct such activities. But as Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin explained, you can?t ?violate? something you?re merely ?called upon? not to do. So Russia will resist any attempt to reimpose sanctions on Iran.
Oh well, say administration officials. We would?ve punished Iran if it was up to us, but we can do nothing because Russia and China will veto it at the United Nations. If only there was something we could do unilaterally, but alas, there isn?t.
Yet while we?re told we can?t punish Iran without our global partners? approval, we can unilaterally reward it.
Last year, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and other members of the administration vowed in congressional hearings that despite the deal, Iran would never be allowed to do business in US dollars.
Remember: Washington, and no one else, is responsible for the greenback, which happens to be the currency that the world uses as basis for commercial transactions. Without access to it, it?s hard to do business in this world.
Remember, too: Cutting Iran?s access to the dollar was one of the most effective tools in the sanction regimes that started under President George W. Bush and intensified during Obama?s first term.
But now, as it turns out, Lew & Co. seem to want to tweak that ban.
Here?s how Eric Lorber, a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, explains how the mullahs benefit from that tweak: If a Swiss automobile manufacturer wants to sell cars to Iran, he?d have a European bank receive payment in rials from an Iranian company. The bank would then exchange those rials for euros, and then swap the euros for dollars at an offshore clearing facility. The bank would subsequently exchange those dollars for Swiss francs and transmit those francs to the Swiss automobile manufacturer.
This way, Iran gets in through the back door, allowing it to conduct dollar-backed business, even as the administration says it has no direct access to US currency or our banking system.
Such a reward isn?t required under the Iran deal or the Security Council resolution that followed it. In fact, administration officials time and again assured Congress and the American people that Iran wouldn?t have such access.
Yet now we learn that unilaterally rewarding Iran is easy, and that what were once described as ?snapback? sanctions to address even the slightest Iranian violation are very hard.
In that same MSNBC interview, Kerry complained of being embarrassed abroad by the US presidential election. But if he wants to know who?s really humiliating him, he shouldn?t be looking here at home.
