Part I
Meet the militantly pro-Israel Trump official directing the economic war on Iran
By Max Blumenthal*
September 3, 2019
Source: https://thegrayzone.com/2019/09/03/pro-israel-sigal-mandelker-fbi-americans-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.
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 Mandelker’s 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.
Mandelker’s actions against the US citizens who participated in New Horizon represent an under-acknowledged but significant escalation in the Trump administration’s 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 Trump’s 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 Maloof’s 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. “They’re interpreting the regulations to say that even if you associate with someone who has been sanctioned, you are subject to fines and imprisonment. I haven’t seen anything in the regulations that allows that, but they’ve set the bar so low that anyone can be designated.”
Targeting a public media conference
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 Department’s 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 don’t 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 you’re going to have better relations.”
Maloof emphasized, “We’re all still US patriots, but we believe there’s 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, we’re very attuned to that stuff.”
Under Mandelker’s 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 Department’s 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 regime’s 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 Hizballah’s financial activities.”
“Jammal Trust provides support and services to Hizballah’s 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 1980’s. 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.
Because Lebanon’s 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 Horizon’s 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 day’s 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, Obama’s Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, and Jeremy Bash, the CIA’s ex-chief of staff, Mandelker declared that Iran was “posing an incredibly destabilizing presence in the region. They’re 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!”
“That’s 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 Israel’s 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, Levey’s 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 Bush’s 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 Iran’s Central Bank and sever Tehran’s ties to the global financial system.
“Stuart Levey’s war is like ‘Charlie Wilson’s War,’ ” an unnamed State Department official told the New York Times, referring to a former Texas congressman’s campaign to undermine the Soviet Union by funneling arms to Afghan insurgents. “It’s the most direct and aggressive stuff we’ve got going. It delivers.”
Mandelker learned the ropes in Levey’s 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.
Mandelker’s 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 Bush’s 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 administration’s 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…isn’t just Jewish, she’s 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 didn’t know, but that “she was born in Israel.”
(((Jewlicious)))@jewlicious
May 14, 2018
President Rivlin pronounced Mnuchin’s name with a very Jewish pronunciation – MnuCHHHHin. Just in case you didn’t know Mnuchin’s Jewish… #USEmbassyJerusalem
(((Jewlicious)))@jewlicious
Not only that, Sigal Mandelker, Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, isn’t just Jewish, she’s Israeli! Is she in Jerusalem today? #USEmbassyJerusalem
4:42 PM – May 14, 2018
According to Mandelker’s bio at the Treasury Department, however, she was born in Chicago, Illinois.
The Treasury Department did not respond to questions from The Grayzone about Mandelker’s citizenship status. It would be unusual for a US official to obtain a security clearance while maintaining dual citizenship, however, Mandelker’s 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, Iran’s 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 Hashemi’s imprisonment was spun by US authorities into the sanctioning of New Horizon will be chronicled in the next installment of this series.
Part II
Was the imprisonment of Iranian-American journalist Marzieh Hashemi spun into expanded US sanctions?
By Max Blumenthal*
September 5, 2019
Source: https://thegrayzone.com/2019/09/05/was-the-imprisonment-of-iranian-american-journalist-marzieh-hashemi-spun-into-expanded-us-sanctions/
The relationship between former Air Force analyst-turned-Iranian spy Monica Witt and Hashemi – who was jailed by US authorities this January – is at the center of one of the Trump administration’s most bizarre sanctions designations.
Disgusted by the atrocities she claimed to have witnessed in the US Air Force in Iraq and Afghanistan, a counter-intelligence analyst named Monica Witt defected to Iran in 2013. She allegedly provided its intelligence services with classified information she had gathered over her career, and helped a team of hackers spearphish the social media accounts.
According to the US government, Witt’s defection was assisted by a US-born journalist, Marzieh Hashemi, who had also moved to Iran.
This January, Hashemi was arrested by US authorities while on her way to visit her son. The unexplained detention of a journalist and reports of mistreatment by her jailers sparked protest rallies outside the federal courthouse in Washington DC where her hearing took place.
Max Blumenthal✔@MaxBlumenthal
Iran’s @PressTV reports that its anchor, Marzieh Hashemi, has been detained at St. Louis Lambert International Airport for no stated reason and was transferred by the FBI to a detention facility https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2019/01/16/585921/Press-TV-news-anchor-Hashemi-arrested-in-US-for-no-specific-reason …
PressTV-Jailed without justice: Press TV’s anchor in US custody
The Iranian English-language television news network’s journalist Marzieh Hashemi has been arrested and transferred to a detention facility in Washington, D.C. without being charged.
presstv.com
7:02 AM – Jan 16, 2019
Close observers of US-Iran relations were mystified by Hashemi’s arrest, speculating that she was being held to pressure Iran to release an unknown US citizen.
