Obama Appeasing Iran?

The Iran Deal has been litigated to death; mostly on social media, but also in the media. Recently, Politico published a new article by Josh Meyer with new allegations about the Obama administration appeasing Iran via lenience towards Hezbollah. The article is long, but can be summed up as such: the DEA had a task force targeting Hezbollah's drug trafficking operation and related activities and there was an unwritten order from the top down (the author insinuates from the very top) to let Hezbollah off the hook as the possibility of a deal with Iran was of greater concern.

As expected, this has led to the usual suspects re-litigating the Iran Deal, and, per usual, the ratio of substantive commentary to ad hominem attacks is unfavorable. This is not worth spending much time on, as the quality of arguments from both sides tend to be limited, though it should be noted that the allegedly mighty "echo chamber" has chimed in vociferously against their usual opponents.

As I noted in the past, the "echo chamber", portrayed by the right as a well-oiled and effective machine, was most active during a period when support for the Iran Deal dropped by 50%. The focus, unfortunately, has been based on the usual tired tropes rather than anything substantive.

One argument worth mentioning is from Ilan Goldenberg. A former Obama official and pro-JCPOA intellectual, he asked Meyer a simple question: 'do you have any proof that any of this is explicitly because of the Iran Deal'. Goldenberg acknowledges flaws in the Obama approach to Iran, and that Meyer's background investigative work is great, but points to this failure to produce anything explicitly linking the two. Meyer has not yet responded.

There is in fact evidence that Obama's administration appeased Iran specifically because of the Iran Deal negotiations. We have it on the record that Secretary of State John Kerry and/or President Obama himself blocked the release of the updated Iran 1951-1954 Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) up until the inauguration of President Trump in January 2017 (it was then discreetly released in the summer) The belief is that the ongoing nuclear negotiations were sensitive and releasing more information on the 1953 coup in Iran which the United States, Britain, and various Iranians were involved in, would be a literal deal breaker. For whatever reason this appeasement continued years after the deal was signed.

While it is unclear how far the administration went to facilitate the deal, how much leeway they gave Iran, Hezbollah, and Iran's other proxies, there is at the moment, little substantial and attributable evidence of appeasement aside from the FRUS incident.

New CIA/State Department Docs on the 1953 Iran Coup (Part 7)

This is part 7 of my series on the new CIA and State Department docs on the 1953 Iran Coup. 

So many questions still remain about the successful and unsuccessful Iranian coups in August, 1953. Many of them may never be answered, including the curious question why John Kerry's State Department delayed the release of the updated FRUS collection.

It has been established that Kerry himself, heavily involved in the Iran nuclear talks, was vehemently opposed to the release, even up to the inauguration of President Trump. President Obama may have also been involved, but this isn't clear from the record.

In 2014 the delay was credited to the sensitivity of the ongoing nuclear talks, yet through 2017, almost two years after the nuclear agreement was finalized, they still worked to keep it from being released. What were they concerned about?

Others have theorized that this was because of the hidden British role in the 1953 coup attempts, or perhaps details over the United States role. I have argued that this doesn't make sense as (despite the reporting on this release) the role of the United States, and the UK has been well-known for decades. Two different American presidencies admitted a role (Clinton, and Obama), and the CIA formally acknowledged its role in 2013.

I asked:

What would be more infuriating for the regime, to show that the US was involved (which is what they are already furious about), or that major regime figures, or their direct influences played a role in fomenting the coup?

As the evidence shows, the role of Ayatollah Kashani, was exactly as I theorized, and perhaps even more damning than I expected. His work collaborating with key coup figures like Zahedi, encouraging quietist clerics to back the Shah, working to make his own coup as early as September 1952, hints that this is what Kerry (and Obama?) hoped to keep hidden from the Iranian public. There was backlash on Twitter especially from Iranian reformists who tweeted about the "Kashani Coup", demanding removing his name from a Tehrani street.

Others may still argue that the details of role of the United States and Britain are the reason why Kerry was so concerned about the release. However, the documents are still classified in key points, so these details are obscured. Additionally, the declassification review was completed in 2014, so there were no changes made to this latest edition. It would not have been the case that Kerry personally went in and classified British or American involvement in the coup.

Did Kerry not know what was in the documents? Was he mistaken in thinking parts that remain classified were to be released? Or was he protecting the Iranian regime, trying to keep them from being insulted by proving a direct connection to the coup which the regime and its apologists point to as the source of Iranian/American animosity?

There will be a part 8 and probably 9, but they won't happen until I thoroughly read sections 1, 2 and 4.