Iran September 3, 2019
Meet the militantly pro-Israel Trump official directing the economic war on
Iran
From her influential post at the Treasury Department, Sigal Mandelker has
vowed to defend our great partner, Israel by sanctioning Iran. Her actions
have resulted in FBI interrogations of US citizens who attended a conference
in Iran and the likely liquidation of a bank that partnered with the US
government.
By Max Blumenthal
This is part one of a two part series on the growing impact of the US
economic war on Iran.
Several US citizens have been questioned by the FBI and threatened with
arrest for their participation in New Horizon, a public media conference
held each year in Iran.
The interrogations and threats are the result of orders apparently delivered
by Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Sigal P.
Mandelker, a militantly pro-Israel lawyer with longstanding ties to
right-wing political networks.
Mandelker was reportedly involved in brokering the infamous Florida deal
that allowed the wealthy child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein to avoid
federal charges.
Since Mandelkers appointment as Under Secretary of Treasury in 2017, she
has been described on pro-Israel news sites as a former Israeli and
Israeli-born.
Asked by The Grayzone if Mandelker currently holds Israeli citizenship, and
if so, whether she was given a special exemption that allowed her to obtain
a security clearance, the US Department of Treasury did not reply.
Mandelkers actions against the US citizens who participated in New Horizon
represent an under-acknowledged but significant escalation in the Trump
administrations strategy of maximum pressure to bring about regime change
in Iran. As the Atlantic noted, Mandelker is the one with her hand on the
lever of Trumps unilateral sanctions policy against Iran.
Michael Maloof, a former security analyst in the US Department of Defense,
was among the New Horizon attendees who has been visited by the FBI. Bureau
agents appeared at Maloofs Virginia home in the early morning last May to
inquire about his participation in the conference. Sander Hicks, another
participant in New Horizon, claimed that others who joined the conference
had been threatened with arrest if they attended again.
OFAC [the US Office of Financial Sanctions Regulations] is supposed to
restrict exchanges of money, but this conference was just an exchange of
ideas, Maloof told The Grayzone. Theyre interpreting the regulations to
say that even if you associate with someone who has been sanctioned, you are
subject to fines and imprisonment. I havent seen anything in the
regulations that allows that, but theyve set the bar so low that anyone can
be designated.
Targeting a public media conference
New Horizon Conference co-founders Nader Talebzadeh and Zeina Mehanna
The New Horizon Conference is an annual event overseen by Iranian TV host
and filmmaker named Nader Talebzadeh and his wife, Zeina Mehanna, a Lebanese
writer. Both were placed under financial sanctions this year by the Treasury
Departments Office of Financial Sanctions Regulations [OFAC] on the grounds
that they had organized events where Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps
recruitment and collection efforts were made.
We wrote to OFAC challenging them about their accusations, however, they
only responded by acknowledging the receipt of our letter. Nothing more!
Mehanna complained to The Grayzone.
She insisted that we are not in contact with the IRGC nor have we ever been
funded by them.
Negative scrutiny of the New Horizon Conference began in 2014 with a series
of reports by the pro-Israel pressure group, the Anti-Defamation League
[ADL]. The ADL openly coordinates with local and federal US law enforcement,
and escorts law enforcement officials on annual training and lobbying tours
of Israel.
According to the ADL, New Horizon was an anti-Semitic gathering that
included U.S. and international anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers and
anti-war activists.
There was some truth to the charge: over the years, New Horizon has played
host to an array of conspiracy cranks and figures with disturbing records of
vehemently anti-Jewish statements.
The event has also featured well-known anti-war activists and former US
national security professionals seeking to forge relations with a country
that has been under sustained Western economic and military attack for
decades.
Peter Van Buren, an author and former diplomat who served in the State
Department for 24 years, attended New Horizon this May in the city of
Mashhad. He returned with a colorful account for Reuters of life in Iran
under escalating US sanctions.
Outside, in Mashhad city, there were no demonstrations, no flag burnings,
and when I visited the central mosque here after Friday prayers more people
were interested in a selfie with a foreigner than anything else, Van Buren
reported.
