SL: What was left out of this week’s news on Trump and What you missed on Trump & Iran

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Now that the dust has settled from the General Assembly and Donald Trump chairing the UN Security Council meeting this week, we noticed something interesting: the media coverage of the Trump administration’s saber-rattling at Iran largely ignored Trump and his senior officials’ association with a shadowy but influential group called United Against a Nuclear Iran, or UANI.

To coincide with Trump’s anti-Iran rhetoric at the UN, National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered fiery speeches at an UANI summit this week, where Bolton claimed there’ll be “hell to pay” if Iran doesn’t change its behavior and threatened to ​ ​ ​ ​ target a key Iranian military figure, while during his speech, Pompeo claimed our European allies are enabling Iranian terrorism. ​ ​

But where Pompeo and Bolton were delivering their speeches and who they were talking to -- like current and former officials from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Israel -- is just as important as what they were saying.

To: Media ​ From: Win Without War ​ Date: September 28, 2018 ​ Subject:

WHAT IS UANI?

Since its inception in 2008, United Against a Nuclear Iran has generally allied itself with ​ ​ neoconservatives and right-wing pro-Israel groups in their anti-Iran activities. The group campaigned vigorously against the Iran nuclear deal, and, since Trump’s violation of the ​ agreement, is now trying to pressure companies against doing business in Iran. ​ ​

UANI’s leadership and advisory board is a who’s who of former diplomats and intelligence ​ ​ operatives (foreign and domestic) and others who have either called for war with Iran, promoted ​ ​ regime change, backed the cultish ex-terrorist Iranian opposition group, Mujahedin e-Khalq ​ ​ ​ (MEK), and have even said things like diplomacy with Iran is “appeasement” or called for ​ ​ starving ordinary Iranians. On that last point, UANI itself has pressured pharmaceutical ​ ​ ​ companies to cease sales of medicine to Iran.

WHERE DOES UANI’S FUNDING COME FROM?

While it’s no surprise that GOP megadonor and Trump booster Sheldon Adelson -- who once said we should set off a nuclear weapon in Iran -- has given large sums of money to UANI in the ​ past, some of its more recent and somewhat questionable funding sources have been revealed by journalist Eli Clifton.

According to Clifton, trusts controlled by billionaire investor Thomas Kaplan have also ​ ​ contributed significantly to UANI. At the same time, UANI CEO Mark Wallace serves as CEO ​ ​ and COO at two of Kaplan’s companies, which have both argued in reports that political instability in Iran and the greater Middle East would be good for business. “In short,” Clifton notes, “while UANI promotes policies that increase the chances of a military conflict in the Persian Gulf, its CEO and main financial backer have promoted investments that stand to gain from instability in the Middle East.”

The remaining sources of UANI’s funding are more murky. Leaked emails last year show Wallace soliciting funding from the UAE ambassador to the U.S. Yousef al-Otaiba, and also illustrate what Clifton describes as “a close relationship among Otaiba, UAE lobbyists, a Saudi ​ ​ lobbyist, and staff at … UANI, activities that would fit with UAE’s reputation as a generous funder of think tanks and employer of lobbyists in Washington.”

Adding to the mystery and intrigue about UANI’s funding is the fact that in 2014, citing national ​ security concerns, the Justice Department intervened to quash a lawsuit against UANI whose ​ discovery process would have offered a more comprehensive look at UANI’s funding streams.

What’s even more bizarre is that both Kaplan and Otaiba have been linked to a $4.5 billion ​ ​ corruption scandal in Malaysia, the subject of bestselling book Billion ​ ​ ​ ​ Dollar Whale. Pilling on to this tangled web, according to emails obtained by The Wall Street ​ ​ ​ Journal, Elliott Broidy, one of Trump’s top fundraisers, tried to solicit upwards of $75 million from ​ ​ a figure connected to the Malaysia scandal in exchange for using his influence in the Trump administration to get the Justice Department to drop its investigation.

*** So what’s going on here? The bottom line is that there is more to the story of the Trump administration’s Iran saber rattling this week. UANI is a powerful group that is pushing the United States toward, at best, a regime change strategy with unclear consequences, and at worst, a war with Iran.

Meanwhile, there’s more to find out about how UANI’s (likely foreign) funding streams influence its positions, and thus the Trump administration and U.S. policy -- not to mention how officials linked to Trump are tied up in a scandal that touches UANI’s income.

What’s more, UANI’s summit this week also featured leaders from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, all countries that have been pushing the United States toward a more confrontational Iran policy, and they now have very receptive ears inside the Trump administration.

The UANI backdrop of Bolton and Pompeo’s speeches this week is significant context that can provide more insight into U.S. Iran policy. We’d be happy to connect you to experts who can expound on this relationship for your future reporting.