Diplomacy: American and Iranian

On Thursday I walked by a television tuned to CNN in the downtown Minneapolis skyway. The crawl below Wolf Blitzer advised viewers that five Iranian diplomats had been released in Iraq, undoubtedly another installment of the Obama administration’s unending charm offensive directed to the mullahs ruling the roost in Iran. They’re enemies of the United States, they’re dictators and they are therefore the recipients of the administration’s deep respect.

What about CNN? Anyone who cares to understand what is happening in the world would have abandoned the CNN during the Clinton era, but “Iranian diplomats”? Perhaps CNN was relying on the AP for the story. As Paul would say, good grief.

Concise enough to make up a screen crawl, the Weekly Standard Blog heading had alerted readers that morning: “Obama administration frees more terrorists.” Steve Hayes briefly commented: “Stunning.” (Hayes had more here.)

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly expresses concern that the release of the five Iranian “diplomats” could present a security threat to American troops there. He described the five Iranians as being “associated with” the Quds force, an element of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. They are helping kill Americans in Iraq.

What’s happening here? Now comes Andrew McCarthy to explain:

There are a few things you need to know about President Obama’s shameful release on Thursday of the “Irbil Five” — Quds Force commanders from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) who were coordinating terrorist attacks in Iraq that have killed hundreds — yes, hundreds — of American soldiers and Marines.

First, of the 4,322 Americans killed in combat in Iraq since 2003, 10 percent of them (i.e., more than 400) have been murdered by a single type of weapon alone, a weapon that is supplied by Iran for the singular purpose of murdering Americans. As Steve Schippert explains at NRO’s military blog, the Tank, the weapon is “the EFP (Explosively Formed Penetrator), designed by Iran’s IRGC specifically to penetrate the armor of the M1 Abrams main battle tank and, consequently, everything else deployed in the field.” Understand: This does not mean Iran has killed only 400 Americans in Iraq. The number killed and wounded at the mullahs’ direction is far higher than that — likely multiples of that — when factoring in the IRGC’s other tactics, such as the mustering of Hezbollah-style Shiite terror cells.

Unless you are already having trouble with anger management issues, go to McCarthy’s column for the four remaining things you need to know about the administration’s release of the “Irbil Five.” I’m quite sure you won’t be able to pick up any of the five things you need to know about their release on CNN.

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