In early August, the State Department had said the prisoner release and delivery of money were completely separate, although Mr Kirby acknowledged on Thursday that the two were in fact related.
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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. USA officials wouldn’t let Iran bring the cash home from a Geneva airport until a Swiss Air Force plane carrying three of the freed Americans departed from Tehran, the paper reported.
“No, I’ve never called you guys evil”. Kirby admitted that the USA had refused to deliver the $400 million before Iran released the hostages, despite the Obama administration’s position that the two transactions were completely separate.
President Obama makes a statement from the White House regarding the release of Americans by Iran on January 17. He said we don’t pay ransom, but he did. “So a decision was made on the spot, given Iran’s behavior, that we should hold up on the $400 million”.
It is possible, of course, that the two teams were coordinating simply to make sure the Iranians stayed true to their word-holding the prize until the Americans could be sure the Iranians wouldn’t hold back.
“This administration continues to endanger Americans at home and overseas by releasing known terrorists, conducting unsafe prisoner exchanges, and enabling the nefarious activities of a designated state sponsor of terrorism”.
Since the release of the detainees in January at least one other Iranian-American has been detained.
Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said earlier this month that the US didn’t and wouldn’t “pay ransom to secure the release of USA citizens”.
“It’s already publicly known that we returned to Iran its USD400 million in that same time period as part of The Hague settlement agreement”, he said. It’s understandable that Obama didn’t want to give ground to his critics, but in the end his dissembling has empowered them.
“It would have been foolish, imprudent and irresponsible for us not try to maintain maximum leverage”.
“If it quacks like a duck, it’s a duck”, Sen.
“But we wouldn’t be having this discussion if the Islamic Republic were a government that abided by global norms and did not arbitrarily hold hostages as bargaining chips”, he said. “The truth matters and the president owes the American people an explanation”, Republican Senator Ben Sasse said.
The funds were part of a trust fund Iran used before its 1979 Islamic Revolution to buy USA military equipment that was tied up for decades in litigation at the tribunal.
Kirby insisted that negotiations for the release of prisoners and the payment of $400 million to Iran – “were independent efforts” and that “they’re connected in the sense that they came together at the same time”.
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“That’s a ransom, plain and simple, and it sets a very unsafe precedent”, Katko said Friday. That is the sum, with interest, held frozen by Washington since 1979, when the pro-US government of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was overthrown in the Islamic revolution.
