Follow the Money in this Artless Deal

By Bill Tarrant

Donald Trump’s endgame in Iran is not the complete dismantling of its nuclear program. He will probably wind up with something akin to Obama's JCPOA, which, of course, Trump petulantly scrapped in his first term. No, what this money grubber (and his real estate wheeler-dealers negotiating with the Islamic regime) really wants is to get his vulgarian fingers on a proposed $300 billion “reconstruction fund” for Post-war Iran. (Oh, but it’s not going to be called compensation or reparations for his war of choice that abruptly ended the nuke talks that probably were going to wind up with the deal he’s going to settle for in the end – after spending at least $30 billion in direct military costs, tens of billions if not hundreds of billions more in indirect economic costs, and depleting his military’s store of munitions to a dangerous level.)

The New York Times has reported that an international "investment fund" for Iran, which one Iranian official estimated at $300 billion, would get backing from Gulf allies and international partners. By sheer coincidence, Trump’s son-in-law and Iran negotiator, Jared Kushner has a firm, Affinity Partners, that has raised billions in capital from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds. The first sons, Don Jr and Eric, have not been shy about grifting on the old man’s policy plays, likewise other first cronies who are only too happy to pay to play. The reconstruction fund sounds a lot like the “Peace Board” for Gaza’s reconstruction that has been dancing around the President’s discombobulated head. That was supposed to raise billions, but almost nobody has kicked in anything, because…yeah, it’s a farce. Trump excoriated Obama for transferring under the JCPOA $1.7 billion in taxpayer funds to Iran to settle a decades-old, pre-1979 arms deal dispute. This amount included a $400 million principal payment delivered in cash via cargo planes, along with $1.3 billion in interest. An Iran draft agreement (who knows which one by now) making the rounds, makes all that look like chump change. It would start releasing $100 billion to $120 billion in Iranian assets, frozen around the world due to U.S. sanctions, in phases as Iran meets milestones in any agreement to end the war.

With so much money at stake it’s no wonder he’s suddenly currying favor with the hardline regime that replaced the arguably more amenable one Israel decapitated at the beginning of the war. In the now infamous interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker last Sunday, he called the younger Ayatollah Khamenei brave and rational, and earlier described Iran as “strong and proud”. The nuclear negotiation is just a misdirection, like a Times Square game of three-card Monty, in Trump’s artless deal. I don’t know if Iran’s negotiators play poker, but the TACO President sure looks like a mark to me.