Special to WorldTribune.com

By Ilan Berman, USA Today

Buried within the 150-plus pages of technical minutia and regulations that make up the recently concluded nuclear deal between the P5+1 powers and the Islamic Republic of Iran lies a stunning revelation, the full import of which has not yet been adequately appreciated by the international community.

It is that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the agreement is formally known, is designed to serve as nothing less than a Marshall Plan for the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.

This may sound like an exaggeration, but it most assuredly is not. Under the terms of the JCPOA, later this year (or early in 2016), once the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, verifies that Iran has divulged the requisite details of its military-related nuclear work, the U.S. and other nations will begin unblocking $100 billion or more in frozen Iranian oil revenue. Up until now, those funds have been locked in escrow accounts in China, South Korea and elsewhere. But, once green-lighted by the UN, they will be quickly released and rapidly repatriated to the Islamic Republic. …

The scope of that investment is already enormous. Even constrained by sanctions, Iran has long served as the “central banker” of international terror. Among other things, Iran provides as much as $200 million annually to bankroll Lebanon’s Hizbullah militia, tens of millions of dollars to the Palestinian Hamas movement in the last year alone, and $6 billion or more a year to prop up the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, underwriting one side of a brutal civil war. Now, thanks to the agreement now before Congress, Iran will be able to do far more on these fronts. Its regional ambitions, currently playing out in places like Yemen and Iraq, will likewise inevitably be stoked, much to the detriment of international peace and security.

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