US pays for prisoners’ release

The administration’s defense came after the State Department outlined for the first time that the January 17 repayment of money from a 1970s Iranian account to buy USA military equipment was connected to a U.S. Several members of Congress immediately pounced on Thursday’s shift.

Earlier this month, when President Obama rejected Republican arguments that he had paid “ransom” to Iran in January to obtain the release of four Americans, we suggested that the president had the better of the argument.

“The president owes the American people a full accounting of his actions and the unsafe precedent he has set”, Ryan added.

In a speech Thursday night in Charlotte, N.C., Trump accused Obama of lying. “He denied it was for the hostages, but it was”.

“We do not pay ransom. He lied about the hostages, openly and blatantly”.

Kirby spoke a day after The Wall Street Journal reported new details of the crisscrossing planes on that day.

The Department of State admitted Thursday it held onto $400 million in cash destined for Iran as “leverage” until Iran released American prisoners. The fourth American left on a commercial flight. However, every connection between the payment and the prisoners has been flatly denied by the administration. The shipment of cash wasn’t ransom, in the sense of being a payment that had no goal other than to obtain the release of prisoners.

“We were able to conclude multiple strands of diplomacy within a 24 hour period, including implementation of the nuclear deal, the prisoner talks and a settlement of an outstanding Hague tribunal claim”, Kirby said, referring to the money claimed by Iran.

The money was held up because of concern Iran would not come through on its agreement to release the prisoners earlier this year, spokesman John Kirby said.

Around the same time, issues were popping up in the US.

White House press secretary Joshua Earnest said that same day that the ransom allegations were meant to undermine the administration’s deal to rein in Iran’s nuclear program.

Kirby said that, while the negotiations on the payment – part of a decades-old financial dispute between the US and Iran – and the hostages were separate, the administration did use the payment as “leverage”.

The military hardware was never delivered after the Shah was deposed by the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

He said nowhere in the discussions about getting the US hostages was there talk about “paying ransom” to get them back.

The call was an attempt to help explain the way a $400 million cash payment – part of a settlement in another dispute – was handled as leverage for the prisoners. Given that the link was to a prisoner release it’s also pretty close to the dictionary definition of ransom.

A Wall Street Journal report earlier this week, though, reported that US officials had withheld the payment until they were sure the captive Americans had been released.

The first installment of that payment came in a $400 million cash delivery made up of euros and Swiss francs.