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Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/hp1330.htm December 17, 2008 HP-1330 Treasury Designates Bank Melli Front Company in New York City Washington, DC--The U.S. Department of the Treasury today designated ASSA CORP., a front company created and controlled by Iran's Bank Melli and domiciled in New York, and its parent organization, ASSA CO. LTD, located in the Channel Islands. "This scheme to use a front company set up by Bank Melli -- a known proliferator -- to funnel money from the United States to Iran is yet another example of Iran's duplicity," said Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial...

U.S. slaps sanctions on Iranian bank over missile programs (Kyodo) _ The Treasury Department said Tuesday it has cut off Iran's state-owned Bank Sepah from access to the U.S. financial system for its alleged support for developing missiles. The sanctions, issued under a presidential executive order aimed at freezing the assets of proliferators of weapons of mass destruction and their supporters, prohibit the bank's any transactions in the United States and freeze any assets it may have under U.S. jurisdiction. "Bank Sepah is the financial linchpin of Iran's missile procurement network and has actively assisted Iran's pursuit of missiles capable...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A group the White House recently identified as a key surrogate in selling the Iran nuclear deal gave National Public Radio $100,000 last year to help it report on the pact and related issues, according to the group's annual report. It also funded reporters and partnerships with other news outlets. The Ploughshares Fund's mission is to "build a safe, secure world by developing and investing in initiatives to reduce and ultimately eliminate the world's nuclear stockpiles," one that dovetails with President Barack Obama's arms control efforts. But its behind-the-scenes role advocating for the Iran agreement got more...

U.S. president-elect Donald Trump will be “surprised” by Iran if he annuls the nuclear deal between the Islamic Republic, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Thursday, according to the Trend news agency. “As I said earlier, Trump will be surprised if he tries to renegotiate the deal,” Zarif was quoted as having told the Iranian IRNA news agency. “We believe that nuclear deal is an international one and we are not worried about it at all,” he continued. “We are not going to be wary of what Trump does and we will have our options,” Zarif added, noting...

An American cyberattack on North Korea half a decade ago was fruitless overall, sources say. The National Security Agency (NSA) led a mission in 2010 to damage North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, Reuters reported on Friday. Operatives tried using a variant of the Stuxnet computer virus deployed against Iran that same year, the news service said, with developers crafting a version that would activate once it reached Korean-language settings on targeted machines. Operatives hoped the virus would disable centrifuges for enriching uranium, much like it had when used against Iran, Reuters said, but the cyberattack stumbled when it encountered North...

A retired four-star Marine Corps general who served as the nation’s second-ranking military officer is a target of a Justice Department investigation into a leak of information about a covert U.S.-Israeli cyberattack on Iran’s nuclear program, a senior Obama administration official said. Retired Gen. James E. “Hoss” Cartwright served as deputy chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and was part of President Obama’s inner circle on a range of critical national security issues before he retired in 2011. The administration official said that Cartwright is suspected of revealing information about a highly classified effort to use a computer virus...

President Obama has commuted the 35-year sentence of former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning for leaking classified information in 2010 to WikiLeaks.

Satellite Pics Suggest Iran, North Korea Cooperating on Nuclear Research by TheTower.org Staff | 12.29.16 4:28 pm The discovery of a working North Korean missile site that was previously thought to be inactive may suggest that the country is cooperating with Iran on ballistic missile and nuclear technology, Voice of America reported Wednesday. PRESS RELEASE: Strategic Sentinel Finds Previously Unknown North Korean Site Read more here: https://t.co/NJk9a9LBgd#NorthKorea #VOA @W7VOA pic.twitter.com/f3S24izQOn — Strategic Sentinel (@StratSentinel) December 28, 2016 Satellite images taken and analyzed by the intelligence firm Strategic Sentinel discovered a missile silo in Geumchang-ri, a mountainous area in North Pyongan...

Bombshell yes, surprising no. Excerpted from The Daily Caller: President Barack Obama twice appointed former Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn to key national security jobs in his administration, including as deputy director of national intelligence and later as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, yet he never once met with Flynn face to face. The general, who spent 33 years in the intelligence field, told The Daily Caller News Foundation he was never called in for a face-to-face meeting with Obama to offer his assessment of ISIS as it rampaged through the Middle East, or during the political meltdown of...

Perhaps it was just a little “Pillow Talk” with his Iranian wife!  Who is Dr. Mohamed El Baradei? A quick Google search yields the following general biographical information:Dr. ElBaradei is the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA], an inter-governmental organization based in Vienna, and formed under the auspices of the United Nations in 1957. He was appointed to the office effective Dec. 1 1997, and re-appointed to a second term in Sept. 2001. El Baradi was born in Egypt in 1942. He gained a Bachelor’s degree in Law in 1962 at the University of Cairo, and a...

