Even the DOJ was none too happy with Obama's funding for Iranian terror. The Pentagon, even in its current mutilated and compromised state, would have been even less thrilled to see the US funding terrorism that American soldiers would end up having to face.
So the answer was clear. Don't tell the Pentagon. It would only worry them.
One might think President Barack Obama would have asked his top military officials to weigh in on his administration's decision in January to send $400 million in cash to Iran. After all, Iran is the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, and terrorists prefer cash to wire payments because it's so difficult to track. And its armed forces have both directly and indirectly threatened the U.S. military in the Middle East.
But Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry did not consult Secretary of Defense Ash Carter or the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford.
This news came out of a hearing Thursday before the Senate Armed Services Committee. In response to a question from Republican Senator Ted Cruz about the cash payment to Iran, Carter made it clear that he had been out of the loop.
"We weren't involved in this," Carter said, adding that it was part of the settlement of a decades-long legal dispute between Iran and the U.S. over arms sales. "I don't know all the details of it, and the chairman and I were not involved in that. It is a decision that was taken by the law enforcement and diplomatic and I would refer you there."
DOJ was none too happy with it. So that just leaves John Kerry and State. But let's not kid ourselves that was anything more than a formality. Decisions like this get made by a small and tight inner circle around Obama. Then everyone else gets told about it. Or at least everyone else who isn't one of those evil jingoistic warmongers in the Pentagon.
Considering how many American lives Iran already claimed and its rising threat in the region, the Pentagon would have been none too happy. And this way, Carter gets to wash his hands of the affair.