Biden's screwy Iran waiver

 Daily Signal:

After Iran-backed Hamas terrorists massacred about 1,200 Jews in Israel and Iran-backed militias throughout the Middle East attacked U.S. bases across the region, the U.S. State Department under President Joe Biden extended a waiver that allows Iran to sell electricity to Iraq and use the money to purchase goods overseas.

“It is beyond insane,” Robert Greenway, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense, told The Daily Signal on Friday, three days after the State Department extended the waiver. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s news outlet.)

“Among the most irresponsible things you can do is to pay your enemies to attack you,” Greenway, who orchestrated former President Donald Trump’s sanctions against Iran, added.

He described Iraq’s payments to Iran for electricity as a “money laundering scheme.” As of 2022, Iraq was the world’s fifth-largest oil producer, producing 4.61 million barrels per day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Yet Iraq imports electricity from its eastern neighbor.

“A major oil producer importing electricity? It’s the stupidest thing in the world,” Greenway said. “Iraq deliberately decides they need electricity and it won’t bring in countries to improve its electric grid.”

Iraq also refuses to import the electricity from its other neighbors in the Persian Gulf, he said. Instead, Iraqi leaders “deliberately” hobble their country because “Iran wants cash.”

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller noted in a Tuesday briefing that the waivers allowing Iraq to purchase Iranian electricity date back to the Trump administration.

“I would remind you of a few things with respect to these waivers in general, and that is that, number one, there are 20 waivers that have been issued for the payment from Iraq for Iranian electricity imports,” Miller argued. “They go back to 2018; they started during the Trump administration.”

The spokesman also claimed that “none of this money goes to Iran.” Rather, it remains “in accounts that are restricted where they can only be used to pay for food, medicine, humanitarian purposes, and other non-sanctionable activities. And it has been consistent with several policies that we have—one, to try to reduce Iran’s leverage over Iraq, and two, to try to wean Iraq from Iranian energy independence.”

Greenway acknowledged that the Trump administration issued waivers to allow Iraq to purchase oil from Tehran, but declared that it is “beyond disingenuous” to blame Trump for the current policy.

The Trump waivers required Iran to deposit the money to pay electricity in dinars, the Iraqi currency, which made them effectively worthless “Monopoly money,” as Greenway put it.

Trump also enforced economic sanctions against Iran. “We saw every transaction—we could shut down their banks,” Greenway explained.
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Joe Biden is not a smart guy.  He is being outsmarted by some of the most corrupt people on the planet.  Iran deserved to be sanctioned along as the Islamic religious bigots are in charge.