The Iran Deal echo chamber has been ratcheting up its rhetoric in the days around the Trump administration’s deal decertification announcement, seeking to protect the non-treaty at all costs.

Among the most honest and simultaneously sordid rationales for defending the deal, especially by leaders of the EU, is this: The JCPOA means big business for the West. As long as the money is good for the major corporations trading with Iran (who contribute to the politicians’ campaigns), who cares if the commerce is materially supporting the world’s leading state sponsor of jihad.

I explore this shameful episode in the history of the West in a new piece at The Federalist, detailing how the West is indeed selling out to a jihadist regime whose economy is expressly dedicated by Iran’s constitution itself to spreading its pernicious Islamic revolution.

Here’s a taste:

Now we understand why then-Secretary of State John Kerry was at pains to push Western entities to trade with Iran. Sec. Kerry served as Iran’s lobbyist-in-chief because he knew deeper economic integration between the West and Iran would make it that much more difficult politically to unwind the culmination of his life’s work undermining U.S. interests. Left unspoken is that such dalliances with Iran inextricably intertwine the West with those who directly threaten and undermine us.

Providing the world’s leading state sponsor of jihad with billions of dollars in cash, and trading it essential goods and services, merely bolster its malicious activities.

To paraphrase the old saw attributed to Lenin: “The Iran Deal dupes and devotees sell the mullahs the rope with which to hang them.”

Consider, for example, the Boeing and Airbus deals with Iran Air. As the Foundation of Defense of Democracies (FDD) noted:

Iran Air was designated by the U.S. Treasury Department on June 23, 2011 for “providing material support and services to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL).” MODAFL is designated under Executive Order 13382 for its proliferation activities.” Treasury stated that “commercial Iran Air flights have been used to transport missile or rocket components to Syria.”

FDD reports that Iran Air never suspended such activities. Since the consummation of the JCPOA, Iranian airlines have continued to ferry “weapons and militants to the Syrian regime” over hundreds of flights.

So today we in the West are knowingly colluding with terror-supporting entities.

More broadly, the aforementioned 150,000 active duty member-strong IRGC—which has American blood on its hands from the Beirut marine barrack bombings in 1983 to the roadside EFP attacks during the Iraq War—is deeply enmeshed in all sectors of Iran’s economy, from oil and gas, to shipping, aviation finance, and telecommunications. At the time of the Iran Deal’s passage, it controlled an estimated 20 to 40 percent of the nation’s economy, and took in income up to an estimated one-sixth of its GDP.

According to congressional sanction legislation the Trump administration signed into law, the IRGC “is responsible for implementing Iran’s international program of destabilizing activities, support for acts of international terrorism, and ballistic missile program.” By that law, the administration has now formally announced the IRGC will be designated by the U.S. Treasury Department pursuant to an executive order sanctioning support for terrorist groups.

As Treasury Secretary Mnuchin noted in the Treasury Department’s press release: “The IRGC has played a central role to Iran becoming the world’s foremost state sponsor of terror … We urge the private sector to recognize that the IRGC permeates much of the Iranian economy, and those who transact with IRGC-controlled companies do so at great risk.”

The devil will be in the details of implementation to see if these words are made concrete with action.

Regardless, it is clear that to this point the West has been directly and indirectly supporting IRGC’s jihadism by doing business with Iran. In fact, the express purpose of Iran’s economy is to spread the very Islamic movement of which the IRGC plays an integral part.

As Iran’s constitution states, in accordance with Islam, its “economy is a means that is not expected to do anything except better facilitate reaching the goal [of furthering and exporting Iran’s Islamic revolution].” Trade is a means to the Islamic revolutionary end.

Read the whole thing here.