Thread by @omriceren

The Biden admin made a Day 1 decision to appease Iran and dismantle Houthi sanctions.

They knew they were doing bad things for bad reasons so they lied to the public and reporters about their decision. As the Houthis escalated, they couldn't respond.

They're still doing it. 🧵

On Jan 11, 2021, the Trump administration imposed terrorism sanctions on the Houthis as a group and on their terrorist leaders. To limit any humanitarian fallout they broadly exempted aid groups, agriculture, medicine, etc.

But Washington DC's expert class – think tankers, journalists, the Hill, Democrat operatives, etc. – always considered anything Trump did on foreign policy illegitimate, and at this point we were post-January 6 so they were convinced they'd be in power forever. They bragged that they were going to quickly and permanently reshape America and American foreign policy. Especially Iran policy: Rob Malley, who had hired operatives who literally answered to Iranian regime figures, was put in charge of America’s Iran policy.

Remember also that for the Obama-Biden foreign policy crew everything is comms. The Trump administration's late sanctions announcement had left the issue at the top of the news cycle.

So here's Blinken at his first press availability, on Jan 28. He was asked which Trump administration policies from "the last several months" he was going to prioritize reversing. He said Houthi sanctions. "That's the priority in my book."

Biden officials suspended terrorism sanctions on the Houthis on Jan 25 and announced revoking them on Feb 5. That was a Friday.

Then immediately that weekend, on Saturday and Sunday, the Houthis launched an offensive of mass murdering Yemeni civilians and attacking Saudi Arabia.

Now again, everything for this crew is comms. So when they came into work on Monday, instead of reevaluating their policy they came up with a narrative to get out of the news cycle. They said they only lifted the "broad designation" on the Houthis as a group for technical humanitarian reasons, but not the terrorism sanctions on any individual Houthi terrorist, and so actually they remained committed to pressuring the Houthis and their leaders. Sometimes they said that explicitly. Other times they tried to muddy the waters by talking about other weaker sanctions that had nothing to do with terrorism.

But they had 3 problems.

1) They were lying about what they had done. They absolutely dismantled terrorism sanctions on the Houthi leaders, because of course they did, because that was their whole point: as policy, to pivot away from terrorism sanctions on Iranian terrorists, and as politics, to undo whatever Trump did.

2) They had been incandescent pricks and bragged to journalists the whole time they were doing it. 'The adults are back in charge. We’re going to show these knuckle-dragging Republicans how adults do foreign policy. We're going to flip all of Iran policy and Saudi policy, starting right now. And there’s absolutely nothing they can do about it.' Now they had to tell those same journalists they had only implemented a technical fix, they were hardline on Iran and the Houthis, they considered the Saudis to be close allies and would cooperate with them, etc.

3) Both of those things - what they did and how they did it - had happened just a few days before, and everyone remembered.

But their goal was to get through the week and out of the news cycle. So they just lied and kept lying.

Here's the press briefing on Feb 11.

QUESTION: So, in fact, there is no change to any sanctions on these individuals.

MR PRICE: There is no change.

QUESTION: So what was the point, then?

MR PRICE: Well, I just spent I think five minutes explaining it. The point was to – the intent was to revoke the broad designation that has profound, steep, and precarious humanitarian implications for the people of Yemen. We are distinguishing between the people of Yemen and the Houthi leadership.

In fact, here are the press briefings for the whole week. Feb 8, 10, 11, and 12 in order. Just look at them lying.

Eventually the actual decision was published in the Federal Register, but not until Feb 16. They had successfully gotten through the news cycle.

One last thing: this entire trick shouldn't have worked.

If you go back to the Feb 8 briefing, you'll see Price said "You may have heard from members of Congress who have been vocal about this, that we notified the Hill of the Secretary's intent to revoke the foreign terrorist organization and specially designated global terrorist designations of Ansarallah." Then he said "we will certainly keep up the pressure on the leadership of the Ansarallah movement of the Houthis."

The "heard from members of Congress" part is about Sen. Ted Cruz, and he was right and they were lying, but OK - if Congress had the notification, and knew the administration was lying, why didn't anybody say so?

There's an answer! Biden officials deliberately co-mingled unclassified and classified information so they could throw the whole notification into a secure space, preventing is from being discussed publicly.

It's an old Obama-era trick they used all the time to hide the details of how they were appeasing Iran (check out the pasted article, note the date). When they got back into power, they picked up right where they left off.

They're still doing it. When they were negotiating their ransom deal they co-mingled unclassified and classified information about Iranian assassination plots, because it would have been inconvenient for them if the public knew about ongoing Iranian aggression against Americans while they were trying to send tens of billions of dollars to Iran.

Real populists, this crew.