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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Navy coastal patrol ship changed course after a fast-attack craft from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps came within 100 yards (91 meters) of it in the central Gulf on Sunday, two U.S. Defense Department officials told Reuters on Tuesday. It was at least the fourth such incident in less than a month. U.S. officials are concerned that these actions by Iran could lead to mistakes. Years of mutual animosity eased when Washington lifted sanctions on Tehran in January after a deal to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions. But serious differences still remain over Iran's ballistic missile...

he United States and its negotiating partners agreed "in secret" to allow Iran to evade some restrictions in last year's landmark nuclear agreement in order to meet the deadline for it to start getting relief from economic sanctions, according to a think tank report published on Thursday. The report, which was released by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, is based on information provided by several officials of governments involved in the negotiations. The group's president David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector and co-author of the report, declined to identify the officials, and Reuters could not independently...

The U.S. and world powers in last year’s landmark nuclear deal with Iran reportedly agreed “in secret” to allow Iran to dodge some restrictions in the agreement to meet the deadline for it to start getting relief when some of the economic sanctions were lifted. Reuters reported Thursday that the findings are based off information from several officials involved in the negotiations. The full details are set to be published by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security. The group’s president David Albright told Reuters that the “exemptions or loopholes are happening in secret, and it appears that they...

Among the exemptions were two that allowed Iran to exceed the deal's limits on how much low-enriched uranium (LEU) it can keep in its nuclear facilities, the report said. WASHINGTON - The United States and its negotiating partners agreed "in secret" to allow Iran to evade some restrictions in last year's landmark nuclear agreement in order to meet the deadline for it to start getting relief from economic sanctions, according to a report reviewed by Reuters. The report is to be published on Thursday by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, said the think tank's president David Albright,...

Understanding the breadth of the enormous damage the Iran nuclear deal has caused.The time for complaining about President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran has passed. The time has come to overcome the enormous damage his signature foreign policy accomplishment has caused. To understand why this is the case, it is important to understand the breadth and depth of Obama’s failure. On August 4, during the course of a press conference, Obama gave his interim assessment of his nuclear agreement with Iran. “It worked,” he insisted. A year after the deal was signed, Obama argued, events have proven that he...

Iran to launch ‘friendship’ satellite Iranian officials announced on Tuesday that the country is preparing to launch three new satellites into space, renewing concerns from defense experts about Iran’s ongoing research into long-range ballistic missile technology that could help it fire a nuclear weapon at Western nations. Mohsen Bahrami, the director of Iran’s space agency— which has long been suspected of providing cover for weapons research—announced that Iran would launch its newest satellite, dubbed “Friendship,” later this year. “The Dousti (Friendship) satellite (built) by (experts at) Sharif University of Technology is the first satellite which will be launched in the...

New evidence suggests Iran received help from Venezuela with its nuclear program despite a decade of U.N.-mandated sanctions aimed at curbing the rouge regime’s controversial nuclear and ballistic missile programs. A 2009 document obtained by Brazil’s leading weekly, Veja magazine, shows late dictator President Hugo Chavez signing off on the release of funds to help Iran with its nuclear ambitions. Specifically, the document states the funds were to be designated for the import of equipment for a gunpowder factory and the development of production plants for nitroglycerin and nitrocellulose, elements used in rocket propulsion for Iran’s government. There is also...

Confidentiality”? Yes, that’s the State Department’s story on why the Obama administration is stonewalling the American people regarding the president’s illegal and increasingly suspicious Iransom payoff. The administration refuses to divulge any further information about the $1.7 billion the president acknowledges paying the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. Grilled on Wednesday about how Obama managed to pay the final $1.3 billion installment — particularly given the president’s claim that it is not possible to send Tehran a check or wire-transfer — State Department spokesman Mark Toner decreed that the administration would continue “withholding this information” in order “to protect...

What’s Worse: $400 Million for Iran or $4 Billion for Iran’s Terror-Sponsoring Ally on our Doorstep? Funding terror in our own backyard. August 17, 2016 Humberto Fontova    If it’s any consolation, the $400 million Obama recently smuggled to terror-sponsoring Iran wasn’t (directly) extorted from the American taxpayer. Instead it was money the Shah (Iran’s ruler in 1979) paid for U.S. military equipment shortly before he was deposed by the terror-sponsoring maniacs still running Iran.   Amazingly, the U.S. never delivered the arms to the Shah’s “successors,” who still claim rightful ownership of U.S. jets, tanks, etc.  The recently...

