$400 Million Payment to Iran Looking More Like Ransom for American Prisoners
Timing is everything
Since the revelation that the Obama Administration forked over $400 million to Iran in exchange for right around the time American hostages were released, speculation that the cash was a ransom payment has dogged the administration and the Justice Department.
Timing is everything, especially in determining what really went down.
New reports suggest the $400 million was held until after the Americans were released from Iranian custody, making the whole ordeal look an awful lot like a ransom payment and subsequent prisoner release. The Obama Administration denied the payment was ransom, but said it was part of $1.7 billion settlement from 1979.
From the WSJ:
U.S. officials wouldn’t let Iranians take control of the money until a Swiss Air Force plane carrying three freed Americans departed from Tehran on Jan. 17, the officials said. Once that happened, an Iranian cargo plane was allowed to bring the cash back from a Geneva airport that day, according to the accounts.
President Barack Obama and other U.S. officials have said the payment didn’t amount to ransom, because the money was owed by the U.S. to Iran as part of a longstanding dispute linked to a failed arms deal from the 1970s. U.S. officials have said that the prisoner release and cash transfer took place through two separate diplomatic channels.
But the handling of the payment and its connection to the release of the Americans have raised questions among lawmakers and administration critics.
The use of an Iranian cargo plane to move pallets filled with $400 million brings clarity to one of the mysteries surrounding the cash delivery to Iran first reported by The Wall Street Journal this month. Administration officials have refused to publicly disclose how and when the cash transfer authorized by Mr. Obama took place.
Executives from Iran’s flagship carrier, Iran Air, organized the round-trip flight from Tehran to Geneva where the cash—euros and Swiss francs and other currencies stacked on shipping pallets—was loaded onto the aircraft, these people said.
“Our top priority was getting the Americans home,” said a U.S. official.
Once the Americans were “wheels up” on the morning of Jan. 17, Iranian officials in Geneva were allowed to take custody of the $400 million in currency, according to officials briefed on the exchange.
BUT IT’S NOT A RANSOM PAYMENT, OK?!
Mary blogged earlier this month:
President Barack Obama said the payment “represented the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement the Obama administration reached with Iran to resolve a decades-old dispute over a failed arms deal signed just before the 1979 fall of Iran’s last monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.”
Congress is planning to investigate the swap when it reconvenes in September.
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Comments
It was ransom payment.
Obama knows it. We know it.
Obama knows that we know it.
And yet he tells the lie right in our faces just because he can.
He knows nothing will happen.
We know nothing will happen.
Congress is planning to investigate the swap, but it will be just the same as when they investigated Benghazi, or Hillary’s server, or Fast and Furious, or, etc, etc.
Nothing will happen.
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies right to our faces.”
It wasn’t a “failed deal”. It was part of Iran’s well-deserved reward for attacking an embassy.
Iran’s crime was (and still is) egregious. Recall that even the Nazis didn’t attack embassies. Hell, even the Mongols didn’t do that.
Of course Obama, who apparently never met a foreign potentate he wasn’t hot to surrender to, wouldn’t be bothered by that.
Besides, $400 million by itself won’t buy Iran enough centrifuges. They’ll need a bit more. Probably they’ll play the same game again; once they’ve landed a mark, easy money is addictive.
“Besides, $400 million by itself won’t buy Iran enough centrifuges”
DING! We have a winnah!
Glad to know someone else has put two and two together.
If Obama was truthful with the American electorate, they would have rejected his proposals.
But they don’t matter to him. He know better than anyone else, as he never fails to remind us.
So the dumbass just put a $100 million dollar price tag on the head of every american?
Who counted $400 Million in currency on the tarmac? Did we get a receipt?
I am absolutely aghast that no one in the media has followed up on this…..if “BOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!” had done this he would have been strung up, tarred, feathered and hog-tied to a rail for evisceration by the mainstream media.
The 2014 congress gave them carte blanche and they are using it. The worst they have to fear is getting Gowdied.
The GOP congress: worse than useless.
Talleyrand said it best: “Treason is a matter of dates.”