Implementation of President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran could lead to successful terrorist attacks in Washington, D.C., according to a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
An Iranian proxy plotted to assassinate a Saudi Arabian ambassador at Cafe Milano four years ago, as Representative Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.) recalled during a meeting with reporters at the Georgetown restaurant. “If the Iranians had their way we wouldn’t be here,” Pompeo said. “We are about to give the Iranians enough money so they can have their way.” Under the terms of the deal, Iran could get as much as $150 billion in sanctions relief, a major windfall for one of the leading state-sponsors of terrorism.
Public and classified information suggests that Iran has grown “more aggressive” in its support for terror in recent months, Pompeo added, noting that even the Obama administration predicts that some of the funding will be used to pay for terrorist attacks. “I have not heard a single administration official deny that some of this will go to the Cafe Milano fund,” he said.
Democratic support for the agreement has grown, even as lawmakers learned that Secretary of State John Kerry had left critical aspects of the Iran deal to be negotiated in side agreements between the regime and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Congress has not been provided with the agreements, but the Associated Press published text of a draft that suggests that the IAEA will delegate inspection of the crucial Parchin military site to the Iranians, entrusting them to pass along information about their own nuclear program.
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Pompeo, who discovered the existence of the side deals during a trip with Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) to Austria in July, was briefed on the Iran deal by the Energy Department Monday morning. He said the Obama administration did not contradict the AP report.
“They did not counter it to me,” he said. “[The side deal is] an elaborate scheme to try and bolster what is clearly a gap in the inspections regime.”
— Joel Gehrke is a political reporter for National Review.