Not only did Obama and Kerry agree to release or stop pursuing more Iranians than the number of Americans released in return, they turned out to be much more dangerous than how the Obama administration painted them for public consumption: 
 
 In his Sunday morning address to the American people, Obama portrayed the seven men he freed as “civilians.” The senior official described them as businessmen convicted of or awaiting trial for mere “sanctions-related offenses, violations of the trade embargo.” In reality, some of them were accused by Obama’s own Justice Department of posing threats to national security. Three allegedly were part of an illegal procurement network supplying Iran with U.S.-made microelectronics with applications in surface-to-air and cruise missiles like the kind Tehran test-fired recently, prompting a still-escalating exchange of threats with the Trump administration. Another was serving an eight-year sentence for conspiring to supply Iran with satellite technology and hardware. As part of the deal, U.S. officials even dropped their demand for $10 million that a jury said the aerospace engineer illegally received from Tehran. And in a series of unpublicized court filings, the Justice Department dropped charges and international arrest warrants against 14 other men, all of them fugitives. The administration didn’t disclose their names or what they were accused of doing, noting only in an unattributed, 152-word statement about the swap that the U.S. “also removed any Interpol red notices and dismissed any charges against 14 Iranians for whom it was assessed that extradition requests were unlikely to be successful.” 
 
 Three of the fugitives allegedly sought to lease Boeing aircraft for an Iranian airline that authorities say had supported Hezbollah, the U.S.-designated terrorist organization. Seyed Abolfazl Shahab Jamili operated for seven years in the US until the Department of Justice finally caught up with him, during which time he helped advance Iranian nuclear-centrifuge development dramatically. Meyer describes DoJ prosecutors as “shocked and angry” over the deal, and even more so over the public accounting of the prisoners swapped as part of it. And as far back as the fall of 2014, Obama administration officials began slow-walking some significant investigations and prosecutions of Iranian procurement networks operating in the U.S. One supervisor described it to Meyer as an “embargo” on any Iran cases that long preceded the deal. Last Wednesday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced a government-wide review of U.S. policy toward Iran in the face of “alarming and ongoing provocations that export terror and violence, destabilizing more than one country at a time.” 
 
 On Thursday, President Donald Trump declared that even if Iran is meeting the terms of its deal with the Obama administration and other world powers, “they are not living up to the spirit of it, I can tell you that. That would reveal the extent to which the Obama administration undermined its own non-proliferation efforts to get this deal, and how it undermined American national security too: 
 
 Former Obama administration officials deny that, saying the men could still be prosecuted if they continue their illegal activity. But with their cases dropped, international arrest warrants dismissed and investigative assets redirected, the men — especially the 14 fugitives — can now continue activities the U.S. considers to be serious threats to its national security, [non-proliferation expert Valerie] Lincy said. “This is a scandal,” she said. “The cases bear all the hallmarks of exactly the kinds of national security threats we’re still going after. It’s stunning and hard to understand why we would do this.” 
 
 It’s not hard to understand at all. “Did some of these other agencies’ actions … undermine what we were trying to accomplish in terms of the Iran network in the U.S.? “People didn’t know what to do.” 
 
 “From the summer of 2015 on, there was a serious slowdown” as many counterproliferation officials shut down prosecutions and investigations voluntarily, Arnold said. That frustration is especially acute when it comes to Jamili and the 13 other fugitives.
– Politico is out with a damning report about the Obama administration's dealings with Iran last year in the lead-up to a nuclear arms accord. The story by Josh Meyer alleges that former President Obama gave up more than he acknowledged publicly, particularly in regard to a prisoner swap ahead of the deal. The Obama White House released seven prisoners it characterized as non-dangerous businessmen, neglecting to mention that three of them had been deemed a threat to national security by the president's own Justice Department. (They'd been accused of illegally shipping US macroelectronics to Tehran for use in surface-to-air and cruise missiles.) What's more, Politico found that the US also quietly dropped criminal cases against 14 fugitives, including Seyed Abolfazl Shahab Jamili, who allegedly procured thousands of parts with nuclear applications for Iran by way of China. "They didn’t just dismiss a bunch of innocent business guys," one former federal law enforcement supervisor tells Politico. "And then they didn’t give a full story of it." In fact, Meyer writes, the White House actions "derailed" its own successful investigations into Iran's proliferation network, angering Justice Department prosecutors. A senior Obama official acknowledges that anger but says such compromises are necessary and pale in comparison to the greater good of a nuclear deal. Here's one sample of early reaction, from the conservative Hot Air site: "Barack Obama and John Kerry desperately needed a win on foreign policy in 2015-6 after seeing its 'smart power' approach turn the Middle East and Caucasus into flames," writes Ed Morrissey. "They didn’t care if it was a short-term win that sacrificed long-term national security." Read the full Politico piece here.