OBAMA: CONGRESSIONAL CRACKDOWN ON TERROR WILL VIOLATE IRAN DEAL WHICH PROHIBITS RESTRICTING TERRORIST VISAS

STEPHEN MULL, IRAN DEAL COORDINATOR & IMPLEMENTER

ALI LARIJANI, SPEAKER OF IRAN'S PARLIAMENT ISSUES WARNING

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION: 

CONGRESSIONAL CRACKDOWN 

ON TERROR WILL VIOLATE IRAN DEAL

‘Iran Czar’ tells Congress nuke deal prohibits congress from restricting terrorist visas

BY ADAM KREDO

SEE: http://freebeacon.com/national-security/obama-admin-congressional-crackdown-on-terror-will-violate-iran-deal/; 

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:

Senior Obama administration officials are expressing concern that congressional attempts to tighten laws preventing terrorists from entering the United States could violate the Iran nuclear agreement and prompt Tehran to walk away from the agreement.

Congress is considering measures that would tighten the Visa Waiver Program to make it harder for potential terrorists to legally enter the United States by increasing restrictions on individuals who have travelled to countries with prominent terrorist organizations from bypassing security checks upon entering the United States.

Iranian officials have in recent days repeatedly issued threatening statements to the Obama administration, saying that such moves would violate the nuclear agreement, and the Obama administration last week conveyed the Iranian anger to American lawmakers.

Stephen Mull, the State Department official in charge of implementing the Iran deal, warned the Senate Foreign Relations Committee late last week that these congressional efforts “could have a very negative impact on the deal.”

Under the revised law, which came in the week of a deadly terrorist attack in California, individuals who have travelled to Iran—a lead sponsor of global terrorism—would no longer be eligible to participate in the Visa Waiver Program, which permits individuals from 38 partner nations to more easily enter the United States.

Congress remains concerned that gaps in the program could prevent federal law enforcement officials from detecting terror-tied individuals before they are granted entrance to U.S. soil.

However, a portion of the Iran nuclear deal mandates that the United States not take any action that could harm Iran’s economic relationships with other countries. Iranian officials maintain that the new restrictions violate this passage of the deal.

Ali Larijani, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, said last week that these tightened measures “are aimed at harassment” and that they “blatantly violate the nuclear agreement,” according to comments carried by the Iranian state-controlled press.

Larijani warned that this action will detonate the deal before it has even been implemented.

“If the Americans pursue the plan, they will destroy an achievement with their own hands since it is against the [nuclear deal] and it will trouble them,” he warned.

Rep. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.) echoed these concerns last week when he questioned Mull during a Senate hearing.

Visa waiver reform efforts include “a naming of Iran such that individuals who have travelled to Iran will no loner be eligible for the visa waiver program,” Murphy said. “There has been a suggestion because there is an element of the agreement that obligates us to not to take steps that would stop economic relations between other nations and Iran that we could perhaps be in jeopardy of breaching the agreement.”

Mull agreed with this assessment.

“I have heard from very senior, and Secretary [of State John] Kerry has as well, from very senior officials of differing European allies of ours that it could have a very negative impact on the deal,” he said.

Sources working with Congress on the Iran deal criticized the Obama administration for attempting to stymie increased action on terrorism due to its desire to preserve the nuclear deal.

“According to the Obama administration’s latest interpretation, the nuclear deal allows Iran to test ballistic missiles in violation of international law, but does not allow Congress to prevent terrorists from coming into the United States,” Omri Ceren, the managing director of press and strategy at The Israel Project, a D.C.-based organization that works with journalists on Middle East issues, told the Washington Free Beacon.

Seyed Araqchi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, also warned that Iran is prepared to “take action” against the United States for implementing visa restrictions.

Iran’s latest threat to break the deal comes amid numerous Iranian provocations, including multiple tests of advanced ballistic missiles, acts prohibited under United Nations Security Council resolutions.

The Obama administration repeatedly said that, while it does not agree with those launches, they do not violate the nuclear deal.

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Lawmakers Slam White House Attempts to Skirt Counter-Terror Laws for Iran

Leading state sponsor of terror opposes 

counter-terrorism measure

BY ADAM KREDO

SEE: http://freebeacon.com/national-security/lawmakers-slam-white-house-attempts-skirt-counter-terror-laws-iran/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:



More than 20 lawmakers have penned letters to the Obama administration expressing anger over its recent decision to waive certain counter-terrorism measures aimed at preventing potential terrorists from easily entering the United States in order to assuage Iran.

The letters from members of Congress come days after the Obama administration promised Iranian leaders it would veto newly passed initiatives tightening the U.S. visa waiver program to close loopholes that have enabled a number of terrorists to enter the country legally.

The new measures would bar individuals who have recently traveled to Iran—the leading state sponsor of terrorism—from participating in the visa waiver program, which eases travel for those from 38 member countries.

Iran expressed anger over the laws, claiming that they violate the recent nuclear accord and could force Iran to abandon the deal before it is even enacted.

Secretary of State John Kerry said in a recent letter to Javad Zarif, the country’s foreign minister, that the administration would ignore the enhanced counter-terrorism measures.

In two separate letters sent Tuesday to the Departments of State and Homeland Security, lawmakers described this action as unconscionable and noted that Iranian actions have been responsible for killing a number of Americans.

“While we understand that Iranian officials have expressed their anxieties to you that this new provision could undermine business opportunities in Iran by international investors, it is beyond belief that those concerns would supersede a newly-enacted U.S. law designed to protect the American people from terrorism,” wrote 20 members of Congress, including Republican Reps. Bob Dold (Ill.), David Joyce (Ohio), Ron DeSantis (Fla.), and Mark Walker (N.C.).

The law, which the president has already signed but has threatened to waive in order to calm Iran, “clearly denies eligibility for the visa waiver program to individuals who have traveled to a country that is ‘designated by the Secretary of State’” as a top global sponsor of terrorism, they wrote.

The lawmakers maintain that “there is no legitimate justification to create a special exemption for Iran from an anti-terrorism an security law that was specifically designed to include Iran,” they wrote. “Iran does not get to veto U.S. security measures.”

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.) independently sent his own letter to Kerry on Tuesday, warning that the administration’s actions “would put U.S. citizens at risk.”

Responding to a comment by Zarif calling the new laws “absurd” and questioning whether “anybody in the West [has] been targeted by any Iranian nation,” Pompeo included a partial list of Iranian-sponsored terror attacks that have killed Americans.

At least 500 U.S. troops were killed by Iranian explosive devices in Iraq between 2005 and 2011, Pompeo wrote. Another 19 U.S. service members were “murdered and hundreds of others injured” in a 1996 terror attack in Saudi Arabia that was sponsored by Iran.

Iran also continues to imprison at least five American citizens.

“Waiving these visa requirements is not in our country’s national security interests,” Pompeo wrote. “The administration cannot allow individuals who are not American citizens, and who have connection to, or have traveled to designated state sponsors of terrorism, such as Iran, to come to our country without doing something as simple as applying for a visa.”

Pompeo, in a statement issued after he sent the letter, called the administration’s actions “wrong and dangerous.”

“Terrorists including Zacarias Moussaoui, the twentieth 9/11 hijacker, and Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, both took advantage of the U.S. visa waiver program to enter our country,” he said.  “For Secretary Kerry to pander to Iran’s Foreign Minister, as it appears he did when he promised to waive U.S. visa restrictions regarding Iran, is wrong and dangerous. The largest state sponsor of terrorism shouldn’t get to dictate U.S. visa policy.”