President Obama on Thursday emphatically denied that the $400 million cash payment his administration delivered to Iran on an unmarked cargo plane just as four Americans held hostage inside the rogue nation were released was a ransom payment and charged that his administration had been transparent about the peculiar deal.
Advertisement
“The Obama administration is now engaged in a cover-up of their fly-by-night untraceable cash airlift to Iran, the world’s leading state-sponsor of terrorism”, senior policy adviser Stephen Miller said in a statement late Thursday”.
At the time, the United States said it had settled a long-standing Iranian claim at the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal in The Hague, releasing $400 million in funds frozen since 1981, plus $1.3 billion in interest that was owed to Iran.
USA officials say the $400 million was the first installment of a settlement the Obama administration reached with Iran to solve a decades-old dispute over a failed arms deal signed just before the 1979 overthrow of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
After the story was first reported by The Wall Street Journal early this week, the White House is having a tough time in defending the decision as the opposition Republican party and the Trump campaign has made it an election issue and alleging that it was a ransom paid to the Iranians.
Obama typically convenes the National Security Council at the White House, but over the past year he has occasionally held such meetings at other agencies like the State Department and the CIA.
As for why the payment was made in cash, Earnest said, “The fact of the matter is that the USA doesn’t have a banking relationship with Iran” because of continued concerns about Iran’s “nefarious” behavior in the realm of terrorism and human rights, among other issues.
To hear Team Obama tell it, Iran’s windfall went for strictly benign purposes. And the delivery of the payment in foreign currency, officials say, was logical because US sanctions prohibit deals with Iran using dollars and the USA has no banking relationship with the country.
“We do not pay ransom for hostages”.
The money was flown to Iran on a plane carrying wooden pallets stacked with Swiss francs, euros and other currencies. “We didn’t here, and we won’t in the future”, Obama said.
He said the settlement agreement ultimately saved USA taxpayers what could have been billions of dollars in additional interest. “The reason is because we couldn’t send them a check, and we couldn’t wire the money”.
The president also defended continuing talks with Russian Federation and its leader, Vladimir Putin, with regard to cooperation between Washington and Moscow to fight terrorist targets in Syria – but he made clear that such cooperation with a semi-adversary must be done carefully. The equipment was never delivered because in 1979, his government was overthrown and revolutionaries took American hostages at the United States embassy in Tehran.
Advertisement
“I would also add that the way this was done looks like an illicit financial transaction”, said Schanzer. “$400 million in cash”, Trump said.
