While the story was about yet another Obama administration Iran scandal in which Tehran’s American lobbyists-in-chief sought to make liquid $5.7 billion more dollars for the “moderate Rouhani regime”, for once in the tragedy there was an unlikely unsung hero.

American financial institutions, though often maligned, especially in the post-financial crisis world, serve a vital marketplace function. Just like all enterprises, they can be vehicles for good, such as raising capital to help businesses grow, and ill, such as engaging in fraudulent activities. On the negative side of the ledger, there is a sordid history of banks prioritizing profit over principle when it comes to doing business with evil regimes and sinister characters.

Perhaps the most sickening instance involves the conduct of Swiss banks before, during and after World War II. These institutions accepted Nazi deposits expropriated from Jews and refused for decades to acknowledge these holdings, let alone provide restitution to the families of those looted and often massacred by the German forces.

For those Jews who had smuggled their funds to Swiss banks in the hopes of protecting them from Nazi terror, the Swiss banks made it almost impossible for the victims or their relatives to claim their assets after the war. The Swiss institutions – which further did substantial business with the Nazis throughout the war – only began to face justice some 50 years later following substantial pressure from federal and state governments as well as a series of class action lawsuits.

Less egregious examples abound of banks transacting with tin-pot dictators and crime syndicates. In the case of the Iran deal, many European businesses, including financial institutions, continue to fight tooth and nail to do business with an IRGC-controlled economy, overseen by the Khomeinist regime, which is the world’s leading state sponsor of jihad. These firms and supportive governments are steadfast in their desire to do business that will in whole or in part redound to the benefit of the terrorist-backing, tyrannical revolution-exporting regime, even with America out of the pact. (Read more from “When Obama Pressured Big Banks to Break the Law for Iran, They Resisted” HERE)

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On Wednesday, as a result of President Trump’s decision last month to pull the United States out of the disastrous nuclear deal, Boeing announced it will not deliver aircraft to Iran. A Boeing spokesman stated, “We have not delivered any aircraft to Iran, and given we no longer have a license to sell to Iran at this time, we will not be delivering any aircraft. We did not factor the Iran orders into our order backlog either.”

Boeing had already delayed the delivery dates on the Iran planes; during the Obama Administration, Boeing obtained U.S. Treasury licenses to begin conducting business. In December 2016, Boeing announced it would sell 80 aircraft valued at $16.6 billion to Iran Air. In April 2017, Boeing announced it would sell Iran Aseman Airlines 30 Boeing 737 MAX aircraft for $3 billion, with purchase rights for 30 additional aircraft.

In late May, The Wall Street Journal reported that General Electric was planning to end sales of oil and natural-gas equipment to Iran later this year. A GE spokeswoman asserted, “We are adapting our activities in Iran as necessary to conform with recent changes in U.S. law. GE’s activities in Iran to date have been limited and in compliance with U.S. government rules, licenses and policies.”

As Dr. Emanuele Ottolenshi of The Foundation For Defense of Democracies (FDD) testified in April 2017 before the Testimony for House Financial Services Monetary Policy and Trade, and Terrorism and Illicit Finance Subcommittees:

The administration should suspend licensing for aircraft deals with Iranian commercial carriers while it conducts a thorough review of their role in the airlifts to Syria. The U.S. should proceed to revoke licenses and re-impose sanctions if that role were to be ascertained. But the only way to prevent U.S. manufacturers such as Boeing from supplying aircraft to Iranian entities involved in material support for terrorism is to rely on U.S. non-nuclear sanctions. While the United States cannot stop every plane, it can use sanctions to exact a heavy price on Iran’s aviation sector. …

(Read more from “The Trump Effect: Boeing Will Stop Selling to Iran” HERE)

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Shortly after President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal last Tuesday, an adviser to a top Iranian official retaliated by dropping a bombshell threat. . .

An adviser to H.J.Ansari Zarif, the deputy for parliamentary and Iranian affairs within Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, specifically threatened to expose every corrupt official who accepted bribes to make the Iran deal happen three years ago.

“If Europeans stop trading with Iran and don’t put pressure on US then we will reveal which western politicians and how much money they had received during nuclear negotiations to make #IranDeal happen,” he either said or wrote, according to Hassan Ghashghavi.

A Middle East analyst for The Jerusalem Post, Ghashghavi posted the adviser’s threat on his Twitter profile Tuesday afternoon, only about an hour or so after Trump’s announcement.

H.J.Ansari Zarif’s senior advisor: “If Europeans stop trading with Iran and don’t put pressure on US then we will reveal which western politicians and how much money they had received during nuclear negotiations to make #IranDeal happen.”
That would be interesting.#JCPOA

— Raman Ghavami (@Raman_Ghavami) May 8, 2018

The adviser’s tweet appears to suggest that some Western officials partook in “pay-to-play” schemes by accepting money to support and ultimately sign the deal. The accusation makes perfect sense given that there was no legitimate reason whatsoever to support the horrible one-sided deal pieced together in 2015 by then-President Barack Hussein Obama. (Read more from “Angry Iran Threatens to Expose Western Officials Who Took Bribes to Make Nuke Deal Happen” HERE)

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