U.S. Held Cash Until Iran Freed Prisoners An Iranian cargo plane left Geneva with $400 million in cash after a flight with Americans aboard took off from Tehran in January By Jay Solomon and Carol E. Lee Aug. 17, 2016 5:27 p.m. ET WASHINGTON—New details of the $400 million U.S. payment to Iran earlier this year depict a tightly scripted exchange specifically timed to the release of several American prisoners held in Iran, based on accounts from U.S. officials and others briefed on the operation. U.S. officials wouldn't let Iranians take control of the money until a Swiss Air Force...

An organization that played a key role in the White House’s effort to mislead the public and Congress about last summer’s nuclear agreement with Iran requested $750,000 for this campaign from a foundation backed by liberal billionaire George Soros, according to funding documents leaked to the public. The Ploughshares Fund, a liberal organization cited by top White House officials as a chief architect of the Obama administration’s campaign to push the Iran deal, requested the cash from Soros’s Open Society Foundations so that it could pay off “experts and validators” of the administration’s diplomacy with Iran, according to a funding...

Questions continue to linger about the Obama administration’s decision to deliver $400 million in pallets of foreign currency flown to Iran aboard an unmarked jetliner the same day five American hostages were released from Iranian custody. The State and Treasury Departments both told Breitbart News that the U.S. government transferred the remaining $1.3 billion, which was part of the same settlement for which the $400 million was an initial payment in January. However, despite numerous requests, neither State nor Treasury would provide an answer on how the Obama administration allegedly transferred to Iran the remaining $1.3 billion.

The Islamic Republic of Iran was designated a state sponsor of terrorism in 1984. That move came several years after Iran had seized American hostages while demanding $24 billion in cash and gold to be paid into a Muslim bank for their release. The total, according to Secretary of State Muskie, came out to $480 million per hostage.

Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is asking President Obama to release nearly $2 billion in Iranian assets frozen in a New York bank account. Ahmadinejad, who left office in 2013 but may be eyeing a new run for president next year, told Obama in a letter that the “property seizure” is “counter to all international legal principles and rules.” Continuing to withhold the money, Ahmadinejad added, could further deepen the “historical distrust” between the two nations. “Your campaign slogan was 'change,’” Ahmadinejad wrote to Obama in the letter, published on Monday by the private Tasnim News Agency. However “the same...

The Obama administration quietly shipped $400 million stacked on wooden pallets in an unmarked plane to Iran in January — just as Tehran was releasing four Americans who had been detained there, according to a report. The huge cash load represented the first payment of a $1.7 € billion debt that Iran, at an international tribunal in The Hague, claimed it was owed over a failed 1979 arms deal signed before the fall of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal Tuesday night.

The Obama administration secretly organized an airlift of $400 million worth of cash to Iran that coincided with the January release of four Americans detained in Tehran, according to U.S. and European officials and congressional staff briefed on the operation afterward.

CNSNews.com) – Republicans lashed out Tuesday at the Obama administration over a news report claiming it airlifted $400 million in foreign currency to Tehran on the same day the regime released five imprisoned Americans. On that day in January, the U.S. agreed to settle a 37-year-old Iranian legal claim worth $400 million, plus an additional $1.3 billion in interest. The two developments also coincided with the “implementation day” for the nuclear deal struck between Tehran, the U.S. and five other nations. The administration has long denied that the $1.7 billion settlement was related to the prisoner releases, or that it...

What Donald Trump has proclaimed the worst deal ever made, may just have become worst-er. The shocking truth behind the US-Iran nuclear deal, as WSJ reports, is that John Kerry and the Obama Administration airlifted $1.7bn of cash in 'compromise' payments (read - bribe) to Tehran to ensure the release of 4 captured sailors coincidentally the same weekend as the signing of the nuclear deal. < - SNIP -> Of course, senior U.S. officials denied any link between the payment and the prisoner exchange. They say the way the various strands came together simultaneously was coincidental, not the result of...

TEL AVIV – Confronting the U.S. is the only choice Iran has left, Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani warned Wednesday. The remarks came following legislation proposed by U.S. opponents to the Iran deal to further sanction the Islamic Republic, and the UN’s first bi-annual report, which said that Iran was not following the “spirit” of the nuclear agreement signed last year by continuing ballistic missile tests. “Majlis (Iranian Parliament), utterly regretting the UN chief’s move, is warning the US administration and its House of Representatives and Senate that injurious measures against the nuclear agreement have reached such a point that...

As Barack Obama’s tenure comes to a close, political analysts are already drawing comparisons between the current administration and that of Jimmy Carter’s. Both proved to be exceedingly inept at dealing with emerging foreign crises, both were harshly and unfairly critical of Israel and both betrayed loyal allies, utilizing all methods available to undermine friends while propping up hostile foes. The personification of this doctrine is best illustrated by that manner in which both administrations empowered and emboldened the mullahs of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Islamic fundamentalist takeover of Iran in 1979 was a disastrous occurrence that was...