ACLJ Demands Obama-Era Iran Deal Documents on Iran’s Use of Commercial Planes for Jihad

By 

Jordan Sekulow

|
October 17, 2017

Late last week, the President boldly announced that his Administration will not certify the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), otherwise known as President Obama’s catastrophic Iran Nuclear Deal. In his announcement, President Trump called out the Iranian government for what it is – a “radical regime.”

As we have explained before, the disastrous Iran Deal is even worse than previously thought: “Evidence now surfaces showing the Obama Administration concealed information that Iran—the number one state sponsor of terror—has made it a practice of shipping jihadists on commercial aircraft to Syria in violation of the international laws governing the Iran Nuclear Deal.”

The ACLJ has opposed the flawed, secretive Obama Iran Deal from the beginning.  And today, we submitted a new round of legal demands to the bureaucracy aimed at bringing those Obama-era flaws and secrets to light.

The ACLJ’s opposition to the Iran Deal is more than mere talk. It’s action. It has to be. The consequences of inaction are too severe.

Remember, last year, we took the Obama State Department to federal court to expose one of the key lies advanced by the Obama Administration. The State Department lied about when the secret bilateral talks with the Iranian regime actually began, and then deleted press briefing video footage where their spokesperson admitted as much. 

Our lawsuit uncovered the “sensitive” internal memo containing “evidence of purposeful editing” – that a video technician recalled receiving a telephone call from within the State Department directing him to cut the segment in connection to a Fox News reporter’s inquiry.  The State Department called the deletion a “glitch,” but after receiving our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, changed course and acknowledged it was “deliberate.”

We are defeating the deep state bureaucracy in federal court. But now we need to take the next step to further expose the duplicity, to hold the bureaucracy accountable, and to stop this disastrous Iran deal.

That’s why we are sending these new FOIA requests today.  We are demanding that four key agencies involved with the Iran Deal – the State Department, the Department of the Treasury, the National Security Agency (NSA), and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) – give us the records that will show what they knew about Iran Air’s use of civilian airliners to transport military personnel and equipment.  What they knew matters because, in the Iran Deal, they agreed to let Boeing and other plane manufacturers sell airplanes to Iranian airliners like Iran Air. 

This is especially important given the fact that, as we reported last month, the Obama Administration reportedly hid Iran’s use of commercial aircraft to transport jihadist soldiers to the battlefield – a blatant violation of international law.

As we’ve previously said,

Shipping jihadists on commercial aircraft constitutes an outrageous pattern of behavior. This conduct has apparently helped to fuel Bashar al-Assad’s atrocities in Syria. This practice demands a thorough investigation. Photographic evidence provided to Congress shows Iran using its state run airline, Iran Air, to ferry militants between 2016 and 2017. During this period, the Obama Administration removed sanctions on Iran Air in an apparent attempt to promote multi-billion-dollar sales between Iran and aircraft manufacturer Boeing. Going forward, this means that Iran would have more aircraft available to ferry militants not just to war-torn Syria, but to anywhere in the world.

In these new FOIA requests, we are demanding:

all records concerning the connection between the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), OFAC licenses issued to Boeing and Airbus allowing agreements for well over 200 jets, U.S. government knowledge of Iran’s past use or intended or possible future use of Iran Air jets to transport military personnel and/or equipment, and any discussions prior to the JCPOA concerning Iran Air’s use or possible use of jets for those purposes.

The fact that the Obama Administration gave so much away to Iran is beyond astonishing – especially when, as Rep. Peter Roskam (IL-6) explained in his bill, the Terror-Free Skies Act:

Iran, through its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), provides material and financial support to Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO), including Hamas, Hezbollah, and Kata’ib Hezbollah, as well as to the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria which is responsible for over 400,000 civilian deaths.

Iran has systematically employed its national air carrier, Iran Air, as well as numerous private and publically owned Iranian and Syrian airliners, including Mahan Air, to ferry weapons, troops, and military equipment on behalf of the IRGC and Iran’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL) to FTOs and rogue regimes around the world.

Without question, the President is right not to certify President Obama’s disastrous Iran Deal.  He is right to call Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a “corrupt personal terror force and militia” and to call for Congress to “impos[e] tough sanctions.”  He is right to stop ignoring the Iranian “regime’s two favorite chants” – “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.”

While there is still much that we do not yet know, here is one thing we do know:  The Iran Deal is a calamity. The Obama Administration had to lie to the American people to get it through.  We will keep pushing until the United States completely withdraws from the disastrous agreement – an agreement which, as we have previously detailed, Iran has violated on numerous occasions.  The more light we can bring to the surreptitious secrets and dangerous counter-American concessions, the more likely Congress will do its part to cancel America’s role in the agreement.

Whether through today’s FOIA requests, or other avenues of advocacy, we won’t back down.  We’ll take the deep state bureaucratic agencies back to federal court again if that’s what it takes.

Please join us. Make your voice heard.