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The Washington Institute hosted a Policy Forum with Ambassador Nathan Sales, the State Department’s Coordinator for Counterterrorism, as part of its long-running Stein Counterterrorism Lecture Series. The following is a report of that event.<\/p>\n
Top Trump Administration Official: We Will Make Tehran Regime Pay Price for Support of Terrorism<\/p>\n
The Tehran regime provides terrorist groups throughout the Middle East nearly one billion dollars a year, a top Trump administration official said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho ultimately pays the price of this support?\u201d Ambassador-at-Large and Coordinator for Counterterrorism Nathan Sales asked during a lecture at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank. \u201cThe Iranian people. The resources Iran uses to fund its global terrorist campaign come directly out of the pockets of ordinary Iranians. The regime robs its own citizens to pay its proxies abroad.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTehran\u2019s priorities are clear,\u201d he continued. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t seek to boost economic growth at home, or to improve Iranian living standards. It doesn\u2019t seek to reduce Iran\u2019s growing unemployment. What the regime prioritizes, despite the country\u2019s increasing economic distress, is buying guns and bombs for foreign terrorists.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Sales, Iran gives its Lebanon-based Shi\u2019a proxy Hezbollah $700 million annually, while Palestinian terror organizations get around $100 million from the mullahs in Tehran.<\/p>\n
\u201cThanks to Iran\u2019s backing, Hezbollah has built a fearsome arsenal,\u201d Sales warned. \u201cThe group now has more than 100,000 rockets in Lebanon, a massive and destabilizing build-up. Indifferent to the people it purports to defend, Hezbollah hides its missile factories in population centers \u2014 effectively using innocent civilians as human shields.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd while Hezbollah likes to tout its political role and social services in Lebanon, that\u2019s an ill-fitting fig leaf for its true and more nefarious agenda,\u201d he added. \u201cLet\u2019s be clear: Hezbollah is not an NGO; it is not just another political party. Hezbollah is a terrorist group with a bloody record of perpetrating violence and destruction in Lebanon and Syria, throughout the Middle East, and around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Iranian leaders do not exhibit the behavior of a \u201cnormal government,\u201d but rather that of \u201ca lawless regime that uses terrorism as a basic tool of statecraft,\u201d Sales said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe cannot let this threat go unanswered,\u201d he declared. \u201cAnd so the Trump administration is responding. We\u2019re going after Iranian support for terrorism in a variety of ways to get at the people and organizations Iran uses to spread terror.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will make clear to Iran-backed terrorists and to their masters in Tehran that there are costs \u2014 increasingly heavy ones \u2014 to their support for terrorist barbarism,\u201d Sales stated. \u201cWe are prepared to impose those costs on the regime and its proxies wherever they may be.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Trump administration, Sales vowed, \u201cwill continue to ratchet up the pressure until Iran comes to its senses, joins the community of civilized nations, and ends its support for murder and mayhem across the globe.\u201d<\/p>\n