Trump’s Ten Lies: A Response to the Iran Nuclear Agreement Speech, by Ted Snider

Trump often has only a glancing relationship with the truth, but his speech announcing the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement had some real whoppers. From Ted Snider at antiwar.com:

After listening to Trump’s speech explaining his decision to pull out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement with Iran, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said that Trump’s speech contained “over ten lies.” Khamenei didn’t go on to name the lies.

So, what were the lies Trump told?

Lie #1

“The Iranian regime is the leading state sponsor of terror”
The United States has long known that its ally, Saudi Arabia, and not its enemy, Iran, is the leading state sponsor of terror. All recent attempts to link Iran to terrorism have failed. Even America’s own reports on terrorism don’t list Iran as the leading state sponsor of terrorism. The State Department’s Patterns of Global Terrorisms “rarely identifies a terrorist incident as an act by or on behalf of Iran.” And, the most recent Global Terrorism Index from the Department of Homeland Security clearly states that, not Iran, but “ISIL, Boko Haram, the Taliban and al-Qaeda” are the biggest terrorist threats. None of these four groups is Shiite and none is aligned with Iran, but combined they are “responsible for 74 per cent of all deaths from terrorism.” The Index also clearly identifies “ISIL,” not Iran “as the deadliest terrorist group.”

As The U.S. well knows, Saudi Arabia is the leading state sponsor of terror. As early as 2009, the State Department had already declared that “Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaeda, the Taliban . . . and other terrorist groups.” A widely circulated 2012 classified Defense Intelligence Agency Information Intelligence Report identified the “supporting powers” of ISIS to be “Western countries, the Gulf States and Turkey.” Two years later, Vice President Biden was still making the same case against, not Iran, but Saudi Arabia: “[O]ur allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria . . .. They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad except that the people who were being supplied were Al Nusra and al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis.” Point 4 of a memo written by Hillary Clinton on September 17, 2014 confesses that based on “western intelligence, US intelligence and sources in the region, “the US knew that “the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia . . . [were] providing clandestine financial and logistic support to Isis and other radical groups in the region.” And, in 2015, President “Obama and other US officials urged Gulf leaders who are funding the opposition to keep control of their clients, so that a post-Assad regime isn’t controlled by extremists from the Islamic State or al-Qaeda.”

To continue reading: Trump’s Ten Lies: A Response to the Iran Nuclear Agreement Speech