President Obama on Thursday emphatically denied that the $400 million cash payment his administration delivered to Iran on an unmarked cargo plane just as four Americans held hostage inside the rogue nation were released was a ransom payment and charged that his administration had been transparent about the peculiar deal.
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“W$3 e couldn’t send them a check, and we could not wire the money”, he said during a press conference at the Pentagon today.
His response follows a report from The Wall Street Journal earlier this week on the Obama administration airlifting the money in an unmarked cargo plane in January at the same time the four USA citizens were released.
“If true, this report confirms our long-standing suspicion that the administration paid a ransom in exchange for Americans unjustly detained in Iran”, said House Speaker Paul Ryan.
Obama typically convenes meetings of the National Security Council at the White House, but over the past year he has occasionally held them at other agencies like the State Department and the CIA. “And the notion we would start now, in this high-profile way. defies logic”. The two governments reached the settlement during negotiations that American officials have said were separate from talks about the release of prisoners.
The natural question is, Did the US pay ransom to Iran in order to free its citizens? “We do not pay ransom for hostages”.
Obama and his advisers have been pushed into spin mode in recent days after a report in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal provided the extraordinary details surrounding the mysterious cash payment to Iran.
The cash, in addition to $1.3 billion interest to be paid later, revolved around a failed military equipment deal at time when the US-backed Shah still ruled Iran.
He said Russian Federation must show it is willing to work to reduce the violence and focus the fight on the Islamic State group and other extremists. “This was announced by the president of the United States himself at the same time”.
Obama says the reason why the payment coincided with the release of prisoners and the nuclear deal was because the United States and Iran were having diplomatic conversations for the first time in decades.
USA officials have said they were concerned that the tribunal might order the U.S.to pay billions more in interest as part of an enforced judgment and that settling the claim in January made good sense.
The payment has revived allegations from critics of the Iran nuclear deal. And he told me we are waiting for another plane, and if that plane take off, then we’re going to let you go, ‘ Abedini remembered. “I have said the agreement has made the world safer, but it has to be enforced”.
Obama described the flap over the cash payment as a diversion from the success of the nuclear accord between Iran and world powers. “By all accounts, it has worked exactly the way we said it was going to work”, he said.
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