Report: US airlifted $400 million to Iran as detained Americans were released

[The Nature Boy 7,659]

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/08/03/report-us-airlifted-400-million-to-iran-as-detained-americans-were-released.html

[lostinblue 1,989]

Pay that ransom ... Expect to see more kidnappings around the world ....

[lostinblue 1,989]

[The Nature Boy 7,659]

But Melaina took down her website, Trump made a joke about a crying baby and has small hands

Lets stick to whats important here

[unsmiley 111]

How these Dems can keep a straight face when denying it was a ransom payment when it occurred on same day as hostage release???

They are all congenital liars.

[TBoneTX 45,299]

It's part of the Affordable Ransom Act.

If you like your hostage, you can KEEP your hostage!

[Dashinka 24,505]

It's part of the Affordable Ransom Act.

If you like your hostage, you can KEEP your hostage!

You didn't finish your thought...

"If you don't like your hostage, we will pay you a LOT of money to take them off your hands."

[eieio 1,594]

John Kerry (who may have served in Vietnam) was in charge of the hostage negotiations. They demanded 200 million, he offered 400 million.

[OriZ 3,157]

Another resounding success of the Obama presidency?

[lostinblue 1,989]

John Kerry (who may have served in Vietnam) was in charge of the hostage negotiations. They demanded 200 million, he offered 400 million.

[Ban Hammer 13,343]

that money should make a good addition to their nuke program......

[smilesammich 10,727]

The $400 million was Iran's to start with, placed into a US-based trust fund to support American military equipment purchases in the 1970s. When the Shah was ousted by a 1979 popular uprising that led to the creation of the Islamic Republic, the US froze the trust fund. Iran has been fighting for a return of the funds through international courts since 1981.

In announcing the agreement, Obama said that paying the $400 million -- plus $1.3 billion in interest -- was saving American taxpayers billions of dollars. The Iranians had been seeking more than $10 billion at arbitration.

"For the United States, this settlement saved us billions of dollars that could have been pursued by Iran," Obama said in January. "There was no benefit to the United States in dragging this out."

As it was making the January cash delivery, the US also imposed new sanctions on Iran over its ballistic missile testing. At the same time, the White House unfroze a larger pool of Iranian assets, estimated at $100 to $150 billion, as part of the nuclear deal, though administration officials cautioned that Iran would only pocket about $50 billion after legal claims.

Legal claims are one of the reasons the payment to Iran was controversial when Obama first announced it. The Clinton administration had agreed in 2000 to pay that $400 million to Americans who had won lawsuits against Iran in US courts.

These families and individuals had sued the Islamic Republic for damages after the deaths of loved ones or for being the victims themselves of Iran-backed kidnappings or terrorist attacks. At the time, US officials told those families the money would come from Iran.

With Obama's announcement, it became apparent that the payments had come from US taxpayers and not from Iran at all.

Stuart Eizenstat, the Clinton administration's deputy Treasury secretary, told Newsweek that Iran had filed a claim with The Hague, limiting the administration's ability to lay claim to the fund.

Critics on Wednesday were further incensed by Iranian claims that the cash amounted to a ransom payment for the four prisoners.

"That sort of ransom payment as part of the Iran deal is an outrage," said Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.

US officials conceded that the Iranian negotiators involved in the prisoner exchange said they wanted the cash to coincide with the release of the Americans to prove a deliverable for the exchange even as they argued against the characterization of it as a ransom payment.

"As we've made clear, the negotiations over the settlement of an outstanding claim at The Hague Tribunal were completely separate from the discussions about returning our American citizens home," State Department Spokesman John Kirby said, referring to the $1.7 billion payout that the $400 cast installment was part of.

"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," he said. "The funds that were transferred to Iran were related solely to the settlement of a long-standing claim at the US-Iran Claims Tribunal at The Hague."

"It's not surprising that Iran would want to call this a ransom for domestic political reasons," another senior US official said. "But that is not the case. The confidence built during the Iran nuclear negotiations helped the negotiations in other areas, so it is true all these things came together at the same time as implementation day of the Iran deal. But this was not a ransom."

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/03/politics/us-sends-plane-iran-400-million-cash/index.html

[Ebunoluwa 6,136]

What part of the settlement from your own article do you not understand ? Read up on the U.S.-Iran Claims Tribunal at The Hague.
As usual headlines of propaganda from the ones who never look deep beyond the headlines but settle for Faux News talking points
as it serves their Trumpster parade.

"The cash transfer was the first installment paid in a $1.7 billion settlement the Obama administration reached with Iran to resolve a failed 1979 arms deal dating from just before the Iranian Revolution."

[TBoneTX 45,299]

The funds apparently had to be converted to Euros, etc. first.

That sounds like money-laundering.

If it is, and if a corporate bigwig had done this, he'd have been in jail before the trial started.

[We Keep Receipts 9,238]

So, basically this is VJ's version of rewriting history to blame Obama for something that took place before he even took office.