Iranian press reports have quoted senior Iranian defense officials describing the cash as a ransom payment.
The $400 million was paid in foreign currency because any transaction with Iran in U.S. dollars is illegal under U.S. law.
The Obama administration has refused to disclose how it paid any of the $1.7 billion, despite congressional queries, outside of saying that it wasn’t paid in dollars.
Lawmakers have expressed concern that the cash would be used by Iran to fund regional allies, including the Assad regime in Syria and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, which the U.S. designates as a terrorist organization.
The U.S. and United Nations believe Tehran is subsidizing the Assad regime’s war in Syria through cash and energy shipments. Iran has acknowledged providing both financial and military aid to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and deploying Iranian soldiers there.
Obama effectively subsidizing terrorist organizations. Bravo, Barack. This is worse than giving up Gitmo terrorists for a deserter.
"I used to think Obama is the best president but slowly I have realized I was hella wrong.
1 ) Failed to address terrorism
Escalated the situation in Middle East
Created the mass immigration situation
more interested in aiding terrorists against Asad(Syria) than in fighting against ISIS and other terrorist groups
Muslim apologist
made a bad nuclear deal with a terrorist country (Iran)
Paying Iran millions of $$$
Escalated tension between USA and Russia
and finally leaving the world at the very worst possible situation than how it was, total failure of a powerful position. However he is good at speaking you gotta give him that…"
with the exception of point 3, where i would change created to neglected
“January 12, 2016 Iran captures and humiliates American sailors. January 17, 2016 Iran gives up 4 prisoners they should not have and gets 1.7 billion from US. The Iranians were that confident of the deal . Very symbolic that Kerry is on crutches.”
“Notice that John Kerry is using crutches. Perhaps spending a lot of time on your knees is unhealthy!”
Will be interesting to see how the Clinton campaign will spin this as a good thing. I realize she’s not been Secretary of State for quite some time now, but she’s very strong in her support of anything the Obama administration has done. I’m guessing her surrogates will deflect and bring up gold star families instead.
it was clearly a gesture of goodwill on the U.S.'s part. if relations are going to eventually normalize, the payment needed to be made anyway. from iran’s pov, it is not hard to see why they required such a gesture as the U.S. was not providing anything in return otherwise. it’s like consummating a marriage. i doubt they were completely unrelated but if it is agreed that those funds are related to an international settlement, who cares.
I have a really great bridge I want to sell you. PM me. I promise it’ll be a great deal, and I’ll put you in contact with my media contacts that will write only positive articles and do interviews with you showing how brilliant you are.
technically it was money that the U.S. received from Iran as part of a weapons deal and never returned. so it is actually iran’s money, as decided by an international court. so in return for U.S. hostages, the U.S. gave iran 1/4 of their money back. haha. hardly a ransom and more like a giant middle finger to iran. the u.s. is basically saying, if you keep giving in to us, we’ll give your money back to you that we’ve held hostage for 35 years.
It makes me ponder on the fact that whether the general Anger and resentment seen in some of the posters here is a result of the way they rush onto making assumptions lacking any substance and wisdom and then getting fukced as a consequence or is it something more elegant and deeper ?
Come on guys there was no payment involved in the whole process, the money belonged to frozen assets so technically no “payment” was involved, paying someone is very different to bending rules or making exceptions . I am not for or against the whole transaction but at least get your damn facts straight .
WSJ quote " But U.S. officials also acknowledge that Iranian negotiators on the prisoner exchange said they wanted the cash [$400 million] to show they had gained something "
this is all going to be funny when Iran breaks their end of the nuclear deal. 1) their govt has a track record of breaking promises 2) US is paying them billions to apparently not develop nuclear 3) the “controls” in place to determine if Iran is cheating on their end are so full of holes, it makes oversight moot north Korea already showed the world this strategy works. one day they just kicked everyone out and said “hey everyone, we are nuclear”. Iran is next
President Trump would have just kept the money anyway, and said “see you losers later”, like how Putin stole that one guy’s superbowl ring. Real winners don’t need laws like property rights.
so US now negotiates with terrorists