Trump Had No Problem with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard When He Was Doing Business with Its Associates

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On Monday, Donald Trump announced that his administration was designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization, the first time in history the U.S. had classified another country’s government as such, an action that flips the switch on a range of sanctions on the military unit and companies, individuals, and organizations with ties to it. According to The New York Times, top C.I.A. and Pentagon officials argued against the designation, saying it will “allow hard-line Iranian officials to justify deadly operations against Americans overseas, especially Special operations units and paramilitary units working under the C.I.A.” But Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton reportedly pushed for it, and ultimately persuaded the president. “This action will significantly expand the scope and scale of our maximum pressure on the Iranian regime,” Trump said in a statement on Monday. “It makes crystal clear the risks of conducting business with, or providing support to, the I.R.G.C.”

Not mentioned in the statement? Allegations, detailed in an extensive investigative report, that the Trump Organization participated in a scheme that likely helped the I.R.G.C. launder money and acquire weapons of mass destruction. (Must have been an oversight!) In 2017, The New Yorker published a story about Trump Tower Baku, a hotel in Azerbaijan that never opened and appeared “to be a corrupt operation engineered by oligarchs tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.” According to reporter Adam Davidson, in 2012, the Trump Organization signed multiple contracts to build the tower with the Mammadov family, whose patriarch, Ziya Mammadov, was the Transportation Minister at the time. (Ziya Mammadov was described by a U.S. diplomat as “notoriously corrupt even for Azerbaijan,” which is among the most corrupt nations in the world.) The Mammadovs were financially entangled with the Darvishi family, at least three members of which were reportedly associates of the Revolutionary Guard. (When the tower was originally announced, Ziya Mammadov “awarded a series of multimillion-dollar contracts to Azarpassillo, an Iranian construction company” run by the Darvishis.) Ivanka Trump, the most senior Trump Organization official involved in the project, toured the site in October 2014, reportedly offering “very strong feelings, not just about the design but about the back of the hotel—landscaping, everything.” (Ivanka, who declined The New Yorker’s request for comment at the time, was said to “personally approve everything” on the project.)

It was around the time the Trumps went into business with the Mammadovs that international banks had become increasingly reluctant to accept money from businesses owned by the I.R.G.C., making it necessary for Iran to find an alternative way to send money outside the country, including to allies like Hezbollah and the Syrian government. As Davidson noted today, the I.R.G.C. came up with “a clever scheme [to] create hundreds of ‘private’ companies, owned by I.R.G.C. officers, that would fund terror, seek W.M.D, launder money and do other bidding of the central organization.” Many of these companies, including the Darvishi’s Azarpassillo, were “barely disguised.” As The New Yorker reported in 2017, anyone paying half an ounce of attention would have noticed that the Trump Tower project sure carried some hallmarks of a money-laundering operation:

Frank McDonald, an Englishman who has had a long career doing construction jobs in developing countries, performed extensive work on the building’s interior [and said] his firm was always paid in cash, and that he witnessed other contractors being paid in the same way. At the offices of Anar Mammadov’s company, he said, “they would give us a giant pile of cash,” adding, “I got a hundred and eighty thousand dollars one time, which I fit into my laptop bag, and two hundred thousand dollars another time.” Once, a colleague of his picked up a payment of two million dollars. “He needed to bring a big duffelbag,” McDonald recalled. The Azerbaijani lawyer confirmed that some contractors on the Baku tower were paid in cash.

The construction firm for the project denied involvement in any corruption. Davidson’s calls and e-mails to Azarpassillo, the Iranian Mission to the U.N., and the Azerbaijani government went unreturned, and neither Ziya nor Anar Mammadov responded to requests for comment.

According to The New Yorker, Alan Garten, the Trump Organization’s lawyer, said it learned in 2015 about the “possibility” that the Mammadovs had ties to the Revolution Guard—but didn’t end the Baku deal until December 2016, claiming that there was “no rush” because “the project had already stalled and was showing no signs of moving forward.” Garten also told Davidson that the Trump Organization’s hands were tied because it had “signed binding contracts with the Mammadovs and couldn’t simply abandon its agreements,” an argument that experts found laughable. (“You can’t violate sanctions just because you have a contract with someone,” Jessica Tillipman, an assistant dean at George Washington University Law School, told the outlet.) As late as 2017, Garten said the Trumps couldn‘t say definitively whether there was a link between the Mammadovs and the Darvishis, or if the association was a myth “spread by the media.” Allison Melia, previously one of the C.I.A.‘s lead analysts on Iran’s economy, told Davidson she could have assembled a dossier on the Mammadovs and their connection to the Revolutionary Guard in “a couple of days,” and that any reputable investigative firm could have done the same.

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This_Bitch_Overhere on April 9th, 2019 at 03:56 UTC »

They must be suing him for unpaid bills, that’s why he labeled them terrorists.

Edit: WOW! Silver! Thank you kind stranger! This is nucking futs!

ICareAF on April 9th, 2019 at 01:57 UTC »

It's about time that we separate money from power, seriously.

ExternalUserError on April 9th, 2019 at 01:28 UTC »

That's okay, he's in bed with Saudi Arabia now, which has an unbroken record as transparency, democracy, human rights, and tolerance.