An Iraqi delegation is arriving in Washington on Wednesday. Its members are desperate for U.S. help in alleviating a crisis threatening Iraq’s national currency, the dinar. The Biden administration should turn a deaf ear.
For over a decade, Iraqi politicians have abused their easy access to U.S. dollars to steal from their people on a historical scale. Even more threatening, successive Iraqi governments have colluded with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC, to circumvent U.S. sanctions and funnel billions to finance Iran’s nuclear program, terrorism, and regional aggression.
But it didn’t take long for Iraqi politicians, Iran, and other bad actors to corrupt the process. Using their control of Iraqi banks and border authorities, a network of front companies, and forged documents, they quickly made massive fake dollar transactions the norm. Import costs were outrageously inflated. Often, transactions existed only on paper — no goods ever arrived in Iraq, while millions of dollars were wired to shadowy foreign accounts.Sadly, the U.S.
It's impossible to know the full extent of the damage, but the raw numbers are staggering. Over the past decade, dollar auction sales seem to have averaged around $200 million a day, or $1 billion per week. Evidence from the Pentagon in 2012 and the Fed today agree that the vast majority of it has persistently been diverted for illicit purposes, with the IRGC a major beneficiary. In Worth’s 2020 expose, expert estimates suggested the total funds absconded abroad might reach $300 billion.
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