The State Department today admitted a Wall Street Journal report that America held onto $400 million cash until five prisoners had been released by Iran first, stressing that the US wanted to keep “maximum leverage” but refusing to call it ransom.
Advertisement
Administration officials, including President Barack Obama, have said the cash payment was not ransom because the $ 400 million was money the US already owed Iran to settle a failed arms deal from more than three decades ago.
It is the first time the U.S. 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.
“We were trying to get our Americans back and we were honest about the fact that it came together at the end of the nuclear deal”, said Kirby.
State Department spokesman John Kirby said the negotiations to return the Iranian money from a 1970s account to buy USA military equipment were conducted separately from talks to free four us citizens in Iran. GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump criticized the payment, saying, “We’ve just learned about a $400 million ransom payment”.
As a result, he explained, the United States had “of course sought to retain maximum leverage until after the American citizens were released”.
Iranian prisoners – some of them dual citizens – who were being released from USA jails in exchange for the Americans were refusing to return to Iran, raising suspicions on the Iranian side, the official said.
Mr Kirby’s comments come after the Wall Street Journal reported that the release of the cash depended on the departure in Iran of the prisoners’ plane.
Administration officials note that President Obama and other officials never hid the $400 million payment, and spoke about it at the time.
The various demands led the U.S.to believe there was a possibility the American prisoners would be returned to Iran’s notorious Evin prison, the official said.
Many who have called the payment a ransom were not assuaged.
“This wasn’t some nefarious deal”, Obama said during an August 4 press conference.
“If it quacks like a duck, it’s a duck”, Mr. Sasse said.
“We deliberately leveraged that moment to finalize these outstanding issues almost simultaneously”.
Some observers, however, said Thursday they don’t see the distinction.
The prisoners were The Washington Post’s Tehran bureau chief, Jason Rezaian; Marine veteran Amir Hekmati; Christian pastor Saeed Abedin; and a fourth man, Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari, whose disappearance had not been publicly known before he was freed.
In 1981, with the reaching of the Algiers Accords and the creation of the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal, Iran filed a claim for these funds, tying them up in litigation at the Tribunal.
Advertisement
“The administration clearly has a lot of explaining to do”, Rep. Jeb Hensarling, the House Financial Services Committee chairman, said.
