Defending the deal on Thursday, amid allegations that the USA paid Iran $400 million as “ransom” to secure the release of American prisoners, Obama said the “Israeli military and security community … acknowledges this has been a game changer” and that “By all accounts, it has worked exactly the way we said it was going to work”. He defended the transaction as evidence that the nuclear accord with Iran has allowed for progress on other matters.
Advertisement
Pastor Saeed Abedini, one of the four American hostages released by Iran on January 16, said that their plane was loaded and ready for departure, but clearance was withheld for hours pending the arrival of another aircraft.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Iranian sources have said the cash arrived the same day the prisoners were released.
Obama said nonpayment of the owed money posed a “significant litigation risk” that could have cost the United States billions of dollars.
The Russian actions raise “very serious questions” about Moscow’s commitment to pulling the situation “back from the brink”, said Obama.
US officials say the $400 million was the first installment of a settlement the Obama administration reached with Iran to solve a decades-old dispute over a failed arms deal signed just before the 1979 overthrow of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump continued Thursday, before Obama’s remarks, that he had seen a video of people unloading the money from the plane it arrived to Iran on.
The session at the Pentagon occurred as the US was bombing targets in and around the Libyan city of Sirte, a notable expansion of the U.S.-led coalition’s military mission against IS.
He said the transfer, which came out of a long-standing Iranian claim at the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal in The Hague, was negotiated on a separate track from the nuclear deal. The deal seems to have prevented the short-term breakout of nuclear capabilities that were widely feared, and Iran is not to have been discovered cheating. And this news comes as many grieving USA families continue to await compensation for the murder of their loved ones by terrorists funded and supported by the Iranian government.
“The same is true about Iran, which has announced clearly and publicly that its goal is the destruction of Israel, and which was ranked in a recent State Department report as the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism”.
“I have said the agreement has made the world safer, but it has to be enforced”.
Iran released the five detainees on January 16 after the United States had agreed to grant clemency to seven Iranians held mostly for sanctions violations and drop charges against 14 Iranians overseas.
Advertisement
“We’re going to keep going after ISIL aggressively across every front of this campaign”, the president said, using the acronym for the Islamic State’s branch in Libya. “And I’ve spoken out very strongly about how I will enforce this agreement”, she added.
