Iran Could Spend More Than $1 Billion of $1.7 Billion Windfall on Terror

T. Belman. A military analyst and ISRAPUNDIT reader, when transmitting to me this article, also sent me a progress note on a study in process: “Tracking sources of international funding for terror operations.”

The information contained in this progress note, while in the public domain, is not widely known. I have verified the information and am reproducing it to further inform the readers of ISRAPUNDIT.

Military Analyst. The process of preparing and vetting the unclassified report [Tracking sources of international funding for terror operations ] is proving to be a more complex, time-consuming project that originally anticipated.

Aspects still in the works include the relationship of North Korea and Iran in developing nuclear weapons and ICBMs. Currently, Iran has large contingents of scientists physically in North Korea and actively working with the North Korean scientists on both their ICBM and nuclear weapons development programs. Previously Iran provided the financing and North Korea provided the technology and scientists to covertly introduce a nuclear reactor into Syria. In that activity Syrian scientists as well as technical personnel from Hezbollah were intimately involved. The US CIA, State Department, and White House denied the Israeli furnished intelligence and claimed that the “suspicious construction ” was an agricultural experimental station. It was only after the Israelis covertly destroyed the facility and provided further documentation that the United States acknowledged the purpose of the facility and the participation of North Korean, Iranian, Syrian and Hezbollah personnel.

Currently, North Korea has tested an improved nuclear weapon and missiles capable of reaching Seoul South Korea, Tokyo Japan, and the West Coast of the United States [ San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Diego, etc.]. While sanctions have been grueling on North Korea, NK is getting relief through infusions of hard currency from Iran some of which originated as payments to Iran from the United States and others which originated as a skim off of a recovering Iranian economy.

Another aspect under work is the $400 million which the US pays to UNRWA. We are attempting to determine what percentage of the US $400 million subsidy goes directly and indirectly to financing terrorist education and activism. Senator James Risch (R-Idaho), US Senate Near Subcommittee chair, disclosed on Tuesday, Sept. 13 , 2016 that he had made an official request in June of the US General Accounting office, for an investigation of the involvement of terror groups with UNRWA education.

By Patrick Goodenough, CNS NEWS September 16, 2016

(CNSNews.com) – The Iranian regime could direct more than $1 billion of the $1.7 billion it received from the Obama administration early this year towards sponsoring terrorism, a defense policy analyst said Thursday.

Rachel Hoff, director of defense analysis at the center-right American Action Forum, based the assertion on the fact – reported several weeks ago – that Iran has earmarked the $1.7 billion to its military budget; and to her own earlier research findings that some 65 percent of its defense budget is channeled to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

“It is unlikely that Iran accurately reports its military or paramilitary spending, but the reported budget figures are useful as a minimum baseline,” Hoff wrote. “Applying the official spending levels to the U.S. payment to Iran, the $1.7 billion could mean $1.1 billion for the IRGC.”

The IRGC’s role in supporting terror plots and terrorist proxies around the world, particularly through its foreign operations arm, the Qods Force, is well-documented. The State Department says Iran remains the world’s “foremost state sponsor of terrorism.”

Iran last January and February received $1.7 billion, in cash, from the U.S. government in settlement of a claim for funds paid before the 1979 Iranian revolution for undelivered military equipment. $400 million was frozen Iranian funds, while the other $1.3 billion of U.S. taxpayers’ money was negotiated interest, accrued over three-and-a-half decades.

(The funds were frozen after the revolution when regime-backed students seized the U.S. Embassy and took as hostage 52 Americans who were held for 444 days.)

Late last month, Iran’s Guardian Council ratified the country’s 2016-17 budget which, according to Foundation for Defense of Democracies research fellow Saeed Ghasseminejad, incorporated a legislative stipulation that the $1.7 billion from legal settlements go to the military budget.

“There is no longer any doubt that the money the United States has paid to Iran will go to the Islamic Republic’s armed forces,” Ghasseminejad wrote in a Sept. 1 policy brief.

“It remains unclear how the military will spend it – potentially to prop up the Syrian regime, Hezbollah, Shi’ite militias in Iraq, or Houthi rebels in Yemen, or to buy heavy weaponry from Russia in contravention of the U.N. arms embargo.”

The first U.S. payment, $400 million, was flown in to Tehran on the same day as the regime freed four imprisoned Americans. The administration rejected – and continues to reject – critics’ accusations that it amounted to a “ransom,” although later conceded that it had been used as “leverage” to ensure the Americans’ release that day.

After the unorthodox method of payment – cash in foreign currency banknotes, stacked on pallets on an unmarked cargo plane – was reported last month, White House press secretary Josh Earnest played down concerns that Iran would use the cash for terrorism.

“Was the White House at all concerned that they were essentially handing the Iranians a pot of untraceable money that is potentially going to fall into the hands of people who we don’t like very much, or doing things that we don’t want to be doing?” he was asked at an August 3 briefing.
In his response, Earnest said the administration’s analysis of how Iran has spent other money acquired as a result of the nuclear deal “is that, largely, that money was spent to address the dire economic condition of the nation of Iran.”

While he acknowledged that Iran may use some of the money it gets to support Hezbollah and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, “the bulk of the money we know has been going to shoring up their economic weakness.”

Hoff of the American Action Forum noted the IRGC’s active support for terror organizations in Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and Yemen, and the fact it sends billions of dollars to the Assad regime each year. (The office of U.N. Special Envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura estimates some $6 billion a year goes to propping up Assad, according to a Congressional Research Service report.)

“Paying ransoms in exchange for Americans held abroad is one bad policy,” said Hoff. “Indirectly funding terrorism is another.”