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OUTRAGE! Wall Street Journal Reveals Obama Paid Iran $400 MILLION Ransom For Captured Sailors

The Obama administration secretly organized an airlift of $400 million worth of cash to Iran that coincided with the January release of four Americans detained in Tehran

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8 years ago

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The Obama administration secretly organized an airlift of $400 million worth of cash to Iran that coincided with the January release of four Americans detained in Tehran, according to U.S. and European officials and congressional staff briefed on the operation afterward.

Wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs and other currencies were flown into Iran on an unmarked cargo plane, according to these officials. The U.S. procured the money from the central banks of the Netherlands and Switzerland, they said.

The money represented the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement the Obama administration reached with Iran to resolve a decades-old dispute over a failed arms deal signed just before the 1979 fall of Iran’s last monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

Video shows U.S. sailors’ capture:

The settlement, which resolved claims before an international tribunal in The Hague, also coincided with the formal implementation that same weekend of the landmark nuclear agreement reached between Tehran, the U.S. and other global powers the summer before.

“With the nuclear deal done, prisoners released, the time was right to resolve this dispute as well,” President Barack Obama said at the White House on Jan. 17—without disclosing the $400 million cash payment.

Senior U.S. officials denied any link between the payment and the prisoner exchange. They say the way the various strands came together simultaneously was coincidental, not the result of any quid pro quo.

“As we’ve made clear, the negotiations over the settlement of an outstanding claim…were completely separate from the discussions about returning our American citizens home,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said. “Not only were the two negotiations separate, they were conducted by different teams on each side, including, in the case of The Hague claims, by technical experts involved in these negotiations for many years.”

But U.S. officials also acknowledge that Iranian negotiators on the prisoner exchange said they wanted the cash to show they had gained something tangible.

Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas and a fierce foe of the Iran nuclear deal, accused President Barack Obama of paying “a $1.7 billion ransom to the ayatollahs for U.S. hostages.” “This break with longstanding U.S. policy put a price on the head of Americans, and has led Iran to continue its illegal seizures” of Americans, he said.

Since the cash shipment, the intelligence arm of the Revolutionary Guard has arrested two more Iranian-Americans. Tehran has also detained dual-nationals from France, Canada and the U.K. in recent months.

At the time of the prisoner release, Secretary of State John Kerry and the White House portrayed it as a diplomatic breakthrough. Mr. Kerry cited the importance of “the relationships forged and the diplomatic channels unlocked over the course of the nuclear talks.”

Meanwhile, U.S. officials have said they were certain Washington was going to lose the arbitration in The Hague, where Iran was seeking more than $10 billion, and described the settlement as a bargain for taxpayers.

Iranian press reports have quoted senior Iranian defense officials describing the cash as a ransom payment. The Iranian foreign ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The $400 million was paid in foreign currency because any transaction with Iran in U.S. dollars is illegal under U.S. law. Sanctions also complicate Tehran’s access to global banks.

“Sometimes the Iranians want cash because it’s so hard for them to access things in the international financial system,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on the January cash delivery. “They know it can take months just to figure out how to wire money from one place to another.”

The Obama administration has refused to disclose how it paid any of the $1.7 billion, despite congressional queries, outside of saying that it wasn’t paid in dollars. Lawmakers have expressed concern that the cash would be used by Iran to fund regional allies, including the Assad regime in Syria and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, which the U.S. designates as a terrorist organization.

The U.S. and United Nations believe Tehran is subsidizing the Assad regime’s war in Syria through cash and energy shipments. Iran has acknowledged providing both financial and military aid to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and deploying Iranian soldiers there.

Col. Derek Harvey on if Obama paid a billion dollar ransom for the American sailors:

But John Brennan, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said last week that there was evidence much of the money Iran has received from sanctions relief was being used for development projects. “The money, the revenue that’s flowing into Iran is being used to support its currency, to provide moneys to the departments and agencies, build up its infrastructure,” Mr. Brennan said at a conference in Aspen, Colo.

The U.S. and Iran entered into secret negotiations to secure the release of Americans imprisoned in Iran in November 2014, according to U.S. and European officials. Switzerland’s foreign minister, Didier Burkhalter, offered to host the discussions.

The Swiss have represented the U.S.’s diplomatic interests in Iran since Washington closed its embassy in Tehran following the 1979 hostage crisis.

Iranian security services arrested two Iranian-Americans during President Obama’s first term. In July 2014, the intelligence arm of Iran’s elite military unit, the Revolutionary Guard, detained the Washington Post’s Tehran bureau chief, Jason Rezaian, and charged him with espionage.