Maloof, too, said his attendance of the conference was motivated by a desire
to build diplomatic bridges. We felt that it was important for dialogue to
go [to New Horizon]. And I dont agree with the US position on Iran, he
explained. All we did was went there, talked and met with people, and this
is the only way youre going to have better relations.
Maloof emphasized, Were all still US patriots, but we believe theres
another way to go about things than looking at everything in Iran through
the prism of Israel.
Asked if there was any interaction with IRGC officials or assets at the
event, Maloof insisted, We were not approached by anyone. And those of us
who are national security veterans, were very attuned to that stuff.
Under Mandelkers guidance, the Trump administration designated the IRGC as
a terrorist organization this April, provoking Iran to counter by branding
all US military personnel in the Middle East as terrorists.
Since then, Mandelker has expanded her target list in Iran and across the
region, even sanctioning institutions that collaborate with the US
government.
Sanctioning a USAID partner
On August 30, the Treasury Departments OFAC sanctioned an Iranian oil
tanker and its captain after it was freed from detention in Gilbraltar.
Mandelker claimed that the vessel was used to transfer large volumes of
oil, which attempt to mask and sell illicitly to fund the regimes malign
activities and propagate terrorism.
That same day, Treasury sanctioned Jammal Trust Bank in Lebanon, claiming
that it and its subsidiaries had been brazenly enabling Hizballahs
financial activities.
Jammal Trust provides support and services to Hizballahs Executive Council
and the Martyrs Foundation, which funnels money to the families of suicide
bombers, Mandelker declared.
But Hezbollah has not employed suicide bombing as a tactic since the 1980s.
And as Asia Times noted, Jammal Trust partnered with the US Agency for
International Development (USAID) as recently as last year on public
initiatives intended to help impoverished communities in Lebanon.
US embassy in Lebanons chargé daffaires Edward White at a June 2018 USAID
ceremony with Jammal Trust CEO Anwar Jammal
Because Lebanons economy is so thoroughly dollarized, the sanctions
represent a likely death sentence for Jammal, preventing it from carrying
out transactions in the US currency.
Notably, the bank is owned by a Shia businessman with close ties to Lebanese
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, and one of several who have been targeted
under the watch of Mandelker. Berri was reportedly threatened with US
sanctions this April by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for his insufficient
hostility to Hezbollah.
When New Horizons Mehanna was sanctioned, her personal savings account in
Lebanon was frozen.
I got a call that I need to go to the bank and close my account, Mehanna
told The Grayzone. The teller told me that the bank was informed by US
Treasury Department to close my account because it had dollars! They closed
my account, gave me a mere $400, and I was told politely to leave.
She said she was given no documentation that her account had been closed.
She recalled, We just left the bank in total shock and bewilderment.
It was all in a days work for Mandelker, the most militant official to
serve in a department overseen by a long line of pro-Israel ideologues.
That is why we have this massive sanctions regime. Because we know Iran is
threatening our great partner, Israel!
At a gathering of the elite Aspen Security Conference this July, Mandelker
put her extreme views on display when she accused former Obama officials of
mollycoddling Iran.
Seated beside Wendy Sherman, Obamas Under Secretary of State for Political
Affairs, and Jeremy Bash, the CIAs ex-chief of staff, Mandelker declared
that Iran was posing an incredibly destabilizing presence in the region.
Theyre threatening our great ally in the region, Israel!
She went on: And after the JCPOA [the Iran nuclear deal], what did the
Obama administration do to curb that kind of behavior? Nothing!
Thats not true, Sherman protested.
Bad actors need money to do bad things, Mandelker continued. That is why
we have this massive sanctions regime. Because we know Iran is threatening
our great partner, Israel!
While media at the event focused on the dust-up between Trump and Obama
officials, they ignored the stunning admission by a US official to advancing
provocative policies on Israels behalf.
But this was the role that Mandelker and her predecessors have played since
her position was established during the second Bush administration by her
mentor, Stuart Levey.
