Is America a State Sponsor of Terrorism?

Mark Makela/Getty Images

Is America a State Sponsor of Terrorism?

Ask John Kerry.

The question above could be asked differently, as cnbc did on Thursday. In an interview with United States Secretary of State John Kerry about the Iran nuclear deal and the money the Islamic Republic will receive from sanctions relief, a cnbc reporter asked: “Do you believe that any of that [money will end] up in the hands of terrorists?”

“I think that some of it will end up in the hands of the irgc [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] or other entities, some of which are labeled terrorists,” Secretary Kerry responded.

Notice how vague Kerry was about which entities are terrorists and who labeled them terrorists. Yet every year, his State Department produces the “Country Reports on Terrorism,” which clearly state that Iran sponsors terrorism through the irgc, Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestine Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, al Qaeda and various Shiite militia in Iraq and Syria.

Some observers estimated that the money Iran will receive in sanctions relief will be somewhere between $100-$150 billion. But Kerry estimated that after Iran settles its debts, it will be left with around $55 billion.

Earlier in the day, Secretary Kerry said that because of all the internal demands in Iran to develop the country, “there is no way they can succeed in what they want to do if they are very busy funding a lot of terrorism.” Kerry makes it sound like the Iranian regime—its mullahs and the ayatollah—wants to help the people of Iran.

Yet Iran sponsored terrorism even under the heaviest of sanctions. It is preoccupied with terrorism because that is its mission. It wants to fund terrorism because that is its primary means to reach its Islamist goals!

Kerry implied that anyone who dreads Iranian terror can take comfort in the fact that Iran’s neighbors in the Middle East might outspend the Islamic nation on defense. He told cnbc: “The Saudis alone spend $80 billion a year on defense. The entire Gulf state community spends $130 billion a year on defense. Iran spends $15 billion a year on its military activities. So it’s so incredibly disproportionate that I believe that working with our Gulf state partners, which we are going to do and which we are upgrading, we have the ability to guarantee that they will be secure, that we will stand by them, even as we look for this potential of a shift in behavior.”

One has to ask why Saudi Arabia is even spending that much money on defense in the first place. Who do Saudis fear the most? Who do the Israelis fear the most in the Middle East?

Israel is under no illusion about this deal, and that’s why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was a “bad deal.”

What will happen when its proved beyond all doubt that it is a bad deal? Notice Kerry’s strongest statement in that regard: “If we catch them funding terrorism, they’re going to have a problem in the U.S. Congress and other people, obviously.” That was it: It will have a problem with Congress and some other people.

Kerry also said, “We are confident that this will not result in an increase somehow in the threat to any partner or any friend in the region.”

The leaders in Israel and Saudi Arabia must be shaking their heads in disillusionment.