Obama was responding to questions on a Wall Street Journal report that the United States transferred a plane load of hard cash amounting to Dollars 400 million to Tehran at the same time when Iran released four American prisoners.
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President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference after attending a National Security Council Meeting on efforts to counter the Islamic State, Thursday, Aug. 4, 2016, at the Pentagon in Washington. After the Tower Commission report into the details of the Iran-Contra matter, Reagan gave a televised speech in which he acknowledged, “It’s clear from the Board’s report, however, that I let my personal concern for the hostages spill over into the geo-political strategy of reaching out to Iran”. He said the timing wasn’t because it was a ransom payment for the release of prisoners, but because the USA was having diplomatic conversations with Iran for the first time in decades. His voice rising, he declared, “Let me say clearly in a Trump Pence administration we will not negotiate or compensate those who threaten our people in Trump administration we won’t pay ransom to terrorists or those who support them, they will pay the price!” And the delivery of the payment in foreign currency, officials say, was logical because US sanctions prohibit deals with Iran using dollars and the USA has no banking relationship with the country. “And if they want to be president, they got to start acting like president, and that means being able to receive these briefings and not spread them around”. Right? That was given to us – has to be – by the Iranians. “Many months ago. They were not a secret”, Obama told a press conference at the Pentagon. The settlement, which was resolved before an worldwide tribune, occurred on the same weekend the United States and other global powers brokered a nuclear deal with Iran.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has attacked the Obama administration over the affair. “It’s now been well over a year since the agreement with Iran to stop its nuclear program was signed, and by all accounts, it has worked exactly the way we said it was going to work”, he said. Paying a ransom to Iran while looking those family members in the eye “defies logic”, he said, adding it also would encourage other countries and actors to kidnap Americans with the goal of a big payday.
And Avram said to the king of Sdom: “‘I have lifted up my hand unto Hashem, God Most High, Maker of heaven and earth, that I will not take a thread nor a shoe-latchet nor aught that is thine, lest thou shouldest say: “I have made Avram rich”.
In an interview Thursday former NYC Mayor said the cash transfer to Iran was money laundering.
The settlement was announced in January, including a planned $400 million payment. In exchange, they returned four innocent Americans, illegally held by the Iranian regime.
“This administration has embarrassed our country as no administration has before, going so far as to fund Islamic terror through cash payments to Iran”, he said in a statement.
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One of my all-time favorite lines is from Henry Thoreau: “Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk”.
