We Need to Ban All Travel to Iran

We Need to Ban All Travel to Iran
The ransom payments and hostages need to end.
By Daniel Greenfield

Iran’s Islamic terror regime has three exports: energy, drones, and meth. Like most traditional Islamic cultures, it also has a thriving trade in slavery, kidnappings, hostages, and such things.

Here’s how that works.

A top political strategist and Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps officer told supporters that Iran should kidnap hostages and ransom them back to the United States for “blood money.”

“Here’s how the IRGC generates funds. The IRGC detains a spy like Jason Rezaian,” Hassan Abbasi can be heard saying in a video that surfaced on Wednesday. “The U.S. pleads for him to be released, and we ask them to pay for him. Our government gets paid $1.7 billion to hand over this spy. By detaining one spy, the IRGC earns the $1-2 billion, which it was supposed to receive from the government budget.”

“Do you want to solve the sanctions problem?” he continued. “Our naval forces should take 10 or 20 Americans as hostage every month. For each one of them, we should get $1 billion. If we get $1 billion per week, and the year has around 50 weeks. That’s at least $50 billion.”

The current Biden version of the deal gives Iran $1.2 billion for 5 hostages amounting to a total of $6 billion.

That beats the $1 billion target, but is lower than the proposed Iranian deals that would have traded 3 hostages for $7 billion. Paying a less outrageous ransom to kidnappers than the one originally proposed is only a deal if you’re an idiot. And you can bet that Biden’s people will make that argument.

When we pay ransom, we incentivize hostage-taking. And since Americans insist on going to Iran, a fresh supply of hostages is flying in every day.

There are things we could do about it, beginning with a ban on any Americans doing any kind of business with an Iranian entity, no matter what currency is used, and even if it means buying a soda at the airport.

Iran is a terror state. Any money input into it will directly or indirectly fund terrorism.

Put some serious fines behind it. Don’t exempt journalists or NGOs. When that trip to Iran isn’t just $10K, but suddenly comes with $150,000 worth of fines, the Iranians will end up with a lot less hostages.

Those are also the only kind of sanctions that may stop them from taking hostages.

Original Article