A fourth Iranian-American was arrested last year. A former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, Robert Levinson, disappeared on the Iranian island of Kish in 2007. His whereabouts remain unknown.

The Swiss channel initially saw little activity, according to these officials. But momentum shifted after Tehran and world powers forged a final agreement in July 2015 to constrain Iran’s nuclear program in return for the lifting of most international sanctions. A surge of meetings then took place in the Swiss lakeside city of Geneva in November and December.

The U.S. delegation was led by a special State Department envoy, Brett McGurk, and included representatives from the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to U.S. and European officials. The Iranian team was largely staffed by members of its domestic spy service, according to U.S. officials.

The discussions, held at the InterContinental Hotel, initially focused solely on a formula whereby Iran would swap the Americans detained in Tehran for Iranian nationals held in U.S. jails, U.S. officials said. But around Christmas, the discussions dovetailed with the arbitration in The Hague concerning the old arms deal.

The Iranians were demanding the return of $400 million the Shah’s regime deposited into a Pentagon trust fund in 1979 to purchase U.S. fighter jets, U.S. officials said. They also wanted billions of dollars as interest accrued since then.

President Obama approved the shipment of the $400 million. But accumulating so much cash presented a logistical and security challenge, said U.S. and European officials. One person briefed on the operation joked: “You can’t just withdraw that much money from ATMs.”

Mr. Kerry and the State and Treasury departments sought the cooperation of the Swiss and Dutch governments. Ultimately, the Obama administration transferred the equivalent of $400 million to their central banks. It was then converted into other currencies, stacked onto the wooden pallets and sent to Iran on board a cargo plane.

On the morning of Jan. 17, Iran released the four Americans: Three of them boarded a Swiss Air Force jet and flew off to Geneva, with the fourth returning to the U.S. on his own. In return, the U.S. freed seven Iranian citizens and dropped extradition requests for 14 others.

U.S. and European officials wouldn’t disclose exactly when the plane carrying the $400 million landed in Iran. But a report by an Iranian news site close to the Revolutionary Guard, the Tasnim agency, said the cash arrived in Tehran’s Mehrabad airport on the same day the Americans departed.

Revolutionary Guard commanders boasted at the time that the Americans had succumbed to Iranian pressure. “Taking this much money back was in return for the release of the American spies,” said Gen. Mohammad Reza Naghdi, commander of the Guard’s Basij militia, on state media.

Among the Americans currently being held are an energy executive named Siamak Namazi and his 80-year old father, Baqer, according to U.S. and Iranian officials. Iran’s judiciary spokesman last month confirmed Tehran had arrested the third American, believed to be a San Diego resident named Reza “Robin” Shahini.

Friends and family of the Namazis believe the Iranians are seeking to increase their leverage to force another prisoner exchange or cash payment in the final six months of the Obama administration. Mr. Kerry and other U.S. officials have been raising their case with Iranian diplomats, U.S. officials say.

Iranian officials have demanded in recent weeks the U.S. return $2 billion in Iranian funds that were frozen in New York in 2009. The Supreme Court recently ruled that the money should be given to victims of Iranian-sponsored terror attacks.

Members of Congress are seeking to pass legislation preventing the Obama administration from making any further cash payments to Iran. One of the bills requires for the White House to make public the details of its $1.7 billion transfer to Iran.

“President Obama’s…payment to Iran in January, which we now know will fund Iran’s military expansion, is an appalling example of executive branch governance,” said Sen.James Lankford (R., Okla.), who co-wrote the bill. “Subsidizing Iran’s military is perhaps the worst use of taxpayer dollars ever by an American president.” source

 

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Barack Hussein Obama

THE PRESIDENT THAT WASN’T THERE: Joe Biden Comes To An Ignominious End As The Third Term Proxy Presidency Of Barack Obama Comes To A Close

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2 days ago

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December 19, 2024

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For 4 years, the White House has run a con game that Joe Biden was a functioning leader, in reality it was the presidency by proxy of Barack Obama in his third term pulling the strings

Earlier today, the usually conservative Wall Street Journal ran a blistering story on how the entire Biden administration spent 4 years conning America that Joe Biden was actually in charge and calling the shots. It’s a stunning article, a segment captured below, and we encourage you to read the whole thing on wsj.com. What they left out, however, was that it was way more than just a con game, it was the literal third term of Barack Obama, made possible by the president who wasn’t there, Joe Biden.

