Royce: Iran prepping smart bomb attacks on Jerusalem – Washington Examiner (blog)

Iranian leaders are working to give a terrorist proxy the ability to launch guided missiles at Israel's most important secular and religious sites, according to a top Republican.

"What they intend to do is transfer a GPS capability to what right now are dumb rockets and dumb missiles," House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce said Wednesday during an event with the Israel Project. "If they succeed in this, they can pick the tallest buildings in Tel Aviv, the main landmarks in Jerusalem, the airport, the ships in the harbor."

That warning punctuated Royce's call for President Trump to prepare to reverse some of the economic concessions that the Obama administration made while negotiating the Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. And the crackdown has bipartisan support, as Royce's Democratic counterpart on the committee emphasized throughout the panel.

"I hope that the new administration will slap sanctions on them and they'll certainly have my support if they decide to do it," said New York Rep. Eliot Engel, the ranking member on the Foreign Affairs Committee.

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Engel and Royce predicted that Israel would have to go to war in Lebanon against Hezbollah, a terrorist group funded by Iran, and reiterated that President Obama miscalculated by doing a deal with the regime. "I think from day one [of the talks] that they played us like a fiddle," Engel said of Iran.

But Engel cautioned against walking away from the agreement entirely, because Iran has already received the infusion of cash it sought from the agreement. "If we were to simply walk out of the deal now, they'd have all this money without really doing anything and I don't think we should let them off the hook," he said.

That requires swift condemnation of Iranian support for terrorists and other destabilizing activities, according to the lawmakers. The regime tested a ballistic missile over the weekend, which the lawmakers called a violation of their obligations under the terms of the nuclear deal.

Royce suggested that Trump should warn Iran that if it conducts another test, the Treasury Department will bar international banks from conducting dollar transactions with the regime. And a message should be sent to international companies that hope to do business in Iran.

"If there's another test, all you companies out there in Europe and beyond know that we have a know your customer law in the United States," Royce said. "And guess what would be out of compliance with know your customer? Any conduct with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps."

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The bipartisanship of the panel was diluted only by Engel's worry that Trump might not recognize Russian President Vladimir Putin as a threat to the United States and a supporter of Iran.

"They're all in it together," Engel said. "Russia and Iran have collaborated, it's my belief that they collaborated all during the negotiations on the JCPOA [nuclear deal] and I think that that's the old line of the axis of evil, I think this is the axis of evil today. And we have to confront it."

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President Trump and his daughter Ivanka departed the White House for Dover Air Force Base in Delaware Wednesday afternoon to witness the arrival of Chief Petty Officer William "Ryan" Owens, who was killed during an intelligence gathering raid in Yemen last weekend.

Owens, a member of the Navy's SEAL Team Six, was killed in a clandestine raid at an al Qaeda facility that Trump had authorized early Sunday morning. The operation left four additional U.S. service members wounded and marked the first military fatality under the new administration.

Trump, who was to be joined by Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., upon arriving at Dover, had a "very somber and lengthy" conversation with Owens' family on Tuesday.

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