That argument ignores that regardless of the origin, giving the money to Iran was a great help to Iran's efforts to destabilize the region.
And as I've mentioned, it represented a pool of money that could be used to pay court awards against Iran.
Like this:
It might be a hollow victory but it's a victory nonetheless for relatives of victims of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
A federal judge in New York on Tuesday ordered Iran to pay billions of dollars to parents, spouses, siblings and children of more than 1,000 9/11 victims, court documents obtained by ABC News show.
It is hollow because Iran won't pay and we can't make them.
Of course, if that money that we "owed" the vile Iranian regime was still in American hands instead of being flown on pallets to Iran in 2015, the court victory would not be hollow.
The money should have been leverage over the Iran. Instead it was just one more gift to Iran in that horrible nuclear deal that hurt Americans in the end by denying them more than a hollow victory.
More will pay for this deal before we can replace the idiocy with an actual policy. Remember, the end of the nuclear deal is just a battlefield win. The war continues.
Since the naming of the Axis of Evil by Bush 43, I hoped that the response to Iran would be to support a revolution by Iranians who polls showed liked America but disliked the mullah rulers.
But Bush would have been impeached--because of seething leftist anger over Iraq--if he had said even a word of support for a revolution even if America had nothing to do with it.
And Obama didn't want to support a revolution if it got in the way of getting even a craptastically bad nuclear deal with the mullahs.
What will Trump do?
Much will be written about what the U.S. and its allies should do on the nuclear file. Iran's leaders have made vague threats, and the West must prepare for the prospect of losing visibility into the country's declared nuclear infrastructure. That said, the most urgent task now for Trump is increasing the odds of success for Iran's democracy movement.
Will the deal be replaced with a willingness to treat Iran as the enemy the mullahs have made Iran? Could we get a real victory in the big picture?
I know people say that nuclear weapons are popular with all Iranians and so a revolution won't change that.
But I would worry far less about a normal and friendly Iran with nukes than I do with the current nutballs seeking nukes. I honestly don't lose much sleep about French or British nukes.
And there is a good chance that if the Iranian people can influence their policies, they might decide that pursuing nukes isn't worth the costs given the other things that the money could be spent on. After all, just who would Iran deter if it had good relations with America?
