{"id":12990,"date":"2018-08-28T05:26:53","date_gmt":"2018-08-28T05:26:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=12990"},"modified":"2018-08-28T05:26:53","modified_gmt":"2018-08-28T05:26:53","slug":"it-is-not-enough-to-halt-the-flow-of-iranian-funds-to-terror-say-experts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=12990","title":{"rendered":"It is not enough to halt the flow of Iranian funds to terror, say experts"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nDUBAI: With Gulf states expressing growing concern over the nuclear deal with Iran, experts say more needs to be done to curb the country\u2019s funding of terror.
Many regional countries say the deal, otherwise known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), failed to set guidelines and restrictions on Iran\u2019s use of cash injections that ultimately ended up in the hands of terrorists. Earlier this year, the US government traced some of the $1.7 billion released to Iran by the Obama administration back to terrorists, specifically Hezbollah in Lebanon and Houthi rebels in Yemen. Ali Khedery, a senior political adviser and the longest continually serving US official in Iraq, said the Obama administration\u2019s attempt to address Iran\u2019s nuclear weapons program through the JCPOA was doomed to fail.
\u201cThat approach is fundamentally flawed because it addresses only one aspect of Iran\u2019s malign and belligerent conduct,\u201d he said.
\u201cWashington, under all administrations since 1979, should have taken a more holistic and strategic view toward the problem of Iran\u2019s policies,\u201d Khedery said.
\u201cThe JCPOA was destined to fail in curtailing Iran\u2019s global and regional terrorist activities because it didn\u2019t address any of them, only the nuclear program, and it addressed it in a short-sighted and insufficient way because Iranians were able to negotiate sunset clauses, which meant a lot of them expired after a few years. \"\"
\u201cSanctions are just a tool, they\u2019re not a strategy. What is needed is a strategy that recognizes the scope of the problem, which is that Iran practices domestic terrorism against its own citizens, and international terrorism by supporting Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, coordinating with different militias in Iraq, across the Gulf and Lebanon, and is engaged in all sorts of criminal and terrorist activities in every continent except Antarctica.\u201d Once the problem is diagnosed, an overall strategy would have to be designed to mitigate that conduct, whether through military means, diplomacy or economic sanctions, Khedery said. Should Iran still not improve its behavior, each measure should be dialed up until its conduct changes. \u201cI\u2019ve been urging this policy for 15 years. The price is relatively low and the benefits quite high,\u201d Khedery said. \u201cIt\u2019s just a matter of political will in Washington and among our allies. Unfortunately, there wasn\u2019t political will until President Donald Trump came to power.\u201d Support is needed from Congress, the media, allied governments and legislatures, Khedery said. Europeans \u201chave been victims due to the refugee influx from Syria and Iraq, which destabilized the EU,\u201d he said. \u201cSo Europe more than anybody should be wanting Iran to behave more like a normal country and less like a terrorist state.\u201d Miles Pomper, senior fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Washington, said sanctions that broadly affect the\u00a0economy, or that interfere with\u00a0transfers to terrorist groups, would be needed. \u201cGiven the amounts of money involved are believed to be relatively small, it\u2019s not clear if anything will work,\u201d he said. \u201cOf particular importance is restricting Iran\u2019s role in Syria, given the\u00a0potential for Iranian-Israeli\u00a0confrontation there,\u201d Pomper said.
Khedery said Iran \u201csees itself as exempt from international law governing human rights and terrorism, including the activities of its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and, more recently, its nuclear weapons program.\u201d<\/p>\n

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DUBAI: With Gulf states expressing growing concern over the nuclear deal with Iran, experts say more needs to be done to curb the country\u2019s funding of terror.Many regional countries say the deal, otherwise known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), failed to set guidelines and restrictions on Iran\u2019s use of cash injections that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":12991,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}