Everything for Pursuing Terrorism

US administration’s persistence to sell the world the idea that the final nuclear deal will bring rulers in Iran to propriety of behavior led to a meeting in London on May 12^th in which US Secretary of State John Kerry tried to persuade European financial institutions to facilitate business with Iran. Mr. Kerry did not come out of the meeting as a winner. International sanctions imposed over Tehran’s nuclear activities were lifted in January, but other U.S. and European sanctions remained unchanged. A few days later on May 17 David Lipton, the first IMF senior management official to visit Iran since the 1979 revolution, said in an interview in Tehran, “The best thing the government can do, and the banks can do, is to bring those standards up to international levels and try to reassure foreign partners, banks and otherwise that Iran’s banks are safe to deal with”.  As Bloomberg reported Lipton advised that “Iran must bolster anti-money laundering and terrorism-financing laws if it wants to reconnect to the global economy”.

Just a few months ago, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the body that oversees the honesty of the international financial system, recapped that Iran remained a money laundering concern and urged banks to treat it accordingly. The Treasury also determined that “the international financial system is increasingly vulnerable to the risk that otherwise responsible financial institutions will unwittingly participate in Iran’s illicit activities.”

No one has come out claiming that Iran has changed its behavior for which it was sanctioned including actively support of terrorism. Financial observers believe that to give Iran a go ahead would pose a significant risk to financial institution. What was claimed did not come true. The deal with Iran did not set the stage for a safer and more stable Middle East and a more secure United States.

Waves of publicities and promises did not change anything for the so called moderate government of Hassan Rouhani. The Ayatollahs, the most hatred ruling system in Iran’s cotemporary history, will not survive without pursuing repression and terrorism. Any hope that one day Iran‘s rulers relinquish their money laundering and submit to the international protocols is only a sweet dream. Tell them how to feed their allies and proxies in the region.

The government of Ayatollahs in its four decades of existence has stood on its two feet: repression inside and terrorism outside its borders. The United Nations General Assembly has adopted many resolutions condemning gross violations of human rights in Iran.

John Kerry’s asking European banks to do more business with Iran stirred criticism in that part of the world. Stuart Levey, HSBC bank’s chief legal officer, rejected the idea, Levey, President Barack Obama’s former undersecretary of the treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence in a Wall Street Journal op-ed warned banks of the financial risks involved in transacting with Iran. The end result, Levey wrote, was that “Iran became a financial pariah.”

Testifying before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Thomas Shannon, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, said reports that Iran would be allowed to deal directly with U.S. banks are inaccurate.  Shannon told the committee the administration is 'encouraged' so far by Tehran’s adherence to its nuclear commitments mandated by the accord, which is designed to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. But he said it shares the concerns expressed by members of Congress over Iran’s “destabilizing activities in the Middle East and its human rights abuses at home”.
He listed Iran’s support for extremist groups like Hezbollah, its assistance to the regime of Bashar Assad and the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and its ballistic missile program as all being at odds with U.S. interests.

Like any other system, Mullahs have also altered Iran’s financial system and codes to suit their own benefits. That is the methods that ease the relocation of funds to anywhere in the world. Not only the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps  (IRGC), that is the central core behind Iran’s illicit conducts and  controls broad swaths of the Iranian economy but individual officials have their own private financial institutions which find their way through the international system. Every administrative channel in Iran is rehabilitated to serve the interests of Ayatollahs’ plundering policies.
A bill passed by Iranian parliament in 2008 prohibits the availability to the public of financial records and activities of the supreme leader Ali Khamenei. More than 500 employees, who are mostly secret and security agents, control the books.

Iran’s present rulers will never abide to any international law. This has been a repeated experience through Iran’s cases of finance, destructive weapons or human rights violations. Some global institutions may still prefer to test their chance of trusting Ayatollahs but for Iranian people the answer is clear. The wealth and finance of Iran must return to its legal owners, the Iranian people. As long as mullahs control Iran the wealth of the country will go to Ayatollahs’ private accounts throughout the world and to their proxy terrorist groups.

Iranian people and their resistance are striving to throw out the suppressive Ayatollahs to bring about democracy, freedom and decency to Iran. What Iran needs is a regime change.