Back in 2016, while much of the Iran Deal reporting was focused on the intrigue behind the passage of the Deal, there was another sleight of hand going down - an attempt to explain away Obama's middle of the night skullduggery in transferring 1.3 billion Dollars in cash to Iran on a dark runway in a far away country in the middle of the night - an action more reminiscent of an illicit drug deal than a payment for a so-called legitimate debt owed by one sovereign nation to another sovereign nation.
Netanyahu's revelations give much more significance to the middle of the night money transfer and the lies used to hide its motivation.
Those in the Obama Administration, who were anxious to fund Iran, wanted to do so before information could surface that would stymie their actions and prevent the money transfer.
Netanyahu's revelations on how extensive Iran's nuclear bomb project was, should make it obvious that the Obama people needed to pull off the money transfer scam before Iran's extensive bomb development program was uncovered, and that hasty action was required. That the scam went as smoothly as it did is due as much to Congress's fecklessness as to Obama's bravado.
The payment distraction was a carefully orchestrated series of lies in the form of deceitful public announcements by Obama and everyone in the Obama press corps that was meant to distract from the illicit reality of the money transfer itself.
In an articlepublished in The Federalist, I detailed how the Obama Administration steadfastly created a false narrative that the payment of the money to Iran was a cost saving move. The message was that if the United States waited to pay a forthcoming judgment that was about to be handed down from the Iran-US Claims Tribunal at The Hague, the amount of the payment including interest might be as much as ten billion Dollars. But, as the story goes, by paying the claim before the judgment was handed down, U.S. taxpayers would save Billions.
That was not true.
Obama and all his spokespeople intentionally lied. In fact the money paid to Iran in the middle of the night exceeded what the maximum payment would have been had the U.S. waited until the judgment was finalized.
Obviously, as evidenced by Netanyahu's Monday revelations, Obama had reasons to get the money to Iran before anyone became the wiser about what was going down.
In 2016, it was obvious to many that the Iran deal was a bad deal, and that Obama knew more than he was telling about Iran's nuclear plans.
Netanyahu's Monday revelations were a confirmation of what many had good reason to suspect at the time, but had little hard evidence to prove.
Regardless of whatever Obama is, and wherever his loyalties ultimately lie, he is not stupid. Looking at the Iran deal in the context of policy decisions like the renewed relations with Cuba, many suspected that Obama was intentionally aiding Iran in achieving its ultimate goal of a nuclear tipped intercontinental ballistic missile system.
The idea of lessening sanctions and bringing Iran back into the community of nations seemed too much like Munich 1938 to be believable.
While the Congress deliberated the pros and cons of a deal over which they had abrogated their authority to vote on like a treaty needing Congressional approval, the Obama Administration was creating for public consumption a 'need' for the money transfer.
Netanyahu's Monday bombshell gave strength to the belief that Obama knew more than he told. It also exposed the 'why' behind the purported urgency to get the deal done as quickly and secretly as possible. If the Congress were able to sink its teeth into the deal and reach out to some in the Intelligence Community who had not been silenced by Obama, some of what was revealed on Monday might have been seen in 2016.
There was so much consternation over the process of the deal itself, few paid attention to the veracity of the amount paid to Iran - just that it was paid in a very unusual manner
Looking back to 2016 in the context of today's certainty of Iran's nuclear intentions, it now becomes evident that the cover story about saving money was considered an important and necessary lie to explain away Obama's middle of the night money laundering.