Iran lacking cash to fund terror groups, domestic cyber agency short of funds, declassified intel shows
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Documents show Iran is having a difficult time funding militias across the Middle East due to U.S. sanctions; Rich Edson reports from the State Department. Newly declassified intelligence shows that Palestinian terror group Hamas had to introduce “austerity plans” due to lack of funding from the Iranian regime.
State Department officials say the intelligence that was shared exclusively with Fox News reveals Tehran’s diminishing resources and influence within the region, prompting cutbacks among groups backed by the regime.
Think running world-wide terror organizations is cheap? Think again- those gravy days of selling oil and C-130’s loaded with cash are over, and Iran is feeling the bite of Trump’s sanctions. How’s that, you ask? The Dems have been saying all along the sanctions won’t work, and may even backfire in a terrible and unexpected fashion.
Just google it, there are dozens of pages like this:
Opinion: Here’s Why The Trump Administration’s Iran Sanctions Strategy Won’t Work
Seems this is not the case:
By Lukas Mikelionis | Fox News
Newly declassified intelligence shows that Palestinian terror group Hamas had to introduce “austerity plans” due to lack of funding from the Iranian regime.
State Department officials say the intelligence that was shared exclusively with Fox News reveals Tehran’s diminishing resources and influence within the region, prompting cutbacks among groups backed by the regime.
This comes amid a tough sanctions regime introduced by the U.S., which sent the country into a recession, with inflation topping 50 percent.
Due to lack of funding from Iran, Hamas had to introduce “austerity plans” while other Shia militia groups were told by Iran that they need to find other sources of revenue as Iran is no longer in a position to provide them the funds.
This coincided with Lebanon-based Hezbollah’s calls on social media to donate to piggy banks. The group apparently used even children to attract contributions.
The U.S. intelligence also shows that the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad is facing fuel shortages thanks to recent U.S. sanctions that cut off 1-3 million barrels a month that Iran once supplied to the war-torn country.
Domestically, as the Iranian treasury is struggling, so is the country’s cyber command, according to the declassified intelligence.
All this comes amid heightened tensions between the U.S. and Iran. The Trump administration sent additional warships and bombers to the Middle East earlier this month to counter unspecified threats to U.S. interests.
Maybe hold a bake sale- bombs for Baklava?
Syria is feeling the pinch, too. The entire article may be perused here: Fox News
Category: "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves", Breaking News, Iran, Syria, Trump!
(Plays “my heart bleeds for you” on tiny violin)
Them Iranian boys sure do miss Bathhouse Barry.
Maybe they could hold a bake sale or something… start a kabob restaurant, maybe?
Maybe a charity explosive event held in their capital buildings?
Raffle off “Drone Target of the Week” tickets?
Door Prizes at a Custom Carbomb show?
I’ve got it! Buy a whole lotta avocados and make some Ayatollah Guacamollah!!
What?!? I have worse puns than that.
Ex:
Jeff is going to be jealous if you have worse puns than him..
😉
Ex
Well, I have to admit that you have me beat on that last pun.
I am honored!
THE WEATHER TODAY will be mostly Punny with a 100% chance of occasional Sarcasm Showers…
Waiting for the Duffle Blog to post an article that Hamas has started a Go Fund Me page…
Wait a second..Iran crash strapped?
What happened to the $$$ that What’s His Face gave them a while back…
worstpresidentever
They spent it on upgrading their nuclear infrastructure to the point that they now have the ability to quadruple production of LEU.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-nuclear-enrichment/iran-increases-by-fourfold-the-rate-of-enrichment-of-low-enriched-uranium-idUSKCN1SQ1PT
And they doubtless upgraded other related programs as well.
Now that they’re cut off from the usual revenue streams, they can EAT the LEU for all the good it will do them.
Look for an Iranian version of loaves and fishes in the near future; the Mad Mullahs will have to deflect the attention of their public to the Great Satan once again, and away from the crushing realities of runaway inflation.
Unfortunately, that capacity still poses a problem.
Without going into the technical details, a 4x increase in the capacity to produce LEU means that they can also produce HEU faster.
But they lack the means to deliver nuclear warheads to strategic targets outside the Middle East, if they can even build them.
Israel, on the other hand…
Yet.
However, PT, you’re smart enough to realize that it’s a virtual certainty any and all data gained by the Iranian Space Agency in their satellite program is being passed directly to their ballistic missile program. Moreover, public sources indicate they’ve already orbited multiple satellites – and now have tested a rocket capable of putting 350kg into LEO.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Space_Agency#Satellite_launch_vehicle_(SLV)
I believe the US and USSR both demonstrated ICBM capability within 3 years of first satellite launch. Iran launched their first satellite on 2 February 2009. And any launch vehicle that can place 350kg payload into a 300+nm LEO may well be capable, with some tweaks, of launching a small nuke intercontentally – or, with minor improvements, into that same orbit.
Undoubtedly correct, Hondo, but even their space program is in its infancy.
Furthermore, no nation has more at stake in an Iranian nuclear capability than Israel, and based on their past preemptive actions, I don’t believe the Israelis will ever let the Iranians develop a viable nuclear warhead.
Such an intervention may come as a variation on Stuxnet or as bombing raid, but come it will–you can bet on it. And if DJT is re-elected, it will come with American approval if not outright support.
