Critics, especially those who oppose the Iran nuclear deal, have termed it a ransom payment.
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It is the first time the USA has so clearly linked the two events, which critics have painted as a hostage-ransom arrangement.
In this October 23, 2015, photo, Secretary of State John Kerry speaks to senior adviser John Kirby before a news conference in Vienna.
U.S. Senator Kelly Ayotte released the following statement regarding a new report that the administration withheld the release of a $400 million cash payment to Iran until Tehran released the detained American citizens. Spokesman Kirby says negotiations over the USA returning Iranian money from a decades-old account was conducted separately from the prisoner talks.
In a conference call with reporters, senior administration officials said it made no sense not to use the money as leverage to ensure that four us citizens were freed, especially as Washington was uncertain until the very moment their plane left that Iran would live up to its word. “We’re exchanging good money, other countries have done it”.
Kirby said Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program that the USA offers “no apologies”.
The money comes from an account used by the Iranian government to buy American military equipment in the days of the shah. The administration said back in January there was a problem getting Rezaian’s wife on the plane.
“As we’ve made clear, the negotiations over the settlement of an outstanding claim… were completely separate from the discussions about returning our American citizens home”, Kirby said at the time.
“It’s true that with the nuclear deal done, these two tracks were kind of converging and coming together, and we took full advantage of that, and we make no apologies for that”, he said. “We make no apologies for that”.
Iranian prisoners – some of them dual citizens – who were being released from United States jails in exchange for the Americans were refusing to return to Iran, raising suspicions on the Iranian side, the official said.
The timing of both incidents has prompted an outcry from Republicans, who accused the Obama administration of quid pro quo.
“If it quacks like a duck, it’s a duck”, Sen.
The administration denies this cash shipment, which included Swiss Francs and other foreign currencies, was a ransom paid to Iran. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said. Republican lawmakers also criticized the action, saying it undermined the longstanding USA opposition to ransom payments.
“He denied it was for the hostages, but it was”, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said in a speech Thursday night in Charlotte, North Carolina. “He denied it was for the hostages, but it was”.
At an August 5 news conference at the Pentagon, Obama said flatly: “We do not pay ransom for hostages”. According to the report, administration officials provided payment to Iran after an airplane carrying three Americans had taken off. The fourth American left on a commercial flight.
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The committee sent its request after the Wall Street Journal revealed earlier this month that the USA shipped $400 million in foreign currency, stacked in pallets in an unmarked cargo plane, to Iran around the time that the Islamic Republic released four American hostages.
