Obama To Just Install ATM To US Treasury In Tehran

A steady supply of currency for the ATMs was made possible late last week when the Obama administration allowed Iran access to the US dollar.

Washington, October 9 – Following months of awkwardness over the propriety and necessity of shipping pallets of cash to Iran as a hostage ransom, the Obama administration intends to forestall further such unpleasantness by commissioning the installation of an automated teller machine in the Iranian capital so that the mullahs can make withdrawals from the US Treasury at will.

White House officials held a strategy meeting this week to address the handful of skeptical reporters who have yet to fall in with those parroting the administration’s line on Iran, and there discussed methods of keeping future concessions and gifts to the Islamic Republic from the prying eyes of non-echo-chamber journalists. In the group’s assessment, the most efficient proposal involves a direct ATM line from the Treasury to Tehran, with an option of including several Republican Guard senior command posts as additional withdrawal locations.

“The trick is that internal Treasury transactions aren’t connected to the worldwide bank transfer system,” explained White House adviser Ben Rhodes. “The whole point of sending pallets of ransom cash to Tehran was to enable the ayatollahs and the IRGC to use it in an untraceable fashion, for military purposes and the support of such terrorist groups as Hezbollah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. But that cash transfer involved too many people, so confidentiality was iffy, and the media eventually found out. We made all sorts of patently false excuses about not having banking connections with Iran, but it wasn’t convincing. Fortunately, that item fell out of the news cycle. But we don’t want a recurrence, so we’re just going to set up a direct line that allows Khamenei and company to just take cash as they feel they need it. It’s cheaper in the end.”

A steady supply of currency for the ATMs was made possible late last week when the Obama administration allowed Iran access to the US dollar, in a further weakening of sanctions originally intended to prevent the ayatollahs from developing nuclear weapons and ballistic missile technology. Obama, however, has sought elimination of the sanctions regime since his first year in office, and has steadily eroded those restrictions. Allowing Iran access to the dollar will ease the country’s efforts to assert dominance in the Middle East and beyond, and the supply of ATMs will similarly smooth continued US support for those ambitions.

Logistical difficulties remain, such as supplying the ATMs with the cash necessary to provide for all the Islamic Republic’s clandestine funding needs. The most likely scenario involves the use of US naval vessels to be periodically captured by the Iranian navy, with those vessels pre-loaded with crates of hundred-dollar bills. Those captures are expected to be a regular feature of US-Iranian naval interaction for the foreseeable future.