A $400 million pallet of cash delivered to the Iranian government at the same time a complicated nuclear deal was settled and four Americans were released was unrelated and not a ransom, US Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday.
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On Wednesday The Obama administration said, 400 million in cash paid to Iran soon after the release of five Americans in custody by Tehran was not payment as some Republicans have charged.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump blamed his opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for launching the talks with Iran. “Those families know we have a policy that we don’t pay ransom”.
The State Department confirmed having received the request and said they would respond “as appropriate”.
The paper quoted Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, as accusing the Obama administration of paying a “ransom to the ayatollah for United States hostages”.
On January 17, 2016, a United States jet plane landed in Tehran carrying $400 million in cash, mostly Euros and Swiss Francs; the same day, Iran released four United States citizens. The White House insists the developments were unrelated and that the $400 million sent to Iran was the first installment in paying Iran $1.7 billion it owed the nation as a result of a botched arms deal in 1979 just before a revolution overthrew Iran’s last king.
Obama administration officials have dismissed the controversy as old news, noting that the settlement was fully disclosed by the White House and State Department at the time the Iran nuclear deal was announced. However, they really have a hard time answering the question, they don’t really answer the question when asked if they did not get the money, if Iran did not get the money, would these hostages have been released?
His campaign later told CBS News that the video was actually footage of the Americans landing at Geneva.
“People knew what it was going to look like, and there was concern the Iranians probably did consider it a ransom payment”, the newspaper quoted one of the people as saying.
“And that included securing the release of five American citizens who’d been unjustly detained in Iran and closing out a longstanding financial dispute in a way that saved the American people potentially billions of dollars”, he added.
Obama defended the administration’s decision to send cash and disputed the notion that it was a ransom payment for the release of American hostages.
193-a-09-(Josh Earnest, White House press secretary, at news conference)-“pay a ransom”-White House press secretary Josh Earnest says the cash was Iran’s own money, being returned, in settlement of a decades-old legal claim – and was not a ransom”.
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“What was negotiated was an agreement in the Hague tribunal”.
