Boeing Comes Under Bipartisan Criticism Over Controversial Jet Sale to Iran

Obama administration should block the $17.6 billion sale for 80 planes

Boeing’s recently announced multi-billion dollar deal with Iran has drawn stinging rebukes from influential members of Congress on both sides of the aisle.
Rep. Brad Sherman (D – Calif.) wrote in a letter this week that the Obama administration should block the $17.6 billion sale for 80 planes, The Hill reported on Thursday.
“Iran Air’s aircraft will undoubtedly be used in the future to continue to funnel lethal assistance to [Syrian President Bashar] Assad, to Hezbollah, and to other terrorist entities,” argued Sherman, a top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Sherman also noted that although Iran Air — the Islamic Republic’s national carrier — is no longer sanctioned as part of last year’s nuclear deal, it still maintains close ties with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its elite Qods Force, which is sanctioned for support of terrorism.
Sherman’s letter indicates that “there is Democratic opposition” to the deal in Congress, The Hill noted. Rep. Pete Roskam (R – Ill.), one of the more vocal Republican opponents of the deal, also slammed Boeing while addressing thousands of U.S. veterans on Thursday, The Weekly Standard reported.
“Iran is the central supplier for terrorism around the world,” Roskam said while rebuking the Illinois-based company. “The regime has killed American soldiers in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and all around the world,” he added. “It’s shameful for Boeing to even consider doing business with the Iranians, let alone agree to sell airplanes to the same regime-owned companies running their terror supply routes throughout the Middle East.”
Roskam and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R – Texas) called on Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg to walk away from the deal in a letter last month, warning that it could further destabilize the Middle East.
Iran has a history of using civilian aircraft for military purposes, with a Western intelligence report seen by Reuters in 2012 confirming that Iran continued using such aircraft to transport large amounts of arms and personnel to aid Assad.
Iran’s continued support of Assad could jeopardize the Boeing deal, the Associated Pressreported last week. If Iran Air, which was initially sanctioned by the Treasury Department in 2011 partially due to its transport of “missile or rocket components” to Syria, is found to be supporting Assad, it could be put back on the sanctions list and the Boeing deal will be suspended or cancelled as a result.
Emanuele Ottolenghi, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who tracks Iranian flights, recently noted that Iran Air flew to Damascus earlier this month, possibly to transport troops and materiel to Assad.
The Daily Beast reported last week that Thomas Pickering, a veteran U.S. diplomat who vocally supported the nuclear deal, never revealed that he received payments from Boeing, even when he testified before Congress in favor of the agreement.

Time to get rid of the terrorist regime of Iran

Rep. Ed Royce

 As the Obama Administration  pushes for a final agreement with  Iran, reports indicate that the deal could bring as much as $50 billion to the terrorist regime in Tehran in immediate relief, and another $100 billion could come over the next year. And U.S. Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA), Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, issued in his statement as U.S. negotiators work toward a final Iran nuclear agreement which would provide Tehran with tens of billions in sanctions relief.  Earlier this week, a senior U.S. official said that Iran would not use billions in sanctions to back its nefarious activities. "It is our assessment that they are not going to spend the vast majority of the money on guns, most of it will go to butter," said the U.S. official.

Chairman Royce said: “Obama Administration officials have talked themselves into the delusion that the regime in Tehran will use a sanctions relief jackpot to help its people.  But Iran’s Supreme Leader isn’t looking to cut this deal because he cares about ordinary Iranians.  He’s making it so that he can consolidate power at home, dominate the region and gain acceptance of Iran’s nuclear program, paving the path to a nuclear weapon.  Helping Iranians doesn’t even make the list.  The ObamaAdministration’s fundamental misread of the Iranian regime is part of what makes this potential agreement so dangerous to our national security.”

At the same time Hillary Clinton the 2016 presidential candidates who in known for her historical appeasements with the Iranian Mullahs was asked about the Obama administration’s involvement in ongoing nuclear talks with Iran, she said: “I’m hoping it’s a strong, verifiable deal that will put the lid on Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions. Even if we are successful, however, Iran’s aggressiveness will not end.”

“Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing” on a range of foreign policy issues، particularly in the Middle East، Sen. Lindsey O.Graham (R-S.C.)، said of the president in a New York radio interview Sunday morning.

“These nuclear negotiations with Iran scare the heck out of me،” Graham said. “We’d be nuts to give the Iranians more money until they change their behavior. . . . At the end of the day، a nuclear deal with Iran has to be airtight because they lie and cheat،” he said، according to an account in The Hill.

Diplomats here enter the final hours of more than 18 months of negotiations that will either establish a new relationship between Iran and global powers، or collapse amid recriminations and threats to world peace.

All sides say they are very close to finalizing a comprehensive agreement that would place limits on Iran’s nuclear activities and prevent it from producing a nuclear weapon، in exchange for lifting international economic sanctions.

Differences have narrowed in recent days in both of the main areas of negotiations — the level of inspections and verification that Iran keeps its side of the bargain، and the pace and scope of sanctions relief Iran will get in exchange.

Separate from the negotiations، U.S. officials are working on how an accord would be rolled out to the public and to a skeptical Congress. Officials have said there will likely be no signing ceremony; instead، agreement on a   mutually agreed later date.

For the United States and its partners، lifting of a wide range of sanctions requires regulatory and political action in Europe، the United Nations and Washington — some of which is under the control of Congress.

 The United States and other countries believe Tehran once was working to develop an atomic weapon،, but any way, the world needs not to trust the Iranian Mullahs because they just want to get rid of the suffocating sanctions in order to earn billions to postpone the evident regime-collapse in Tehran. It's time to get rid of the terrorist regime in Iran instead of providing facilities for them to get rid of the  world sanctions.