In a separate statement, Senator John McCain said, the State Department’s acknowledgment that the Obama Administration’s Dollars 400 million cash payment to Iran depends upon release of American prisoners in Iran. But when The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the money had been held until the prisoners were let go, the narrative began to change. He said we don’t pay ransom, but he did.
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“The president and his administration have been misleading us since January about whether he ransomed the freedom of the Americans unjustly imprisoned in Iran”, House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement. “With concerns that Iran may renege on the prisoner release, given unnecessary delays regarding persons in Iran who could not be located as well as, to be quite honest, mutual mistrust between Iran and the United States, we of course sought to retain maximum leverage until after American citizens were released. The truth matters and the president owes the American people an explanation”.
U.S. State Department spokesperson John Kirby said Iran was “going to get this money anyway” because an global court was set to rule that the U.S. must pay it. If a cash payment is contingent on a hostage release, it’s a ransom.
Iranian prisoners – some of them dual citizens – who were being released from U.S. jails in exchange for the Americans were refusing to return to Iran, raising suspicions on the Iranian side, the official said.
Trump said, Obama has lied about money, we never give ransom money. The confluence of diplomatic activity meant “our ability to clear accounts on a number of different issues at the same time converged”.
The money comes from an account used by the Iranian government to buy American military equipment in the days of the US -backed shah.
At an August 4 news conference at the Pentagon, Obama said nothing nefarious occurred. The equipment was never delivered after the shah’s government was overthrown in 1979 and revolutionaries took American hostages at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.
“It’s already publicly known that we returned to Iran its $400 million in that same time period as part of the Hague settlement agreement”, he said.
Another of the prisoners, pastor Saeed Abedini, also had linked the two events. Given that interest rates in the early years of the fund were as high as 20 percent, the official said Iran stood to receive a much more substantial award than $1.3 billion in interest. Iran asked the U.S.to pressure them into leaving, but the American negotiators refused, he said.
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The White House and the State Department have strenuously denied Republican accusations that the transaction amounted to paying ransom, insisting that the timing was coincidental.
