In 2015, the Obama administration signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a multilateral agreement to end the Islamic Republic’s drive toward nuclear weapons. While President Barack Obama described the deal as rigorous and sacrosanct, he maneuvered to avoid Senate ratification lest it come under serious inspection and debate. The basis of the JCPOA was Tehran’s agreement to stop weaponization of fissile material in exchange for the West unfreezing Iranian assets. The White House was oblique when confronted with how much money the Iranian regime might receive. While some analysts suggested it could be as high as $150 billion, future contracts and business ventures easily could double that amount over a decade.
While Congress held multiple hearings on the JCPOA, the Obama administration stonewalled open discussion of the true amounts the United States and Europe provided to Tehran. President Donald Trump instinctively understood the deal’s weakness and so both walked away from what amounted to a political agreement, rather than a binding treaty, and designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—the chief beneficiary of the deal—as a terrorist entity.
Many Americans—and even many in Congress—do not fully appreciate the apparent national security implications of Obama’s backroom dealing.
As Trump begins his second term auditing government and promising to uproot corruption, he should go deeper: He should investigate how the JCPOA came about from start to finish. The executive branch should declassify and expose the nature of the contacts between U.S. negotiators and the Islamic regime from the beginning of the Obama administration in 2009 to the end of President Joe Biden’s term last month.
He also should expose any secret annexes, commitments, and side letters, first between U.S. and European negotiators and then between U.S. and Iranian officials. Such secrecy would be necessary only if Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry had made commitments so outrageous or detrimental to the security of the United States and its allies that they could not face public scrutiny. That should change.
Many Americans—and even many in Congress—do not fully appreciate the apparent national security implications of Obama’s backroom dealing. While critics of the JCPOA have focused both on its loopholes and how the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps could divert the flood of hard currency into Iran to underwrite the nuclear program or subsidize terrorism, the Iran deal also opened the door to perhaps the greatest influence operation ever to impact the United States.
Basic information regarding the JCPOA remains unconfirmed. Different officials cite various figures. Trump should direct Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to determine the financial operations around the JCPOA: How were amounts calculated? Which brokers organized the transfers? And how did the United States trace Iran’s use of its “pallets of cash,” if at all?
Any hard currency to the world’s greatest state sponsor of terror is too much, but the issue goes beyond simple terror sponsorship.
Any hard currency to the world’s greatest state sponsor of terror is too much, but the issue goes beyond simple terror sponsorship. In 2015, as co-secretary-general of the Transatlantic Parliamentary Group on Counterterrorism, I tried to alert members of Congress about the dangers of the financial arrangements with Iran that Obama blessed. The regime leaders likely diverted some of the original $1.5 billion cash payment to lobby for a larger deal. This could mean that the Obama administration enabled Iran to spend $150 million, if not more, on an influence operation against Congress and the U.S. media. If the Islamic regime continued to revert just 10 percent of its windfall to lobbying and influence operations, this means it quickly had at its disposal $15 billion to sway Americans via consultants, companies, legal funds, academia, think tanks, and media. The most famous example of this would be the Islamic Republic’s Iran Experts Initiative that cultivated Iranian American analysts and academics, some of whom Biden subsequently hired into sensitive government positions. Many other such examples may exist but remain unknown to journalists. Forensic analysis and a deep dive into the classified record may shed light on these.
The questions about Iranian influence are troubling. For example, did Iranian officials divert any of the funds transferred into regime banks to support urban violence or anti-American protests? Did the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or the ministry of intelligence use Iran deal monies to meddle in U.S. elections in 2016, 2020, and 2024?
Hostage ransoms open another avenue for investigation. The Obama administration offered billions of dollars to free American hostages in Iran. So, too, did Biden. But Trump managed to free hostage Xiyue Wang without any ransom or concession. This should raise questions about whether Obama and Biden used the hostage schemes as a cover to subsidize the Islamic Republic.
Admittedly, such an investigation could open a Pandora’s box within our government and country, but the American public has the right to know whether Obama and Biden colluded with Tehran to craft false narratives and undermine U.S. national security. It is time to declassify all Iran dealings.