“When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.” Proverbs 29:2 (KJB)

We have told you before Joe Biden was ever sworn in that the whole reason he was chosen was because of his highly diminished mental faculties, that way he could be propped up before the cameras while Barack Obama called all the shots like the Wizard of Oz from behind the curtain. Biden went bad, to worse, to “replace him with Kamala” in sickeningly realistic fashion. The main stream media did their part by refusing to report on Biden’s obvious ‘absent while present’ speech patterns, weird gesture and motions, and everyone’s favorite thing to pretend is not happening, his walking away from the podium as if he had no idea where he was. He had no idea. What does all this have to do with drones over New Jersey? The same government that told you Joe Biden was fine is the same government telling you there is nothing to worry about with the drones. That’s the memo.

How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in Charge

FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: The president’s slide has been hard to overlook. While preparing last year for his interview with Robert K. Hur, the special counsel who investigated Biden’s handling of classified documents, the president couldn’t recall lines that his team discussed with him. At events, aides often repeated instructions to him, such as where to enter or exit a stage, that would be obvious to the average person. Biden’s team tapped campaign co-chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, a Hollywood mogul, to find a voice coach to improve the president’s fading warble.

Biden, now 82, has long operated with a tightknit inner circle of advisers. The protective culture inside the White House was intensified because Biden started his presidency at the height of the Covid pandemic. His staff took great care to prevent him from catching the virus by limiting in-person interactions with him. But the shell constructed for the pandemic was never fully taken down, and his advanced age hardened it.

The structure was also designed to prevent Biden, an undisciplined public speaker throughout his half-century political career, from making gaffes or missteps that could damage his image, create political headaches or upset the world order.

The system put Biden at an unusual remove from cabinet secretaries, the chairs of congressional committees and other high-ranking officials. It also insulated him from the scrutiny of the American public.

The strategies to protect Biden largely worked—until June 27, when Biden stood on an Atlanta debate stage with Trump, searching for words and unable to complete his thoughts on live television. Much of the Democratic establishment had accepted the White House line that Biden was able to take the fight to Trump, even in the face of direct evidence to the contrary.

On July 13, Biden held an uncomfortable call with a group of Democratic lawmakers called the New Democrat Coalition, aimed at reassuring them about his ability to stay in the race.

The president told participants that polling showed he was doing fine. He became angry when challenged, according to lawmakers on the call. At one point, Biden looked up and abruptly told the group he had to go to church. Some lawmakers on the call believed someone behind the camera was shutting it down. Biden dropped out of the race eight days later. READ MORE

The sad and strange decline of Joe Biden

Joe Biden dropped out of the race to become the next president, after a series of gaffes in 2024 raised concerns about his age, and a disastrous presidential debate performance caused alarm within the Democratic party.

Now The End Begins is your front line defense against the rising tide of darkness in the last Days before the Rapture of the Church

When you contribute to this fundraising effort, you are helping us to do what the Lord called us to do. The money you send in goes primarily to the overall daily operations of this site. When people ask for Bibles, we send them out at no charge. When people write in and say how much they would like gospel tracts but cannot afford them, we send them a box at no cost to them for either the tracts or the shipping, no matter where they are in the world. We have a Gospel Billboard program. We are now broadcasting Bible studies, Podcasts and a Sunday Service 5 times a week, thanks to your generous donations. All this is possible because YOU pray for us, YOU support us, and YOU give so we can continue growing.

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But whatever you do, don’t do nothing. Time is short and we need your help right now. The Lord has given us an open door with a tremendous ‘course’ for us to fulfill that will create an excellent experience at the Judgement Seat of Christ. Please pray for our efforts, and if the Lord leads you to donate, be as generous as possible. The war is REAL, the battle HOT and the time is SHORT…TO THE FIGHT!!!

“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;” Titus 2:13 (KJB)

“Thank you very much!” – Geoffrey, editor-in-chief, NTEB

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Barack Hussein Obama

New Netflix Movie ‘Leave The World Behind’ Produced By Barack Obama Released As Chinese Cyber Army Hacks Into US Power Grid And Utilities, Coincidence?

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1 year ago

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December 12, 2023

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‘Leave the World Behind’ is a 2023 American apocalyptic psychological thriller film executive produced by Barack and Michelle Obama for Netflix

For starters, we have covered for many years, the money-path that the Barack and Michelle Obama have taken after their first two terms in the White House. One leg of that path led straight to Netflix where, for a cool $50,000,000.00, they were invited to produce movies supporting their Leftist Agenda. Predictably, their first effort ‘American Factory’ was awarded the Oscar with seemingly no effort at all. It was a ‘Christmas Miracle!’. So let’s talk about their latest release, an end times apocalyptic thriller, (yes you heard right), called ‘Leave The World Behind’.

