The State Department confirmed Thursday that a $400 million cash payment made to Iran in January was dependent upon Tehran’s release of four American prisoners, an acknowledgment sure to heighten questions about the administration’s repeated denials that it paid a ransom to secure the prisoners’ release.
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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 USA citizens were freed, especially as Washington was uncertain until the very moment their plane left that Iran would live up to its word.
While discussing the Obama administration’s $400 million payment to Iran, Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer told “America’s Newsroom” anchor Martha MacCallum that the “real scandal” is the nuclear deal with Iran.
“With concerns Iran may renege on the prisoner release given unnecessary delays regarding persons in Iran who could not be located, as well as mutual mistrust between Iran and the United States, we of course sought to retain maximum leverage until after American citizens were released – our top priority”, the official said. United States officials reportedly wouldn’t let Iran bring the cash home from a Geneva airport until a Swiss Air Force plane carrying three of the freed Americans departed from Tehran, the paper reported.
“First of all, this was Iran’s money, OK?”
The Iranians wanted money they were owed, but the USA only released the money after the detainees were released, she said. “This wasn’t some nefarious deal”.
They found that the video “likely was shortened very early in the process only minutes after the briefing concluded and well before the technician who recalled making the edit believes the request was made to make the edit”, Kirby said. US officials wouldn’t let Iran bring the cash home from a Geneva airport until a Swiss Air Force plane carrying three of the freed Americans departed from Tehran, the paper reported.
“If you’re asking me was there a connection in that regard, at the end game, I’m not going to deny that”, Kirby said at a State Department press briefing. But it still insists the payment was not ransom.
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.
“We did use it as leverage, and we make no apologies about that because now we got our American citizens back safely”, Mr. Kirby said.
Washington released seven Iranians, mostly dual Iranian-American nationals convicted of sanctions violations, as part of the deal. “The truth matters, and the president owes the American people an explanation”.
The payment was part of a decades-old dispute over a failed military equipment deal dating to the 1970s, before the Islamic revolution in 1979. While the Obama administration dropped sanctions on the airline as part of the nuclear deal, US officials have not indicated that such shipments have stopped.
Kirby spoke a day after The Wall Street Journal reported new details of the crisscrossing planes on that day.
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He said the settlement agreement ultimately saved United States taxpayers what could have been billions of dollars in additional interest.
