The Supreme Court Must Uphold Measures against Terror Finance

June 15 2022

Soon the Supreme Court will decide whether to hear two cases involving European charities that funnel donations to jihadist groups. The Biden administration has submitted a brief urging the justices to allow the lower-court rulings to stand, but Mike Pompeo urges them to do the opposite:

In these two new cases, the petitioners—54 American families who have been victims of foreign terrorism—have fought for sixteen years to reach a jury. . . . In the first case, a British bank reported suspicions of terrorist financing to UK regulators, who took no action, thus permitting the bank to continue providing financial services even after the charity in question was designated by the U.S. Treasury Department as a terrorist front. In the second, a French bank held accounts for CBSP, a French charity that the U.S. government found collected large sums that “it then transfers to sub-organizations of Hamas.”

Implicit in the Biden administration’s brief to the Supremes is that our courts should defer to other countries’ judgments instead of our own. This would set a horrendous precedent. Are we also to rely on such judgments made by the governments of Russia or China?

Terrorism derives a part of its power by encasing itself within a hall of mirrors. This complicates our reactions, which are difficult enough without [this] attempt to remove a core element of our countervailing response—the attainment of civil remedies against those who knowingly facilitate terrorism. This will cost precious lives.

Read more at New York Post

More about: Hamas, Supreme Court, Terrorism

American Middle East Policy Should Focus Less on Stability and More on Weakening Enemies

Feb. 10 2025

To Elliott Abrams, Donald Trump’s plan to remove the entire population of Gaza while the Strip is rebuilt is “unworkable,” at least “as a concrete proposal.” But it is welcome insofar as “its sheer iconoclasm might lead to a healthy rethinking of U.S. strategy and perhaps of Arab and Israeli policies as well.” The U.S., writes Abrams, must not only move beyond the failed approach to Gaza, but also must reject other assumptions that have failed time and again. One is the commitment to an illusory stability:

For two decades, what American policymakers have called “stability” has meant the preservation of the situation in which Gaza was entirely under Hamas control, Hizballah dominated Lebanon, and Iran’s nuclear program advanced. A better term for that situation would have been “erosion,” as U.S. influence steadily slipped away and Washington’s allies became less secure. Now, the United States has a chance to stop that process and aim instead for “reinforcement”: bolstering its interests and allies and actively weakening its adversaries. The result would be a region where threats diminish and U.S. alliances grow stronger.

Such an approach must be applied above all to the greatest threat in today’s Middle East, that of a nuclear Iran:

Trump clearly remains open to the possibility (however small) that an aging [Iranian supreme leader Ali] Khamenei, after witnessing the collapse of [his regional proxies], mulling the possibility of brutal economic sanctions, and being fully aware of the restiveness of his own population, would accept an agreement that stops the nuclear-weapons program and halts payments and arms shipments to Iran’s proxies. But Trump should be equally aware of the trap Khamenei might be setting for him: a phony new negotiation meant to ensnare Washington in talks for years, with Tehran’s negotiators leading Trump on with the mirage of a successful deal and a Nobel Peace Prize at the end of the road while the Iranian nuclear-weapons program grows in the shadows.

Read more at Foreign Affairs

More about: Iran, Middle East, U.S. Foreign policy