State Department spokesman John Kirby admitted during a press briefing on Thursday that the Obama administration’s secret cash payment of $400 million to Iran was, in fact, ransom for four Americans being held hostage in Tehran.
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Spokesman John Kirby says that negotiations over the US’s returning Iranian money from a decades-old account was conducted separately from a prisoner swap in January, in which seven Iranians detained in the USA were exchanged for Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and three other Iranian-American prisoners.
It is the first time the USA has so clearly linked the two events, prompting claims that the payment was a hostage-ransom arrangement, which runs counter to the longstanding United States policy of not paying ransoms.
“The payment of the $400 million was not done until after the prisoners were released”, US State Department spokesman John Kirby said on Thursday.
The payment, part of a $1.7 billion settlement of a decades-long legal dispute before an global 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.
In a conference call with reporters, senior administration officials said it made no sense not to use the money as leverage to ensure that four US citizens were freed, especially as Washington was uncertain until the very moment their plane left that Iran would live up to its word.
On August 3, the day the news broke, Kirby tweeted: “Reports of link between prisoner release & payment to Iran are completely false”.
US officials also have said that the prisoner release and the arms-deal settlement were negotiated through separate diplomatic channels, and denied that the two were linked.
Administration officials note that President Obama and other officials never hid the $400 million payment, and spoke about it at the time.
The “tracks” argument came up yesterday, too, in Kirby’s claim that State was handling the hostages and the Iran deal on two separate tracks.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. refused to hand over the $400 million cash payment that was being held at Geneva Airport “until a Swiss Air Force plane carrying three freed Americans departed from Tehran”.
The White House, however, has pushed back on claims that the USA paid a ransom for the release of the prisoners, saying the money was part of a longstanding financial dispute with Iran from before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iran had lived up to its commitment by repaying $2.5 billion awarded for claims by US citizens and companies.
“The way I think ransom works is you have to pay first and then you get your hostages back and that’s not what happened here”.
He said nowhere in the discussions about getting the US hostages was there talk about “paying ransom” to get them back.
The payment was made by the United States in cash due to global sanctions against Iran.
When a video emerged earlier this month that purportedly showed the payment of $400 million on the same day the prisoners were released, the Obama administration was hit with accusations they’d paid a ransom for the Americans.
Also of concern, the official said, was the disappearance in the final hours of Yeganeh Salehi, an Iranian citizen who is married to released Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and was included in the exchange. “The truth matters and the president owes the American people an explanation”.
On Thursday, however, Kirby said, “The events came together simultaneously”. For one thing, why did the US suddenly agree now to pay Iran this money.
Illinois Senator Mark Kirk, chairman of the Senate Banking national security subcommittee, is demanding congressional hearings on the isse. USA officials had pinned the delays on difficulties finding Rezaian’s wife and mother.
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The ordeal has set off a tidal wave of condemnation from opposition Republican party politicans, who have questioned the timing of the two events and said the government paid a ransom for the releases.
