The Obama Administration did something in January that goes against one of our most sacred rules in dealing with terrorists; he paid a ransom.
Just five days after Iran released our sailors that were captured in January in an embarrassing spectacle, Obama sent $400 million on the same day four other American’s held in Iranian prisons were released.
The Obama administration says the money was part of the Iran deal, but the facts are not adding up.
If the payment was part of the deal, then why did Obama load up wooden pallets stacked with Swiss francs, euros and other non-American currencies and fly it to Iran in a unmarked cargo plane in the middle of the night?
John Kirby, a spokesman for the State Department tried to explain the payment.
“As we’ve made clear, the negotiations over the settlement of an outstanding claim…were completely separate from the discussions about returning our American citizens home. Not only were the two negotiations separate, they were conducted by different teams on each side, including, in the case of The Hague claims, by technical experts involved in these negotiations for many years.”
The Administration says that the payment was to clear up an old debt from 1979 before Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was ousted as the last monarch of Iran.
Let’s get this strait.
The United States paid a 37-year old debt to Iran on the exact same day that they release four Americans who had been imprisoned in Iran.
Does anybody believe the administration? Not really. People on both sides of the isle are furious that it looks like Obama paid a ransom to Iran of all places.
If it was part of the Iran deal, why didn’t Obama mention it back when the prisoners were released in January?
In Iran, the press reports have quoted leaders in the Iranian military that describe the cargo plane full of money as a ransom payment.
Is what Obama did illegal? Maybe not, because if the payment was paid in foreign cash it puts the payment in question.
There are members of Congress that are trying to pass legislation that will prevent the Obama administration from making more cash payments to Iran and to force the administration to release the details of the $1.7 billion transfer to Iran.
Senator James Lankdor from Oklahoma, one of the members trying to pass legislation by co-writing the bill, said this about ransom payment.
“President Obama’s…payment to Iran in January, which we now know will fund Iran’s military expansion, is an appalling example of executive branch governance. Subsidizing Iran’s military is perhaps the worst use of taxpayer dollars ever by an American president.”
Again, if this was just part of the Iran deal, why all the secrecy? Let us know your thoughts about the ransom payment in the comments below.
