As The Daily Wire’s Kassy Dillon has reported, the Trump administration recently decided to formally end its program of granting sanctions waivers for certain countries to import Iranian oil:
“Our goal has been to get countries to cease importing Iranian oil entirely,” [Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo said. “Last November, we granted exemptions from our sanctions to seven countries and to Taiwan. We did this to give our allies and partners to wean themselves off of Iranian oil, and to assure a well-supplied oil market.”
Pompeo then announced that no more exemptions would be granted.
“Today I am announcing that we will no longer grant any exemptions. We’re going to zero. We’re going to zero across the board. We will continue to enforce sanctions and monitor compliance, any nation or entity interacting with Iran should do its diligence and air on the side of caution. The risks are simply not going to be worth the benefits.”
The ostensible goal of the U.S.’s doled out oil sanctions waivers had been to stabilize international energy markets. But as The Daily Wire has also reported, many Iran hawks viewed the waivers as merely a backhanded way of propping up the fanatical anti-American, anti-Israeli regime that oppressively rules Iran.
Pompeo tweeted at the time that the decision was made to phase out the waivers: “Maximum pressure on the Iranian regime means maximum pressure. That’s why the U.S. will not issue any exceptions to Iranian oil importers. The global oil market remains well-supplied. We’re confident it will remain stable as jurisdictions transition away from Iranian crude.”
But the waivers, which indeed do merely boost the genocidal jihadist mullocracy that governs Tehran, will still take 90 days to officially phase out. And this morning, noted Iran hawk Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) found himself in a fiery Foreign Relations Committee exchange on the subject with State Department official Andrea Thompson, who serves as undersecretary for arms control and international security.
Jordan Schachtel of Conservative Review neatly summarizes the exchange:
“How is it possibly in our best interest to allow Iran to continue doing nuclear research in the Fordow bunker that was built into the side of a mountain to be able to develop nuclear weapons to use to murder Americans? How is that in our best interest?” Cruz asked.
Failing to answer the question, the unelected State Department official responded that “everyone in this administration will stand for what’s right for the safety and security of the American people, bar none.”
Sen. Cruz repeated his question:
“Is it in our interest to allow Iran to continue to do nuclear research in the Fordow facility?”
He then received the shocking response from the unelected bureaucrat that the decisions made by the State Department are “always in the interest of the American people,” which Sen. Cruz called an “Orwellian position.”
For decades, the State Department has been known as a particularly restive den of anti-Western, pro-Islamist sympathizing. But what is perhaps even more revealing is the supercilious nature of Thompson, who seems to feel that she is too morally enlightened to feel any accountability for her bureaucracy’s actions — no matter how deleterious those actions may be to the national interest.
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