Obama officials agreed to release 21 Iranian proliferators in January as part of a prisoner swap that involved a range of other concessions, including a controversial $1.7 billion cash payment.
Even as the cash payment came under intense public scrutiny, the administration downplayed the background of the seven Iranian so-called sanctions violators released under the swap, Politico reports. Obama officials also dropped charges and warrants against an additional 14 Iranian fugitives:
In his Sunday morning address to the American people, Obama portrayed the seven men he freed as “civilians.” The senior official described them as businessmen convicted of or awaiting trial for mere “sanctions-related offenses, violations of the trade embargo.” In reality, some of them were accused by Obama’s own Justice Department of posing threats to national security. Three allegedly were part of an illegal procurement network supplying Iran with U.S.-made microelectronics with applications in surface-to-air and cruise missiles like the kind Tehran test-fired recently, prompting a still-escalating exchange of threats with the Trump administration. … And in a series of unpublicized court filings, the Justice Department dropped charges and international arrest warrants against 14 other men, all of them fugitives. The administration didn’t disclose their names or what they were accused of doing, noting only in an unattributed, 152-word statement about the swap that the U.S. “also removed any Interpol red notices and dismissed any charges against 14 Iranians for whom it was assessed that extradition requests were unlikely to be successful.”
Many of the law enforcement officials at the center of the administration’s counterproliferation efforts were not informed or consulted about the decision to release the 21 Iranians, per Politico.
More broadly, FBI and Justice Department counterproliferation efforts against Iran, including luring Iranian targets, were delayed and hobbled in the months before the nuclear deal, leaving officials discouraged and frustrated.
Through action in some cases and inaction in others, the White House derailed its own much-touted National Counterproliferation Initiative at a time when it was making unprecedented headway in thwarting Iran’s proliferation networks. In addition, the POLITICO investigation found that Justice and State Department officials denied or delayed requests from prosecutors and agents to lure some key Iranian fugitives to friendly countries so they could be arrested. Similarly, Justice and State, at times in consultation with the White House, slowed down efforts to extradite some suspects already in custody overseas, according to current and former officials and others involved in the counterproliferation effort.
Read more at Politico.
