President Barack Obama’s administration said Thursday that a $400 million cash payment to Iran seven months ago was contingent on the release of a group of Americans held prisoner by the Islamic Republic. The payment marked the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement with Iran.
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The US airlifted $400m (£300.8m) worth of cash to Iran on the same day.
The White House has denied claims it paid a ransom for the release.
But critics have said the carefully choreographed payment was, in effect, a ransom paid in violation of US policy meant to discourage hostage-taking.
Kirby told reporters that negotiations over the United States’ returning the Iranian money from an account from 1999 was conducted separately from the prisoner talks.
The payment, part of a $1.7 billion settlement of a decades-long legal dispute before an worldwide tribunal in The Hague, was announced on January 17, a day after Tehran freed the four Americans and on the same weekend that United Nations sanctions against Iran were lifted.
The State Department spokesman confirmed that the money was not given to Iran until the prisoners were released, but said he was not going to go through the details of The Wall Street Journal report “line-by-line”. “That was our top priority”, Kirby added.
Kirby said “it would have been foolish, imprudent, irresponsible” for the administration to have acted otherwise.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump accused the adminstration of a quid pro quo that undermined America’s longstanding opposition to ransom payments.
“If it quacks like a duck, it’s a duck”.
The cash repayment agreement and hostage release agreement were both made on January 17.
“The president owes the American people a full accounting of his actions and the risky precedent he has set”, Ryan added. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said Thursday.
“He denied it was for the hostages, but it was”.
“We don’t pay ransom”, he said.
The newspaper reported that U.S. officials allegedly would not let a plane containing the cash in Geneva leave for Iran until a Swiss Air Force plane with the three of the USA citizens on board left Tehran. The fourth American left on a commercial flight.
Obama has said his negotiators secured the USA a good deal on a busy diplomatic weekend that also included finalizing the seven-nation nuclear accord. The U.S. dispatched the cash in foreign currencies because any transaction with Iran in dollars is illegal under U.S. law.
Obama has said his negotiators secured the United States a good deal on a busy diplomatic weekend that also included finalising the seven-nation nuclear accord. Abedini said he was told by a senior Iranian intelligence official that their departure was contingent on the movement of a second plane.
The US and Iran have been negotiating the Iranian claim to the money since 1981, and Kerry said that negotiation was separate from the nuclear deal and discussions about Americans held in Iran.
WASHINGTON (AP) – The State Department says it can’t determine who ordered several minutes of videotape deleted from a news briefing about nuclear negotiations with Iran. Obama has described these terms as favorable.
“The Clintons, as they approach the presidency, if they are successful, will have to work with their attorneys to make certain that rules of the road are drawn up to give confidence to them and the American public that there will not be favoritism”, Lugar said earlier this week.
This is the first time the U.S. has admitted to a connection between the release of the prisoners, including the Washington Post’s Jason Rezaian, and the funds.
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“It thanked Iran for its conduct in illegally detaining 10 American sailors in a flagrant violation of global law”, added McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
