1. NEW: My former career @StateDept, NSC, and EU colleagues are so concerned with the concessions being made by @robmalley in Vienna that they’ve allowed me to publish some details of the coming deal in the hopes that Congress will act to stop the capitulation.
[Long thread]
2. “What’s happening in Vienna is a total disaster” one warned. The entire negotiations have been filtered and “essentially run” by Russian diplomat Mikhail Ulyanov.
The concessions and other misguided policies have led three members of the U.S. negotiating team to leave.
3. This is a long and technical thread, but here’s what you should know: the deal being negotiated in Vienna is dangerous to our national security, it is illegal, it is illegitimate, and it in no way serves U.S. interests in either the short or long term.
4. Here’s why: Led by Rob Malley, the U.S. has promised to lift sanctions on some of the regime’s worst terrorists and torturers, leading officials in the regime’s WMD infrastructure, and is currently trying to lift sanctions on the IRGC itself. Let’s dive in.
5. First, Biden’s team is preparing to rescind the Supreme Leaders’ Office Executive Order (E.O. 13876) as soon as this coming Monday, and lift sanctions on nearly every one of the 112 people/entities sanctioned under it, even if they’re sanctioned under other legal authorities.
6. We sanctioned some of the worst people you can possibly imagine under this authority, like Mohsen Rezaei, who was involved in the 1994 AMIA bombing that killed 85 people in Argentina.
He’ll be able to live free of sanctions next week if Malley proceeds.
7.Also under this action, the U.S. will lift sanctions on IRGC Brigadier General Hossein Dehghan, who led IRGC forces in Lebanon and Syria when Hezbollah bombed the Marine compound in Beirut and killed 241 U.S. servicemembers in 1983.
8. Who else? Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior advisor to Supreme Leader Khamenei, who was charged in Argentina for homicide for the 1994 AMIA bombing and as one of the "ideological masterminds" behind the attack.
He also helped prop up Assad’s brutality in Syria.
9. This would also lift sanctions on Khamenei’s personal slush funds known as “bonyads”, including Astan Quds Razavi and Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order, which confiscated houses and billions from political dissidents and religious minorities to enrich Khamenei and his goons.
10.Sanctions also to be lifted on Bonyad Mostazafan, a massive conglomerate that systematically confiscated property from Jews and Bahai’s after 1979.
It is enmeshed with the IRGC and is a corruption network used to enrich top Iranian terrorists. reuters.com/investigates/i…
1 - There’s a memo floating around some Hill offices with serious claims about weapons going to Ukraine – the thesis being that if the US keep giving them weapons, WE will quickly run out ourselves.
Putting my Hill staffer hat back on, a brief THREAD examining the claims. 🧵
2 – The chief concern raised is that Ukraine’s consumption of PAC-3 missile interceptors and 155mm artillery shells far outpaces US production rates.
The memo argues that we then curtail U.S. support & suggests we broker a deal to preserve our weapons for the Indo-Pacific.
Few other important claims:
1. Key stockpiles are depleted & require 3-5 years to replenish if we stopped sending weapons to Ukraine.
2. Supplying Ukraine won’t leave us enough weapons for the Indo-Pacific.
3. DoD said it was risky to draw down weapons without replacing them.
A few early observations on Israel’s strike on Iran and its proxy targets:
1- Great to see Israel didn’t let itself be bullied by US/European demands at unilateral appeasement.
2- the Iranian regime couldn’t defend their airspace. Israel has freedom of operation inside Iran.
3- the Iranian regime didn’t have regional help shooting down munitions coming their way either.
4- Iranian officials are already downplaying Israel’s attack and claiming they shot down drones.
Good - means they’re trying to pretend nothing happened so their response can be weak
5- great day for the Abraham Accords - the Gulf countries saw their top enemy humiliated by Israel. Good incentive for Saudi to open relations with Israel so they can do more of this.
6- Iran sees Israel can strike them with or without US blessing. Bad news for Tehran.
Thanks to the 2015 Iran Deal, huge swaths of international sanctions on Iran have just ended. All UN sanctions on Iran will expire permanently two years from now.
Russia releases a statement rejoicing the lifting of UN sanctions on Iran:
“The plans of the Anglo-Saxons and EU members to justify their unlawful actions by escalating the imaginary Iranian threat and shifting responsibility for the fate of the JCPOA to Tehran are futile.”
Ok let's talk about what "Iranian sleeper cells" in the US look like.
This July 2022 video shows 100s of children singing an ode to Qassem Soleimani & Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei with lyrics "I will be your soldier, I will be your martyr."
It's not Tehran, it's Houston.🧵
The "Islamic Education Center" of Houston hides under the guise of a religious institution.
To be clear, it's not about Islam - it's about advancing Iranian propaganda. That's why they host an annual commemoration of Ruhollah Khomeini - the founder of the Iranian regime.
They've been hosting these days at least since 2013, when their website noted there were parallel "celebrations" in Detroit/Dearborn, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, and Los Angeles.
At these celebrations, you have Khomeini quote readings like this one.
I'm not so sure Iran wants Hezbollah to launch against Israel (right now).
The most valuable function Hezbollah provides Iran is a conventional deterrent against Israeli strikes on its nuclear program: if Israeli strikes Iran, Hezbollah launches 150,000 rockets/missiles. (1/7)
2. North Korea has 6,000 artillery systems within range of South Korea's population centers, allowing them to decimate Seoul in hours of any U.S. strike on DPRK's nukes. That's a major reason we never attacked North Korea.
Here's the truth about those accounts - they were mandated under Section 1245 of the FY2012 National Defense Authorization Act signed into law by Obama.
The sanctions were designed so that as we cut Iran's oil export volume...(1/x)
2) The price of oil wouldn't spike as we took supply off the markets. Yes, that was for US customers, but it was also to keep Iranian revenue limited since revenue = price*volume.
And it cushioned our allies by not spiking their supplies too rapidly. And we took two MILLION...
3) barrels of oil off the global markets in ONE year - Biden hasn't been able to get a fraction of Russian oil off the markets because he kneecapped domestic oil production.
The law that Congress (not Trump) passed mandated the oil sales temporarily permitted be set aside in...