Obama Allegedly Tried To Give Iran Access To United States’ Finances
Critics can try to throttle President Trump for quashing the shady Iran deal but the fact remains that the American public was heavily misled by the Obama administration over what that deal contained.
It was a bad deal, point blank. Bad for the American taxpayers and for the world. Especially since Iran never held up their end of the bargain by ending their nuclear programs.
According to USA Today, the Obama administration gave Iran brief access to the U.S. financial system as part of the Iran nuclear deal despite specifically telling Congress that such access would remain banned under terms of the controversial agreement, a report released Wednesday by Senate Republicans claims.
“Officials repeatedly testified to Congress that Iranian access to the U.S. financial system was not on the table or part of any deal,” says the majority report of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
Despite those claims, the Treasury Department, at the direction of the State Department, “granted a specific license that authorized a conversion of Iranian assets worth billions of U.S. dollars using the U.S. financial system,” the report says.
As Written By Fox News:
“On Feb. 24, 2016, the Treasury Department issued a specific license to Bank Muscat to authorize the conversion of Iran’s rials to euros through ‘any United States depository institution …,’” the draft report said. “Even after the specific license was issued, U.S. government officials maintained in congressional testimony that Iran would not be granted access to the U.S. financial system.”
“The Obama administration during the negotiation of the Iran deal misled the American people,” said Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), subcommittee chairman. “I think they did so because they were desperate to get a deal.”
When the nations involved in the Iran nuclear agreement implemented the deal, Iran had $5.7 billion in assets at Bank Muscat in Muscat, Oman, maintained as Omani rials, according to the subcommittee. Iran wanted to access that money, and using the U.S. financial system to convert it “was the most efficient means, even though U.S. sanctions prohibited it,” according to the report.