But soon after Hashemi returned to Iran, and as the media torpor over her jailing died down, the US Department of Justice publicized the previously secret indictment. The DOJ subsequently revealed that Hashemi was the “Individual A” who allegedly assisted Witt’s defection, acting as a “spotter and assessor” for Iran’s intelligence services.
The indictment further asserted that Witt “traveled to Iran for the purpose of attending the New Horizon Organization’s ‘Hollywoodism’ conference, an IRGC-sponsored event aimed at condemning American moral standards and promoting anti-U.S. propaganda.” (The IRGC is the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, the combined military and intelligence apparatus of Iran).
As The Grayzone detailed in part one of this series, New Horizon is a public media event held annually in Iran that has hosted anti-establishment Western intellectuals and anti-war activists seeking to bridge fractured US-Iranian relations, along with an array of more dubious conspiracy cranks.
Two weeks after Hashemi’s release from US custody, the co-founders of New Horizon, Zeina Mehanna and Nader Talebzadeh, were sanctioned by the US Treasury Department.
“I see no connection with my arrest and its organizers, thus I see no connection with my arrest and [New Horizon’s] sanctioning, except as a psychological game or psy-op by the US government,” Hashemi told The Grayzone.
She added, “The US always tries to play people against each other. This is nothing new.”
But Mehanna of New Horizon offered a strikingly different account. She described Hashemi as a close friend who had betrayed her and her husband, possibly while under duress, in order to secure her release from a possible long term jail sentence in the US.
“A few days after [Hashemi’s] arrival to Iran, we were sanctioned!” Mehanna exclaimed. “Go figure. A deal! Just connect the dots!”
Breaking into the Iranian scene as a “Wall Street Activist”
Whether or not the 2012 “Hollywoodism” conference had anything to do with Witt’s recruitment, it was there that Witt made her first public appearance in Iran.
Mehanna insisted that Witt had not been formally invited to participate in the “Hollywoodism” conference, and maintained that New Horizon did not sponsor the event. “It was Marzieh [Hashemi] who brought her,” Mehanna said.
For her part, Hashemi stated, “I am not sure if this individual was invited or not,” referring to Witt. “I saw her at the conference, but later I was told that she had already been here in Iran and just came to the conference.”
Invited or not, Witt was able to speak at the event, and was billed in conference literature published after the event as a “Wall Street Activist,” referring to the Occupy Wall Street movement.
The former Air Force officer converted to Islam in a publicly broadcast ceremony, and gave an interview to Press TV, Iran’s state media company, during which she identified as a US military veteran.
New Horizon’s Mehanna fervently denied any connection between her conference and Witt’s espionage activities.
“Why should we be accused and sanctioned for something that we did not commit?” she exclaimed. “Ask any of our guests if they were approached by any IRGC member or asked to share any information related to security. The answer would be no!”
Michael Maloof, a former US Pentagon official who attended the conference in the name of fostering better relations with Iran, told The Grayzone that he was unable to detect any presence of IRGC recruiters at the event.
Maloof was nevertheless visited at his home this May by FBI agents asking questions about New Horizon.
Following her first trip to Iran, Witt returned to the US in May 2012 to complete a graduate program at George Washington University. In DC, she was approached by FBI agents who warned her that she was a target for recruitment by a foreign intelligence agency.
She promised she would not discuss her work with the US Air Force if she ever traveled to Iran again.
A former classmate of Witt’s at George Washington told the New York Times that Air Force veteran was traumatized by US war crimes she had witnessed in Iraq and Afghanistan. “She would talk about how she couldn’t sleep at night, the stuff she saw and was a part of,” the classmate said of Witt.
According to the Times, Witt “would mention drone strikes, extrajudicial killings and atrocities against children, all of which she claimed her colleagues in the military would brag about. She seemed distressed by what she called ‘gross incompetence’ by her superiors.”
By the time Witt returned to Iran the following year, dropping in on another “Hollywoodism” conference, she was on the path to defecting and forking over information she had gathered as an intelligence analyst. Helping her make the move was Hashemi, the journalist and US dual citizen, according to federal prosecutors.
“I was talking to people until about 2 in the morning about your case. I have several different channels working on it, but to be honest with one of them, he said they got suspicious that on one hand, you said u have no money, and on the other hand u r going from country to country,” Hashemi allegedly texted Witt.
