Heather Cox Richardson from Letters from an American <heathercoxrichardson@substack.com>:

“When Obama sent Iran $400m + $1.3bn in interest in 2016 Trump called it ‘insane’ and he and others spent a decade mocking the idea of ‘pallets of cash’ even though it was Iran’s own money, American prisoners were released, courts were likely to require the U.S. payment, and Iran had just agreed to significant and verified reductions and restrictions on its nuclear program for 15+ years.

“Now Trump is giving Iran up to ten times that amount of revenue—one of the most significant measures of sanctions relief provided to the Islamic Republic since its founding—in exchange for marginal and temporary relief from the big increase in oil prices his actions have caused, without any concessions from Tehran, and even as Iran continues to target the United States, its allies, and world oil supplies. No way to read as anything other than desperate recognition of the situation Trump’s own actions have created and the lack of available alternatives for dealing with it.”

On Meet the Press today, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said: “We’re gonna give Iran $14 billion to fund this war with the United States? We’re gonna give Russia billions of dollars to fund their war with Ukraine? We’re literally putting money into the pockets of the very nations that we are fighting right now. We’ve never seen this level of incompetence in war-making in this country’s history.”

Of course, there are likely those in our government who seem to perceive that Russia is our friend and it is only proper to give them back the oil which is being destroyed by Ukraine.

Jeff