Good News or Bad News?

It's tempting to lay this story on the Obama people.  After all, they just made a nuclear deal with a country that has apparently released five top AQ operatives being held under house arrest in exchange for one of their diplomats captured in Yemen by AQ.

It sounds bad.  It may end up being bad.  But there's a slim possibility it's not all bad.  Iran has released AQ operatives under house arrest before, including bin Laden's son Saad, some of whom were later killed or captured.   One of the Khorasan members operating in Syria and recently killed were previously held in Iran as well. 

A lot depends on how this deal was done.  Evidently they were negotiating with someone in AQ, who had the Iranian diplomat under control somewhere.  And the five operatives have apparently not been swapped to anyone, only released from their house arrest.  They may still be in Iran, or may be trying to sneak away.  

But if there was a deal done, say a side deal as part of Iran's agreement to the nuke deal (and us freeing up over a billion they can use to fund their own proxy terrorists), this may have been the way it was done.  Obviously Iran cannot be seen handing over AQ terrorists to AQ nor can the West be seen making deals with terrorist masters for other terrorist hostages in exchange for more money for their own terrorists.         

So the jury is still out.  If there was a deal it's probably not unprecedented--Pakistan evidently took out a long-wanted AQ operative in their country last year only days after a Pakistani general came to Washington to collect on millions in aid money for the Pakistani Army.    Adnan el-Shukrijumah was a reported high level operative, pilot, and someone the government called very dangerous.  He had been wanted since 9/11 (according to the FBI he is still wanted).  Then suddenly after some money changed hands he was reported to be pushing up daisies.  Funny how that works.  

But that's the way this entire war on terrorism has worked...bodies of lies interspersed within truths and half-truths.  It appears some countries are not only holding US citizens and other westerners as hostages, but also holding AQ members for ransom as well.  Maybe Iran got what they wanted in the deal and part of it was them quietly releasing all their AQ hole cards so we can have access to kill them.

Or maybe this is just another in-your-face-Obama move by the Ayatollahs after they got their deal, like sending General Quds Force to Moscow to make a deal with Putin on Assad in Syria while knowing our position is that he 'must go'.  Or telling the press that Israel will be gone in 25 years, praise Allah, death to America.  Guess we will see.