State Department spokesman John Kirby defended his boss, Secretary of State John Kerry, on Monday for accepting an award for his role in negotiating the Iran nuclear deal along with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. Kirby and Zarif were given the annual Chatham House Prize for finalizing the agreement in July 2015 and working to implement it in January 2016. Critics of the deal in the United States say that it does not do enough to curb Iran’s nuclear capabilities and gives the Islamic Republic too much sanctions relief without addressing the country’s malign activities in the Middle East.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Monday criticized Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s proposal to allow Japan to obtain nuclear weapons, stressing that Japan’s pacifist Constitution was written by the United States. “Does he not understand we wrote Japan’s constitution to say they could not be a nuclear power?” Biden said in a speech he delivered in Scranton, Pa., for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. “Where was he when in school?” Biden asked. “Someone who lacks this judgment cannot be trusted,” he said. “He’s not qualified to know the [nuclear] codes,” the U.S. vice president said. Trump has suggested that...

North Korea: Friendly Proliferation May Beat A Nuclear Umbrella DOUG BANDOW 2:42 PM ET The Obama administration is debating a declaration of no first use of nuclear weapons. Some Asia specialists fear the resulting impact on North Korea. But dealing with Pyongyang is a reason for Washington to encourage its ally South Korea to go nuclear. /snip Washington's chief responsibility should be America's security. Backers of the status quo act like there is no alternative to leaving South Korea (and Japan, which faces a real, though less direct, threat from the DPRK) vulnerable to attack. However, Seoul is well able...

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Friday strongly condemned North Korea's latest nuclear test and said she supported U.S. President Barack Obama's call to increase sanctions on the East Asian country. "I support President Obama’s call to both strengthen the sanctions passed earlier this year with the United Nations and to impose additional sanctions," Clinton said in a statement.

South Korean officials said that they had detected an “artificial” tremor emanating from North Korea on Friday morning, indicating that the country has conducted its fifth nuclear test despite threats of more sanctions from Washington ... A statement from the South Korean military also said that an artificial tremor, registered as magnitude 5.0, had originated from Punggye-ri in northeastern North Korea, where the North has conducted its four previous underground nuclear tests. North Korea last tested a nuclear device on Jan. 6. In April, President Park Guen-hye of South Korea warned that the North might be preparing for another underground...

I can't wait for those Iran sanctions to "snap back" into place, can you? The top leadership in Iran has instructed its atomic research organization to prepare to reopen nuclear sites shuttered by the nuclear agreement. If Iran goes through with this, it would scuttle the agreement and force President Obama to reimpose sanctions. Or not.

Newly released State Department emails help reveal how a major Clinton Foundation donor was placed on a sensitive government intelligence advisory board even though he had no obvious experience in the field, a decision that appeared to baffle the department’s professional staff. The emails further reveal how, after inquiries from ABC News, the Clinton staff sought to “protect the name” of the Secretary, “stall” the ABC News reporter and ultimately accept the resignation of the donor just two days later. Copies of dozens of internal emails were provided to ABC News by the conservative political group Citizens United, which obtained...

HIROSHIMA, Japan (AP) - With an unflinching look back at a painful history, President Barack Obama stood on the hallowed ground of Hiroshima on Friday and declared it a fitting place to summon people everywhere to embrace the vision of a world without nuclear weapons. As the first American president to visit the city where the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb, Obama came to acknowledge - but not apologize for - an act many Americans see as a justified end to a brutal war that Japan started with a sneak attack at Pearl Harbor. Some 140,000 people died after...

In case you missed it over the weekend, National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes admitted in a lengthy New York Times Magazine profile that the Obama administration used the media to manipulate and lie to the American people about the nuclear deal with Iran. Here is one of the lies pushed by the administration, which David Reaboi highlighted yesterday at The Federalist. First, the lies and the denials about the negotiations. It took months before a few dogged journalists started to ask questions about the talks Obama officials were engaged in with Ahmadinejad’s regime. In February 2013, then-State Department Spokesperson Victoria Nuland...

President Barack Obama will visit Hiroshima later this month, the White House announced Tuesday. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were devastated by atomic bombs the U.S. dropped on the Japanese cities in 1945 during World War II. Obama will be the first sitting U.S. president to visit Hiroshima. He is scheduled to travel to Vietnam and Japan from May 21 through May 28 on his 10th trip to Asia, where he is expected to highlight America’s commitment to increase diplomatic, economic and security engagement with Asian nations and their people. The White House said Obama will participate in his final G-7 Summit...