Members of a younger generation may draw blanks when asked to recall Marc Rich, but for three decades he was the world's most powerful and secretive oil trader, an international fugitive from American law enforcement for the "largest tax evasion ever" (in the words of then-prosecutor Rudy Giuliani), racketeering and trading with Iran during the hostage crisis. Iran-Contra, learn it and know it.
Rich was pardoned by Bill Clinton in the last hours of his presidency, he had earned billions over 16 years selling oil for the Iranian ayatollahs, much of it to Israel and apartheid South Africa. Rich secretly helped enemies become strange bedfellows.
Even Iran's taking of 53 American hostages in 1979, which sparked the American oil embargo, didn't stop Rich's business. The embargo and the Iranian Revolution that same year proved a boon for him. The anti-Semitic, anti-American fundamentalist clerics had no problem trading with the Jewish-American businessman.
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