The IRGC appeared initially suspicious of Witt, but eventually helped her obtain a visa through Iran’s embassy in Dubai. “I’m signing off and heading out! Coming home:),” Witt texted Hashemi on August 28, 2013, the day she defected.
Mehanna of New Horizon described Hashemi as Witt’s “handler.” The DOJ indictment referred to the Iranian-American journalist as a “spotter or assessor on behalf of the Iranian intelligence services.”
Hashemi rejected these characterizations. In a statement to The Grayzone, she declared:
“I am a journalism [school] graduate with decades of experience. I have interviewed people from around the world and maintained contact with many of them, just like any other journalist. I happen to be living and working in Iran. Journalism is not a crime. It is not being a spotter, nor a fixer, nor a pawn for US foreign policy.”
In Iran, Witt adopted a new identity as Fatemah Zahra. According to her indictment, she began collaborating with hackers to spearphish information from US intelligence agents she identified.
It was not until July 2018, almost five years since Witt slipped into Iran, that the US government issued a secret indictment against the former Air Force analyst.
In January of the following year, Hashemi took a trip to the US to visit members of her family. Unaware of the indictment of Witt, she headed straight into a US dragnet.
The arrest and interrogation of Hashemi
Marzieh Hashemi was born in Louisiana as Melanie Franklin in 1959. After meeting revolutionary Iranian students at age 22 and converting to Islam, she changed her name and moved to Iran during the early 1980’s.
In January 2019, Hashemi traveled to New Orleans to visit her family. Next, she headed to St. Louis to film a documentary about the Black Lives Matter movement. While she boarded a flight at St. Louis Lambert International Airport, on her way to meet her son, Hossein, in Denver, she was arrested by federal agents and immediately transported to Washington DC.
Initial reports on Hashemi’s arrest stated that she was a “material witness,” but offered no further information. Her son told the Associated Press, “we don’t have any information along those lines” when asked if she was being investigated in connection to any crime.
While in prison, Hashemi was unable to communicate with her family for four days. “While being held without charge, I was forced to remove my hijab and denied adequate clothing or food,” Hashemi told The Grayzone. “Similar treatment of other Americans has been found to be unlawful.”
It took ten days before Hashemi appeared in a courtroom, and by then, protests against her detention had erupted from Washington to Tehran.
“The FBI hates us”
On January 30, a week after her federal grand jury appearance and subsequent release from custody, Hashemi returned to a hero’s welcome in Tehran. Received on the tarmac by throngs of chanting supporters, the Press TV anchor held a press conference where she denounced “a campaign of disrespect and intimidation” in the US.
“As I greeted [Hashemi] with warmth, since we were best friends, she whispers in my ear as we hugged, ‘The FBI hates us,” Mehanna recounted. “She added that eighty percent of the questions they [the FBI] asked her were about New Horizon! The rest were about Monica Witt and her connection to her.”
“When they asked her about Witt,” the New Horizon co-founder added, “she tried to deny everything. But they had evidence from her emails, WhatsApp messages, and phone calls that she had been in continuous contact with her.”
Hashemi confirmed that she had been grilled by the FBI about New Horizon: “I was asked about many subjects regarding Iran, and that conference was one of the subjects.”
According to Mehanna, her husband, New Horizon co-founder Talebzadeh, demanded Hashemi go public with the information about her interrogation. “She refused on the premise that it was part of the ‘sealed portion’ of Witt’s indictment,” Mehanna said.
On February 8, Witt’s indictment was unsealed. Department of Justice officials subsequently told members of the media that Hashemi was the “Individual A” referred to in the indictment as Witt’s “spotter.”
Five days later, the US Treasury Department announced sanctions on Mehanna and Talebzadeh, claiming that they “organize[d] international conferences that supported the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force’s (IRGC-QF’s) efforts to recruit and collect intelligence from foreign attendees, including US persons.”
The sanctions designation of the two New Horizon founders, a filmmaker and a writer, was accompanied by acronym, SDGT, or Specially Designated Global Terrorist. This meant that they would be tainted with a label traditionally reserved for members of violent extremist organizations like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
Mehanna’s personal savings account was subsequently frozen in her home country of Lebanon as a result of the sanctions.
She now looks back on the episode – and Hashemi’s role in it – with anger.
“The irony is that Nader [Talebzadeh] and I get an SGDT status when we had nothing to do with Monica Witt, while the actual person who was Witt’s handler is free and undesignated,” Mehanna reflected. “Isn’t that a total farce?”
*Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War, and The Management of Savagery. He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.
Emma Olive 