Like Mandelker, Levey is an unabashedly ultra-Zionist ideologue. His 1985
senior thesis at Harvard University was a paean to the creation of Israel,
declaring that the Zionist movement had created a morally exemplary state
that would be a light unto other nations.
As journalist Phil Weiss noted, Leveys thesis advisor was Martin Peretz,
the neoconservative former New Republic publisher who emigrated to Israel
after triggering protests with his declaration, Muslim life is cheap,
especially for Muslims.
At the dawn of the so-called war on terror, Levey successfully lobbied
Bushs national security team to turn up the heat on Iran, a country that
considered Al Qaeda its mortal enemy. His weapon of choice was sanctions,
convincing the Bush administration to blacklist Irans Central Bank and
sever Tehrans ties to the global financial system.
Stuart Leveys war is like Charlie Wilsons War, an unnamed State
Department official told the New York Times, referring to a former Texas
congressmans campaign to undermine the Soviet Union by funneling arms to
Afghan insurgents. Its the most direct and aggressive stuff weve got
going. It delivers.
Mandelker learned the ropes in Leveys Office of Terrorism and Financial
Intelligence, developing an innovative arsenal of financial weapons against
the enemies of Israel, a state for which she and her boss clearly felt a
passionate attachment.
She came to the job with the conservative movement credentials she gained as
a clerk in the office of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and as a
card-carrying member of the right-wing Federalist Society.
Mandelkers husband, Stephen Capozolla, has worked as a spokesman for the
Alliance for American Manufacturing, a Washington-based lobbying group,
while pumping out columns denying climate change for the right-wing site,
Breitbart.com.
In 2008, while Mandelker served in Bushs Department of Justice, she
approved the notorious deal that allowed the wealthy child sex trafficker
Jeffrey Epstein to escape federal prosecution.
I was told Epstein belonged to intelligence and to leave it alone, Alex
Acosta, the former US attorney who brokered the deal, told the Trump
administrations transition team.
When Mandelker returned to government in March 2017, she earned immediate
praise from Levey, her former boss, who called her an asset. Michael
Chertoff, another close colleague, described her as his eyes and ears when
he was at the Department of Homeland Security.
Pro-Israel websites also buzzed about the appointee, homing in on her
alleged Israeli roots.
Mandelker
isnt just Jewish, shes Israeli!
The right-wing Jewish Press described Mandelker as an Israeli-born deputy
secretary, while the Israeli security blog, Debka File, referred to her as
a former Israeli. Meanwhile, the Jerusalem-based blogger, Jewlicious,
called Mandelker a current Israeli citizen. When asked how he knew she
maintained her citizenship, the blogger said he didnt know, but that she
was born in Israel.
According to Mandelkers bio at the Treasury Department, however, she was
born in Chicago, Illinois.
The Treasury Department did not respond to questions from The Grayzone about
Mandelkers citizenship status. It would be unusual for a US official to
obtain a security clearance while maintaining dual citizenship, however,
Mandelkers former colleague at the Department of Homeland Security, Michael
Chertoff, was reportedly born an Israeli citizen.
Whatever her citizenship status is, Mandelker has made no secret of her
desire to advance the geopolitical imperatives of our great partner,
Israel.
Her sanctions blacklist is broadening by the day, resulting in even former
US national security officials being visited by the FBI for their
participation in an Iranian media event.
How the sanctioning of that conference came about is the subject of heavy
intrigue. According to Mehanna, the co-founder of the New Horizon
Organization, she and husband were targeted as the result of a separate US
investigation into a former US counter-intelligence officer and her alleged
handler, another American citizen.
The latter suspect American was an anchor for Press TV, Irans state
broadcaster. Known as Mazrieh Hashemi, she was jailed by federal authorities
this January when she attempted to return to the US to visit her family.
How Hashemis imprisonment was spun by US authorities into the sanctioning
of New Horizon will be chronicled in the next installment of this series.
Max Blumenthal
