Kerry: Iran Sanctions Relief Money will go Exactly Where You Think

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the 2016 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday, Jan. 21, 2016. Kerry’s trip is expected to last nine days and to encompass stops in Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Laos, Cambodia, and China. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool)

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the 2016 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday, Jan. 21, 2016. Kerry’s trip is expected to last nine days and to encompass stops in Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Laos, Cambodia, and China. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool)
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the 2016 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday, Jan. 21, 2016. Kerry’s trip is expected to last nine days and to encompass stops in Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Laos, Cambodia, and China. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool)
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Iran has been making out like a bandit since the nuclear deal was announced last year. Among the many fears about the deal was that the sanctions relief money that would accompany it would find its way into some rather unsavory hands quickly and easily. Today, John Kerry did nothing to assuage those concerns. While in Davos, Switzerland, he spoke with CNBC about what could happen:

When asked about whether some the $150 billion in sanctions relief to Iran would go to terrorist groups, Kerry reiterated that, after settling debts, Iran would receive closer to $55 billion. He conceded some of that could go to groups considered terrorists, saying there was nothing the U.S. could do to prevent that.

“I think that some of it will end up in the hands of the IRGC or other entities, some of which are labeled terrorists,” he said in the interview in Davos, referring to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. “You know, to some degree, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that every component of that can be prevented.”

In other words, the likelihood that it will find its way into the hands of one terrorist group or another is so high that our Secretary of State is not even bothering to lie about it or cover it up. It’s probably going to happen, he says, and there’s really just nothing we can do about it.

If you need any indicator of how serious Barack Obama and his administration is about opposing the Iranians and fighting terrorism in the Middle East, especially in the last year of his Presidency, this should be more than enough. There are many reasons for ISIS’ success, but one of them, if you will recall, is that they ended up being armed along with the so-called “moderate” Syrian rebels (or, rather, many of those rebels ended up becoming ISIS). Now, we have tacit admission that this is all but certainly going to happen on the Iranian side as well.

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The worst part here, though, is that John Kerry’s remarks imply that the Obama administration is content to just let this happen, because hey, it was going to happen anyway. We are dealing with a President who is so eager to please an avowedly anti-American dictatorship that he is totally fine with some of the money we are sending them “accidentally” finding its way into terrorists’ hands.

And at this point, even if we elect a Republican in 2016 who repeals the Iran deal, it is probably still too late. The damage has already been done here, but that doesn’t mean we should allow more of it to happen. This is the perfect opportunity, in the meantime, for some inquiring minds in both Houses of Congress to do part of what they were elected to do: hold our government accountable for what it does.

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