No. of Recommendations: 13
Heather Cox Richardson from Letters from an American <heathercoxrichardson@substack.com>:
“When Obama sent Iran $400m + $1.3bn in interest in 2016 Trump called it ‘insane’ and he and others spent a decade mocking the idea of ‘pallets of cash’ even though it was Iran’s own money, American prisoners were released, courts were likely to require the U.S. payment, and Iran had just agreed to significant and verified reductions and restrictions on its nuclear program for 15+ years.
“Now Trump is giving Iran up to ten times that amount of revenue—one of the most significant measures of sanctions relief provided to the Islamic Republic since its founding—in exchange for marginal and temporary relief from the big increase in oil prices his actions have caused, without any concessions from Tehran, and even as Iran continues to target the United States, its allies, and world oil supplies. No way to read as anything other than desperate recognition of the situation Trump’s own actions have created and the lack of available alternatives for dealing with it.”
On Meet the Press today, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said: “We’re gonna give Iran $14 billion to fund this war with the United States? We’re gonna give Russia billions of dollars to fund their war with Ukraine? We’re literally putting money into the pockets of the very nations that we are fighting right now. We’ve never seen this level of incompetence in war-making in this country’s history.”
Of course, there are likely those in our government who seem to perceive that Russia is our friend and it is only proper to give them back the oil which is being destroyed by Ukraine.
Jeff
No. of Recommendations: 14
On Meet the Press today, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said: “We’re gonna give Iran $14 billion to fund this war with the United States? We’re gonna give Russia billions of dollars to fund their war with Ukraine? We’re literally putting money into the pockets of the very nations that we are fighting right now. We’ve never seen this level of incompetence in war-making in this country’s history.”More importantly, they have given Iran, Russia, and China motivation to keep this war going, to give Iran as much under the table help as possible to keep it going.
If recent reports are accurate that Iran is considering allowing limited tanker passage only if transactions are settled in Chinese yuan, then the issue at stake is no longer merely the movement of ships. It is the future architecture of global energy finance. https://asiatimes.com/2026/03/irans-hormuz-yuan-pl... I am sure China is salivating at that.
We live in incompetent times. It has always astounded me at how our Gov't has failed to think through their actions to include the ramification of possible, and mostly predictable, unintended consequences. Now it seems we have a gov't that simply fails to think.
IP
No. of Recommendations: 4
“We’re gonna give Iran $14 billion to fund this war with the United States?
A piece posted on the Policy board quoted Iranian sources saying they don't have any 140M bbls, or any significant amount of oil sitting in storage offshore. The piece proposed that the "announcement" was nothing but another attempt to manipulate the oil market, so insiders can profit.
Steve