Iran has freighters and airliners. Thus, they can deliver a ten ton warhead anywhere on the planet.
True, but ships and aircraft are subject to scrutiny and remote sensing – and the signature of a warhead isn’t that easy to obscure completely. The possibility of pre-detonation interception is there.
Something in orbit (or in a suborbital ballistic trajectory) isn’t as easy to scrutinize. Plus, pre-detonation interception is much more difficult.
Agreed. It -is- rocket science.
But the ability to slide one into a harbor, somewhere, is quite real, and if large enough, “nearby” is plenty close.
Identifying exactly who owns which freighter is also somewhat challenging.
Perhaps we have the equivalent of Spock’s Tricorder, and can spot such a thing fifty miles off the coast. If that ship has the equivalent of Castle Bravo aboard, and is upwind of a major port city, the fallout is still going to be catastrophic. (As will be the likely panic, then the genocidal counter-strike).
Best we defang those lunatics before they are tempted to try to bite. They only get worse with time. Of course if the Donks had not -created- that lunatic regime….
Mail, even if you’re right, Iran only has the ability to hurt us–badly perhaps–but nonetheless, just hurt us. We, on the other hand, have the unquestioned capability to totally obliterate them. They most assuredly know that any nuclear attack on America would demand such a response.
Correct. Attacking the USA with a nuke will result in an “extinction level event” for the attacker.
If that potential attacker is working from a system of premises that is basically insane, then that “extinction” event may not be believed, or may be thought of as the beginning of some other events that are survivable/pre-ordained/whatever.
They are also part of a “boast” culture, prone to serious exaggeration and flowery threats. Their own difficulties with nukes and rockets may also be convincing them that we are bluffing, not actually capable of throwing nukes reliably.
Consider how many crazies think we faked the Moon landings, despite the visibility of the sites and the stuff we left there. Decent cameras in orbit can see the footprints. Yet some still say “bogus!”
The Persians have difficulty accepting that a bunch of Greeks kicked their asses to the curb, and they have had millennia to come to terms with that little debacle.
Excellent points, Mail. I had considered the supposed “Seventh Imam” death wish of Shiite Muslims but I’m not sure the leadership really buys that blarney.
But you are right–if there is any opponent more unpredictable than the Mullahs, I don’t know who it could be.
Oh no. Won’t someone think of the poor, underpaid terrorists?
Where’s Commissar? He was blaming our sanctions for toppling Venezuela’s socialist paradise. I guess that’s sort of what sanctions are designed to do. Cut of the funding for your enemies. Huh.
Not only are you trying to conjure the goblin, but make him regurgitate his Empirical Evidence all over the place as well!
Only I, Commie-Tsar, with my vast knowledge and terabytes of empiric data, can get socialism…errrrr… communism to work right. I can do it with the FLACCID MICROPENIS OF TRUTH as my talisman!
Interesting how when one of their socialist shitholes collapses, they blame US sanctions, yet when President Trump, or anyone for that matter suggests imposing sanctions on our enemies, they immediately scream that they won’t have any effect… liberalism truly is a mental disorder!
Behold my field of f…. It is barren and I don’t have a single f… to give.
Maybe they could do like our Legion Post does for fundraising. We’ll smoke up a bunch of Boston Butts, another guy frys up bags of pork skins, and we’ll grill a boat load of sausage dawgs with some bacon cheese burgers….oh wait…forgot….They don’t eat good food. I think that’s why they are pissed at the world.
pulledporkbbq
Nothing good can come of a society that detests pork, hates alcohol, and doesn’t appreciate the female form.
Not a society, a culture.. a culture very similar to the kind that grows in petri dishes, and is treated with antibiotics…
I could say something about a former president of the United States (He Who Shall Not Be Named) who sent them pallet loads of dollar bills…
… but I won’t.
De mortuis nihil nisi bonum.
Guess the Persians spent all the Benjamins. (More likely, shipped them overseas so when the true revolution comes, they can run and hide).
Word out today is that the Obama administration’s UN ambassador, Samantha Powers, was doing her level best to undermine Israel through that supposed “world organization.”
There’s also speculation that declassified documentation will show that the entire anti-Trump conspiracy was to cover up the Obama regime’s campaign to undermine Israel. The people of that country better be giving thanks to Yahweh that Hillary Clinton lost the election and could not continue the treachery of the un-American government of Bathhouse Barry.
Some folks are clearly showing the desperation of soon-to-be-exposed conspirators, who know they face rather severe consequences.
They are desperate. And that is only going to increase. They are going to face the music unless they remove Trump. Those removal efforts are going to be increasingly extra-legal as their failures mount.
He didn’t just defeat them at their favorite game. He made it look easy and do-able by any like-minded person. That loss of control, and potential permanent change to the game they thought they owned, terrifies them beyond any prison sentence or other court sanction.
And he is nowhere near done repairing the damage they have inflicted. And he is darn-near a shoo-in for another four years. After which they may be back-benchers for decades to come.
There is -no- limit to what they will do to try to stop Trump. None. If someone doesn’t wise them up, talk them into turning aside from the abyss, they will drag us all into it.
Some of them will prefer that fate. And that insanity is spreading fast.
Something on that is coming up shortly, 11B. Stick around.
It’s past time someone broke these shit heels…
File this one under “ Winning.”