Posted on 07/17/2015 7:39:49 PM PDT by jfd1776
There has always been a rule – an overriding rule in the common law, in the criminal justice system and in the insurance industry – that society must not allow you to profit from a crime you committed.
For example, if you file an insurance claim on your house, and it’s proven that you burned it down yourself, you get imprisoned for arson and the insurance company gets all the money back.
Or if you file for the life insurance on your parent or spouse, and it’s proven that you murdered him or her for the insurance money, you get imprisoned for murder and the insurance company gets all the money back.
This system is designed this way so that a societal positive (insurance) doesn’t get perverted into a societal negative by rewarding villainy. The rule is also in place for the very obvious reason that if it weren’t, the system would be literally inviting criminality. “Do I think a year in prison is worth a million dollar insurance payment? If so, I may as well do it.” We have to remove this incentive – an incentive that may warp the judgment of a person of weak conscience or desperate straits.
Yes, there are exceptions; criminals do occasionally sell the movie rights to a crime or write a book about it, but at least the law doesn’t make it easy: you can’t keep the stolen merchandise from a bank robbery; you can’t inherit or collect insurance when you were responsible for the death.
THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION OF 1979
In the 1960s and 1970s, Iran was an ally of the United States. It was a largely western country, with a largely muslim population, but primarily western in both governance and culture, like Morocco, Turkey and Lebanon used to be, in those now long-distant days.
The modern islamist movement essentially began in earnest in the 1960s, and one of its primary advocates was Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini , who spent fourteen years in exile, returning to Iran in February 1979 to take command of the growing islamist revolt against our ally, the modernizing ruler Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.
Khomeini turned the young people’s movement of demonstrations into a full-fledged rebellion, taking power in 1979 and instituting a muslim authority over the formerly largely secular government. The country could therefore still look like a republic, but the elected officials would be there only to provide cover for the mullahs who ruled them.
In the course of this rebellion and its aftermath, the islamists killed approximately 8000 members of the old Persian regime, and drove many others into exile, as they began to transform this once prosperous and advancing country back into a seventh century world of shrinking freedoms and growing sharia.
The United States responded to this overthrow of an ally’s government by freezing Iranian assets… and then by implementing sanctions… and by treating them – as we had to – as a hostile enemy nation ever since. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 turned a former friend into a dedicated enemy, as Iran became a major state sponsor of terrorism, either outright sponsoring or partially supporting such groups as Hezbollah, Hamas, Al-Qaeda, and the Taliban.
WHAT HAS IRAN DONE SINCE 1979, AND CONTINUES TO DO TODAY?
- Iran has sponsored terrorism. - Iran has worked to topple neighboring and distant governments alike. - Iran has supported insurgencies and has sent its own soldiers to fight against the United States, particularly in our actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. - Iran has worked constantly on developing both conventional weapons and weapons banned by the international community (such as chemical and biological weapons, and nuclear weapons). - Iran has made its desire to become a nuclear-equipped military power blatantly clear, and has never relented, regardless of how many agreements they sign. With centrifuges spinning all over the country, Iran’s nuclear program is too big and widespread to be easily monitored. - Iran has put bounties on the heads of American soldiers. - Iran has kidnapped Americans and other foreigners, even people who are perfectly clearly non-political non-combatants, often holding such prisoners for years. (There are four long-term prisoners in the news today, there for years, one of them just for being a peaceful Christian missionary.) - Iran has sponsored the building of mosques and Islamic community centers in the west, including here in the United States, with the practical goal of abusing the USA’s 1st Amendment protections to use these facilities as jihadist recruitment centers. - Iran publicly and shamelessly makes political promises to destroy Israel and America, to subjugate all enemies, to kill all non-muslims (or even all non-their-type-of-muslims). This is not a nation that looks for the artful, politically-polite way of addressing the enemy; this is a nation that is hostile and terrifying… and backs it up with action every time they can, to ensure that we don’t mistake them for a paper tiger. - Iran has turned a formerly westernizing nation back into a sharia-dominated land. They have elected officials for show; the council of mullahs rules in fact – according to the notoriously brutal code known as sharia law.
As they make clear, in every manner they can, when Iran makes threats, they mean it.
THE IRAN-KERRY SCANDAL
President Ronald Reagan’s second term was largely hamstrung by an investigation known as Iran-Contra, a political attack on the conjunction of two small administration efforts – one to help Iranian moderates in their efforts to free Iran from the death grip of the mullahs, and one to help Nicaraguan freedom fighters in their ongoing war against the Cuban/Soviet affiliated Sandinista government. Both efforts were in America’s interest, and still the Democratic Party dominated the headlines with investigations to hunt for some kind of lawbreaking, somewhere.
Iran-Kerry is a thousand times worse, as it involves an administration effort to work directly against American interests by doing such things as helping a currently non-nuclear enemy nation get nuclear weapons, pouring money into that enemy to spend on munitions and sponsorship of terror, and further entrench a government that the sanction regime had successfully brought to the brink of collapse. The mullahs’ regime was close to falling just a few years ago, and could easily be again, and soon… but the Iran-Kerry “deal” could easily flood the country with enough money to prop up the government for another generation.
Iran-Kerry’s failings are not only the most obvious ones – such as the inspection regime being toothless (weapons inspections can be delayed for a month or vetoed completely, for example), but that the deal rewards these past 36 years of evil by pouring tens of billions of dollars – some have estimated the preliminary numbers to be over $160 billion, hard as that may be to believe – into the Iranian rulers’ coffers.
What does this teach us, and what does it teach other enemies of the United States and our allies for the future?
It says that the United States are now happy to reward 36 years of crimes. That we are now happy to pour money into a government that unapologetically continues to put a bounty on the heads of American soldiers, a government that proudly continues to hold American hostages, a government that demonically continues to declare, in speech after speech, that it will “push the Jews into the sea” and overpower “the Great Satan” (as they call the United States).
The Iran-Kerry deal, an agreement negotiated with the support of islamist partisans in the United States government, works against United States interests in every way.
It takes frozen assets in the USA – long dormant – and turns them over to the control of one of the world’s most malicious governments, to use as they will.
Many of those assets are US government debts to the prior Iranian government, the government that the mullahs exiled, imprisoned, or murdered. These were NEVER debts to the mullahs, so there is no reason to turn these assets over to them at all, ever.
Many others of these assets are the personal property – real estate, bank accounts, stock certificates and other investments, etc. – owned by people who numbered among the 8000 killed in the revolution.
Under what rational framework of logic or morality can the Obama administration claim that it is right to give those assets to the Iranian revolutionary government?
This is to reach into the pockets of a murdered corpse, and turn over his wallet to the man who murdered him. “Don’t forget this, after all… you don’t want to have killed him for nothing…”
This is the Iran-Kerry deal. It turns diplomacy upside down. It undermines our own position and the position of our allies.
And it allows the accounts of the victims of that evil revolution to be turned over to the perpetrators of their crimes.
How dare the United States government be part of such a travesty of justice.
Copyright 2015 John F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is an international trade consultant, actor, and writer. Permission is hereby granted to forward freely, provided it is uncut and the IR URL and byline are included.
Iran-Kerry and a World Turned Upside-Down——we all knew he was a traitor,we just didn’t think history would give him a second chance.
To my friend Jaffar, who thought the Islamists silly and their beliefs unsustainable in the modern world. I’ll still miss you although the Mullahs killed you forty five years ago.
A good read... These DemRat traitors have blood past, present and future on their hands. They are guilty and will pay eventually.
Moral hazard on a global scale — thanks to Valerie Jarrett and her evil cronies.
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