{"id":58189,"date":"2017-12-22T17:00:43","date_gmt":"2017-12-22T15:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=58189"},"modified":"2017-12-21T10:32:39","modified_gmt":"2017-12-21T08:32:39","slug":"19-00-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=58189","title":{"rendered":"Obama said to have derailed campaign against Hezbollah"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Obama said to have derailed campaign against Hezbollah to clinch Iran nuke deal<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

ERIC CORTELLESSA<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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US President Barack Obama speaks during a joint press conference with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the White House on August 2, 2016 in Washington, DC. (AFP PHOTO \/ Brendan Smialowski)<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 The Obama administration covertly derailed a campaign by the US Drug Enforcement Administration that targeted the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorist group in order to help solidify the 2015 Iran nuclear accord, according to an investigative report by Politico.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The specific campaign, called Project Cassandra, was launched in 2008 to monitor Hezbollah\u2019s weapons and drug trafficking practices, which included funneling cocaine into the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n

Along with drug-trafficking, the Lebanon-based terrorist group was also engaging in money laundering and other criminal activities \u2014 from which it made some $1 billion annually.<\/span><\/p>\n

When investigators \u2014 after amassing substantial evidence \u2014 sought approval for prosecution from the US Department of Justice and US Department of Treasury, those two agencies were unresponsive, the Politico report said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis was a policy decision, it was a systematic decision,\u201d said David Asher, an analyst for the US Department of Defense specializing in illicit finance who helped set up and run Project Cassandra. \u201cThey serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Asher added that Obama officials obstructed efforts to apprehend top Hezbollah operatives, including one of Syrian President Bashar Assad\u2019s foremost weapons suppliers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hezbollah parading its military equipment in Qusayr, Syria, November 2016. (Twitter)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Ex-Obama officials, for their part, said they sought to improve relations with Iran as part of a broad strategy to prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear arsenal, but did not try to derail Project Cassandra because of any political motive.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe world is a lot more complicated than viewed through the narrow lens of drug trafficking,\u201d one former Obama-era national security official said. \u201cYou\u2019re not going to let CIA rule the roost, but you\u2019re also certainly not going to let DEA do it either. Your approach to anything as complicated as Hezbollah is going to have to involve the interagency [process], because the State Department has a piece of the pie, the intelligence community does, Treasury does, DOD does.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Politico said in its report that sources independent of Project Cassandra confirmed the allegations made by its team members.<\/span><\/p>\n

It cited a Treasury official in the Obama administration, Katherine Bauer, who submitted written testimony presented last February to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs acknowledging that \u201cunder the Obama administration \u2026 these [Hezbollah-related] investigations were tamped down for fear of rocking the boat with Iran and jeopardizing the nuclear deal.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

After the nuclear deal was officially implemented in January 2016, Project Cassandra officials, such as John Kelly, a veteran DEA supervisory agent, said they were transferred to other assignments.<\/span><\/p>\n

As a consequence, the report said that the US government \u201clost insight\u201d into not only Hezbollah\u2019s drug trafficking operation, but other aspects of its vast criminal operations worldwide.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Obama said to have derailed campaign against Hezbollah to clinch Iran nuke deal ERIC CORTELLESSA US President Barack Obama speaks during a joint press conference with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the White House on August 2, 2016 in Washington, DC. (AFP PHOTO \/ Brendan Smialowski) WASHINGTON \u2014 The Obama administration covertly derailed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58189"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58189"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58212,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58189\/revisions\/58212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}