Earnest told reporters that the $400 million was money that the Iranian government under the shah paid into a USA account in 1979 as part of a transaction to procure military equipment.
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US journalist Jason Rezaian gestures as he poses for media people in front of Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Landstuhl, Germany, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016.
While senior USA officials told the Wall Street Journal that the payment and the prisoner exchange were purely coincidental, the Iranian press has portrayed the cash as ransom for the prisoners.
In addition to the $400 million, there is an additional $1.3 billion in accumulated interest owed to Iran. What was the cash for?
It did not say when in January the money was received in Iran.
The White House and State Department are pushing back. He only said: “With the nuclear deal done, prisoners released, the time was right to resolve this [arms lead] dispute as well”.
“The funds that were transferred to Iran were related exclusively to the settlement of a long-standing claim”, Kirby told the Wall Street Journal.
“The logistics of this payment – literally delivering a plane full of cash to evade USA law – shows yet again the extraordinary lengths the Obama administration will go to accommodate Iran, all while hiding the facts from Congress and the American people”, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, California Republican, said in a statement.
Obama reportedly approved the shipment of the $400 million.
Nonetheless, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan argued that the money is being used for developing the country, by building its infrastructure and helping with the agencies’ budgets.
“If true, this report confirms our longstanding suspicion that the administration paid a ransom in exchange for Americans unjustly detained in Iran”, House Speaker Paul Ryan said in his statement.
Mr. Trump said that the deal with Iran could be traced back Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of state when the US opened the negotiations.
“Our incompetent Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, was the one who started talks to give 400 million dollars, in cash, to Iran”.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump took to Twitter Wednesday to criticize his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, over the report.
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“With the nuclear deal done, prisoners released, the time was right to resolve this dispute as well”, President Barack Obama said at the White House on January 17-without disclosing the $400 million cash payment. To this end, United States received more than 1.7 bln Dollars from Iran.
