A pair of top Republican senators revealed the Obama-Biden State Department intervened to prevent the prosecution of Iranian operatives involved in adversarial nuclear programs nearly a decade ago. According to lawmakers, former Secretary of State John Kerry blocked several FBI arrests of individuals responsible for proliferating Iran’s military capabilities between 2015 and 2016.
On Wednesday, Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Ron Johnson, R-Wis., sent letters demanding documents related to the interference from the FBI, the Department of State, and the Department of Justice (DOJ).
“The records provided to our offices show that the Obama/Biden administration’s State Department, under the leadership of John Kerry, actively and persistently interfered with FBI operations pertaining to lawful arrests of known terrorists, members of Iranian proliferation networks, and other criminals providing material support for Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs,” lawmakers wrote to all three agencies. “The records also show that DOJ and FBI leadership apparently allowed it to happen until the Trump administration altered course.”
Iranian appeasement has remained at the heart of the Biden administration’s foreign policy following eight years of a similar strategy embraced by former President Barack Obama. On Tuesday, the Biden State Department even offered “condolences” for the recent death of Iran’s terrorist president.
In 2016, the final year of Obama’s presidency, the federal government airlifted $400 million in cash to Iran in a covert operation as four Americans were released from Tehran.
“The money represented the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement the Obama administration reached with Iran to resolve a decades-old dispute over a failed arms deal signed just before the 1979 fall of Iran’s last monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi,” reported The Wall Street Journal. “The settlement, which resolved claims before an international tribunal in The Hague, also coincided with the formal implementation that same weekend of the landmark nuclear agreement reached between Tehran, the U.S. and other global powers the summer before.”
Then-President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018.
Last September, the Biden White House agreed to pay a $1.3 billion-per-prisoner ransom to Iran in an apparent “prisoner swap” wherein the U.S. released spies caught trying to steal military equipment for the world’s lead state sponsor of terror.
“But don’t let the term ‘prisoner swap’ insinuate any moral equivalence,” reported Federalist Senior Editor David Harsanyi. “These are not two normal countries trading spies or combatants. No, this is just an old-fashioned extortion.” While the U.S. released spies, “the Iranians released political hostages, snatched off the streets of Tehran after unwisely returning to visit family or attending funerals or protests.”
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Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., introduced bipartisan legislation with more than two dozen GOP colleagues plus Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., to block the $6 billion dollar hostage deal in October. The “Revoke Iranian Funding Act of 2023” was last considered by the Senate Banking Committee in early April.
Sens. Grassley and Johnson gave the Biden administration a June 4 deadline to deliver records requested by congressional investigators.
