When the Obama administration sold its Iran nuclear deal to Congress in 2015, one of its primary arguments was that the agreement was narrow. It lifted only nuclear sanctions. America, President Barack Obama told us, would remain a vigilant foe of Irans regional predations through sanctions and other means. Thanks to stunning new reporting from Politicos Josh Meyer, we can now assess these assertions and conclude that they are … well, "alternative facts." Meyer reports that while the US and other great powers were negotiating a deal to bring transparency to Irans nuclear program, top officials in Obamas government dismantled a campaign, known as Operation Cassandra, intended to undermine “Hezbollahs” global drug trafficking and money laundering network. A few months after the implementation of that bargain in January 2016, Operation Cassandra was ripped apart. Agents were reassigned. Leads and sources dried up. Bad guys got away. “Hezbollah” is many things: a Lebanese political party, a militia and a Shi’ite religious movement. It is also an arm of Iranian foreign policy. “Hezbollah” troops fight alongside Irans Revolutionary Guard commanders in Syria and Iraq. Iran uses the groups operatives for international terror attacks in Latin America. “Hezbollahs” advanced arsenal is supplied by the Iranian state. “Hezbollahs” drug trafficking provides the revenue it needs to spread mayhem. To curb that trafficking is to starve Irans primary proxy. The Obama administration believed cracking down on “Hezbollahs” trafficking would undermine nuclear negotiations. As David Asher, a former Pentagon illicit finance analyst and a key player in Operation Cassandra, told Meyer: “This was a policy decision, it was a systematic decision. They serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down.” The details are troubling. One example involves Ali Fayad, whom DEA agents suspected was the “Hezbollah” operative who reported directly to Russian president Vladimir Putin as a weapons supplier in Iraq and Syria. In 2014 Fayad was arrested by Czech authorities. Meyer reports that even though Fayad was indicted by US courts for planning the murder of US officials, "top Obama administration officials declined to apply serious pressure on the Czech government to extradite him to the United States, even as Putin was lobbying aggressively against it." Fayad eventually found his way back to Lebanon, and is believed today to be back at his old job, supplying Russian heavy weapons to Iranian-backed militants in Syria. If the Trump administration had let Fayad slip through the net of law enforcement, that would be a five-alarm scandal. And yet for Obama this was part of a pattern. Obama never asked Syrias neighbors to deny fly-over rights to Russian aircraft in 2015, which could have slowed or prevented Putin from establishing air bases in Syria that were used to bomb civilians and aid workers. Russia established those air bases less than two months after the end of the Iran nuclear negotiations. The chief of Irans Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, also saw the close of the nuclear talks as a green light. He was soon on a plane to Moscow to iron out the tactical alliance between Russia and Iran in Syria as Obama went about trying to persuade more than a third of Congress to support the nuclear bargain. Obama officials reached for comment disputed elements of Meyers reporting. Kevin Lewis, a spokesman for Obama, pointed to some European arrests of “Hezbollah” operatives after the implementation of the nuclear deal. But Meyer says officials with Operation Cassandra noted that these suspects were nabbed after the Obama Justice Department shot down efforts to prosecute these operatives in US courts. A particularly cringe-inducing response came from a senior national security official who suggested, anonymously, to Meyer that agents in a DEA operation might unwittingly botch a CIA or Israeli intelligence operation within “Hezbollah”. Thats doubtful, at least for the CIA. As the Los Angeles Times reported in 2011 the agencys Beirut station, which tracked “Hezbollah”, was put out of business after most of its sources were arrested that year. Its highly unlikely the agency would have been able to build up its source network in a few short years. Whats more, the CIA director for Obamas second term, John Brennan, had openly discussed his view of trying to separate “Hezbollah” hardliners from “Hezbollah” moderates in Washington policy forums. The decision to go soft on “Hezbollah” looks entirely deliberate. So was all of this worth it? We know what the West got out of the nuclear deal: a temporary suspension of Irans nuclear program and increased transparency into its stockpiles, enrichment facilities and laboratories. At the time the Obama administration told us that in exchange, the US had to lift only the crippling nuclear sanctions against Iran. It turns out the price was much higher.Bloomberg