Kirby said the Office of the Legal Adviser interviewed more than 30 current and former State Department officials trying to determine why there was a sudden flash of light and an eight-minute gap in the video of a 2013 news briefing.
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“Reports today confirm what many of us have suspected all along: the $400 million payment to Iran was a ransom payment for four Americans unlawfully held by the ayatollahs”, Sen.
It was the first public acknowledgement of a link between the cash payment and Iran’s release of prisoners on January 17.
The deleted section from the December 2, 2013, briefing with then-spokeswoman Jen Psaki (SAH’-kee) included questions about another official’s months-old denial of then-secret U.S.
After months of denials that the United States paid a ransom to Iran, the State Department confirmed on Thursday that the Obama administration’s transfer of $400 million in cash to Iran was contingent upon the release of three American hostages.
“He made it very, very clear this summer that if families wanted to pursue paying ransom for family members or friends who were being held hostage, the USA government would assist them in that process and would never, ever prosecute them”, Hoekstra said. “There were also USA citizens who were attempting to litigate and get settlements for the damages that they received from Iran”. “As we said at the time, we deliberately leveraged that moment to finalize these outstanding issues almost simultaneously”, Kirby continued.
Johnson is facing off against Feingold, D-Middleton, in a rematch of the 2010 campaign, when Johnson sent Feingold packing after 18 years in the U.S. Senate.
“Our top priority was getting the Americans home”, an unnamed USA official told the newspaper.
Both events occurred January 17.
Trump spokesman Jason Miller sought to blame Democratic rival Hillary Clinton for the payment, even though it happened nearly three years after she departed as secretary of state. He said the money was “likely used to fund terrorism”, without providing any such evidence, and said Clinton had proven herself unfit to be president.
The Wall Street Journal Thursday called it “a tightly scripted exchange specifically timed to the release of several American prisoners held in Iran”. USA officials wouldn’t let Iran take 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. The fourth American left on a commercial flight.
Earlier this month, President Obama denied the us paid ransom to Iran.
Two weeks ago, President Obama was on camera stating definitively that the $400 million the US sent to Iran at a time it was releasing American hostages was not a ransom.
The military hardware was never delivered after the Shah was deposed by the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Both sides have argued over the account and numerous other financial claims ever since.
But two weeks ago, Obama said, “We do not pay ransom”.
He added, “This wasn’t some nefarious deal”.
Mr Kirby reaffirmed the White House claim that the payment was part of $1.7bn (£1.2bn) owed to Iran in a military equipment deal made with the US-backed Shah in the 1970s.
Some observers, however, said Thursday they don’t see the distinction.
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Three of the five prisoners, including Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post’s Tehran bureau chief, were part of a prisoner exchange that followed the lifting of most worldwide sanctions against Iran following a nuclear deal in 2015. There is also a prohibition on banking between the two countries. Critics and skeptics noted the money was airlifted just as the Americans were released by the Iranian regime and the hostages said they were told at first they could not depart on the awaiting plane until the money arrived.
