Dupage Policy Journal

Although Boeing was prohibited from completing the sale of $20 billion worth of aircraft to Iran once President Donald Trump canceled his predecessor’s nuclear accord with the nation, criticism from U.S. Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL) may have delayed completion of the deal for the past two years.

Just months after Boeing and Iran drew up an agreement in 2016, Roskam delivered a stinging op-ed piece published in USA Today, blaming them for American casualties.

“The Iranian regime is using commercial airlines to send troops, weapons, missiles and cash to assist the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad in his slaughter of innocents; 400,000 have been killed so far,” he wrote in a June 21, 2016 editorial. “Iran’s terror proxies have killed and wounded thousands of Americans troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. They’ve murdered civilians from Beirut to Buenos Aires.”

President Trump

Now that the White House has officially scuttled the deal, Roskam is praising the company for refusing to fulfill the agreement.

“Boeing’s recent decision to refrain from selling jets to Iran, the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism, is a welcome change of direction for the company,” he wrote in a June 8 press release. “If delivered, these planes would have likely been used to transport troops and weapons to the Assad Regime to support its atrocities against the Syrian people and to terrorist groups throughout the Middle East.

“The fewer aircraft Iran and its Revolutionary Guard Corps can use to sow death and destruction around the world, the better.”