2019 was a tough year for the payroll professionals serving in Iran‘s terrorist groups across the Middle East. One distraught Iranian-backed fighter in Syria who had lost a third of his salary and other benefits lamented to the New York Times in March of that year that “the golden days are gone and will never return … Iran doesn’t have enough money to give us.”

The State Department’s Iran Action Group — of which I was a member — was so fond of the fighter’s swan song that we printed team T-shirts emblazoned with his quote.