After all, Obama had publicly disclosed the payment to Iran at a White House news conference in January called to announce implementation of the historic Iran nuclear deal. Did we mention the plane and its precious cargo were headed for Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism?
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The payment has revived allegations from critics of the Iran nuclear deal.
“We don’t pay ransom for hostages”, Obama said on Thursday, adding that Americans are held prisoners around the world and that “we won’t pay ransoms in the future”. Trump said without offering evidence that it was the Iranian government.
On Tuesday Obama questioned why leading Republicans have not withdrawn their support for their presidential nominee. Right? $400 million in cash.
Obama said Thursday the payment had to be in cash because the US and Iran have no banking relationship, eliminating the possibility of a check or wire transfer.
Obama was responding to the revelation, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, that $400 million of the settlement was delivered by plane to Iran in cash.
A woman has died and five others were injured in a knife attack in a central part of London, police said Thursday.
“There wasn’t a secret”, he said. “If some of these folks who had said the sky is falling suddenly said ‘you know what, we were wrong and we’re glad that Iran no longer has the capacity to break out in short term and develop a nuclear weapon.’ But of course that wasn’t going to happen”.
The White House said it was returning cash from a 1970s Iranian military order that was not fulfilled because of the Islamic Revolution.
While the cash transaction took place the same day as the release of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and the other Americans, administration officials insist the payment did not constitute ransom and that there were was no quid pro quo for the payment.
“This wasn’t some nefarious deal”, Obama said at a press conference at the Pentagon on Thursday. And at the time, we explained that Iran had pressed a claim before an worldwide tribunal about them recovering money of theirs – that we have frozen – that as a effect of them working its way through the global tribunal, it was the assessment of our lawyers that we were now at a point where there was significant litigation risk and we could end up costing ourselves billions of dollars.
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“But none of this is surprising from an Administration that allowed its Secretary of State to threaten the country with a private email server, delete her records, and lie about it to us all”, Miller said. But, did this claim settlement create this problem? “It would also mark another chapter in the ongoing saga of misleading the American people to sell this risky deal”. Trump’s campaign released a statement Thursday night accusing the administration of a “cover-up” and slamming “Obama’s refusal to acknowledge that these funds will end up being used to subsidize terror”. Furthermore, it argued it was a good deal for the United States, settling a $10 billion claim filed by Iran at an global tribunal in The Hague over Iranian funds frozen in 1981, a matter separate from the much larger sums involved in the agreement to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program.
