In the late 1970s the Iranian government, under the U.S.-backed shah, paid the United States $400 million for military equipment.
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Kerry also said he is unaware of any video showing the arrival of a pallet of cash in Iran, which Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump cited at a rally on Wednesday. “Scandal!” Trump said in a Twitter post.
“That means being able to receive these briefings and not spread them around”, he said.
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.
People familiar with the discussions were quoted as saying that senior Justice Department officials objected to this at the same time that Iran released four imprisoned Americans, but their objections were overruled by the State Department. “It may be because it kind of feels like some spy novel or, you know, some crime novel, because cash was exchanged”, he said. “The only people who are making that suggestion are right-wingers in Iran who don’t like the deal and Republicans in the United States that don’t like the deal”.
Despite the fallout from the issue, however, supporters of the current US president have shrugged off the accusations of ransom, stating that there was nothing wrong with the deal and that the money sent to Iran was in no way a form of ransom for the American prisoners.
The White House denied accusations by Republicans that the $400 million payment made in January was a “ransom” for the release of the hostages. “It wasn’t a secret. We were completely open about it”.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the cash flown to Iran consisted of different currencies, but no dollars as federal law prohibits American dollar transactions with Iran. Maybe not, because if the payment was paid in foreign cash it puts the payment in question. “And the notion that we would somehow start now, in this high-profile way, and announce it to the world, even as we’re looking in the faces of other hostage families whose loved ones are being held hostage, and saying to them we don’t pay ransom, defies logic”.
“The fact of the matter is the United States does not have a banking relationship with Iran”, he said. They raised it in one of the very first meetings in 2001 attended by Hillary Mann Leverett, then a diplomat who led a USA dialogue with Iran on Afghanistan. At the urging of the Pentagon, Obama authorized the strikes that started this week and include precision attacks against IS tanks, rocket launchers and fighting positions.
Mired in chaos following the ouster of strongman Moammar Gadhafi in 2011, Libya became a target for IS extremists hoping to build a safe haven outside its initial territory in Iraq and Syria. But unlike the 400 million, that money would come from taxpayer-funded US government accounts.
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AP writers Julie Pace and Alicia A. Caldwell contributed.