“And they brought forth the images out of the house of Baal, and burned them.” 2 Kings 10:26 (KJB)

The first thing I’d like to direct your attention to is the movie poster itself, proudly featuring the names of the 4 stars who act in it, is the fascinating little acrostic it contains. We have gone ahead and highlighted what we found in red, and you will see it forms the word ‘Baal’. That’s not a review, that’s the marketing, so you can see the position we start this from. But honestly, did you expect anything different from Barack and Michelle Obama? I certainly did not.

As far the movie itself goes, I gave up my Netflix subscription when they started showing movies promoting kiddie porn, pro-abortion and such like so I had to rely on various sources like social media and a plot synopsis. The least troubling part of the ‘Leave The World Behind‘ is the overt racism it promotes where the main characters are reinforcing the troupe that blacks cannot trust whites. Democrats have nothing if they stop peddling racism, and it is peddled quite well here.

THE MAIN THEME: “After a prolonged stand-off, Danny decides to help Archie in exchange for money and directs them to a nearby underground bunker prepared for doomsday. G.H. confesses to Clay that he knows what’s happening – he says that a political coup d’état is afoot, which is why the people in positions of power are letting a civil war take root by disrupting technology and feeding chaos. Amanda and Ruth see New York City being bombed, and Rose has walked into the neighboring home and found the bunker, where an Emergency Alert System interceptor reveals that the U.S. is at war with rogue armed forces with the suggestion of radiological weapons being involved.” Basically, it’s a story about the end of the world written by lost people without the Bible. But you get the idea.

Translated it reads like this. Barack and Michelle have produced an end times movie showing the United States government turning against the people, and using the military to bomb them into submission. Hmm, sounds like someone has been roaming in the corridors of Now The End Begins. We’ve been warning of things like that for 15 years now. I’m sure it’s just a ‘coincidence’, but ‘Leave The World Behind’ comes out just as reports of the Chinese Cyber Army hacking the US power grid are revealed. I’m sure that’s just a crazy coincidence. Now back to your bunker.

Chinese Cyber Army Hacks US Power Grid As Obama Netflix Movie ‘Leave The World Behind’ Is Released

Now The End Begins is your front line defense against the rising tide of darkness in the last Days before the Rapture of the Church

Please continue to pray for us, and for wisdom for me especially, as we continue taking steps to print the NTEB branded King James Bible for our free Bible and Bibles Behind Bars program. It is exciting and intimidating at the same time. If the Lord has prospered your financially, we ask you to donate to help us continue to send out free Bibles at this level, and even higher than we are at the moment. It takes a lot of prayer, and a lot of resources to do all this. Praise the Lord we are doing it, all of us together, labouring in the Lord’s harvest field. TO THE FIGHT!!!

When you contribute to this fundraising effort, you are helping us to do what the Lord called us to do. The money you send in goes primarily to the overall daily operations of this site. When people ask for Bibles, we send them out at no charge. When people write in and say how much they would like gospel tracts but cannot afford them, we send them a box at no cost to them for either the tracts or the shipping, no matter where they are in the world. We have a Gospel Billboard program. We are now broadcasting Bible studies, Podcasts and a Sunday Service 5 times a week, thanks to your generous donations. All this is possible because YOU pray for us, YOU support us, and YOU give so we can continue growing.

But whatever you do, don’t do nothing. Time is short and we need your help right now. The Lord has given us an open door with a tremendous ‘course’ for us to fulfill that will create an excellent experience at the Judgement Seat of Christ. Please pray for our efforts, and if the Lord leads you to donate, be as generous as possible. The war is REAL, the battle HOT and the time is SHORT…TO THE FIGHT!!!

“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;” Titus 2:13 (KJB)

“Thank you very much!” – Geoffrey, editor-in-chief, NTEB

Continue Reading

Barack Hussein Obama

Barack Obama Parses His Words Very Carefully As He Calls For An ‘End To The Occupation’ And An Implementation Of The Two State Solution

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1 year ago

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November 4, 2023

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Former President Barack Obama called the Israel-Hamas conflict a ‘moral reckoning for all of us’ at an event hosted by his foundation Friday, says ‘occupation must end’.

Last time I checked, Israel was not occupying anyone. They are in their land, given to them by God, as the Bible clearly points out in Genesis. But there is indeed an ‘occupation’ of Gaza and the Palestinians, only it’s Hamas who is doing the occupying. But as Obama was throwing around phrases like ‘end the occupation’, he never mentions who is referring to, and that’s quite intentional. He needs to keep things ‘open ended’ so as not to cause his donors to flee, without alienating his Jewish staff members.

