Why Is Biden Funding Iran amid a Shooting War with Its Terrorist Proxies? – By Noah Rothman (National Review) / Nov 15, 2023
It’s reasonable to conclude that, while there is never a good time to hand over $10 billion to the rogue regime in control of the so-called Islamic Republic of Iran, this is an especially inopportune moment for such a transfer. But then, it seems that reason has no hold over the Biden administration.
Late Tuesday, the secretary of state sent to Congress a recommendation for a 120-day waiver allowing the Iraqi government to transfer $10 billion in frozen funds to Iran. That capital was earmarked as payments for Iranian electricity, but it was being held in an escrow account that allowed Baghdad to avoid triggering penalties associated with violating the sanctions against Tehran. The administration maintains the waiver was necessary to preserve Iraq’s electricity supplies, but the cost of that enterprise is steep. Regardless of its motives, the White House is still funding a regime with which it is engaged in active hostilities.
The sequence of events here is utterly bewildering. The United States has come under attack from terrorist militia groups throughout the Middle East that are either aligned with or controlled by elements in Tehran. On no fewer than 56 occasions, U.S. positions in Iraq and Syria have come under drone and rocket attacks from Shiite militias under Iran’s control. Fifty-nine U.S. service personnel have been injured in those strikes. The escalating tempo of attacks eventually convinced Joe Biden to retaliate. Three times in as many weeks, the Pentagon executed precision strikes on targets in Syria explicitly because they were sites used by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. At least one of those rounds of strikes produced up to seven fatalities among “Iranian proxy fighters.”
