President Barack Obama’s administration has previously stated emphatically that the payment, which was made to settle a decades-old arms deal, did not amount to ransom.
Advertisement
On Thursday, the Obama administration admitted to having paid $400 million cash to Iran in January as leverage for the release of American prisoners held in the country but denies that the payment was a ransom.
Thursday’s explanation was the first time the US had so clearly linked the two events, which critics have painted as a hostage-ransom arrangement.
“He denied it was for the hostages, but it was”, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said in a speech Thursday night in Charlotte, North Carolina.
“We would not, we have not, we will not, pay a ransom to secure the release of USA citizens”, Earnest said. “Now Obama said yesterday, ‘It has nothing to do with it.’ It’s another lie”.
Fox News reported that the money was apparently tied to a failed military equipment deal between the two nations stemming from 1979, but as State Department spokesman John Kirby explained, the deal was conducted separate from the negotiations to free the four prisoners, and so it cannot be categorized as a ransom.
Both events occurred January 17, fueling suspicions from Republican lawmakers and accusations from GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump of a quid pro quo that undermined the United States’ long-standing opposition to ransom payments.
The committee sent its request after the Wall Street Journal revealed earlier this month that the USA shipped $400 million in foreign currency, stacked in pallets in an unmarked cargo plane, to Iran around the time that the Islamic Republic released four American hostages.
Money from a frozen Iranian fund in the USA was paid under a tribunal settlement and had been used as leverage during negotiations, U.S. authorities said.
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.
At an August 4 news conference at the Pentagon, Obama said nothing nefarious occurred. Kirby’s comments followed a report Wednesday that US officials held a cargo plane carrying the cash until the hostages were actually freed. Kirby said that, while the negotiations on the payment – part of a decades-old financial dispute between the USA and Iran – and the hostages were separate, the administration did use the payment as “leverage”.
The equipment was never delivered before the Shah was overthrown in 1979. “Not only were the two negotiations separate, they were conducted by different teams on each side, including, in the case of The Hague claims, by technical experts involved in these negotiations for many years”.
“The president owes the American people an explanation”, disclosed Sen.
“The president himself talked about the timing”, Kirby said on Thursday.
He said nowhere in the discussions about getting the US hostages was there talk about “paying ransom” to get them back.
It would be more accurate to describe both the prisoner release and the settlement payment as add-ons to the central deal – sanctions relief and the release of frozen Iranian monies in exchange for curbs on Tehran’s nuclear program.
Meanwhile, a US State Department video of a press briefing about secret US-Iran nuclear talks was deliberately edited but there is no evidence to suggest the cut was meant to hide information, a US spokesman said on Thursday after further details were released of an investigation into the incident.
But the way Obama’s critics are talking, you would think that we offered cash in exchange for the release of the USA prisoners.
Another of the other prisoners, pastor Saeed Abedini, also had linked the two events. He said that as the prisoners waited for hours at an airport to leave Iran, a senior Iranian intelligence official informed them their departure depended on the plane with the cash.
US Secretary of State John Kerry, left, meets with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at United Nations headquarters Saturday, Sept. 26, 2015.
Illinois Senator Mark Kirk, chairman of the Senate Banking national security subcommittee, is demanding congressional hearings on the isse.
Asked whether Kirby was saying the payment was contingent upon the prisoners being released, he responded, “That’s correct”.
Advertisement
Congress returns from a lengthy recess after Labor Day.
