Yesterday, at the urging of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), a group which consistently lobbies against sanctions on the Islamic Republic and its nuclear program, several congressmen sent a letter to President Obama urging him to extend a sanctions waiver issued after last August’s deadly earthquake allowing Americans to send humanitarian assistance to Iran.
The congressmen may be well-meaning, but the call to extend the sanctions waiver is wrong-headed. Charities in Iran are seldom charitable. Take the Imam Khomeini Relief Committee, for example. While the group may brag about its efforts to provide medical care, blankets, and food support to the poor, charity is not its primary goal. Indeed, just two years ago, the U.S. Treasury Department designated the group’s Lebanon branches as complicit in Hezbollah terrorism.
Likewise, the Iranian Red Crescent has become the mechanism by which the Iranian regime sends aid to the Syrian government. While the Iranian government claims that the shipments are humanitarian in nature, U.S. intelligence suspects that the group is actually providing weaponry and other military equipment.
Suffering in Iran is not the result of an inability of Westerners to send money to that country; rather, it is the result of a regime whose priorities are out-of-whack. If the congressmen truly seek to help the Iranian people, they will not channel money to compromised charities, but instead work to end the far greater suffering brought on Iranian citizens by the regime itself.
Rubin excellent post, except for calling the congressional signatories of the letter "well-meaning." A quick review of the names – Conyers, Moran, Ellison, Stark, Lee, etc. – indicates that this band of appeasers and unAmericans shower their benevolence almost exclusively on the latest Islamic, anti-Semitic and anti-Israel causes. Let's hope Commentary starts shining the light on these congressional rats.
Exactly. Is there anyone who still takes Kucinich seriously? Or S. Jackson Lee? Can we be surprised that CAIR mouthpiece Keith Ellison signed the letter? This is just the usual bunch of suspects.
Yep, they may be duly elected reps, but they're "appeasers and unAmericans." Sure hope Romney revives HUAC when he's president. n nOops! Mitt's a liberal now. I forgot.
What a great crowd. Anyone who has an opinion different than the reader, becomes "Un-American". I thought this great country was built on freedom of press and freedom of speech. So just because someone holds slightly different opinion than you do, they all of a sudden become "Un-American"? As they say, "I respect and fight for your freedom of speech as an American, so you can say whatever you want, no matter how stupid and moranic it is."