by WorldTribune Staff, December 20, 2017
Israeli politicians blasted former U.S. President Barack Obama after Politico’s bombshell report that the Obama administration derailed a DEA investigation into Hizbullah’s drug trafficking activities to protect Obama’s major foreign policy legacy, the Iran nuclear deal.
“Obama must return his Nobel Peace Prize,” if this week’s Politico story is correct, said Yair Lapid, chairman of the Yesh Atid party.
“Israel warned repeatedly that there can be no connection between the nuclear deal and anti-terror activity, certainly against Hizbullah… We also warned of this specifically, because of the proven link between Hizbullah and Iran,” Lapid said.
Communications Minister Ayoob Kara tweeted that the report shows the Obama administration allowed Hizbullah, a U.S. designated terror organization, to grow stronger.
“Does anyone still doubt why Obama was bad for Israel and how Trump is better for us?” Kara asked.
The Politico report details the efforts of the DEA’s Project Cassandra, which starting in 2008 had been tracking Hizbullah’s global criminal-syndicate operation, backed by Iran, including drug and weapons trafficking worth $1 billion annually.
The report also cites several DEA agents who say the Obama administration all but shut down Project Cassandra as Obama was negotiating the nuclear accord with Iran.
Related: Report on Obama’s obstruction of Hizbullah probe blacked out by major networks, December 19, 2017
Israeli Regional Cooperation Minister Tzachi Hanegbi wrote on Facebook that the report is not surprising, due to Obama’s “persistent efforts to give Iran, Nasrallah’s patron, legitimacy at any price.”
“Up until the Obama administration,” Hanegbi wrote, “every American president fought terrorism uncompromisingly… I am convinced that the Trump administration will not turn from that tradition, and that the outrageous and mistaken policy that was revealed this week will not be repeated.”
Former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren, currently a deputy minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, said the news “wouldn’t surprise any Israeli involved in the attempts to prevent a bad nuclear deal with Iran.”
Oren said “It was clear that the government was willing to do anything to reach an agreement, including ignoring Iranian terror that took the lives of hundreds of Americans and Israelis and hundreds of thousands of Syrians. This exposé and others that may be published in the future must strengthen our resolve to cancel or at least significantly change this dangerous agreement.”
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