“Iran is already trying to capitalize on this egregious mistake by taking more US citizens captive”, he added.
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But Americans would have had more complete information available to them, to help them decide whether the Obama administration had made a savvy deal using “leverage”, as it now claims. As a result, he explained, the U.S. “That was our top priority”, Kirby told reporters.
“There was truly a profound lack of trust on this very hard prisoner exchange track”, a senior administration official said of the secret talks with Iran, “and even over the final 48 hours, there were repeated indications that our people may not actually ever be permitted to leave Iran”.
The Republicans are hammering away at what they see as the Democrats’ foreign policy failures with Donald Trump insisting candidate Hillary Clinton will just deliver more of the same, and insisting there are risky secrets behind that Iran deal.
He said the findings had now been shared with Secretary of State John Kerry and with congressional members.
The cash repayment agreement and hostage release agreement were both made on January 17. “The truth matters and the president owes the American people an explanation”, Sen. Richard Burr, a Republican who is chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement Thursday.
“Decisions like these are putting our nation and our allies at risk”, added Sen.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign said on Thursday that the State Department’s acknowledgement “further cements Hillary Clinton’s role in crafting disastrous policies that have led to a more risky world”.
The administration had repeatedly denied the timing of airlifting the cash to Iran at the time of the hostages’ release was anything but a coincidence.
But Team Obama wanted to avoid admitting to paying a ransom.
Kirby spoke after The Wall Street Journal reported that the departures of the crisscrossing planes were linked. The fourth American left on a commercial flight.
But on Thursday night, the Journal reported that the State Department would not allow the Iranians to take control of the $400 million until the prisoners, including a Washington Post reporter, were safely in the air and on their way to Geneva. Washington said the payment was part of a decades-old dispute over a failed military equipment deal with Tehran dating to the 1970s, before Iran’s Islamic revolution in 1979.
But even that trade-off faced several difficulties on the busy diplomatic weekend in January that also included the Iranians complying with last year’s nuclear accord and the USA lifting many oil, trade and banking sanctions on Iran – context, the official said, that played into the administration’s decision making with the $400 million.
US officials still deny the payment was ransom, and argue the money was owed to Iran as part of a failed arms deal 35 years ago.
At another point, a prisoner in Virginia who was part of the package refused to accept his pardon, leading Iran to threaten to pull out of the deal.
“This wasn’t some nefarious deal”, he said.
“The way I think ransom works is you have to pay first and then you get your hostages back and that’s not what happened here”.
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(Photo: #FreeIran Grand Gathering 2016 Youtube screencap) Pastor Saeed Abedini speaking at the #FreeIran Grand Gathering 2016 in Paris on July 9, 2016. The U.S. dispatched the cash in foreign currencies because any transaction with Iran in dollars is illegal under U.S. law.