“In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates: The Kenites, and the Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites, And the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaims, And the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.” Genesis 15:18-21 (KJV)

For those of you who are not geographical scholars, here is the original land grant God gave to Abraham in bullet points:

  • The upper-right portion of Egypt
  • All of modern-day Israel
  • All of Lebanon
  • All of of Syria
  • A piece of Turkey
  • Half of Iraq
  • The northern half of Jordan
  • A little slice of Saudi Arabia

Now I understand that in this dispensation of the Church Age, that is something that will never be realized. Israel is actually preparing to go into the time of Jacob’s trouble which includes the 3.5 year time of the great Tribulation. But there is a Day coming where, in that day, all the land that I just told you belongs to Israel will be given back to them by the LORD Himself. In the meantime, Israel is a ‘deadly piece of dirt’ that grows deadlier with each passing day. One day, people like Barack Obama will bow down before the Jewish King of Kings, and confess that Jesus Christ is LORD to the glory of God the Father. And there will be no more the Canaanite in the house of the LORD. That’s a fact, and that’s Bible. Go look it up.

Obama calls for end of ‘occupation,’ security for Israel, state for Palestinians

FROM FOX NEWS: Obama spoke at the Obama Foundation’s Democracy Forum on Thursday, where he called for a two-state solution and an end to the “occupation,” while not clarifying what occupation he meant.

“All of this is taking place against the backdrop of decades of failure to achieve a durable peace for both Israelis and Palestinians,” the former president told the forum audience.

Obama continued, “One that is based on genuine security for Israel, a recognition of its right to exist, and a peace that is based on an end of the occupation and the creation of a viable state and self-determination for the Palestinian people.”

Palestinian governing authority Hamas launched a terrorist attack against Israel on October 7 that killed over 1,400 Israeli citizens. Since then, more than 9,000 people have been killed in Gaza as Israeli Defense Forces continue their ground incursion of the region, the Gaza Health Ministry claims. The death toll is expected to rise once buildings are cleared and rubble is taken away.

“Now, I will admit, it is impossible to be dispassionate in the face of this carnage,” Obama said Thursday. “It is hard to feel hopeful. The images of families mourning, of bodies being pulled from rubble, force a moral reckoning on all of us.”

“We’ve had to sort through our anguish, our outrage, our fears and our differences on the issues,” he said. “I had a conversation with a group of you around this issue, and you were passionate and pushed me around some of the public statements I’d made.”

“And the issue is not a wish for different outcomes – an end to the killing, peaceful coexistence between two sovereign and free peoples – but rather different assessments of the path that we need to take in order to get there,” former president Obama continued.

The United States does not officially support a cease-fire, as President Biden has repeatedly affirmed Israel’s right to self-defense against Hamas. Biden has recently shifted his tone, amid pressure from progressive groups and world leaders, to express support for a humanitarian “pause.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that a pause in Israel’s ground invasion would give time for Hamas to reorganize or plan other attacks. READ MORE

Now The End Begins is your front line defense against the rising tide of darkness in the last Days before the Rapture of the Church

Please continue to pray for us, and for wisdom for me especially, as we continue taking steps to print the NTEB branded King James Bible for our free Bible and Bibles Behind Bars program. It is exciting and intimidating at the same time. If the Lord has prospered your financially, we ask you to donate to help us continue to send out free Bibles at this level, and even higher than we are at the moment. It takes a lot of prayer, and a lot of resources to do all this. Praise the Lord we are doing it, all of us together, labouring in the Lord’s harvest field. TO THE FIGHT!!!

When you contribute to this fundraising effort, you are helping us to do what the Lord called us to do. The money you send in goes primarily to the overall daily operations of this site. When people ask for Bibles, we send them out at no charge. When people write in and say how much they would like gospel tracts but cannot afford them, we send them a box at no cost to them for either the tracts or the shipping, no matter where they are in the world. We have a Gospel Billboard program. We are now broadcasting Bible studies, Podcasts and a Sunday Service 5 times a week, thanks to your generous donations. All this is possible because YOU pray for us, YOU support us, and YOU give so we can continue growing.

But whatever you do, don’t do nothing. Time is short and we need your help right now. The Lord has given us an open door with a tremendous ‘course’ for us to fulfill that will create an excellent experience at the Judgement Seat of Christ. Please pray for our efforts, and if the Lord leads you to donate, be as generous as possible. The war is REAL, the battle HOT and the time is SHORT…TO THE FIGHT!!!

“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;” Titus 2:13 (KJB)

“Thank you very much!” – Geoffrey, editor-in-chief, NTEB

Continue Reading

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